in Chatsworth, Grey Highlands, Southgate, West Grey
September 19, 2024
BY JOHN BUTLER — In October 1966, twelve-year-old Chanie Wenjack died of exposure by the side of the railway tracks while trying to walk 600 kilometres to his home from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora. Wearing only a light windbreaker in subzero temperature, he had walked for 36 hours. His body was discovered by a CN engineer. Chanie had been forcibly removed from his Marten River home and sent to the school when he was nine. Chanie’s tragic story became well known over the years, and in March 2018, Trent University launched the Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies.
Chanie Wenjack was only one of about 150,000 Indigenous children who were placed in segregated schools for Indigenous children in Canada. Up to 6,000 of these children died while in residential schools. The deaths of some such children were never recorded: many lie today in unmarked graves in long neglected school graveyards. They never achieved the tragic fame of Chanie Wenjack, but every one of their lives was as precious as his.
Folks in South Grey have a chance to learn more about Canada’s infamous residential schools, and to celebrate the rich and deep Indigenous cultures that survived despite these schools, at a free National Truth and Reconciliation Day Ceremony on Monday September 30 at 5:00 pm at Dundalk United Church, 200 Main Street East, Dundalk. The Ceremony is open to everyone in the community. Funded by the Government of Canada, the event is organized by JunCtian Community Initiatives in cooperation with the Grey Highlands Peace Committee. It coincides with Orange Shirt Day — an Indigenous-led grassroots commemorative day that raises awareness of the inter-generational impacts of residential schools, and promotes the belief that “Every Child Matters”. While the public is invited to wear an orange item of apparel that day, many of us don’t have orange in our closets — so orange ribbons will be offered free at the event.
The orange shirt symbolizes the stripping away of the culture, freedom and self-esteem of Indigenous children over generations. It was inspired by the accounts of Phyllis Jack Webstad, a Northern Secwepemc (Shuswap) author and activist from British Columbia, whose clothing — including a new orange shirt given to her by her grandmother — was taken from her forever during her first day at a residential school in 1973 when she was six.
“While our Truth and Reconciliation Ceremony will help us remember a tragic part of our history,” said Joan John, Founder of JunCtian Community Initiatives, “It will also celebrate the survival and growth of Indigenous culture, from which all Canadians can learn.”
As part of that celebration, the event will include an Indigenous smudging ceremony, food, and a presentation by Lenore Keeshig of the Wolf Clan, a distinguished traditional storyteller from the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation at Neyaashiinigmiing on the Saugeen Bruce Peninsula. From 2001 until the present, Lenore has worked as a naturalist, providing education programs about the natural and cultural heritage and history of the Saugeen Bruce Peninsula, the Great Lakes and the Anishinaabek people. A poet and author of books for children, Lenore received the Living the Dream Award in 1993 (an award commemorating the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) and in a 1988 an Author’s Award for an article co-authored with her husband David. Lenore was the founding chair of the Racial Minority Writers Committee of The Writers’ Union of Canada, and co-founded the Committee to Re-Establish the Trickster, a group that fosters and promotes Aboriginal writers.
Lenore sees the September 30 ceremony as a mending and building initiative:
“One of the hardest things to mend is broken trust — a trust broken not just by broken treaties and the residential school system and the fallout from all that and more. Here we will be on September 30, in the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, working to mend that broken trust and to build a new and respectful and long-lasting relationship.”
Mending and building has taken place on the national level too. Canada’s Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault tabled a bill on September 29, 2020, proposing Orange Shirt Day as a national statutory holiday, to be named the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. All parties in the House of Commons agreed to fast-track the bill. It passed in the House and Senate, and received royal assent on June 3, 2021.
There were 140 federally funded residential schools in Canada that operated between 1867 and 1996, run primarily by the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, but also by the United, Methodist and Presbyterian Churches. Deaths in these residential schools are estimated to be between 3,200 and 6,000 children, largely from tuberculosis. Some residential schools had mortality rates of 30% or more. The mortality rates at residential schools were much higher than the mortality rates of Canadian children as a whole. Physical and sexual abuse and neglect in these schools marred the lives of many who survived, just as these conditions contributed to many of the deaths.
Survivors advocated for recognition and reparations, and demanded accountability for the intergenerational impacts of harm caused. Their advocacy resulted in:
Residential schools were part of a decades-long government policy to assimilate Indigenous peoples into the “general population.” Duncan Campbell Scott, the deputy superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932, who supported the assimilation policy, said in 1910, "It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating so closely in these schools and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is being geared towards the final solution of our Indian Problem."
While this policy of assimilation caused the deaths of thousands and the cultural and political oppression of First Nations, it ultimately failed in the face of the success of Indigenous culture, with roots thousands of years old and vibrancy as fresh as the promise of tomorrow.
Come share in that history and culture and joy on National Truth and Reconciliation Day in Dundalk on Monday September 30 at 5:00 pm at Dundalk United Church. You matter too!
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