YORKTON — National Day for Truth and Reconciliation was recognized last Sept. 30, in Yorkton with a march down Broadway Street with presentations following the walk.
Still known to many as Orange Shirt Day the day is a memorial to recognize the long-term effects of the Canadian Indian residential school system, which was a common theme for the three speakers.
Emma Mantee said sharing stories is important.
“When we share a little bit of our story we’re bringing our past and present together,” she said.
Alexander Campbell said just being in City Centre Park for the event shows a resiliency and that was important.
Campbell said for far too long First Nations people have been impacted by colonization, adding it is something they must still overcome.
“I’m still trying to give up how I was colonized,” he said. “. . . What I lost as an Indigenous person, I’m trying to get back to it.”
Speaker Howard Sangwais picked up on that theme.
“People are still struggling with who they are,” he said. “They don’t know who they are.”
Sangwais said many lack the confidence “to get to a certain place in life.”
The problem for many relates back to residential schools.
Sangwais said his mother went to a residential school so did he, and that has impacted he and his family.
“I don’t even remember living with my siblings when I was young. They weren’t there,” he said, adding as a result family bonds were never really created.
Sangwais said he remembers being in residential school always looking out the classroom windows, or at the doors, to the point teachers wrote in his report cards “difficulty concentrating.”
“The fact is I just didn’t want to be there,” he said, adding his looking out windows and watching doors was because I was actually waiting for my parents to come.”
It got worse as Sangwais said he was sexually abused too.
It left scars that Sangwais said took years to come to terms with in part because so many denied his truth, until an elder in Saskatoon finally validated his experience, accepting what Sangwais had went through.
Mantee said she recalls her first day at residential school, the feeling she had when meeting the priest for the first time.
“I knew then I was going to be alone,” she said.
Mantee said residential schools was where First Nations children lost their bonds to family. Lost their innocence. Lost their cultural identity.
“Our self pride, our self worth that we as children had a right to have,” she said.
In terms of truth and reconciliation it is a positive path but one where the journey is slower than many might wish.
“Everybody has their own opinion on reconciliation . . . There is no right, or wrong one,” said Campbell.
Campbell said he believes whatever is done it must come “from the heart” to “do what is best for the people. . . “Have there been any changes for me? Yes; incremental changes.”
Mantee said she sees progress.
“Think about how far we’ve come,” she said. “We’ve made quite a lot of strides. We have a voice now.”
Sangwais said part of the issue is that the idea of truth and reconciliation may be good, but only if people understand what it is about.
For example, putting up a teepee as a gesture doesn’t mean a lot if “no one really knows what it stands for.” At that point it is merely a lawn ornament, he noted.
Campbell said steps forward have been made, then added, “we have a long ways to go.” He also noted the job of reconciliation is largely on the non-aboriginal side of the ledger.
“Reconciliation is mostly the responsibility of the other side,” he said.
As a key first step Campbell said, “everybody else has to acknowledge this is Indigenous land first and foremost.”
