The topic of residential schools is difficult. Although there is bound to be discomfort for anyone coming to terms with Canada’s history in this regard, it’s something the country has become increasingly invested in remembering.
To this end, while the concepts that tend to draw attention leading up to Truth and Reconciliation Day on September 30th are important year-round, the Truth and Action Working Group of the Pembina Valley is taking special care this month to create ways for the community to engage mindfully not only with what it means to be Indigenous in Canada, but also what it means in our community — for our friends, family, neighbours, and colleagues.
For anyone new to the history of Truth and Reconciliation Day, its origins spring from the orange shirt of one little girl.
“Orange Shirt Day started in 2013. It was a commemorative event in Williams Lake, BC, and it told the story of Phyllis Webstad,” says Dianne Hildebrand, a member of the Truth and Action Working Group. “She was a residential school survivor, and when she went to school . . . for the first time, . . . her grandmother bought her a shiny orange shirt. She went to a school where that was taken away from her. She never saw that shirt again, and many other signs and symbols of her own personal identity were removed from her in that experience.”
In 2021, Orange Shirt Day became the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
As for what Truth and Reconciliation Day has grown into, it honours not only all the residential survivors like Webstad whose identities were stripped, but also those who did not survive. The families and communities who mourned and continue to mourn their loss of life, culture, and community are also honoured. The day was established in response to The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 calls to action, which are the result of a project from 2008 to 2015 during which the commission gathered the experiences and stories of those affected by the residential school system.
This year is the first one that Truth and Reconciliation Day on September 30th will be a statutory holiday in Manitoba.
“I think it's always awesome to have another holiday. No one is going to complain about that,” says Hildebrand. “I think the thing is, how are we going to use that? And how are we going to prepare to mark that? Really, it's an opportunity set aside for those of us who aren't getting the curriculum that kids are getting in school now.”
While to some, the residential school system seems like a bygone practice from the distant past, the last school closed in 1996 — well within the living memory of many people who must grapple with Canada’s history and their own.
“I would say that, for myself at my age, there's things that we learned in school, and there's things that we learn as adults, and there's things that we're blind to for many years, and we gradually come to recognize them,” says Hildebrand. “As a country, that's what's happened for us over the last 10 to 20 years. We’ve gradually recognized the significance of residential schools and what that meant for children and communities and generations.”
Hildebrand adds that residential schools have crashed into the Canadian consciousness because of the grim discoveries over the past few years.
“The thing that I think finally had people paying attention and recognizing it at a heart level was all of the unmarked graves of children that have been discovered,” she says. “[We’re] starting to really have to face the realities of what happened there.”
In the face of such a difficult chapter of history and its reverberations through time, it can be challenging for those who feel on the outside looking in to know how to react. The Truth and Action Working Group is one way for community members to empower themselves through education that both acknowledges history and helps precipitate a future that is bright for everyone.
“The Truth and Action Working Group is simply a group of volunteers,” says Hildebrand. “We're from the Morden, Winkler, [and] Carman areas . . . . [We] are really interested in doing our own education and providing opportunities for other people to learn about Indigenous issues.”
For Hildebrand, the group’s function is not to take a moralistic role in the community, but it is rather a group of people who feel an internal pull to reshape their own perspectives.
“We want to help ourselves [understand] as well. A lot of it is our own ongoing learning, but it's providing those opportunities for people to engage in the conversation,” she says. “A lot of these issues are not past issues that we're talking about. They're still happening right here and now.”
The Truth and Action Working Group is busy in the region. Last weekend on Saturday, “The Secret Treaty” Tour and Book Launch took place. The graphic novel is a joint effort by Swan Lake’s David Scott and Winkler’s Jonathan Dyck.
“This [story] is from the oral tradition of the Ojibwe people here and their first meetings when Mennonites first came to the area,” says Hildebrand. “It is Mennonite and Indigenous history combined.”
The event included an afternoon of Ojibwe storytelling, a tour, and a powerful symbol of comradery and fellowship familiar to many people in the Pembina Valley — faspa (a traditional afternoon meal served in Mennonite homes).
The group’s next book tour takes place on September 24th at 7 p.m. at St. Paul’s United Church in Morden during Truth and Reconciliation Week. The book is called “Crossing the River: An Unsettling Memoir” by Sandra Hayes-Gardiner, who grew up in The Pas, Manitoba.
“She talks about going back to work as a social worker and how she was part of apprehending children as part of her role in those years,” says Hildebrand. “She really talks about her own journey of this gradual awareness I was talking about — learning about reality, and then the other part of it [is] how we are part of that story.”
Hildebrand says that in the week leading up to Truth and Reconciliation Day, there will also be webinars accessible from anywhere run by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba. Topics covered will include the health-related impacts of residential schools, allyship, confronting biases, and how to address barriers of reconciliation, to name a few.
“This is something that you can access yourself from home. This is something that workplaces could access and have available to their employees,” says Hildebrand. “If you don't love accessing technology and figuring this out from home, St. Paul’s United Church [in Morden] will be casting these Zoom items in its facility.”
On Truth and Reconciliation Day itself, there will be a ceremony and healing walk in Morden. The event will begin at the Access Event Centre with a ceremony and flag raising, followed by a walk as a community.
“Whether we're silent, whether we're paying attention, whether we're actively trying to seek a way to connect with people in our communities who are Indigenous, . . . those are choices that we get to make every day, but this is specifically a day where you can come out and you can learn more and be part of things,” says Hildebrand.
For Hildebrand, everyone is a part of the ongoing realities that Truth and Reconciliation broach. Seeking education together is one way to manage the discomfort required in finding a path forward.
“This is our story,” she says. “We are part of this story and how we continue to be [a part of it] — really that's the question.”
For more information about the role the Truth and Action Working Group has in the Pembina Valley or to become involved, visit their Facebook page here. To read stories by residential school survivors in their own words, scroll down on Manitoba Museum's page here.
~With files from Ty Hildebrand and Jayme Giesbrecht~