Celina Loyer says her mother almost never talked about her time at the Edmonton Indian Residential School, parts of which still stand on the grounds of Poundmaker’s Lodge near St. Albert.
“My mother wouldn’t talk about it until she was 70 years old,” she said, and even then took many of her experiences there with her to the grave.
That’s why Loyer said she was touched to be in city council chambers on Monday as Mayor Cathy Heron, clad in an orange shirt, proclaimed Sept. 30 to be Orange Shirt Day in St. Albert.
“I wondered what my mother would think of that, having (her experience) acknowledged by the mayor of St. Albert.”
St. Albert students and leaders will join tens of thousands across Canada this Monday to mark Orange Shirt Day – a national event that sees people don orange shirts to honour those affected by Canada’s residential school system and to discuss their legacy in the spirit of reconciliation.
“It’s really about honouring those who lost their lives and those who survived,” Heron said in an interview, and to stand in solidarity with the generations of Canadians who were affected by the schools.
Members of the public are invited to join Heron and Indigenous elders at noon Monday at St. Albert Place for tea, bannock, and speeches to mark Orange Shirt Day. A walk to the Healing Garden will follow at 12:40 p.m., where guests can observe a smudge ceremony and performances by Indigenous singers and drummers.
Heron called on all city residents to wear an orange shirt Monday to show their support for Canada’s Indigenous peoples.
“Wearing an orange shirt is the simplest thing in the world,” she said, yet it can make a huge difference for some.
Lessons of the past
Orange Shirt Day started in 2013 in B.C. when residential school survivor Phyllis Webstad shared her story on how her grandmother gave her a shiny orange shirt for her first day at a residential school at age six – a shirt staff members stripped from her as soon as she arrived, leaving her in tears. The shirt has come to symbolize a childhood lost and the experience some 150,000 Indigenous Canadians endured in residential schools.
Loyer, a Calahoo resident and aboriginal programmer at the Musée Héritage Museum, said that Orange Shirt Day was a powerful event for her and many residential school survivors, as for many years no one would believe their accounts of what happened in the schools.
“We cannot let ourselves forget that the Government of Canada institutionalized a way to try and take the Indian out of the child,” she said, referring to the residential school system’s explicit goal of wiping out Indigenous identity.
“We need to have that memory and keep it alive so we don’t do that to other groups of people who come here.”
Reconciliation involves more than just symbolic acts like Orange Shirt Day, Heron said. Based on recommendations from the Payhonin Reconciliation report adopted earlier this month, council will now take Indigenous relations training as part of council orientation and make annual reports on reconciliation efforts to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. Other steps, such as the installation of additional flagpoles to fly the Métis and Treaty 6 flags, are also under consideration.
Loyer said she would think of her parents and family during Orange Shirt Day, adding that it comforted her to know that Canada was now ready to acknowledge this part of our shared history.
“Once we get through understanding what the truth is, then we can work on reconciliation.”
Visit orangeshirtday.org for more on Monday’s national celebrations.
