On Sept. 26, School District 27 (SD27) hosted their annual Orange Shirt Day event at the baseball fields behind the South Cariboo Recreation Centre to recognize Canada’s past with residential schools, where members of local police forces and churches took First Nations children and forced them into the schools in order to assimilate them.
Orange Shirt Day was created to educate and inspire future generations on the government-sponsored cultural genocidal program enacted in 1876 with the Indian Act until the last residential school closed as late as 1996, in hopes that it or something like it will never happen again.
“We want all children to live and learn without fear and prejudice. We are very lucky to live in a time where our ability to share our experiences can be done at the touch of the keyboard,” said Beverly Marks to the crowd of students from the district on the behalf of MLA Donna Barnett. “I encourage all of you to look into our history to learn about your heritage, learn about Canada, learn about British Columbia, and it’s history – good and bad. Then go out into the world and teach others to improve on what we’re so lucky to have. Everyone matters.”
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Mayor Mitch Campsall also echoed this sentiment and spoke to how it is fantastic that today’s children are being taught about the residential school system, as his generation never received it and the students will be best equipped to teach and prevent it from happening again.
Margo Wagner, the director of Area H of the Cariboo Regional District, was also at the event on behalf of the CRD and all its staff.
“When we signed on to the Truth and Reconciliation action matters, we agreed that we’d do everything in our power that Chief Justice [Murray] Sinclair made in the Truth and Reconciliation document,” she said. “I think we’re doing well. We’re well on our way.”
She then addressed the students, ranging from kindergarteners to Grade 12 students.
“It’s important that you understand this. Taking young children, putting them in a whole different culture and not being allowed to visit their parents for endless months, it has affected countless generations. It hasn’t just affected those children. They have now become parents – they have children of their own.”
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Cecilia DeRose then took the stage, first speaking in her traditional Shuswap language before taking a deep breath and switching to English.
DeRose, a member of the Esk’etemc First Nation, was awarded the Indspire Award in March of 2018. Indspire is a national Indigenous-led charity that funds post-secondary education for Indigenous people. She was recognized for teaching the Secwepemctism language.
She is also a survivor of the residential school system and spoke of her experience within it.
“We weren’t allowed to speak Shuswap, so we had to speak English and we didn’t know a word…It was hard to communicate with the nuns and priests. If we got caught speaking our language we got the straps so we didn’t dare speak out loud. If we wanted to speak we had to whisper to our buddies.
“We had a lot of hard experiences… we didn’t have friends, nuns or brothers (priests). We never got to see our brothers. They were in a different building, so we just saw them just at a distance and waved. We never got together as a family or talk to them. The first mother superior that was there, I never saw her smile. She was there for the first four years and, I never ever, ever saw her smile once,” she recalled.
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The next mother superior allowed the children to have picnic days where both genders participated in sack races and other types of parties together.
However, the experiences never left her.
“That was a lifetime memory for us. We will never forget it. I don’t think we will ever bury it.”
She married off-reserve to a rancher in her adult life. While living off out in the Chilcotin, the school district sent her a letter that said her eldest child had to go to a boarding school one year. She told her husband that no way that would be happening and they ended up finding work at a ranch near Lac la Hache so her five children could bus to a school and back, never having to board.
brendan.jure@100milefreepress.net
