Truth and Reconciliation

Baie D’Urfe holds creative Truth and Reconciliation event

By Chelsey St-Pierre
The Suburban

Baie D’Urfé resident Oana Silagui-Bedikyan hosted the town’s annual Truth and Reconciliation event for kids and tots in the park last week.

Children, along with their families, were invited to share pizza and snacks, served up by Oana’s husband — Aksel Bedikyan. Then they were invited to gather round on thick blankets laid on the grass to listen to Silagui read a Native publication created by Elder Albert D. Marshall Mi’Kmaq, spiritual leader from the Moose Clan, Louise Zimanyi, and illustrator Emily Kewageshig-Anishnaabe from the Saugeen First Nation.

The idea is to build the same kind of community gathering that the Aboriginal soul represents, getting together and sharing stories in nature. Story-telling is the original medicine passed along to generations. In nature, we find the fundamental building blocks for children,” Silagui-Bedikyan told The Suburban.

The event took place at the lake front park across the street from the Town’s library. Kids enjoyed playtime in the park following the book reading. Many challenged each other to tree climbing competitions while others practiced skipping rocks on St-Louis lake. “They had the opportunity to experience the words in the book,” Silagui-Bedikyan explained. “Many people write to me after the event, feeling appreciative of just being able to sit down and listen to a gentle story that their kids can process and understand.”

Baie D’Urfé Mayor Heidi Ekdvedt attends the event annually. “It is so wonderful to see our community gather and we are grateful for these grassroots initiatives,” Ekdvedt told The Suburban. “We are a small town, filled with great people.” n

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 Gespeg marks Truth and Reconciliation Day

Nelson Sergerie, LJI Journalist

 people marched through the streets of downtown Gaspé on September 30 as part of Truth and Reconciliation Day, aimed at honouring the survivors of Canada’s residential school system and the children who never returned home. 

This was the fourth such march in Gaspé, which has become a tradition. “Since the first announcement of the 215 little tombstones, (found near a residential school) we’ve done it every year,” says Jessica Jean-Morin, Cultural Officer for the Micmac Nation of Gespeg. 

Ms. Jean-Morin is referring to the discovery on May 27, 2021, of 215 unmarked children’s graves in the orchard of the former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia, run by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. 

“This day is to honour and support the children who never returned to their families or those who returned with traumas from this genocide. We support the communities,” says Ms. Jean-Morin. 

“We don’t want people to forget. The last school closed in 1997. It hasn’t been that long,” notes Ms. Jean-Morin. 

Yan Tapp, the new chief of the Micmac Nation of Gespeg, made his first public appearance at the event. “I’m very proud to be here with the members of the community, and it gives me a chance to share my vision with the people of the Gaspé community,” says Mr. Tapp. 

He notes that more and more people are taking part in the day. 

I see this reconciliation in the community. You can see it in the steps we take. We see new people joining in every year. It’s very interesting,” says the chief. 

The mayor and several Gaspé municipal councillors were also keen to take part in the event. 

“For us, harmony between peoples is a priority. It’s important to work towards reconciliation,” notes the mayor of Gaspé, Daniel Côté. The mayor intends to make contact with the new chief of Gespeg. They met for the first time on Monday morning at the march. “Our hand is outstretched. If we can lend a hand, we’ll always be happy to do so,” says Mr. Côté, whopoints out that the two communities have been working well together for a long time. 

Since 2017, the two councils had held a joint meeting to take this collaboration further, citing partnerships with Berceau du Canada in a video or Rivière-au-Renard, Capitale des pêches. 

“We were perhaps less aware of this reality. When you see the number of people who turned out for this walk for truth and reconciliation, it bodes well for the future,” says the mayor. 

In addition to members of the Gespeg Nation and the non-Aboriginal population, students from English-language schools in the Gaspé region took part in the march. 

The National Day of Truth and Reconciliation is an opportunity to pay tribute to the children who were never able to return home, to the survivors of residential schools and to their families and communities. 

Orange Shirt Day is a day of commemoration organised by Aboriginal communities to raise awareness of the intergenerational impact of residential schools on individuals, families and communities, and to promote the concept of Every Child Matters. 

The shirt is a symbol of the loss of culture, freedom and self-esteem that Aboriginal children suffered for generations. 

An estimated 6,000 children died while attending these residential schools.

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Marching for Truth and Reconciliation

Hundreds marched through downtown Montreal on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Photo Andrea Caceres

Andrea Caceras,
Local Journalism Initiative

Montrealers mobilize for fourth annual Every Child Matters march

Hundreds of Montrealers marched on Sept. 30 to commemorate the Indigenous Survivors and victims of the residential school system in Canada.

People gathered in Mount Royal Park at 1 p.m. and marched to Place Ville Marie in downtown Montreal while chanting phrases such as “Land back” and “No pride in genocide.”

“The importance of this march is to honour the Survivors of residential schools and how they impacted the Indigenous population,” said Selena Martineau, a protestor and employee at Resilience Montreal. Resilience Montreal is a shelter for Montreal’s unhoused population, who co-organized the march. “We are here to uplift them as much as possible and honour what they’ve gone through,” Martineau said.

This march was additionally co-organized by the Native Women’s Shelter, a shelter dedicated to providing support and frontline services to Indigenous women and their children. 

Nine speakers as well as a residential school Survivor spoke to the crowd preceding the march. Demonstrators marched through Parc Ave., Sherbrooke St. and Mansfield St. to René-Levesque Blvd.  

“[Indigenous peoples] gave up their lives, they gave up their language, they gave up their cultures, as lessons for us to take,” said Alex McComber, assistant professor of family medicine at McGill University. “We say never again, this will never happen again to any of our children.”  

Philippe Tsaronséré Meilleur is the director of Native Montreal, an organization specializing in offering services and community connection to Indigenous children and families.

“It’s important for Indigenous people and allies to have a moment to be able to say, through society, that the changes have not already taken place to stop intergenerational harm for Indigenous children,” Meilleur said. “It’s important for us to feel that we’re all together to say this message and to allow allies that have moments to also come and support us.”

From the 1830s to 1996, Christian church organizations and the Canadian government forcibly removed children between the ages of 4 and 16 from their family and forced them to attend residential schools in Canada. The goal was to erase Indigenous cultures and to assimilate Indigenous children into European settler colonialism.  

The orange shirt is an emblem, with rich history, which raises awareness of the abuse that Indigenous children had endured in residential schools. 

As a girl, Phyllis Webstad was forced to attend a residential school. On her first day, she wore a bright orange shirt given to her by her grandmother. Residential school administrators cut off her hair and stole her belongings, including Webstad’s orange shirt, which she never wore again. 

According to research conducted by the Save the Children Canada organization, residential schools had a rate of mortality rate between 40 and 60 per cent, and the majority of children experienced severe physical, emotional and sexual abuse.  

In Canada, hundreds of unmarked children’s graves have been discovered on the sites of old residential schools in recent years. 

According to Kahsennenhawe Sky-Deer, former grand chief of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke, this is not the only problem. Sky-Deer said the Canadian government often makes empty promises regarding the needs of Indigenous communities. She stressed how boil advisories and a lack of infrastructure and housing are problems for many First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities.  

“We have to do something, we have to get them off their feet to make some real substantial changes to our nations, to our communities,” Sky-Deer said. “It shouldn’t be like this in 2024, our people have been through so much.”

This article originally appeared in Volume 45, Issue 3, published October 1, 2024.

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René Lemieux leafs through a bilingual Cree/English edition of Kâ-pî-isi_kiskisiyân / The Way I Remember.

Keeping languages and histories alive

René Lemieux leafs through a bilingual Cree/English edition of Kâ-pî-isi_kiskisiyân / The
Way I Remember. Photo Miguel Fowke-Quintas

Miguel Fowke-Quintas
Local Journalism Initiative

In 2019, Canada passed the Indigenous Languages Act, responding to a Call to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The Act allocated $330 million to support projects for reclaiming and revitalizing Indigenous languages.

Dr. Sigwan Thivierge, a Linguistics and First Peoples Studies professor at Concordia, believes that linguistics training has an important role to play in Indigenous language revitalization.

“I want to bring more Indigenous people into the field and also make the knowledge that we already have accessible to community members,” Thivierge said, “It’s about bringing the

community to linguistics, and bringing linguistics into the community.” 

Thivierge herself is from Long Point First Nation in Quebec, an Anishinabeg community, as well as a speaker and learner of Anicinabemowin. 

Quebec is home to nine Indigenous languages, spoken by roughly 50,000 people—the greatest share of Indigenous language speakers out of any Canadian province or territory.

According to Statistics Canada, between 2016 and 2023, the number of First Nations language speakers fell by almost five per cent. 

Article 13 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that “Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their languages.” The UN estimates say that an Indigenous language dies every two weeks.

In response, UNESCO launched the International Decade of Indigenous Languages last year. Linguists like Thivierge say that Indigenous perspectives are crucial to reclamation and revitalization efforts.

There is evidence of some language revitalization among First Nations youth in Quebec. Statistics Canada revealed that in 2021, almost 40 per cent of First Nations children

could speak an Indigenous language, a figure nearly three times higher than First Nations adults aged 65 and older.  

René Lemieux is a researcher at Concordia, who works on the Awikhiganisaskak Project to create learning materials for Abenaki using 17th century dictionaries written by hand on parchment. “Often, we’re working with information given to us by missionaries, so we have to be conscious of the layers of ideology,” said Lemieux, explaining that the goal is to process the existing documentation and return it to Indigenous communities.

“Linguistics is a field that lends itself to extractive research methodologies,” Thivierge said. Historically, settler linguists and anthropologists would collect data about Indigenous languages and then compile it into academic tomes which were inaccessible to laypeople.

“Communities want documentation, they want databases, they want their stories to be kept alive,” said Thivierge. “Yet, the data that does exist is not formatted for learners. You open a random page and see nominalising, or verb particles, and ask ‘What is this?’”

Learning Indigenous languages as living languages rather than only learning about them is crucial for the work of the Awikhiganisaskak Project, according to Raphael Bosco, a researcher for the project. 

Reflecting on his experience as an Abenaki learner, he encouraged other settlers to take classes in Indigenous languages. “It helps with reconciliation of non-Indigenous people and Indigenous people,” he said. “Learning a language is always a way to see things from a different perspective.”

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