Survivors’ Flag rises: reconciliation takes time

In preparation for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as Orange Shirt Day, Lakehead University raised the Survivors’ Flag.

On Friday, inside the Lakehead University Agora building, the ceremony served as a poignant reminder that understanding the impacts of residential schools is vital to reconciliation.

Bob Baxter,an Elder from Marten Falls First Nation, was in the residential school system for over 10 years.

“It’s really hard to comprehend, I think, for some people. When you’re six years old and taken from your parents and you get into an institution and you’re all alone and you come back a different person,” he said.

Baxter shared his story on Friday during the ceremony.

“One of the things my mother told, was when I went to residential school, I had these real sparkly eyes and just full of light, and when I came back, that spark was gone. It wasn’t there . . . it did something to me and to my parents,” he explained.

Baxter said that each person who was at a residential school has their own story.

“These are the stories that have to be told so that people can understand.”

He said having the flag up at the university is important because it also comes with a story.

“If you see a flag standing there, and if a person comes up and asks what’s that all about, you can be able to tell the truth and inform people what the First Nations people went through,” he said.

Reconciliation takes time, he said.

“I think this is a journey forward for survivors of residential schools, their children, and their grandchildren. To let the public know where First Nations people had to struggle with where they are, but they have to overcome, and I think education is a big key for everything . . . we’re going in the right direction and hopefully it just keeps moving on forward,” Baxter said.

Gillian Siddall, president and vice-chancellor of Lakehead University, said Lakehead has a long history of working to support Indigenous students.

“I think the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report really brought home to so many people the devastating impact of residential schools. The connection to education was something that universities really needed to grapple with.

“We believe very deeply in the role that universities can and should play in advancing reconciliation, working with community partners, working with Fort William First Nation, and bringing in as many Indigenous faculty and staff as we can who can provide that education and those support services that will make Indigenous students here, as one of our speakers said, feel welcome and celebrated. That this will feel like home and a comfortable place to acquire the kind of education they want,” she said.

Siddall said it’s important to come together.

“Indigenous, non-Indigenous, community members, university members, members of various First Nations, Metis Nation, to think together and remember together about the incredible harm that residential schools caused, and continues to cause intergenerationally.

“Really lean into that truth, which is difficult to do, but what we must do in order to then achieve reconciliation and I find it very moving when I hear the amazing Indigenous speakers who attend this event talk about walking that path together and we want to walk that path with them and it is a long path, but we are committed to walking it together,” she said. – tbnewswatch.com

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…Reconciliation takes time, he said….