Drumming, singing and a wave of orange swept through the streets of Sudbury on May 27.
More than 150 people gathered to walk on the one-year anniversary of the discovery of 215 unmarked graves in Kamloops, B.C., and to remember the more than 10,000 children who never came home from residential schools in Canada.
The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc refer to the May 2021 discovery of the unmarked graves at the Kamloops former residential school site as finding “Le Estcwicwéy̓” (the missing).
Hosted by N’Swakamok Native Friendship Centre, in partnership with Laurentian University and the Greater Sudbury Police Service, the walk began from the friendship centre’s location at 115 Elm St., site of the newly unveiled art piece honouring the missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people.
Participants walked Elgin Street to meet Paris Street and climb the Bridge of Nations before heading down John Street to Elizabeth, and the edge of Ramsey Lake. Waiting for the walkers were orange tulips, to be laid in the water at exactly 2:15 p.m.
There were songs and a place to smudge by the waters’ edge, a cleansing most of the participants lined up to take part in, many of them also cleansing the flowers they would lay.
Amongst the singers was guest speaker Julie, a residential school survivor. She spoke with her husband at her side. She said her grandparents, her parents, and even her own generation didn’t “know how to love.”
“They didn't know how to say I love you, they didn’t know how to parent, because we were all in residential school, because that love was taken away from them,” she said. “They didn't know how to be a family.”
She was thankful she knows better today, even if it took her a long time to realize the toll the schools had taken on her. “We didn't know what we were feeling until much later in life, when it was the hurt, the pain, the separation, the abandonment issues, and the children that didn't make it home.”
Connor Lafortune, an artist, activist and member of Dokis First Nation, spoke to Sudbury.com just after the finding of the children known as the Kamloops 215 while hosting a memorial at École publique Franco-Nord in Azilda.
He said that “as Indigenous people, we have had no choice but to learn (about residential schools), we have had to carry this knowledge in our bundle since we were little, it has been ingrained in us,” he said. “I hope that with more people being able to have this knowledge and push for change, we no longer have to carry that bundle alone.”
Lafortune was at the May 27 event, and spoke to Sudbury.com once again. He spoke of the tendency to forget uncomfortable truths when they disappear from the forefront, and reiterated what it is like to “carry the bundle” each day.
“What happens in the media a lot is that a big thing will happen, everybody will gather and then we forget. And only the people that are affected by it are reminded of what's going on and what still occurs,” said Lafortune. “So I think when we do this over and over and over again, I think non-Indigenous people can get a sense of what we go through every day and what we have to think about in order to live our lives.
“So for me, as much as this is for the children, and it's for Indigenous communities, it's also for a non-Indigenous allies to really wake up and see that they need to do something as well.”
Dr. Susan Manitowabi, Interim Associate Vice-President with the Office of Academic and Indigenous Programs at Laurentian University, told Sudbury.com she too was hoping that the walk would bring continued awareness, that all of the children lost would be remembered, that Every Child Matters, as many signs at the event read.
She was also encouraged to see so many non-Indigenous people at the gathering. “I'm looking around at the crowd and there's indigenous people here, certainly, but we see others who have joined us,” said Manitowabi. “People are out here raising that awareness, and that’s really encouraging.”
Jenny Lamothe is a reporter with Sudbury.com. She covers the diverse communities of Sudbury, especially the vulnerable or marginalized, including the Black, Indigenous, newcomer and Francophone communities, as well as 2SLGBTQ+ and issues of the downtown core.
