The Marieval Indian Residential School operated from 1899 to 1997 in the area where Cowessess is now located, about 140 kilometres east of Regina. Children from First Nations in southeast Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba were sent to the school.
The discovery led to the Yellow Thunderbird Lodge holding a Smudge Walk in Yorkton July 1.
The Walk was for ‘the children found and those yet to be found’.
Tribal Chief Isabel O’Soup said the walk was a time of reflection.
“I was sitting here thinking about residential schools and the effect it had ... on our people all across the country,” she said.
And it was a time to think about Canada on a day that usually marks the country’s birthday with celebrations. O’Soup said that this is not the time to celebrate given the recent discoveries of unmarked graves at former residential school sites.
“We’re honouring children that never came home from residential schools,” she said.
When you think about those children, celebration isn’t appropriate, offered O’Soup, adding it is a time when many are dealing with a range of emotions, including anger.
On Sept. 30. The National Day of Truth and Reconciliation was marked in Yorkton, starting with a long parade of more than 200 people down Broadway Street, followed by residential school survivors sharing their stories.
“I was happy when we were two blocks long (the parade),” said O’Soup, adding “this is just the start of it.”
O’Soup said the day was one which focuses on “learning the truth about residential schools – the legacy.”
O’Soup said it is clearly time for change because through change people may heal, are educated and find ways to better live together.
Madame Commissioner Mary Culbertson of the Office of the Treaty Commission and from Keeseekoose First Nation, said she was “honoured to be here with my family today,” adding that in spite of many responsibilities there was “no way I was going to miss walking with my own people.”
Culbertson noted that there “is a lot of intergenerational trauma we are all dealing with ... lateral violence is everywhere around us.”
Culbertson said it is time to change things, “to put the brakes on here and now.
“Our generation, we stop this legacy now.”
The residential schools were “a system of genocide,” that didn’t work, but it did leave great scars.
