THUNDER BAY – Students at a local public schools reflected on the dark history of residential schools Friday.
Kakabeka Falls District Public School’s students and staff wore orange and participated in a number of learning opportunities to remember the experiences of former residential school students.
With respect to the ongoing reconciliation efforts across the country, Orange Shirt Day began in British Columbia as a commemoration for St. Joseph Mission Residential School.
Grade 3/4 teacher Jason Wilton said it’s important to teach youth about Canada’s past, so the same kind of mistakes don’t repeat themselves in the future.
“We wanted to promote an awareness of what has happened to children in Canada, and create an understanding of that experience and how that’s impacted Canada’s First Nations people,” Wilton said.
The date was chosen because it is the time of year in which children were taken from their homes and brought to Residential schools.
Wilton said the kids have reacted on an emotional level to the various stories, films, and classroom discussions.
“They can relate to children being taken from their homes, not being with their parents, not speaking their language, having their name changed, and not wearing their traditional clothes,” Wilton said.
“They can relate to those things and some kids have responded quite emotionally to the experience.”
Wilton said it’s important for these children growing up to understand these conditions, and how it’s going to still impact them in the present.
“Our primary goal is to promote and create a feeling of empathy and an understanding of what has happened to Canada’s First Nations people.”
In honour of a Federal government doctor who lost his job because he documented health conditions found in Residential Schools, a movement was created, and the idea behind the movement is to find empathy for what has happened.
The students in Kakabeka wrote meaningful words such has freedom, courage, culture, family and language on an orange heart and placed them outside the school.
Eight-year-old Kirsi Niittynen said she wrote be free on her heart and placed it outside.
“We’ve been making hearts,” Niittynen said. “People wrote a lot of really nice things, I wrote be free and my friend wrote freedom, and there was a whole bunch of other ones.”
Niittynen said she was shocked to hear children had to go to Residential schools, and she found it even more shocking if parents said no they would be arrested.
“It’s really scary, because I am lucky I didn’t have to go to that school,” she said.
“I would run away, and I would say no to everything they told me.”
