The sweet scent of smudge and a sea of orange T-shirts under camouflage uniforms showed respect Thursday for the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation at the Edmonton Garrison of the Canadian Armed Forces 3rd Division.
Under the hoisted orange flag of Truth and Reconciliation, members of all backgrounds and creeds took off berets and wafted the smoke over them as a gesture of unity and cleansing.
HONOURING SURVIVORS
Amber Horricks is civilian co-chairwoman of Edmonton’s Defence Indigenous Advisory Committee that organized the event, and a member of the Poundmaker Cree Nation.
She has aunts and uncles that were residential school survivors.
“I’m thinking about them today, survivors and families that have been affected by this,” Horricks said.
“It’s of huge importance for us as we want to continue to remember and honour the children, the survivors and the families.”
National Truth and Reconciliation Day is Monday — also known as Orange Shirt Day, thanks to activist Indigenous residential school survivor Phyllis Webstad, a Northern Secwepemc author and activist from the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation, whose stirring account of not being allowed to keep her new orange shirt on her first day at residential school sparked a movement that continues to grow.
Horricks said she was moved to see the many orange T-shirts tucked under camouflage uniforms.
“It’s such a simple thing, but it has such a huge impact,” Horricks said.
Lieut. Keith Diakiw of the Royal Canadian Navy agreed.
A geologist and the CAF’s northern environmental co-ordinator, and proud Metis, he hoisted the flag Thursday.
“To see how many more military members, brothers and sisters in arms, wearing the orange shirt, warms my heart, because you can see it’s the movement that’s happening — the momentum is building,” he said.
“It was really powerful to see some military members smudging for the first time.”
To see the orange and white Survivors flag fluttering in a brisk wind, with its moving artistic depiction of the Indigenous eagle feather, the Inuit Inukshuk, the Metis sash, and the children torn from their parents, was emotional and breathtaking, he said.
Introduced in Ottawa in 2022, the flag was created by the National Centre of Truth and Reconciliation in partnership with survivors and national Indigenous organizations to honour the hundreds of children who never returned home from residential schools.
“We’ve come a long way, and we still have more to go. To be part of that agent of change and to be that light for others that come behind us is so important,” Diakiw said, citing 630 Indigenous communities across Canada, and over 50 nations.
‘NOT DISTANT HISTORY’
Col. Robbin Dove, Commander 3rd Canadian Division Support Group, lauded the Defence Indigenous Advisory Group for organizing the event, fostering better relationships with the First Nations and Metis communities.
“It’s essential to speak of and recognize colonial assimilationist policies. This has resulted in lasting negative impacts of generations of First Nations … and this is not distant history,” Dove said, noting the last federally run residential schools closed in 1996.
“Each of us have a responsibility to learn about the past, how we got here, to share this knowledge with others.”
Dove recounted last year’s 30-hour road trip with fellow officers during National Truth and Reconciliation week to the Nisga’a First Nation territory in northwestern British Columbia to witness the rematriation of an 1860s totem pole that had been taken in 1929 and sold to a Scottish museum.
“It was an amazing opportunity to be able to witness the spirit of the community and feel their joy in welcoming back their relatives, their celebration of their return,” he said.
The Nisga’a Nation’s gratitude for getting the pole back to their sovereign territory was “overwhelming, and we all felt it,” he recalled.
“We felt so privileged to be able to be in attendance and to have seen reconciliation in action,” he said, adding the restorative event required international diplomatic co-operation from the museum in Scotland to recognize the rightful ownership of the Nisga’a Nation and its cultural significance, and a strategic airlift across the Atlantic Ocean and across Canada.
