The Survivors’ Flag was raised at Town Hall today, a symbolic lead-in to the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation on September 30.
The flag is an expression of remembrance, meant to honour residential school Survivors and all the lives and communities impacted by the residential school system in Canada.
Despite the wet and dreary weather, spirits were hopeful as Joyce Jonathan Crone, President and Founder of Hope Arises Project Inc., led those in attendance through a smudge ceremony. She asked everyone to look within themselves on how to build a stronger community through reconciliation.
“It really is resilience and strength,” she said. “When we have lived through suffering and pain and trauma either directly or indirectly, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, it impacts, it affects who we are. So, I don’t just say it, I walk the talk.”
Crone read out 22 names of children who still have not been found, while noting that those are just a minuscule number of the thousands who never made it home.
“It’s a very important day,” said Crone about the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. “Not just on September 30, but it really should be every day. It’s reflecting on the children of residential schools that were taken and never came home, it’s reflecting upon survivors who are still here.”
Crone is Haudenosaunee, Mohawk from the Turtle Clan, and grew up on the Six Nations of the Grand River.
She is a retired schoolteacher who moved to Huntsville in 2005 and says it’s amazing to see the support the community has for the symbols of survivors of the residential school system, including the orange shirts, orange ribbons, and the Survivors’ Flag.
“I first arrived here in 2005 as a summer resident, I did not see myself reflected in this community,” she recalls. “I was one of the only brown people in this community and time has changed. Look at how long that’s been, so it’s truly significant and I feel empowered by that.”
According to its website, Hope Arises is a project which see like-minded individuals collaborate to revitalize Indigenous ways of being and knowing. They envision a community committed to fostering cultural parity, diversity, and acceptance.
Crone says when she sees and feels the positive energy from all walks of life in Huntsville and the surrounding areas, it means that unity can happen.
“It’s about giving us the ability to feel equal, to feel accepted, to feel empowered,” she says. “It’s a big change from a little girl growing up on a rez to now helping and wanting my non-Indigenous community to come together and support what we’re doing at Hope Arises, and that’s what’s happening.”
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If the council are in the habit of raising flags other than the Canadian flag, perhaps during November they could raise the Canadian Navy, the Army an Air Force flags for a week each to commemorate those veterans who died in the service of Canada.
Our governments’ so called “Indian Residential Schools” were a misbegotten Euro-centric policy that tore children away from their families and traditions. Many many children died with the poor treatment and never saw their families again. But yes thankfully the people have survived. Truth and Reconciliation. Sean McLeod : as the Rotarians Peace Poles message “May Peace Prevail on Earth” – we can get there with respectful genuine shared personal experiences in conversations.
And what of the settlers who were butchered?
It’s time for a conversation.
Remembering and making the same mistakes doesn’t bode well with the signatories of the Treaties of our indigenious communities.
The Treaties have never been upheld in the manner to which they were presented. These lands should have long been returned to the indigenious people as the Treaties were designed to do.
We are not just first nation we are also Mete who signed these Treaties long before confederation. The gifts promised by these Treaties are untruths and deceitful lies by a people who are invaders to a foreign land.