A wave of orange rippled across an area surrounding a former Winnipeg residential school on Sunday morning, as Treaty One Nations held their first ever Orange Shirt Day run and walk event to honour survivors and their loved ones.
Phyllis Webstad founded Orange Shirt Day to recognize Indigenous children who were forced to attend residential schools.
A group of people wearing orange t-shirts and running shoes gathered at the former site of the Assiniboia Residential School on Wellington Crescent, where a monument stands with the names of children who went there until its closure in 1973.
Toni Kipling’s aunt Elsie Kipling was one of them.
“She attended this school here, as you can see behind us, her name is on the monument,” said Toni Kipling, executive director of the Assiniboia Residential School Legacy Group.
Kipling, who is from Peguis First Nation, said Elsie died this past month.
“With her passing, it just further reinforces the need to have their truth shared, to have their truth acknowledged and to make sure that something never happens like that again here,” she said.
People participating in the free event stood in Theodore Niizhotay Fontaine Park to hear speeches, songs and drumming before the five-kilometre race kicked off at 11 a.m. on Sunday.
Theodore (Ted) Fontaine, a respected elder and a former chief of Sagkeeng First Nation, was a student at the Assiniboia Residential School. He worked to highlight the history of residential schools and detailed abuses he suffered himself in his memoir, Broken Circle: The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools.
He died in 2021 at age 79.
Northern and Arctic Affairs Minister Rebecca Chartrand said she felt emotional seeing the names of all the children who went to the former school.
Her father went to the former Pine Creek Residential School in Camperville, Man. The school operated from 1890 until 1969, according to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba.
“My own father went to residential school. It continues to impact him. He is still a very silent man to this day because he was taught to be silent,” Chartrand said at the event, held a few days before the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
The Churchill—Keewatinook Aski MP said running or walking from the former Assiniboia school is like “coming full circle” and acknowledging the harm that was done to Indigenous students at the site, while participating in an activity that can help build healthier families and communities.
“Running is a good way to display that,” she said.
Quentin Gabriel said he was thinking of his relatives while he was trekking the course on Sunday.
A group of people wearing orange shirts walked from the former Assiniboia Residential School site on Wellington Crescent during Treaty One Nations’ first Orange Shirt Day five-kilometre race. (Justin Fraser/CBC)
“I wanted to do this for those children that didn’t make it back home, my ancestors,” he said, adding his late father was a residential school survivor.
Mark Dela Cruz said he ran to the starting line from the North End to show his support for survivors and their families.
“This is a journey other people have taken on and now we’re doing it in a different way, but it’s still honouring the impacts of what happened before,” said Dela Cruz, who works in a First Nations community.
He participated in a separate reconciliation run at the grounds of the former Birtle Residential School in Birtle, Man., on Saturday.
Kipling said it’s “beautiful” to begin and end the race at the park near the former Assiniboia grounds, where children who used to attend the school would play.
“It’s very crucial that we bring the truth out and talk about the legacy of residential schools,” she said.
Brokenhead Ojibway Nation Chief Gordon Bluesky, whose father-in-law also attended the former Assiniboia Residential School, said Treaty One Nations hope to keep the event running annually moving forward.
Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is on Wednesday.