Indigenous Awareness Rally aims at ‘changing the meaning behind Canada Day’
Under a blazing noon sun, a walk was held to remember the lives of children from residential schools who didn’t make it home.
The Indigenous Awareness Rally started at L’Ecole La Verendrye School and passed by Lethbridge City Hall en route to Galt Gardens.
For organizers Ava Mountain Horse and Kellita Day Chief — who call themselves the Turning Deer Sisters and who are both from Kainai — Saturday’s walk to raise awareness was prompted by some bullying they faced.
“We want to spread awareness because of everything that has been going on. People are very uneducated and we want to help educate and show support to all of our children who didn’t make it home,” said Mountain Horse.
The selection for Canada Day for the rally was simple.
“People are celebrating while we’re mourning the children who never made it home,” said Mountain Horse. “It’s so important because we’ve been dealing with this for decades. My grandfather is a residential survivor as well and it’s really close to me. It’s really sad and we just want people to know why we’re hurting and why we’re mourning for this. We want to help make a new Canada Day and help make things better.”
On Wednesday, a search using ground-penetrating radar found the remains of 182 people in unmarked graves at a site close to a former residential school in the southern Interior of British Columbia.
However, the leadership of the Ktunaxa community of aq’am says several factors make it difficult to establish whether the unmarked graves contain the remains of children who attended the institution.
That comes after more unmarked graves were found at former residential schools in Saskatchewan late last month and B.C. in late-May.
By around 11:45 a.m. July 1, a crowd of roughly 25 had gathered in the parking lot of L’Ecole La Verendrye School.
As the noon kickoff approached, those numbers quickly grew as a crowd wearing mostly orange shirts in honour of the lives lost quickly filled the parking lot.
“For me, honestly, the turnout is crazy,” said Day Chief. “It was originally supposed to be just five girls walking. I’m really shocked and I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty scared. But I’m so happy for this and I’m so happy we’re changing the meaning behind Canada Day.”
Day Chief said the Turning Deer Sisters name is both her and Mountain Horse’s Blackfoot names combined.
“My name is Turning Woman and hers is Deer Woman. So we just decided to call ourselves that.”
At a little after noon and after a performance from a drum group, the contingent headed down Sixth Avenue South before turning north on Mayor Magrath Drive on their way to City Hall and Galt Gardens.
“We’re going to be walking to the Galt Gardens and we’ll be setting up there. People will be sharing stories about their residential (experiences),” said Mountain Horse.
“We’ll have Sheldon Day Chief, he’s running for mayor (of Lethbridge) and he’s going to have his speech,” added Day Chief. “Ava and I will say our speeches and then the White Buffaloes girls drumming group will drum for us.”
Both Mountain Horse and Day Chief were hopeful their rally will open up some dialogue down the road.
“I really do because we’re youth and I think it’s going to change things and help people understand better,” said Mountain Horse, taking stock of the number of people who came out. “It feels wonderful and I’m very thankful for all of the people who came out today.”
Now, Day Chief said they’d like to make the Indigenous Awareness Rally an annual event.
“We hope to have more events, especially for the kids because with residential schools we did lose a lot of our culture. With our group, we want to bring it to the kids, especially the young ones, because a lot of them don’t even know Blackfoot.”