Walk raises awareness of Indigenous issues
Event named after Chanie Wenjack who died after escaping a residential school
KITCHENER — Ruxandra Balanean was sickened to learn how Canada forced Indigenous children to attend schools away from home, separating them from their parents, language and culture.
So she helped organize a Wenjack Walk to raise awareness. It’s named after Chanie Wenjack, an Ojibwe child who perished in 1966 after escaping a residential school.
“My parents are a huge part of my life,” said Balanean, 17. “So for me to be taken away from them, and totally stripped of everything I knew, I would have been heartbroken. I’m not sure I would have lasted.”
Monday’s walk drew more than 200 students who marched from Victoria Park to Eastwood Collegiate Institute. Some wore T-shirts that said “Every Child Matters.”
“It tells me the younger generations are learning. This is a good thing. They’re going to learn the history,” said Roberta Hill, 67, who attended a residential school in Brantford and lives on the Six Nations territory. Hill joined students to march. She was six when she was sent to the residential school in 1957. “I remember a lot of crying, a lot of sadness, children that couldn’t go home,” she said. She attended for four years.
Chanie Wenjack, 12, died from exposure and hunger. He was walking alone along a railway track, trying to make his way home to his father 600 kilometres away in northern Ontario. His death, largely unnoticed at the time, was recently turned into a book by author Joseph Boyden and also a graphic novel, film and musical album by Gord Downie, the late Tragically Hip singer.
Grace Schmelzle, 17, watched the Downie project titled “Secret Path.” It inspired her to help organize Monday’s Wenjack walk, which raised money to restore the former Mohawk residential school in Brantford that Hill attended. Organizers were unable to say how much was raised.
“We’re definitely getting better as far as education and awareness goes,” Schmelzle said. “I think there’s a long way to go.” She’d like to see a requirement to teach Indigenous issues in schools.
Residential schools separated more than 150,000 Indigenous children from their families and culture over a century, part of a bid to teach them and assimilate them. The last school closed in 1996. Canada apologized for the schools in 2008.
Suria Runstedler, 18, is dismayed that she went though most of her schooling before learning about residential schools. She learned how the schools affected the children who went through them and how the impact lingers.
“That’s why I feel like this walk is so important, because it’s spreading awareness of what happened, so that Canadians all over can learn about this topic,” she said.