Walking for reconciliation

The discoveries of unmarked Indigenous children’s graves near former residential schools have sparked anger in many people.

Landyn Toney, a Mi’kmaw boy from Annapolis Royal First Nation in Nova Scotia, felt it, too.

After the latest two discoveries — 751 graves in Saskatchewan on June 24 and 182 in British Columbia on June 30 — acts of destruction began.

At more than 20 sites across Canada in the past week, churches were set ablaze or vandalized with red and orange paint. Statues were toppled or paint-smeared. The targets were varied, including Catholic and protestant churches on band lands and in cities, and in Calgary, the Vietnamese House of Prayer Alliance Church and All Nations Full Gospel Church, an African evangelical place of worship.

In Nova Scotia, there was a suspicious fire June 30 at Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Catholic Church on Sipekne’katik First Nation.

In St. John’s, N.L., on Canada Day, statues and church doors at the landmark Roman Catholic Basilica of St. John the Baptist, and the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Legacy Statue, were defaced with red paint.

At some sites, the digits 215 were left behind in red paint, a reference to the number of unmarked children’s graves discovered in May at a former residential school near Kamloops, B.C.

The fires and acts of defacement are suspected to be expressions of the emotions brought to the surface by the evidence of the residential schools’ cruel legacy.

Both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Indigenous leaders have condemned the behaviour.

“I can’t help but think that burning down churches is actually depriving people who are in need of grieving and healing and mourning (of) places where they can actually grieve and reflect and look for support,” Trudeau said at a news conference July 2. “The anger ... is real. People have gone decades and even generations living with intergenerational trauma. …”

“I talk to a lot of residential school survivors and sure there is a lot of hatred and bitterness and anger,” Chief Clarence Louie of the Osoyoos Indian Band in B.C. told the National Post the same day, “but that still doesn’t mean you go and do arson.”

Landyn Toney channelled his anger into something good.

He completed his Journey of Awareness Tuesday — walking 196.5 kilometres and raising roughly $30,000 — to honour his great-grandmother and other residential school students, some of whom never got to make it home.

“That makes me mad,” Landyn told SaltWire Network last week as he set out, accompanied by supporters. “So, I’m doing this to help them out and make them feel a little better about themselves.”

Rather than stoke the fires of division, Landyn mobilized people and brought them together in a common cause.

He turned 12 on his journey, but clearly, he is wise beyond his years.