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Thursday, June 3, 2021
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Residential school victims remembered HANNA PETERSEN
Hundreds gathered Monday near School District No. 57 (SD57) offices on the corner of Highway 16, wearing orange and holding drums, to honour the lives of the 215 children discovered buried at the Kamloops Residential School.
Cars honked in support as nearly 200 people, including SD57 school trustees and staff, rallied for those children and residential school survivors. The event was organized by Sonya Rock, a Gitxsan member, residential school survivor and teacher at Nusdeh Yoh Elementary. “I went to Port Alberni Residential School and both my parents went to residential school. My dad went to Edmonton and my mom went to Lejac and all of my other 10 siblings – all of us 11 children went to residential school,” says Rock. “I could imagine what all the other survivors were going through. Right away it brought back memories of my own
experiences at Port Alberni.” Rock says she was not able to sleep since May 27 when the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc confirmed they found the remains of 215 children buried at the site of the former Kamloops Residential School because her heart was so broken. “We all went through the sexual abuse, the physical abuse, the spiritual abuse. Being separated was really the hardest thing to be taken away from our parents and brought to the residential school.” Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc found the remains with the help of a ground-penetrating radar specialist. The band anticipates having a full report ready by mid-June as work is still being done on the site to potentially find more remains. “The thing that hurts me the most is to know that with this new technology this is just the beginning because there were so many residential schools throughout Canada and the United States,” says Rock.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE/LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE
EVERY CHILD MATTERS Lheidli T’enneh Chief Dolleen Logan is comforted as she speaks by elder Darlene McIntosh while singer Kym Gouchie looks on. A gathering was held on Saturday
See ‘THIS IS GENOCIDE’ afternoon at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park in remembrance of the 215 children whose remains were on page 2 found on the site of a former residential school in Kamloops.
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