I spent several hours in the evening walking from site to site eventually stumbling upon a luminous installation downtown where Indigenous youth performers did round dances.
Between 1867 and 1996, the federal government of Canada operated 140 residential schools with oversight from the Roman Catholic Church. During the era of residential schools, an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to learn the English language and Christian beliefs. As a consequence of assimilation, this generation of Indigenous children were deprived of their own culture and heritage which were primarily passed down through oral histories. Additionally, the poor conditions of residential schools—overcrowding, lack of sanitation and inadequate food provisions—left Indigenous children at great physical risk, especially as Tuberculosis infections spread. Even after the final residential school closed its doors in 1996, Indigenous communities continue to grapple with an enduring loss of culture today. While the idea of NDTR took hold in 2013, it was not until 2021 that the statuary holiday was passed by both houses of Parliament and given Royal Assent. The collective recognition of the integrational harms which residential schools incited made the NDTR bill pass through Parliament very quickly.
