Schools commemorate NDTR, honour lives lost at residential schools

Schools across Canada recently took time to commemorate Truth and Reconciliation and honour the lives that were lost at residential schools. In Nova Scotia, students from Shubenacadie District Elementary, Riverside Educational Centre, Hants East Rural High School, and L’nu Sipuk Kina’muokuom school joined community members to place 15,000 orange flags on the site of the former Shubenacadie Residential School. Two classes at St Thomas More elementary school in London, Ontario crafted words sharing “compassion and empathy” onto a healing blanket. In Saskatchewan, Vanier Collegiate Institute students created a living medicine wheel by dressing in the colours of the medicine wheel and forming the four quadrants to honour truth and reconciliation. Students in Nelson, British Columbia attended ceremonies at Trafalgar Middle School, walked in a parade, and participated in singing and drumming Indigenous songs; while in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith School District, Const Cole Brewer from the RCMP’s Indigenous policing unit spoke with students about NDTR, led them in drumming, and taught them how to make bannock.