Hundreds form sea of orange for reconciliation walk in Saskatoon

Hundreds of people wearing orange joined together in Saskatoon on Treaty 6 territory as part of the Rock Your Roots Walk for Reconciliation on Saturday.

The gathering was held on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as Orange Shirt Day. More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were forced to attend church-run, government-funded schools between the 1870s and 1997.

Shirley Isbister, president of Central Urban Métis Federation Incorporated, shared that her mother-in-law was a residential school survivor, and at five years old, she was taken from her mother's arms, put on the back of an army truck and taken to Birtle, Manitoba.

"For 13 years, she was in residential school. We're into the fourth generation now and we still have the effects of intergenerational trauma," Isbister said. 

Isbister said the sea of orange has only been growing larger in the seven years since she started the walk.

Before the walk began, however, people shared a meal at a pancake breakfast outside the CUMFI in the core of the city.

"It's an opportunity for people to come and ask survivors questions or just get to know them," Isbister said. "We want to recognize that if we're going to have reconciliation, we need truth."

Isbister said it's just the start of the truth coming out of different communities, with findgings of potential unmarked graves in the English River First Nation as the most recent one. 

"I think there's going to be lots more. It's a time where we're hurting for the children that didn't come home."

Patricia Whitebear agrees. She attended the walk with her daughter, Martina, and grandson, Rider.

"We are walking for my late mother, a residential school survivor, and for my grandparents and father who attended residential schools. We walk in their honour," she said.

Whitebear said the walk is to spread awareness about the trauma they experienced in the schools.

"I was Sixties Scoop, I was taken from my mother." 

She said many of her relatives at White Bear First Nation never made it home and they are still trying to find them on their family tree.