Survivors find recognition, healing at National Day for Truth and Reconciliation events across Vancouver

Hope and grief intermingled as residential school survivors, Indigenous communities and non-Indigenous people gathered across Vancouver to commemorate the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Saturday.

The day is meant to recognize and honour residential school survivors and those who didn't make it home, as well as acknowledge the inter-generational damage caused by Canada's residential school system and celebrate Indigenous cultures.

Multiple Indigenous-led events in Vancouver brought hundreds of survivors, elders, children and members of the public together in song, dance, prayer and learning.

In East Vancouver, hundreds marched from Strathcona Community Centre to Grandview park in the morning as part of the Orange Shirt Walk.

"It's a tough day, because if you know an Indigenous person, their parent or their grandparent went to residential school, so it's important that we create a safe space," said Jerilynn Snuxyaltwa Webster, a Nuxalk and Onondaga spoken word artist also known as JB the First Lady.

"We're here, coming together to heal, to uplift each other and share that medicine through songs, dances and ceremony, and reclaiming who we are and what colonization and residential schools took from our elders, which was their songs, dances, language and land."

Webster emceed the events following the march, which included a drum circle, craft circles and dance performances by members of several First Nations in B.C. at Grandview Park and Britannia Community Centre.

She was heartened to see many non-Indigenous people come out to show their support and learn from the programming, and said every Canadian should read the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's 94 calls to action to take a stand year-round.

"It's not just wearing an orange shirt, it's about learning and understanding and creating justice for Indigenous peoples," said Webster.

Esther Calder said seeing so many people come out to recognize the abuse she and others suffered at residential school was validating.

Calder is a member of Nisga'a First Nation and said she was sexually abused at St. George's School in Lytton when she was forced to attend from 1965 to 1969.

"It's a blessing to be able to see all these people because a lot of them went through what we went through in residential school," she said. "It's a very painful thing to go through."

That sense of recognition is also a comfort to Sylvia Sharon Isaac, a member of the Nak'azdli Whut'en, who said she was physically, sexually and emotionally abused at an Indian day school she was forced to attend as a child.

Isaac said forgiving the perpetrators has helped her to heal, and she recently celebrated 25 years sober from alcohol.