Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

The challenge of reconciliation • 317cemetery and in this city need to be remembered.” So the church formed acommittee … and over the next few years, we researched the site and the schoolrecords, personally visited the seven Cree and Stony communities and the Métisnation from which all the students had come. In September 2009, over thirtypeople from those concerned First Nations and Métis communities travelledto Red Deer, had stew and bannock at Sunnybrook United Church, and visitedthe school cemetery for the first time, where we were welcomed by the [current]landowner.Muriel Stanley Venne, from the Sunnybrook United Church, continued,A working group was formed to organize the first [commemoration] feast,which was held at Fort Normandeau, on June 30, 2010. As the more than 325names of students were read, a hush fell over the crowd.… Since then thecollaboration [has] continued, with First Nations Treaty 6 and 7, Métis Nationof Alberta, United Church members, the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery,the City and County [of Red Deer], the [Indian] Friendship Centre, and schoolboards. This led to the formation of the Remembering the Children Society in2011.… Our society’s objectives include: continued support for recovering Indianresidential school cemeteries and histories in Alberta; educating the publicabout the same; honouring the Survivors, and those who died in the schools;as well as identifying the unmarked graves. Each year for the next three years, acommemorative feast was held. At the third gathering, many descendants sharedstories of the impact on them, their parents, and grandparents, because theyattended the Red Deer Industrial School.Charles Wood then said,The Society has worked with the museum in developing a new standingexhibit and with the Waskasoo Park administration in the preparation of newinterpretive signage at Fort Normandeau regarding the school history. We aregrateful for the truth spoken of a painful shared history, the friendships wehave formed, and the healing that has happened as a result of working togetherfor over five years. We will continue to remember the children of the past andpresent. In the Bentwood Box, as symbols of our work together, we place aprogram of the first ceremony, a dvd from the museum display, flower andribbon pins from the third feast, and a copy of guidelines we have publishedof our experience, for those who wish to undertake a similar recovery of aresidential school cemetery. 165For the most part, the residential school cemeteries and burial sites that theCommission documented are abandoned, disused, and vulnerable to disturbance.While there have been community commemoration measures undertaken in somelocations, there is an overall need for a national strategy for the documentation, maintenance,commemoration, and protection of residential school cemeteries. This work