‘Continue to listen to survivors,’ elder tells Parliament Hill crowd

Updated on Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025 at 5 p.m. ET.

Reepa Evic-Carleton, a residential school survivor, had a message for young people on Parliament Hill on Tuesday for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

“Keep asking questions,” she said. “Keep pursuing your education. The sky is the limit for you.

“I believe we all share responsibility in the work of remembering, honouring, healing and rebuilding.”

Approximately 1,000 people filled the west side of Parliament Hill for the ceremony. Indigenous and national political leaders attended, including Prime Minister Mark Carney and Gov. Gen. Mary Simon.

“I have seen how forced relocation and separation from the land has impacted us,” Evic-Carleton told the crowd.

A residential day school survivor, when she was five her family was relocated from Cumberland Sound to Pangnirtung where she spent 10 years attending the Attagoyuk Federal Day School.

“The trauma and intergenerational impacts have strongly impacted me and my family like it has with many Indigenous families across this country,” she said.

It has been 10 years since the release of the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report of its investigation of Canada’s residential school system, and five years since the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation was declared a federal holiday.

“Today, I call on every Canadian to renew their commitment to reconciliation,” Gov. Gen. Mary Simon — who is Canada’s first Indigenous Governor General — told the crowd.

Kathy Kettler says progress has been made in the last five years, but residential school denialism continues to impact survivors and their descendants. (Photo by Jorge Antunes)

Approximately 150 residential schools operated in Canada between the 1800s and 1996, when the last school closed. More than 3,000 Indigenous children are estimated to have died in the schools, according to the commission report, and many more were subjected to abuse.

On Tuesday, it took more than 20 people to carry the now 60-metre-long National Student Memorial Register banner, which lists the names of Indigenous victims of residential schools who never came home. This year, 400 names were added to the banner.

There were solemn moments, as residential school survivors shared their experiences, but also cheers honouring their strength.

“I have also witnessed the strength of my people and how we continue to hold on to our culture, language and values and practices that connect us to who we are as people. We cannot forget our ancestors,” Evic-Carleton said, as the crowd broke into cheers and applause.

“Oh, absolutely,” Kathy Kettler said when asked if there has been progress over the past five years.

Kettler is chief of staff for Rebecca Chartrand, the federal minister for northern and Arctic affairs, and previously was heavily involved in the early days of reconciliation at the Assembly of First Nations.

From starting as a small event on Parliament Hill, events held there now on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation are broadcast across the country.

Kettler noted even the ubiquity of orange shirts is a mark of awareness and the momentousness of the day.

The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation began as Orange Shirt Day, a project that was the vision of residential school survivor Chief Fred Robbins in 2013 to raise awareness of Canada’s residential school system and its survivors.

The idea for an orange shirt sprang from the experience of Phyllis Webstad, an Indigenous woman who, as a child, arrived to start residential school in an orange shirt her grandmother had given her. School staff took the shirt from her, though, and kept it.

Looking forward, Kettler said she would like to see “more awareness and school curriculum” related to reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous Peoples.

However, “there’s a lot of denialism around residential schools, which is very hard for a lot of people — not just survivors, but for your intergenerational survivors as well,” she noted.

Correction: This article has been updated from its originally published version to quote Kathy Kettler as talking about “intergenerational survivors.”