Ottawa funds truth and reconciliation day events in 4 Nunavut hamlets
Federal government providing $4M for 278 community projects across Canada
Cambridge Bay residents observe the first-ever National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in 2021 with a community bonfire in this file photo. This year, the hamlet is one of four Nunavut communities that will receive $10,000 from the federal government to help commemorate the holiday. (File photo courtesy of the Kitikmeot Friendship Society)
Four Nunavut communities will receive $10,000 each from the federal government to help commemorate the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Sept. 30, a government news release states.
Events in Coral Harbour, Gjoa Haven, Pond Inlet and Cambridge Bay are on the list of 278 community projects across Canada that will split a total of $4 million, the government announced Monday.
No Nunavik communities were on the list of projects in Quebec to receive funding.
Those projects also include two national events — a commemorative gathering and an educational week for students across Canada.
“Commemorating the tragic history and impact of residential schools is essential to the healing and reconciliation process,” the news release states.
This will be the second time Canada has observed the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, after the federal government passed a law to designate the day — also known as Orange Shirt Day — as a holiday to reflect on the abuse thousands of Indigenous people suffered in Canada’s residential schools system.
Across the country, the status of the holiday varies. In its first year — 2021 — it was a public holiday for federal government employees only. It was left to each province and territory to decide whether to make it a public holiday.
In Nunavut, only government employees got the first-ever truth and reconciliation day off because the Government of Nunavut said it didn’t have enough time in 2021 to practise Aajiiqatigiinniq — the making of decisions by consensus and consultation with businesses, Inuit organizations and municipalities.
Nunavut’s Justice Department began that process in March this year and in June passed a law extending the holiday to everyone in Nunavut.
The residential school system was a government policy from the late 1800s until the 1990s to separate young Indigenous students from their family, language and culture by making them attend residential schools, often hundreds of kilometres from their home communities.
a day to reflect on such a horrendous day in canadian history. Many lives were shattered. Many parents and grandparents lives were shattered. Thousands of children and teenagers were shattered. Many Hopes and Dreams were shattered. Little One’s died (natural, tortured, suicides) and left in an unmarked grave. Many Generations of these children who were kidnapped now had children of their own in a Shattered state of mind. Many intergenerational residential school survivors lives were shattered. What would their lives be like if they grew up in a culture that their parents were not physically, emotionally, verbally, sexually and spiritually abused by the residential schools, priests, ministers lay people and the federal government. This is what the southern people in the English and French speaking cultures do not understand. It is a rippling effect and it will ripple until the suffers learn to forgive the the churches and governments. And learn how to live with the memories and scars that will not heal during a life time. Those scars and emotions will always follow us. But it is up to each person to learn how to live with such emotional garbage. Alcoholism, drug addiction, sexual abuse, rapes, molestations, and domestic violence is a huge part of the TRC but they never speak of them nor do they send the qualified people to help those still suffering. Many Metis, First Nation and Inuit men and women are in prison for this abuse and the southern people still whine and complain that this happen 100’s of years ago but the emotional scars still harm the person. This is what I wish they would understand.
“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.”
~Maya Angelou
Thank you for the support and funding.