Collingwood is marking the second-annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, including an official flag raising on the afternoon of Sept. 29 at the library.
The Every Child Matters flag now flies in front of Collingwood Public Library as events on Sept. 30 mark the national day that began as Orange Shirt Day.
Jillian Morris, Kanien’kehá:ka, and Muckpaloo Ipeelie, Inuk, spoke during the flag raising.
Morris asked for compassion for herself and other Indigenous people during the next few days as September has been a busy month of events related to Truth and Reconciliation, and also a time of collective grief remembering the victims of the residential school system.
She reminded the crowd at the flag raising of the Two Row Wampum (Gä•sweñta’), a treaty between the Haudenosaunee and Dutch settlers in the 1600s. The two-row wampum represented the Dutch ship and the Haudenosaunee canoe travelling the river of life side-by-side with neither attempting to steer the other's vessel. The agreement was to share friendship and peace forever.
"As long as the grass grows and the river runs," said Morris. "I always try to bring us back to that place ... there is a way."
Morris is also Collingwood's current poet laureate. She read a poem she wrote after hearing about the first children discovered in unmarked graves at a former residential school site. One she read at last year's flag raising and it is posted at the Awen Gathering Circle.
Here is her poem:
A Tribute to Our Stolen Spirits
Show me where your prints took mold
The path that led to rest untold
The stolen breath of silent story
buried truth, an allegory
Lament for sacred ones defiled
I hear you now, my kindred child
Your whispered song begets a choir
Across these lands, united fire
May peace be sought beyond this sphere
while tenacious warriors hold memory dear.
Ipeelie asked the crowd to remember that First Nations and Inuit have lived on and cared for the land we call Canada for time immemorial.
"It's important to remember you benefit from land taken care of by First Nation and Inuit," said Ipeelie.
She explained there will be a sacred fire gathering on Sept. 30 for the Indigenous community only in the afternoon.
"We will gather to bring our culture forward ... it has been opressed for a long time," said Ipeelie. "The way that I see moving forward is having access to our culture."
In the evening, starting at 6:45 p.m. at the Awen Circle, the greater community is invited to join the gathering to interact with the sacred fire and participate in releasing flowers into the water in memory of the victims of the residential school system, both those who survived the trauma and those who died in the genocide.