City hall to be lit orange in recognition of unmarked graves

By Herald on June 1, 2021.

Members of the First Nations, Métis and non-Indigenous communities walk from city hall to Galt Gardens earlier this week in recognition of the 215 unmarked children’s graves recently discovered at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C. Herald photo by Ian Martens

Tim Kalinowski – Lethbridge Herald

City council held 215 seconds of silence at the start of Tuesday’s meeting to remember the 215 Indigenous children discovered in unmarked graves on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

City hall, Mayor Chris Spearman also confirmed, will be lit orange this week in solidarity with the orange-shirt, “Every Child Matters” movement.

Flags have already been flying at half mast at city hall this week to mourn the heart-breaking discovery at Kamloops, and many Lethbridge residents attended a vigil at St. Patrick’s Church, city hall and Galt Gardens Monday evening.

Mayor Chris Spearman said the discovery of these children’s graves has forced many Canadians, and many here in Lethbridge, to confront the uncomfortable truths of Canada’s colonial history which are exemplified by the residential schools system.

“I, like many of you, like many of my council colleagues, read the news out of Kamloops last week, and we were lost for words,” Spearman said. “We didn’t know how to respond. It is an unthinkable tragedy when human life is lost, but when the lives of children are taken it all feels too much. But this is the tragic legacy of the residential school system in Canada. It is not just a chapter in our history, it is an ongoing story in our lives today.

“Racism is real,” he added. “It happens in our community, and it happens in communities across Canada. And we really have yet to deal effectively with it. We need to get comfortable with the uncomfortable conversations, and start calling out racism whenever we see it happening.”

Prior to Spearman’s remarks, city council listened to a previously unscheduled presentation by Leroy Little Bear on the history and legacy of residential schools, and the history of how diseases and pandemics introduced by colonial settlers ravaged previously thriving Indigenous populations across North America in a quiet genocide which the residential schools were the later inheritors of.

Little Bear also spoke about how the expansion of the Canadian nation intentionally and systematically displaced Indigenous peoples on the plains to take control of their lands, and created a system, which included residential schools, to perpetuate that colonial legacy.

Little Bear said Kamloops had opened the eyes of many Canadians to a truth which has been in front of them all along.

“Today, when we are talking about developments and happenings such as Kamloops, British Columbia, these things happen because we don’t understand each other,” he stated. “Through the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission), and when it first came out, everybody talked about truth and reconciliation. Everybody jumped on the reconciliation wagon. Nobody wanted to talk about the truth that Kamloops is reminding us to talk about. The truth.”

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