What better way to commemorate our day for Truth and Reconciliation than via music and song for the ears, and vivid, bright orange for the eyes?
Mimi O’Bonsawin is a singer-songwriter born of mixed French Canadian & Abénaki, a member of Odanak First-Nation. Her music embraces the Beauty of Land. Last week, on September 30th, some of us attended her concert in Oakville. She performs with various string instruments and her husband plays drums. It was wonderful to listen to her beautiful voice and also to watch an Indigenous traditional dance.
Beforehand, we had stood outside the theatre to witness speeches and songs by Indigenous people who relayed experiences of residential schools that they, their parents or grandparents had been forced to attend. The trauma it left – on those that survived – remains for life, really. How can it not?
I’m only glad that in recent years, especially since the discovery of countless unmarked graves in the grounds of those old residential schools, Caucasian Canadians stopped to finally listen to what First-Nations people had been trying to tell them for decades. (See my blog post on that here.)
The September 30th Day for Truth and Reconciliation is also known as Orange Shirt Day. It’s a day of memorial recognizing the multi-generational effects of the atrocities committed in Canadian Indian residential schools … by supposedly Christian monks and nuns. Many of us wear something orange to stand in solidarity.
