Members of Wahpeton Dakota Nation walk along Highway 11 on July 8, 2023 (Derek Craddock/paNOW Staff)

By Derek Craddock

EVERY CHILD MATTERS

‘They’re in my heart’: Residential school survivors trek from Wahpeton Dakota Nation to Duck Lake

Jul 8, 2023 | 6:00 PM

It is more than 70 kilometres from Wahpeton Dakota Nation to the site of what was once the St. Michael’s Indian Residential School in Duck Lake.

This weekend, several members of the community and survivors from that school walked that distance by foot to raise awareness of the horrors they witnessed and how they bridge the road towards healing.

The walk, which began on Saturday made its way through Prince Albert that afternoon, trekking along the shoulders of Highway 11 south, en-route to Duck Lake.

The temperatures may have been warm, as Saturday’s high hit the mid to high 20s by the afternoon. But that did not stop those from taking the walk, which entered its third year.

The event was started by Linda Buffalo, a survivor of St. Michael’s School, who felt in her heart and soul that she needed to do something for those that did not come home.

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“I sat and I cried and I wanted to help, how do I help? That’s what came to me was this walk,” she said. “We do it for our children. We’re all survivors from that residential school.”

An Every Child Matters flag flys behind a truck during an awareness walk to Duck Lake. (Derek Craddock/paNOW Staff)

She was joined by her brothers Loren and Arnold Waditika, also survivors of the residential school.

Arnold recounted the days inside those walls, after being taken from his home reserve and over to Duck Lake. He said that he couldn’t speak the Dakota language at the school, only returning home for a couple of months each year.

“I spent 10 years in Duck Lake, I lost the ability to speak that language,” he said.

He added that next year, the final year for the walk, they plan to ‘finish the journey” and walk to Duck Lake and back to Wahpeton Dakota Nation.

For Buffalo, the walk means more than just raising awareness of what she went through as a child, but to make sure future generations know what happened, and to show them not to be afraid of their culture.

“It’s so hard to teach our children what we don’t know, our Dakota language, our ways of life, our culture, our traditional ways, our spiritual ways,” she said. “We’re just now teaching our kids and they’re starting to respect that way of life. Before that, we didn’t know nothing about our culture, nothing about our traditional, spiritual ways of life.”

She said it wasn’t until she and her brothers were in their 20s and 30s before they could pick up the pieces, relearn their language and traditional ways and start to heal.

Buffalo said what keeps her going forward during the long walk is remembering the children and infants that didn’t survive at the residential school.

“I think about them, I think about our people, all the people that are in sorrow because the children never made it home. That’s what I think about and pray about,” she said. “I want our family, our children, our grandchildren to be free of this thing we are carrying. We have to get rid of it. The only way we get rid of it is through prayer.”

Her brother Loren started at the school in 1960 and was eventually taken to a day school in the Red Wing area in 1967. Though the memories of what he went through still haunt him, he knows that he and all First Nations people can’t continue to carry that resentment.

“We got to learn how to forgive these people so that we can carry on with our lives in a good way and in our traditional, spiritual way of life.”

The group of walkers hopes to arrive at the St. Michael’s Indian Residential School site sometime Sunday afternoon.

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derek.craddock@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @princealbertnow