Children at a previous PAGC walk to honour survivors of Indian Residential Schools. (File photo/paNOW Staff)

By Glenn Hicks

lost children

Local schools embrace orange after remains found at B.C. residential site

May 31, 2021 | 3:14 PM

Prince Albert schools, like many others across the nation, have been encouraging to wear orange in light of the tragic discovery of the remains of hundreds of children at a former residential school in B.C.

Canadian schools host the annual Orange Shirt Day in the fall to highlight the time of year when Indigenous children were taken away to residential schools. It also remembers the history and abuse suffered by Indigenous children who were sent away.

However, the discovery of the remains of 215 children on the site of a former Indian Residential School in Kamloops late last week has schools promoting the wearing of the symbolic colour in class this week.

Jennifer Hingley, the Superintendent of Schools at the Saskatchewan Rivers Public School Division, said while it was in recognition of the loss of lives discovered [in B.C.] and the harm residential schools have caused, she stressed their overall efforts are multi-faceted.

“We don’t turn Indigenous education into an event,” she told paNOW. “It is something we’re committed to, there’s strong evidence of things happening all year long to teach understanding and to help bear witness to what happened in residential schools.”

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Hingley said they were committed to ensuring students don’t graduate never having heard of residential schools and their impact.

Lorel Trumier, the Director of Education for the P.A. Roman Catholic School Division, said they too have been encouraging the wearing of orange.

paNOW asked if the horrific discovery in B.C. would bring additional weight to those elements in the curriculum.

“Yes, it certainly does add weight to it, and I would go a step further and say it’s essential,” Trumier said.

“We need to do this work and we need to do it well. We are still learning how and what to do and so we will do our very best to support our children,” she said.

Prince Albert had two Indian Residential Schools of the 22 in Saskatchewan. One was St. Alban’s which ran from 1943 to 1951 and was managed by the Anglican Church of Canada. The other was All Saints, an amalgamation of St. Alban’s Indian Residential School and All Saints (Lac La Ronge) Indian Residential School. It operated from 1947 to 1997.

An image of the All Saints Indian Residential School in Prince Albert taken in 1965. (photo PADH 23346/Prince Albert Daily Herald)

On Monday, the Saskatchewan government joined the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) in calling for radar ground searches of residential school sites in the province.

After the remains were found, the FSIN called on governments to start looking into undocumented deaths and burials on the sites of similar institutions in Saskatchewan.

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glenn.hicks@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @princealbertNOW

With files from Dawson Thompson and CKOM.