Kahnawake honours survivors

Wayne Delormier. Sonny Joe Cross. Sheila Boyer. Josie McGregor. Charles Stacey. Those were the names Helen Jarvis Montour read out loud Monday at the honour ceremony in Kahnawake held to mark Orange Shirt Day. Each of the five passed within the last year-and-a-half, and each attended residential school in Spanish, Ontario.

“Let’s enjoy this time together and remember to love and care for each other,” Montour told the crowd gathered at Orville Standup Park.
The gathering was held to celebrate the strength of residential school survivors in Kahnawake. It created a space where community members could share found memories about those who recently passed. 

Montour said she’ll always remember the first time Wayne Delormier was gifted a teddy bear on Orange Shirt Day. 

“He told me later that he cried because there was a teddy bear,” she told those gathered. “He’d never received anything like that, they didn’t get things like that.”

Delormier passed away last October at the Kateri Memorial Hospital Centre (KMHC).

The event was also a birthday party, complete with cake, muffins, and gift baskets, something done annually to acknowledge how children in residential schools didn’t get to celebrate their birthdays.

A total of 15 bundles of gifts were given out to survivors in attendance, and to the families of those that had recently passed.

“It was very calming,” said Trudy McGregor, the daughter of Josie McGregor. “It felt like she was close to me, that she was here. She was hugging me for a while.”

Her mother was five years old when she was sent to residential school in Spanish, Ontario. 

Her sister-in-law Colleen Brown McGregor attended alongside her that morning. 

“She met my father, Angus McGregor. She got married, and she had four beautiful children, and she was so giving to the community. She took in foster children. She played baseball,” she said. “She was full of life. She was loving, she was giving, she was rambunctious. She loved to dance, laugh, and tell jokes.”

Josie passed only one day after taking part in the annual Purple Ribbon Walk held in August to support cancer survivors. 

Curran Jacobs opened the gathering Monday morning with the Ohèn:ton Karihwatéhkwen, a first for her. She’s been involved in running the event alongside Montour and June Skye-Stacey since its first iteration in 2015.

“Visibility is important, because for many years before this, we didn’t talk about residential schools,” she told The Eastern Door. “There’s a lot of healing that needs to happen for people, and they weren’t able to do that before.”

After the opening address Don Barnaby sang a Mi’kmaq welcoming song followed by a pipe ceremony. 

“Our ancestors are watching us,” he told the crowd. “They know we come here in a good way, to honour our survivors of residential school and day schools, and they are grateful and thankful.”

While there, Barnaby shared the story of his mother being taken to Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Nova Scotia. 

“If my mother didn’t come home, if she didn’t survive, I wouldn’t be here, my children wouldn’t be here, my grandchildren wouldn’t be here,” Barnaby said. “Generations would have been taken away. So, I always have to remember, every child does matter.”

Barnaby also spoke of his own experience growing up during the Sixties Scoop and being placed in a non-Native family. 

“My language was taken from me. The ceremonies were taken from me. My identity was taken from me,” he said. “I had to go out when I was 18 years old to go search for my biological family.”

Jacobs said she’s excited already to start planning next year’s Orange Shirt Day, saying there’s a big surprise to come. 

“We continue to do it because it keeps our community together,” she said. “It’s the thing that reminds us that even though we’ve struggled with a lot of the effects of colonization, we’re still here.” 

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