Students at Similkameen Elementary Secondary School (SESS) had the chance to learn about the residential school experience from survivor Grace Greyeyes, a Penticton Indian Band elder last week.
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“Students can play a vital role in understanding the history and learning what they can about it from firsthand accounts,” said SESS Indigenous education advocate Michael Reid who organized the event on Sept. 27. He added schools can also change the curriculum to learn about some of these stories and accounts.
“Twenty-five years ago, this history wasn’t a part of the school curriculum. I think a lot of the young students and grandchildren of some of the residential school survivors at our school. They are learning about it and understanding they have a part in the story.”
Reid said the students were respectful and listened quietly to Greyeyes’ story. They asked questions about how long she was at the school and how old she was when she was forced to go.
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Grade 12 student Chila Louis said the talk was important because she feels residential school history is not taught enough in history classes.
“It’s something that happened not too long ago in Canadian history,” Louis said, adding she felt horrified to hear about the traumatic experiences from Greyeyes. But she said she feels there is hope for reconciliation.
“I think learning about these experiences is taking the right steps forward, especially with Orange Shirt Day too,” she said of the Orange Shirt Day event held at the school Monday. “Lots of students were wearing their orange shirt and acknowledging what happened.”
Reid added he hopes an event like the residential school talk and Orange Shirt Day can help the education system and society at large move forward in the reconciliation process. For him, as an Indigenous person, the events are healing.
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“It’s very healing when I can sit and help an elder talk to students and help answer questions and be open about some of these things. It helps me as an Indigenous person when I think about my own family, my own father and my grandfather who had been taken out of their community to residential school and taken away from their families and had to endure hardship. And we’re still here and we’re still moving forward and we’re resilient to the things that have happened to our people.”
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