A local teacher is organizing a memorial to honour the 215 children found buried in an unmarked grave near the Kamloops Residential School in BC.
Mary Kate McTavish is encouraging people to come to the Tecumseh Monument on Longwoods Road near Thamesville this Friday between 9am and 8:30pm to help build a memorial.
“We ask that you bring something that might represent a child,” McTavish says. “Children’s shoes, or if you have teddy bears, or you want to donate flowers, whatever’s in your heart.”
Following the direction of Chatham-Kent Public Health and COVID restrictions, residents are asked to remain in their cars wearing face masks and volunteers will gather the donations to place at the memorial.
McTavish asks that photos and social media posts use the hashtag #ckhonours215 to continue spreading awareness.
McTavish is of Indigenous descent herself. Her father was born into the Oneida Nation of the Thames but was taken from his family by the Children’s Aid Society, separated from his five sisters, and adopted into a non-Native family.
“From that, he has no big connections with his indigenous community. Passing that down to me, I feel even though I have a lot of settler privilege, I feel like part of myself is missing, I don’t have the community I could have had.”
She says it’s important for people to remember residential schools are not just part of our past.
“The last residential school closed in 1996, that really was not that long ago. It’s not history because there is inter-generational trauma happening from residential schools. Obviously it’s not history because we are finding remains and there are more remains out there that we have not found yet.”
Everyone who attends the memorial at the Tecumseh Monument on Friday will be given an orange ribbon in recognition of the lives lost and a pamphlet with information about residential schools.
“We need to take a step back from our busy lives, think about what has happened in the past, what is happening in the present, and how we can educate ourselves to change the future.”
