First Nations University of Canada holds annual community smudge walk in Regina | CBC News

The First Nations University of Canada (FNUniv) held its annual community smudge walk in Regina Thursday.

This year’s walk started around 9:30 a.m. CST and brought in students, faculty and other community members displaying bright orange shirts as they walked around the campuses of FNUniv and the University of Regina.

FNUniv said this was the largest crowd the walk has ever had.

The annual event is meant to remember those who attended residential school, talk about the history of those institutions and allow survivors to come together to show support for one another.

FNUniv president Jaqueline Ottmann said it’s important that educational institutions lead and engage in events like this because the education system has engaged in and contributed to the exclusion of Indigenous peoples.

“Perhaps events like this, the attendance for events like this will increase, and then, you know, we have this opportunity to engage in dialogue to work together.”

Chief Michael Starr of Star Blanket Cree Nation is a residential school survivor. His community announced in January it had used ground penetrating radar to find potential unmarked graves at the former site of the Lebret Indian Industrial School, located near Fort Qu’Appelle, Sask.

Starr said it’s nice to see more and more people attend events like the smudge walk.

“It brings continuous healing as I talk about continuing understanding of what has to happen, as I talk about what had happened to our our people from that residential school system. So it brings a sense of warmth,” he said.

Starr said the work at the former Lebret Indian Industrial Residential site is ongoing and will be a long process, because of all the research that has to be done.

He said the research team has travelled all over Canada to search for records from residential schools.

“All our leadership, all of society, all of our people need to work together, to help each other and understand that truth they talk about, understand that pain that our people endured.”

Sarah Longman, board chair of the Regina Indian Industrial School Commemorative Association, spoke on some of the association’s work, including trying to protect all 130 hectares of the former school, which was located just northwest of Regina.

The non-profit association has been using ground-penetrating radar to search for graves at the site since 2012. The human-made disturbances that were found, which could be an indication of graves, were marked with 38 commemorative feathers in 2021.

“It’s history that exists in our own backyard and a lot of times it’s much more easier to process some of the truth, some of the atrocities that have happened by distancing ourselves.,” Longman said. “So when we look at other provinces, for example, and what they’re finding, there’s a certain amount of empathy, but I think there’s fear when we’re looking in our own backyard and seeing that, you know what, this history lives right here.”

The Regina Indian Industrial School was officially approved for heritage status in 2016 by the city.

Longman said its important to keep speaking the truth about the residential school system.

“Amnesia is a word that I like to think about. You know, it’s an comfortable place to be because we don’t have to remember, we don’t have to know, we don’t have to think about our collective history and the work that we need to do today,” Longman said.

“We talked about the truth, and the truth can be painful. It can be very uncomfortable and it could be very harsh. I think there’s a lot of courage to looking at that truth and embracing the history and its reality.”