Toronto ceremonies honour ‘courage of the survivors’ of residential schools | CBC News

Toronto continued a weekend of programming to commemorate the fourth National Day of Truth and Reconciliation on Monday with a sunrise ceremony at Nathan Phillips Square. 

The city is partnering with Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre to present the seventh annual Indigenous Legacy Gathering at the square. 

The gathering honours residential school survivors, their children and communities through activities including workshops, presentations, stories and performances, according to the city’s website. It began on Friday and continues on through Monday. 

“I want to recognize … the courage of the survivors, who carried their childhood wounds into their adult lives and have lived to tell the truth to this day,” residential school survivor Michael Cheena said during a speech at the gathering on Monday morning. 

The residential school system was “a national crime and a national secret,” Cheena said. 

“That Canadian flag is a symbol of prosperity and pluralism, and also of Indigenous oppression and racial injustice,” he said. 

Several residential school survivors spoke on Monday morning. Many held up photographs of siblings and friends who were also survivors and had since passed away.

People can attend the gathering for free, the city said. 

Flags at city hall, civic centres and other city facilities will be lowered to half-mast on Monday, according to the city’s website. 

Free workshops on teaching lodge, teepee design 

The city opened an Indigenous spirit garden on Monday in front of city hall. 

“The spirit garden is there to remind us of the residential schools [and] the children that have been lost, but [also to] … remind us that that spirit needs to be there as we seek to, every day, work for justice, truth and reconciliation,” said Mayor Olivia Chow, who attended the sunrise ceremony on Monday.

As its centrepiece, the garden has a large turtle sculpture made of limestone. Elements that represent First Nations, Métis and Inuit cultures surround the turtle and include a teaching lodge, a silver voyageur canoe and an inukshuk made out of granite.

On Monday afternoon, there will be public cultural workshops at Nathan Phillips Square on the design and building of traditional teaching lodges. John Keeshig Mayawaasige,  a knowledge keeper, will host and guide the design of the teaching lodge inside the spirit garden. 

The workshop was hosted at 1:30 p.m. and will happen again at 4:30 p.m., according to an online guide posted by the Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre. 

All workshops are on a first-come, first-served basis, the guide says. 

There was also a workshop on teepee design and its historical usage at 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Attendees had the chance to craft their own personal teepee that they can take home with them. 

Another workshop is focused on how to make sweetgrass medicine mist. Hosted by Roots + Raven, an Indigenous woman-owned bath and body care brand, the workshop was hosted at 11:30 a.m. and will happen again at 4 p.m.

Performances on Monday kicked off at 1 p.m. with the Manitou Mkwa Singers, a family hand drum group from the Mississaugas of the Credit.

The square is also hosting a marketplace of Indigenous artists and artisans, featuring crafts, jewellery, clothing and paintings.

‘Finally the truth has risen’

Tuscarora and Seneca Nation artist Raymond Skye created the Three Sisters Panel, displayed in the spirit garden. 

In a speech at the gathering on Monday, he said he has been thinking about his father and his aunts, who were all residential school survivors. 

He said he has also been thinking about the children who didn’t make it home from the schools and what they would say today. 

“They’d probably be saying to us, we’ve been waiting a long time, and finally the truth has risen,” he said. 

“And with that truth, we can now go home. We can all go home.”