Kristine Walkden, Centretown News
Trina Cooper-Bolam wrote her MA thesis on how the Monuments Board of Canada isn’t doing a proper job of commemorating indigenous people.With plans underway for monuments to commemorate the Holocaust and victims of communism in Ottawa, is it time the capital had a monument to remember the tragic legacy of residential schools?
Residential schools survivor Terry McKay isn’t sure.
“It’s really hard to say because in our culture we don’t do that kind of thing,” says McKay, who is a member of the elder council of the Odawa Native Friendship Centre in Centretown.
McKay is from the Tsimshian Nation in British Columbia and says when his ancestors lived through a war or battle, they were honoured with an eagle feather. He wrote to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission asking that residential school survivors be given medals or eagle feathers.
But he wants all survivors to meet to discuss how they want to commemorate their suffering at residential schools, among other issues.
“Everything that goes on with us survivors is something that’s been passed on by the government,” McKay says. “There’s no input from us at all, except maybe through the band councils and one or two survivor networks.”
The 2007 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement included a $20-million commemoration fund that supported 143 projects between 2011 and 2013. First Nations groups across the country applied for funds to create their own memorials, monuments and other commemoration projects.
“You can’t open the door for four years and then close it again and say ‘OK, everyone’s done commemorating,’” says Carleton University PhD student Trina Cooper-Bolam, who has researched the commemoration of residential schools. “That’s extremely short sighted.”
As for a national monument, Cooper-Bolam says it’s a conversation worth having.
“It would be a good question, do survivors want a national monument?” she says. “I think for some a national monument would be a very good thing. I think for others, it wouldn’t be as meaningful and they would never see it. So I guess the question is, who is it for?”
Ottawa Centre NDP MP Paul Dewar is open to a national monument, as long as it’s not done in a “top-down” way.
“I think that the idea is fine as long as it’s coming from the people who were affected,” he says.
Cooper-Bolam says she wants federal government commemoration programs – such as the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, which designates sites of historic significance nation-wide – to do more to acknowledge residential schools.
Cooper-Bolam says the Historic Sites and Monuments Board has only designated one site associated with residential schools – Notre Dame des Victoires/Lac La Biche Mission near Lac La Biche, Alta.
She takes issue with the wording of the plaque erected at Notre Dames des Victoires/Lac La Biche Mission, which was the site of a church, convent and residential school and received designation under the Historic Sites and Monuments Act in 1989.
“(The plaque) presents it as if residential schooling and the policy behind it was a good thing and that assimilation was a good thing,” says Cooper-Bolam. “Our own prime minister has gone on record in his federal apology to survivors saying that no, in fact, (residential schools) had myriad negative impacts on indigenous peoples and communities.”
According to Parks Canada’s website, the plaque reads in part: “Church, convent and residential school ministered to the needs of the Métis community and the Cree and Dene of the area. The Mission also played a role in aiding the local people to make the transition from a hunting to an agrarian way of life.”
The federal government has not announced any additional money for residential school commemoration projects since the funding under the settlement agreement ran out in 2013.