Leonard Ignace is thinking of his late sisters today, during the Walking Our Spirits Home event.
During opening ceremonies near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School this morning, Ignace and his wife held large photographs of his three sisters.
A 60-year-old Adams Lake Indian Band member, Ignace says all three of his sisters have passed away as adults, but because of the residential school, he didn’t see them at all for 25 years .
“I just wanted my sisters to be recognized as school survivors,” he told NL News.
Ignace also went to the Kamloops Indian Residential School but just for one year when he was five years old, before he went into an abusive foster home.
He ran away from that home at the age of 17.
“I lived up in Houston and Prince George, Burns Lake, running scared from my foster dad. He was very abusive towards me and I was running scared, I guess,” he said.
Ignace recalled being beaten with a baseball bat after he failed classes in grade eight. He then had to stay home from school for a month after he suffered a concussion as a result of the beating.
Ignace is one of at least 81 Adams Lake Indian Band members still living who attended residential school. Councillor Brandy Jules says the band estimates there were almost 200 members who attended the school in Kamloops.
“It’s a good thing we’re recognized as survivors from our band. It’s a long time coming,” he said.
“After they found those kids [in Kamloops], it hit way down where all that stuff was buried, and just started surfacing.”
Ignace says he stopped drinking almost 30 years ago, noting he would drink to cope from the trauma he experienced growing up. Only recently, Ignace says he has been able to seek professional support.
Hundreds of people are walking from Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc to the Adams Lake Indian Band this weekend, heading up Shuswap Road. The walk is being broken up into stages which will be covered over three days.
Splatsin Chief Wayne Christian is one of the local chiefs leading the walk. He spoke at today’s opening ceremonies, telling the crowd the world did not understand residential schools before the discovery at the former residential school in Kamloops.
And he says no one believed the survivors until now, noting the graves of the 215 children have helped “show the truth” about residential schools.
“So as you walk, every step you walk, pray, for those 215-plus children who are here, on this now-sacred ground,” Christian said. “Pray for their families. Everything that Tk’emlúps needs, let’s pray for them to get it, and do what has to be done in a good way.”
“It’s a time to embrace our culture, our ceremony. Because the job of sending these children home, calling them home – their spirits home, to their people – is not yet done.”
More photos from the opening ceremonies of the Walk Our Spirits Home event. @Tkemlups #Kamloops @RadioNLNews pic.twitter.com/dDF49lEJCO
— Colton Davies (@ColtonDavies_) June 11, 2021
