Overview

• The gathering at Mount Royal Park included residential school survivors and relatives, including Fay-Lisa Gagné, who described family separation through the Sixties Scoop.
• Attendees marked the fifth National Day for Truth and Reconciliation with reflections, testimony, and performances honoring children taken from their families.
• The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 found the system aimed to destroy and assimilate Indigenous peoples, characterizing it as cultural genocide.
• About 150,000 Indigenous children were compelled to attend church-run, government-funded schools from 1857 to 1996, where abuse, poor conditions, and infectious disease were widespread.
• Speakers cited data that First Nations children are six to eight times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be placed in care, and voices such as elder Ka’nahsohon Kevin Deer and singer Leonard Sumner urged remembrance and healing.