Story of Residential Schools to Be Told through Exhibit, Truro Daily News, March 7, 2011

Story of Residential Schools to Be Told through Exhibit

Truro Daily News
March 7, 2011

http://www.trurodaily.com/News/Local/2011-03-07/article-2310430/Story-of-residential-schools-to-be-told-through-exhibit/1

An estimated 400 people, led by native drummers, marched on June 11, 2008 from the former Shubenacadie Residential School site to the former train station, where many arrived to start school. The people then went to the Indian Brook community centre to...

MILLBROOK – A new exhibit will honour and tell the stories of residential school survivors.

The Glooscap Heritage Centre, located in the Truro Power Centre, will host the display from March 14 to 31from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each weekday.

The schools are closed but the emotional, physical, spiritual and social trauma they inflicted still affects people's lives and their communities. The Shubenacadie Residential School was one school of 130 that operated in Canada between 1850 and 1996. This exhibit places the schools in a larger context that examines the system as a whole as well as connecting powerful stories of loss and healing from residential school survivors.

"There is no justification for what happened behind the doors of these schools or the desks of those that created or ran them. There are volumes of Canadian histories that are not flattering and no Canadian can be proud of. I think it is a mark of a strong society that can stare at our own country's dark places and acknowledge it happened and show empathy and compassion for First Nation survivors," said Gordon Pictou, the centre's program director.

"The question of healing is important and will take many different forms on an individual level. The question of how healing will happen for communities and how to break the cycle of passing anger on to our children is a question that this exhibit naturally raises and is a conversation we need to be having with ourselves, our communities and our children."

Thousands of First Nation, Inuit and Métis children were forced to attend residential schools in an attempt to assimilate all First Nations to accept and honour the Eurocentric lifestyle, disregarding all of their own traditional teachings, language and values. It is estimated there are 80,000 residential school survivors today, from approximately 140,000 residential school students.

The "Where Are the Children" exhibit is one step towards reaching a full understanding of what residential schools were and the impact they continue to have in all First Nations across Canada.

A private opening for residential school survivors takes place March 14 at 1 p.m. with a grand opening to the general public to follow later that day at 6:30 p.m.