Officials from Seneca Gaming Corp. will host the fifth annual Every Child Matters Walk at 5:30 p.m. today in Niagara Falls.
Walkers will gather at Seneca Square outside the Fourth Street entrance to Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino and follow the approximately one-mile walk route through downtown Niagara Falls to Niagara Falls State Park, pausing for a moment of silence at Prospect Point, before returning to Seneca Square.
Hundreds of walkers have participated in the walk each of the last four years in a strong showing of community support for the victims and survivors of the Indigenous residential boarding school movement that occurred across the United States and Canada for more than a century.
From the 1800s until well into the 1990s, tens of thousands of Native American children were forced to attend residential schools across the United States and Canada, where they were systematically stripped of their traditional language and culture, and where they were often the victims of physical abuse. Thousands of children are known to have died at these schools. It is believed that the deaths of hundreds — if not thousands — more were never documented.
Earlier this year, Gov. Kathy Hochul made a historic visit to the Seneca Nation to formally apologize for New York State’s role in operating the Thomas Indian School on the Nation’s Cattaraugus Territory from 1875 until the school closed in 1957.
Sept. 30 is recognized as a federal statutory holiday in Canada known as National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.