Monday’s Every Child Matters walk through Niagara Falls was one of many such events taking place across the U.S. and Canada.
As part of the international effort to raise awareness and promote healing for the abuse faced by generations of Indigenous children at residential schools that operated across both countries, walkers wearing orange t-shirts made for a visible and powerful statement of support as they marched downtown.
Walkers on Monday followed a mile-long route, pausing for a moment of silence at Prospect Point with a healing song led by Haudenosaunee Singers, before returning to the Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino, which hosted the day’s event.
Beginning in the 1800s and lasting well into the 1990s, tens of thousands of Native American children were forced to attend residential schools across the U.S. and Canada, including the Thomas Indian School, which operated on the Seneca Nation’s Cattaraugus Territory in Irving from 1855-1956. Children at the schools were systematically stripped of their names, traditional language and culture, and were often the victims of physical abuse. Thousands of children are known to have died at the residential schools. It is believed that the deaths of hundreds — if not thousands — more were never documented.
“The journey toward healing is long and difficult,” said Seneca Gaming Corp. President & CEO Kevin Nephew, a member of the Seneca Nation. “Even now, decades after the residential school doors finally closed, there are generations of Native people who still carry pain and darkness with them every day because of what they experienced at the schools. There are Native communities everywhere that still bear the weight of that trauma. We want people to understand what happened and, as important, we want every individual and community that were forever changed by the residential school movement to know that we are walking that healing journey with them.”