Friday is National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and events are being held across the region.
The Dryden Native Friendship Centre is organizing local efforts with a Parade of Orange planned to Cooper Park at 10:00 am.
Land acknowledgement, pipe ceremony and opening song will take place at 10:30 am, with speeches and traditional drumming hosted by Little Feather to follow.
The pipe ceremony will include two carriers, one representing Residential School survivors and the other Day School Survivors.
Cheryl Edwards is the Executive Director at the Dryden Native Friendship Centre and says the event will feature a Healing Horse.
“Her name is Maggy and she is going to be carrying some prayer flags for anyone who wants to place a prayer flag colour on her for the healing of residential schools, for their family members, or for themselves and the community.”
The day will end at the Friendship Centre with a free lunch.
The event is open to all community members.
Edwards says National Truth and Reconciliation Day is an extremely important day for everyone in terms of the recognition of some of the atrocities that happened at residential schools.
“To be able to bring that healing. To be able to bring that truth. And then for us as community to be able to help each other in terms of the reconciliation. There’s so much that we need to learn from each other.”
She says it was very difficult for Indigenous people to share a lot of their stories without recognition on what truly happened in our history.
Edwards believes this is a relationship building day and she sees this happening for many years to come.
