Windsor-Essex students colour feathers to commemorate residential school victims, survivors

Catholic school students in Windsor-Essex coloured more than 2,000 paper feathers for a display at Art Windsor Essex to coincide with the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

It's called bezhig miigwan, meaning "one feather," and each feather symbolizes a residential school survivor or a child lost at one of the schools, according to the Art Windsor Essex website.

"When I first walked into the exhibit, I was in awe," said Fawn Lomascolo, the success coach for Indigenous students with the Windsor Essex Catholic District School Board.

"There's one big wall that has probably about 500, another smaller wall, and then a case that has about probably another 300 in it," said Lomascolo, who partnered on the project. "So when you walk in, it's pretty, pretty amazing."

The Parliament of Canada made Sept. 30, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a federal statutory holiday in 2021 after ground-penetrating radar searches began detecting human remains believed to be lost pupils on the sites of former residential schools.

The day, however, had been marked as Orange Shirt Day since 2013.

Lomascolo is hoping staff will mark the day this year by recommitting to what truth and reconciliation means for the school board at the higher levels, she said.

"We are also connecting it to the seven grandfather teachings so how those teachings, embedded in who we are as people, kind of connect to truth and reconciliation."

Students will receive stickers on Monday designed by Sienna Rochon, a Grade 12 student at St. Anne Catholic High School in Lakeshore and the youth representative for the Windsor-Essex Council of the Metis Nation of Ontario.

"I wanted to make it as simple as possible," she said of the image, which was inspired by the title of the AWE display: "One Feather."

"So just having the name just big right there and then the feather over top of it. I also wanted to add in the turtle as it is one of my spirit animals, but also it means a lot to the Indigenous community."

Rochon plans to spend Sept. 30 thinking about her grandfather, she said.

"He never really wanted to bring up the topic of schooling, but when he did, it justit wasn't like a great experience for him," she said.

"He didn't necessarily like the teachers. And I think it's really important for everybody to understand that residential schools don't necessarily mean, like, the extreme of, like, being taken away from your family and going through that. it can also be maybe the less extreme just the racism that Indigenous students or people face through residential schools as well."

Lomascolo said she will spend Sept. 30 reflecting on the resilience of the Indigenous community, the strength of survivors and the manner in which Indigenous people are reconnecting to their cultures.

The feathers are on display until Nov. 3.