{"id":32852,"date":"2023-03-30T19:19:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-30T23:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=32852"},"modified":"2023-03-30T19:19:01","modified_gmt":"2023-03-30T23:19:01","slug":"traditional-anishinaabe-grandmother-hails-incredible-moment-of-rink-board-unveiling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/traditional-anishinaabe-grandmother-hails-incredible-moment-of-rink-board-unveiling\/","title":{"rendered":"Traditional Anishinaabe Grandmother hails \u201cincredible moment\u201d of rink board unveiling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As she prepared to speak from the ice of the Stronach Aurora Recreation Complex\u2019s west arena last Tuesday afternoon, Traditional Anishinaabe Grandmother Kim Wheatley was momentarily at a loss for words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arriving at the recreation centre and seeing orange edges popping out from behind a curtain that would, just a few minutes later, be lifted to reveal a rink board bearing the motto, \u201cEvery Child Matters,\u201d it struck her as a moment that was \u201cso hugely impactful, so healing\u201d \u2013 and something she said should be emulated across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wheatley was a guest of honour at the SARC last week as she helped Mayor Tom Mrakas unveil the rink boards, which will now be featured in all five of Aurora\u2019s arenas. The latest step on the Town\u2019s path towards Truth & Reconciliation, Wheatley says it was \u201can incredible step forward and an example for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIce rinks, skating rinks and community centres like this are places of belonging and our children belong here, too,\u201d said Ms. Wheatley, referencing the thousands of children whose graves have been uncovered on land associated with residential schools in the last few years. \u201cOur children are exceptional athletes with exceptional raw talent who don\u2019t oftentimes get the access and the ability to be in a place like this, as nice as this, but their spirit is here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Nations, Metis and Inuit have, she said, \u201cundergone cultural genocide and that\u2019s really hard for Canadians to absorb and digest and feel comfort with,\u201d but it\u2019s important to feel uncomfortable because \u201ccultural genocide is wrong and what\u2019s even more wrong is to attack the most vulnerable segment of our communities, which is the children, and this is what happened with residential schools.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur children were harmed at unprecedented numbers. Across the country there is still this mindset that there have been only 215 children\u2019s bodies discovered. When I hear that word, \u2018Only,\u2019 I cringe. One, because the number is well over 12,000 and we don\u2019t hear about that in the papers anymore. It makes Canadians uncomfortable to hear about the rising numbers. 12,000 is where we\u2019re at. Justice Murray Sinclair talked about 50,000 to 60,000 children\u2019s bodies being unearthed across the country and as you can see the numbers are climbing dramatically. I have no words to express how hard that is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think about all the names we don\u2019t speak and I think about all the families that were fractured, and I think in my own family what it\u2019s like to speak publicly about this and it\u2019s hard. And it\u2019s sad and there\u2019s no getting around that. But today we have a moment to celebrate and people wonder how we can celebrate. We have to celebrate the resilience of our communities, the refusal to let go of justice, and the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission) report helped us to remember that there is a way to right the wrongs. We can\u2019t bring back the lives of these children. We may never know all their names and we may never know what gifts were lost in the world because they didn\u2019t get to live a full life, but what we can remember is to never press the repeat button on something like this again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIndividually you might feel like you can\u2019t make a change or reparations but that\u2019s not true; every small step that you take, every small choice that you make, every moment of remembrance makes a difference to us, individually and collectively. If you\u2019ve never thought about it like that, I encourage you to do it today. We\u2019re all change-makers and we have to do something; we have to walk our talk. Talking is shallow without the follow-up with action and the action I see here today is such an honouring.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before singing a song in honour of the children who were lost, Wheatley gave thanks to the First Order of Creation, which she described as \u201cthe space and place that received the bodies of our children, the one that have an earth blanket to carefully hold their bodies until we can find them\u201d; to the Second Order of Creation \u201cwho beautified those spaces, the plant beings \u2013 maybe grass grew, maybe flowers grew, maybe trees grew, but there was something to honour that space and place from creation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks were then offered to the Third Order of Creation \u2013 \u201cthe swimmers, the crawlers, the flyers, the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, those that live up in the sky that are older than those beneath the earth\u201d \u2013 and finally to families impacted by residential schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFamilies who have suffered so greatly and continue to persevere and step forward and honour their memories by not giving up and saying, \u2018They are there, please find them.\u2019 They have been found, some at least, and there are a lot more to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to thank the allies and the growing circle of allies who continue to shine in spaces and places that we can\u2019t get do and share the truth and encourage reparations and restitution and activate the word \u2018reconciliation\u2019 meaningfully. This is a powerful time and a powerful gesture. It\u2019s not just symbolic for me, a bit of our hearts are now publicly on view and hopefully it will trigger more allies, more awareness, and a constant reminder that we will never forget. And we will never forget. With those words, I honour the children on this day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As she prepared to speak from the ice of the Stronach Aurora Recreation Complex\u2019s west arena last Tuesday afternoon, Traditional Anishinaabe Grandmother Kim Wheatley was momentarily at a loss for words. Arriving at the recreation centre and seeing orange edges popping out from behind a curtain that would, just a few minutes later, be lifted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":32853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/2023-03-30-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8xS","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 20:19:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}