The City of Saskatoon has raised a reconciliation flag at city hall to honour residential school survivors and raise awareness about reconciliation efforts in the city.
On Monday morning, survivors, politicians, leaders, and dignitaries held an event to raise the flag.
“If you ask a thousand people about truth and reconciliation, you will get a thousand different answers,” said elder and residential school survivor Maria Linklater. “So whatever you have to do to get it done.”
Linklater would encourage all those gathered to work together toward reconciliation and spoke on some of the work being done that people may not know about.
“We have to do this work forever and ever,” she said. “Because if we don’t, we will go back to the same place we were.”
Dignitaries like Saskatoon Tribal Chief Mark Arcand and Saskatoon Mayor Cynthia Block say the work on reconciliation needs to move faster.
“I wanna challenge people. We’ve gotta do better, and we’ve gotta do it quickly. Because at the end of the day, we gotta make sure we all have a quality of life, just remember that, quality of life for equality for all people,” said Arcand.
“For all of the things that we know we must do, for all of the reasons that we must continue to hear truth as we move forward with reconciliation. Let’s know that our we put our hearts into this as a city, all of us together, we will get to the other side,” echoed Block.
Last year, Reconciliation Saskatoon chose not to hold the flag raising.
This year, emcee Neal Kewistep says the organization wanted to ensure the city was working toward reconciliation.
“Some of those challenges are a little bit more obvious than others, but I think today is about celebration and and coming together to actually, create a better tomorrow in the in the community and the neighborhoods and, and the province we all wanna live in today.” he said.
(TOP PHOTO: The Bedford Road Collegiate drum group play the Treaty 6 song and singers from St. Mother Theresa School sing the Metis anthem to kick off the flag raising ceremony. Photo by Joel Willick.)