Truth and Reconciliation Day 2025: Remembering the Survivors
By founder Shila LeBlanc
Today, as we do each year, we pause to honour the lives, voices, and histories of Indigenous Peoples across Mi’kma’ki and throughout Turtle Island. When I see orange shirts out and about today, I see more than fabric and colour — I see the children who never came home, the children who didn't experience love, the children who lost their culture, and the survivors who carry those memories. Each shirt feels like a symbol, a reminder of one life taken or forever changed by residential schools. It is a call to honour them not just in memory, but in how we choose to live in right relation.
Truth and Reconciliation Day is a time to acknowledge the enduring harms of colonialism and residential schools, and to recommit ourselves to the work of justice, healing, and relationship.
At Restorative Approach, we know that reconciliation is not a single day, nor a symbolic gesture — it is a daily practice of upholding peaceful relations, and repairing the harms we commit as we go. I mean this with our families, our friends, our colleagues, our communities. We must create spaces where truth can be spoken, where harms are named and addressed, and where respect and reciprocity guide our choices. Period.
Our work is rooted in relational approaches that prioritize listening, accountability, and restoration. On this day, we recognize that these principles are rooted in Indigenous teachings that have for time immemorial centred balance, connection, and responsibility to one another. In an era of global conflict, war, genocide, and macro harm to our environment, I reflect on the difficult responsibility each and every one of us has to create better communities than the ones we inherit. It is not easy to hold on to hope for change in a time where it feels so easy to connect to despair and anger. We must live our lives in ways that do not perpetuate tools of harm and oppression, and we must find a way to keep moving toward healing and love.
One resource I encourage you to connect to, or as in my case revisit, is the story Fatty Legs, a memoir by residential school survivor Olemaun (Margaret) Pokiak-Fenton and Christy Jordan-Fenton. This illustrated story follows 8-year-old Margaret who dreams of learning to read, and begs her family to take her to residential school. Little does she know, the institution is cruel, and the rupture between Margaret and her culture begins. It’s a story aimed at middle-grade children, but we adults have so much to learn from it.
(Get your own copy here, or go to your local library and find it there! The updated 10th anniversary edition includes a foreword by noted Indigenous scholar Debbie Reese [Nambé Pueblo], founder of American Indians in Children’s Literature. The foreword discusses the biased portrayal of Indigenous people in children’s literature throughout history and the exclusion of Indigenous people from the ability to tell their own stories.)
I had the immense privilege of working with Margaret and Christy in an art project related to the book that ran on and off for years. Margaret was such an incredible spirit, so gentle and kind, and she had such a love for her family and traditions. Later, with her permission, I got a tattoo of arctic saxifrage and an arctic wren, symbols from her stories. Margaret passed in 2021, but I can still hear her voice.
With Christy’s permission (thank you SO much Christy!), here are two images of Olemaun, one when she is a girl, one in her time as Elder:
I had never seen this image of her as a young girl before. I was so moved seeing her as an innocent child. I thank Margaret for all of her contributions that continue to ripple outward in positive ways. Her story lives on.
Reconciliation is an ongoing journey. May today be a reminder to all of us to carry this work forward — in our organizations, in our communities, and in our daily relations.