It wasn’t all that long ago that James Doxtador knew little of his Indigenous roots. He grew up in the foster care system and became detached from the culture of his parents and grandparents.
“As a young Haudenosaunee man, I never had my dad in my life growing up because of residential schools,” Doxtador said. “I didn't have my mom as a mother couldn't walk beside me as a child all the way to the man that I am today because of residential schools. Because my grandmother (and) my grandfather both suffered from residential schools in which that affected my mom. It affected my dad. In turn, it affected me.”
But at the age of 25, that all changed.
“I'm here because I embraced my culture at 25 years old. I took a step to work with the Niagara Regional Native Centre and give back to our youth. They're going to be standing here in my position one day to be able to spread the love and the knowledge.”
Doxtador, a member of the Lower Cayuga Bear Clan from the Six Nations, was speaking at a flag raising in Pelham on Monday to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The event was one of several being held throughout the day. While the flag raising was at Town Hall, the rest of the events – including displays of Indigenous artefacts from The Welland Museum, artworks courtesy of a local curio and housewares retailer, drum workshops, seminars a KARIOS blanket exercise – were taking place at the Meridian Community Centre.
“What we're doing today, wearing this orange shirt, is telling society it can't break us anymore,” Doxtador told a crowd of about 70 people – made up of members of the local Indigenous community, Town of Pelham staff, and members of the community – gathered on the municipal building’s front lawn.
“A lot of our people over the years have faced a lot of racism, a lot of abuse, a lot of neglect. And we're here, we're surviving. We've survived, and we're thriving.”
Doxtador urged people to listen to – and learn – from those who experienced or who are living with the trauma brought about by the residential school system, no matter how uncomfortable that it may be.
“When we become uncomfortable, we run from it, but in uncomfortable situations, we grow,” he said. “We grow and we learn how to actually listen to our survivors, our thrivers.”
Chief Administrative Officer David Cribbs agreed with Doxtador.
“I think he's absolutely right that if you don't ever enter into a state of discomfort, you don't go forward anywhere,” Cribbs said.
He noted that best estimates put the number of children who died while in residential schools at 4,200.
“Almost as bad as that is, we only figured out about a third of the identities,” he said. But what that actually says is we cared so little that we didn't even bother figuring out the names or recording the names of children who died in care – care is the wrong word – in custody of the school system.”
And it’s not something that happened all that long ago, Cribbs added, with the last residential school closing its doors in 1996.
“Three-quarters of this crowd existed in 1996,” Cribbs said of the people gathered in front of him. “This happened on our watch.”
Cribbs noted that there still a long path ahead to achieve reconciliation and he recalled an incident back in June at the Pelham Summer Chill Series to drive that point home.
Rick Langlois, an Anishinaabe man and is a survivor of the ‘60s Scoop – when Indigenous children were taken from their homes and placed in the child welfare system – was subject to racial slurs while participating in an Indigenous market at the weekly event in Peace Park. He had attended the Town’s flag raising for National Indigenous Peoples and talked about the experience.
“Mr. Langlois spoke up, and I'm really glad he did, because he brought the discomfort that we should be thinking and should have felt,” Cribbs said. “That was a Town-run event in a Town park 20 feet outside the door of Town Hall.”
There is still work to be done, he said, and the Town is engaged with providing staff with educational opportunities concerning the history of Indigenous people in order to better serve the community.
That training, Cribbs said, is a result of the Town acting on Call to Action No. 57 from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) final report, issued in 2015, calling on the federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments across Canada to provide such opportunities.
“The point is there’s opportunities every year to learn and do better and be better and know more,” he said.
