Survivor’s Walk and Pow Wow
Saturday, Sept. 30, beginning at 11 a.m.
The Forks to Canada Life Centre
Visit wa-say.com to register
Commemorate Orange Shirt Day surrounded by community with a walk and powwow hosted by Wa-Say Healing Centre, a local organization providing health and wellness support to residential school survivors and their families.
The yearly events aim to raise awareness about the painful legacy of the government-funded and church-run school system, while offering opportunities for collective healing.
JOHN WOODS/THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES People attend the second annual Orange Shirt Day Survivors Walk and Pow Wow on National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in 2022.
Wa-Say’s third annual survivor’s walk begins at Oodena Celebration Circle at The Forks and will follow a route to Canada Life Centre led by the Oyate Techa Riders on horseback. Participants are encouraged to wear orange.
The group’s first Orange Shirt Day powwow was held at St. John’s Park in 2021 and attracted more than 10,000 people, prompting a move to the RBC Convention Centre. The event has expanded again this year to Winnipeg’s largest arena.
The powwow’s grand entry starts at 1 p.m. and will include drumming by the Spirit Sands Singers and other invited drum groups. Michael Esquash Sr., a Swan Lake First Nation band councillor and drum keeper, will act as MC.
— Eva Wasney
Orange shirt days at the Manitoba Museum
Saturday to Monday, Sept. 30-Oct. 2, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Manitoba Museum
Admission is free
In honour of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, the Manitoba Museum is offering three days of special programming focused on the history of Indian Residential Schools and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Calls to Action.
Daily performances by the Beautiful Cloud Company Powwow Dancers in Alloway Hall, film screenings in the auditorium, planetarium shows, an Ojibwe language-learning booth and a collaborative art project are among the many events offering opportunities to learn and reflect.
The Museum Shop is selling orange shirts printed by Dreamcatcher Promotions while supplies last, and will be donating all of the net proceeds to Ka Ni Kanichihk, Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre, and Clan Mothers’ Healing Village.
Free admission includes the museum galleries, science gallery and planetarium. Visitors are encouraged to wear orange.
— Jen Zoratti
Niizhotay Stories: An Evening with Darrel J. McLeod
Saturday, Sept. 30, 7 p.m.
McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park location (1120 Grant Ave.)
Free admission
The life of elder and community builder Theodore Niizhotay (Ted) Fontaine will once again be honoured and celebrated at Thin Air 2023: Winnipeg International Writers Festival at this year’s Niizhotay Stories event.
Fontaine died in 2021; the next year Thin Air organizers pulled together the inaugural (and virtual) Niizhotay Stories event, held on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. This year’s event will give those in attendance the chance to honour Fontaine in person for the first time.
The featured reader this year is B.C.-based Cree (Treaty 8) author Darrel J. McLeod, who will read from and discuss his debut novel A Season in Chezgh’un. McLeod won the Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction for his 2018 memoir Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age; his followup memoir, 2021’s Peyakow: Reclaiming Cree Dignity, was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
McLeod will be joined in conversation with Winnipeg doctor and author Jillian Horton, whose 2022 memoir We Are All Perfectly Fine was a national bestseller. Admission is free and the event can also be streamed online; for more information see thinairfestival.ca.
— Ben Sigurdson
Cree senator’s speech highlights gallery’s TRC day
Sen. Mary Jane McCallum headlines WAG-Qaumajuq’s commemoration of Truth and Reconciliation Day.
SPENCER COLBY / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES
Manitoba Sen. Mary Jane McCallum
The 71-year-old Cree senator from Barren Lands First Nation in northern Manitoba will speak about her seven generations of lived experience at 4 p.m., at the Muriel Richardson Auditorium, the final event of a day filled with art, reconciliation and awareness.
A new tour, Truth and Reconciliation Through Art, which take place from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., will focus on the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has been at the heart of the gallery’s recent transition toward works by Indigenous artists, as well as Qaumajuq, which is dedicated to Inuit artists and displays and stores the world’s largest collection of Inuit art.
A tour at noon focuses on the gallery’s newest exhibition, Gasoline Rainbows and Anaanatta Unikkaangit by Nunavut artist Tarraliq Duffy, which blends pop art with Inuit culture.
Besides McCallum’s keynote speech, other presentations at the Richardson auditorium include: How To Read Historical Canadian Artworks Through a Decolonizing Lens, (1 p.m.) with Riva Symko, WAG-Qaumajuq’s head of collections and exhibitions; Reconciliation for Newcomers in Canada, (1:30 p.m.) with Micaell Novolas Moura, the gallery’s manager of equity; How to Combat Residential School Denialism (2 p.m.) with Sean Carleton, a University of Manitoba history and Indigenous studies professor; and Journey Towards Reconciliation (3 p.m.) with Stephen Borys, WAG-Qaumajuq director and chief executive officer and Julia Lafrieniere, its head of Indigenous ways and equity.
All admission proceeds on Sept. 30 will be donated to Sunshine House.
— Alan Small
Truth and reconciliation on the big screen
Saturday, Sept. 30, 7 p.m.
Dave Barber Cinematheque
Pay-what-you-can, or general admission, available at davebarbercinematheque.com
Six short films made by Métis, Cree and Anishinaabe women and gender non-conforming artists will take over the screen at the Dave Barber Cinematheque Saturday night in recognition of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
“With a focus on documentary and experimental film, each work stands on its own as a way to touch on the complexities within each of the artists’ identities,” reads the description for And a current runs through me, an event curated by Jillian Groening and Mahlet Cuff and presented in partnership with Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art.
The slate of films selected trace the experiences, both personal and shared, of the filmmakers in terms of their relationship with colonialism and selfhood. Watched in sequence, the films trace a decade in reverse, beginning with Chanelle Lajoie’s 2019 short Métis Femme Bodies and ending with Caroline Monnet’s IKWÉ, made in 2009. In the middle are Jennifer Dysart’s Caribou in the Archive, Sonya Ballentyne’s Nosisim, Charlene Moore’s Moccasin Stories and Maiden Indian by the Ephemerals, an art collective made up of Jaimie Isaac, Niki Little and Jenny Western.
— Ben Waldman
Alan Small
Reporter
Alan Small has been a journalist at the Free Press for more than 22 years in a variety of roles, the latest being a reporter in the Arts and Life section.
Ben Sigurdson
Literary editor, drinks writer
Ben Sigurdson edits the Free Press books section, and also writes about wine, beer and spirits.
Jen Zoratti
Columnist
Jen Zoratti is a Winnipeg Free Press columnist and author of the newsletter, NEXT, a weekly look towards a post-pandemic future.
