By Christopher Snook.  Onion Lake First Nation celebrated this year’s National Aboriginal Day with a healing walk for survivors of abuse in Onion Lake’s residential schools. The walk’s theme was forgiveness. Local clergy, elders, young mothers and children began walking at 10 in the morning, leaving from the community’s rodeo grounds and travelling by foot for 9 hours, to the sites of the Anglican and Roman Catholic residential schools.

Prayers were offered at 11am in honour of Chief Lawrence Joseph’s call for prayer. The walkers gathered in a circle as clergy representing the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Full Gospel churches prayed for healing and forgiveness. Reuben Fox, a community elder and addictions counsellor, concluded the prayers by reflecting on his own experience in residential school. Old wounds, he said, need to be healed through forgiveness so that Onion Lake can continue to look forward to a bright future. The walk, he said, respresented a new beginning for the community.

At the site of each school prayers were said. Throughout the day people shared their stories. At the site of the Roman Catholic school a fire was built and some of the walkers shared their stories and then burned hand written copies of their most painful memories.

The crowd of people who walked together was not composed entirely of people who had attended residential school. There were young people struggling with addictions, there were others struggling with health concerns, and others still who walked carrying photographs of family members who had passed away.

The walk began in sunshine, with a cool breeze, as the walkers travelled cross-country through the reservation. At the end of the day, the community walked through a torrential thunderstorm, returning to the rodeo grounds at 7pm just as the sun came out and a rainbow appeared in the sky.

More than one person noted that as they walked they felt as if burdens were falling from their shoulders. The further they walked, the lighter and more hopeful they felt. One participant suggested that the rain that fell at the end of the walk was a sign of purification, a sign that people’s burdens were being washed away and that people were coming back into the light.

At the end of the walk, the participants were greeted by Chief Henry Lewis and other members of the community at the rodeo grounds, where an honour song was sung and a meal shared.