On Friday, September 26, Dease Lake Community Director Christina Callbreath and Jodi McKenn, Victim Services worker for People’s Haven, Tahltan Band, hosted a potluck to honor Truth & Reconciliation Day and share stories, feelings, food, and new orange shirts, designed by the T-shirt Design Contest Winner, Shiela Davidson.

The residential school system stole our children from us. Starting in 1883, the government required all children on reserves to attend residential schools. These schools were located hundreds of kilometres away from our Territory. At school, our children were punished for speaking Tāłtān. Made to feel ashamed for being Tahltan. Beaten. Abused. The residential school system tore our communities apart, shredding the bonds between generations, breaking our connection to the land. The last residential school didn’t close until 1997. Over 150,000 children are estimated to have attended residential schools, and as many as 6,000 children to have died while at school.

Children from Telegraph Creek were sent in every direction. To Lejac, on Fraser Lake, nearly 600 kilometres southeast as the crow flies, more than twice that by steamer and train. To St. John’s at Lower Post, on the Liard River to the north. Even further north: to Choutla at Carcross, Yukon and Coudert Hall in Whitehorse. Eastwards, to Grouard in Alberta, almost 1,000 kilometres away.

Many of our children from Iskut were forced to attend a day school, a place that also harbored abuse.

Until after World War II, there were no roads linking Telegraph Creek to these places. Journeys took days. Our children traveled by steamer down the Stikine River, or by raft down the Dease River to Lower Post. In many cases, our children didn’t return until they finished school, years later. Some of them never returned. And if they did, it was often to a home they no longer knew, among people who no longer knew them.

We didn’t feel welcome. We didn’t feel we belonged. Sometimes we just left again, looking for another home.

In 2013, we decided, as a Nation, to begin the process of healing from over a hundred years of trauma. We held a Welcome Home Celebration and Gathering at the mouth of the Tahltan River. There, we welcomed our people home with an āni ceremony. In each of the four directions, we called “āni”, “come here”, three times, calling back the spirits of the children who had been taken from our communities.

One of our major traditional villages was at Metsantan, a small lake in the headwaters of the Stikine River. Many of our parents and grandparents still lived there in the mid-1900s. In 1948, an Englishman called Tommy Walker arrived at Metsantan with a string of pack horses and the intention of establishing a guide outfitting territory. Three men from Metsantan—Alex Jack, Charles Quock and Watson Moyez— guided him to Cold Fish Lake and built a camp for him.

Watch an archival video featuring Charles Quock. He guided archer Fred Bear to a world record ram in 1957. The ram held the title for 40-50 years.

Until now, the signs at Cold Fish have not told this story. Now they will. As part of the Tāłtān Signage Project, we’ve created a series of new signs to be installed at the cabins there. Along with the history, we’re sending a map of Tāłtān place names, another act of Truth and Reconciliation, returning our names to the land. And we’re sending an old Tahltan tale from the area, Denekā’lādiya, as requested by an Elder during our community engagements.

You can learn more at:
https://nctr.ca/education/teaching-resources/residential-school-history/ 

And many resources, collected here:
https://nctr.ca/education/teaching-resources/education-resources 

Mēduh for marking this day with care and intention.