In honour of Orange Shirt Day on Sept. 30, I want to encourage the community to wear orange shirts or hoodies all week! We can be Green and Gold all year, but from Sept. 28 - Oct. 2, 2026, let’s show solidarity as a collective on campus. Shirts and hoodies purchased at the Bookstore support First Peoples' House programming.
For as long as I get the gift of living, I will continue to honour my late dad george dion and all of my family who have walked before me to the spirit world.
It is because of my dad’s quiet resistance that I now turn toward strength and an indebted responsibility instead of shying away from it.
I speak as a first-generation survivor of the genocide of Blue Quills Indian Residential School.
It is what our parents endured and what they should have never experienced, felt, learned, heard and for many survived through. Which is something out of a true horror documentary.
Yet this was not truly documented, not in the way other horrors of our centuries have been. This is different because there are no graphic images of the violence, sexual abuse and physical traumas. That was never to be documented. That part was only documented into the souls of the ones who would carry it to their graves; and for the children that survived, it became emblazoned into their souls.
What we see in photos is the row by row of brown little children sitting in church pews or school chairs that are pressed, primped, posed and polished… camera ready.
Like as if they were happy, yet they bore no smiles.
Like cut out dolls, without names just numbers.
I cannot express onto white flat pages the heaviness that I sit with when I write each year, yet it is so therapeutic. A release of some sort that is hard to explain. It is the way I get to write his name, george dion. It is how I get to express my adoration for my dad’s fight in life to merely survive some days all the while suppressing tormenting memories we had no idea he was re-living.
Okay. Let me get to where I am going. I always say, I need to go back before I can move forward (even for just a moment). Because in this life, you just don’t get the good parts. You must hold the good and evil simultaneously. I also write and speak from personal experience and perspective; this is not meant to speak for all.
For anyone new to meeting me here, I always ask that if you have time to sit with me mahti (please) grab yourself a maskihkîwâpoy (tea) or nîpiy (water), and find a quiet space somewhere you love where you can see pîsim (sun) or tipiskâw-pîsim (moon), and just be as present … as present as one can be in 2026.
We Were Never Small.
Indian Residential School Priests, Nuns, and Teachers taught my dad to
Lower his eyes
Quieten his voice
Believe he was less than.
But like my dad, like all the others
None of them were small.
What they were ….CHILDREN.
As young as three years old.
Stolen and ripped out of the only kîsik (sky) that they have ever known.
And then they were told by the real-life monsters that it was a sin to cry while they were being told
...Don't cry for your mom. Your dad. Your siblings. Your aunties and uncles. No one is coming for you. We made sure of that. You know how? We made it illegal! IF they come to get you. The RCMP will be called and your parents will be jailed. You're ours until we “kill the Indian in the child”!
In English you say North Star, in Cree we say, acâhkos êkâ kâ-âhcît, which translates to the star that doesn’t move.
How does a native child learn safety when their acâhkos êkâ kâ-âhcît is banished and the world turns dark? As dark as where real-life monsters live in human form: At the foot of their beds. At the head of the table. At the front of their class. At the head of their pews. At the end of heavy leather straps. At the other end of fear. At the other end of death.
If we remind ourselves that at 3, 5 or 8 years old, it is our parents’ that shape our core traditional values, emotional security and foundation of our behaviours. The core of who we are, where we come from and who claims us.
My dad, like all the thousands of others, carried a fierce and quiet resistance within their souls so deep that not even those real-life monsters knew. (shhhhh).
My dad, like all the other thousands who were stolen from their lives, inherently knew who they were and who loved them. Even while their souls were being stripped in unspeakable atrocities, unsafe conditions and the sheer survival that began from the moment of their arrival into those red brick walls of pain and abuse.
A pain that cannot be spoken of without tears flowing, without pause in their voice as it shakes, without utter wailing.
HA! They thought you were not smart, dad. They thought they could outsmart you.
HA! They thought you were not strong, dad. Yet, you were stronger.
You knew, dad, that you come from acâhkosak (the stars), and from the depth of askiy (the earth).
Little did they know. Little did they know that you were NOT small. Not small at all.
We live loudly so we can;
Speak our Tribal Languages.
Speak our TRUTH.
Take our rightful place.
Raise our children to know they were never meant to fall into shadows or become smaller just because others try to belittle our culture, ambitions, Tribal Languages or how we glow.
It is our time to pour into ourselves and our children so they know they come from the greatest of acâhkosak (the stars).
Our history is deeply woven into our DNA because it is all interconnected as it reaches from the deepest roots of askiy (the earth) to the farthest reaches of kîsik (the sky), because we know that Spirit and Earth have always belonged in the same story.
TRUTH asks each of us to remember
Reconciliation asks us to ACT.
TIME is a thief. Time is not guaranteed
So,
Let us STAND now
When survivors were told to shrink themselves.
Let us SPEAK now
When survivors were ordered to be silent.
Let us LEAD now
When survivors were made to feel powerless.
Not with hatred
Not with fear
But with the greatest of sôhkitêhêwin (courage).
With sâkihitowin (love)
With sôhkisiwin (strength)
Knowing…
That We were NEVER small. Never small at all.
My dad’s courage now lives within me.
It is my DNA.
And so, I stand
not because I am without fear,
but because I have learned…
that fear does not have to have the final word.
I do.
