Indigenous Peoples’ Day Marked On Green

Dressed in orange to commemorate the victims and survivors of Indigenous boarding schools, Sadé Heart of the Hawk beat a turtle-decorated hand drum as she sang about a child — much like her mother — who was ripped from her family, home, and culture, and sent away to Shubenacadie.

Sadé sang that story Monday afternoon during an Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebration on the Green.

Roughly 50 people turned out for the annual downtown event, which was organized by Norm Momowetu Clement, Ricky Looking Crow, and others. People of Native American lineage and others gathered to smudge sage, sing, dance, tell family stories, and celebrate a diversity of Indigenous cultures.

One such attendee was Heart of the Hawk.

Wearing an orange-and-white ribbon skirt and an orange t‑shirt bearing the words ​“Bring Them Home,” Heart of the Hawk said she came to Monday’s event from her current home in North Haven to keep alive a tragic history that dates back to her childhood, and her mother’s childhood, in Nova Scotia, Canada.

That involved her mother’s forced attendance at a so-called residential school — part of a network of government-supported, largely Catholic Church-run boarding schools across Canada and the United States that saw Indigenous children taken from their families and compelled to assimilate. An estimated 150,000 children over the past century-plus were forced to attend Canadian boarding schools, where they were severed from their native languages and cultures and families and often physically and emotionally abused.

A Canadian National Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that at least 4,100 students died while attending these schools.

Heart of the Hawk, who is a member of the Miꞌkmaq nation, said that her mother never quite recovered after spending a decade of her youth trapped at the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Nova Scotia.

“She learned to hate herself” while there, Heart of the Hawk said. She said she wore orange on Monday not just in honor of her mom, but also to draw attention to the hundreds of children’s bodies found earlier this year at the Kamloops school in British Columbia and in unmarked graves on the site of a former boarding school in Saskatchewan.

“I’m wearing orange right now [because] orange is the color that we commemorate our residential school survivors and those children that never made it home,” she said. ​“We need to bring our children home. There’s a great trauma that happened to the Indigenous people under the name of genocide in this country. A stain on this country.”

With that, as Clement held a microphone to her lips and she beat half-notes on a hand drum, Heart of the Hawk sang a ​“survivor song” all about the residential school her mom was forced to attend.

They took me to a residential school
When I was six years old,
Forced me from my family
And all I’ve ever known.
I cried out for my momma,
But she could not hear me.
I was 200 miles away, in Shubenacadie.

They tried to break my spirit.
I wouldn’t let them see me cry.
They held me underwater
Until I almost died.
I can still hear screaming
Deep inside of me
And I will always bear the scars of Shubenacadie.

After Heart of the Hawk finished singing, Clement argued that many more children than presently accounted for likely died due to the residential school system. That’s because kids were often sent to boarding schools hundreds of miles away from their homes.

“Many, many children will never be found” on the site of a former residential school, he said, ​“because they did try to get home, and didn’t make it. There’s thousands and thousands more.”

Rachel Massaro, a New Havener and member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe, said her great-grandmother was also forced to attend a boarding school.

She showed up to Monday’s event on the Green with her family in order ​“to celebrate the people who are here” and ​“to bring awareness to residential school survivors.”

This history needs to be brought out of the shadows, she said, and become a part of every school’s curriculum.

“I want people in New Haven to recognize us,” added Clement, who is a member of the Penobscot and Quinnipiac tribes. ​“To recognize that we’re still here.”