City of Saskatoon/Twitter

To raise awareness about residential schools as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation approaches, the City of Saskatoon is installing 205 orange banners on light poles around the city.

Melissa Cote, Director of Indigenous Initiatives at the City of Saskatoon, says the banners, which were first unveiled last year, display 10 different messages which were generated with help from the Saskatoon Tribl Council, as well as residential school survivors.

The messages include ‘Over 160 Years of Pain’, ‘We Are Telling Our Stories’, ‘Many Never Returned Home’, and ‘More Than 150,000 attended residential schools’.

The banners will be placed along 20th Street down to Spadina Crescent, along Spadina and across the bridge to the University of Saskatchewan. This path symbolizes building bridges throughout the city. They will be left up for the remainder of September and into October.

They will be visible for a portion of the 2023 Rock Your Roots Walk for Reconciliation on September 30th, which is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. There will also be a Saskatoon Survivors Circle pipe ceremony on September 25th, and a powwow on September 30th and October 1st hosted by the Saskatoon Tribal Council.

Other Saskatchewan communities are taking part in acts of reconciliation as well, as the Indian Residential School Memorial Monument made a stop in Regina on Saturday while making its way to the Canadian Museum of History in Quebec.