Mr. Speaker, this weekend I had the honour to join Grand Chief Ben Silliboy and Chief Rod Googoo for a special ceremony in Waycobah First Nation. A monument and exhibit were unveiled to commemorate those who were forced to leave their community to attend the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School, where many of them suffered unnecessary and unspeakable abuse.
The chair of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Justice Murray Sinclair, travelled to Waycobah for the ceremony. He spoke movingly to the survivors who brought this project to life so that the children of the community could understand and learn from their stories. Justice Sinclair also spoke of the power of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Inscribed on the monument outside Waycobah school are these words by the late revered Mi'kmaq poet Rita Joe:
I lost my talk
The talk you took away....
Let me find my talk
So i can teach you about me.
On behalf of the entire House, I commend the residential school survivors from Waycobah for finding their talk so that they can help teach us, as a nation, the power of forgiveness and reconciliation.