A new display in downtown Nanaimo is paying tribute to the Indigenous children subjected to the residential school system.
On June 30, members of the Nanaimo chapter of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, a peace and justice group that mostly advocates for nuclear disarmament, put up posters and balloons on the fence surrounding the old Jean Burns Building site.
Member Dyane Brown said they’re calling it the “Wall of Grief, Remembrance and Hope.”
“We’re wanting to honour the children who were taken from their families to the residential schools,” she said. “The ones that didn’t come back, the ones that died there and the ones that have to live with the pain and all the generations that never got born.”
The work will be up until July 7 and Brown said she’s inviting the community to participate in the project by adding more items to the wall.
“It’s just the beginning,” Brown said. “I’m hoping other people will come by and put a piece of art or a poem or somebody that they’re remembering.”
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