Sask. students take part in football camp, smudge walk for truth and reconciliation [Video]

In recognition of Orange Shirt Day and the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Sept. 30, the First Nations University of Canada hosted their annual smudge walk Friday.

The walk in solidarity marked the schools’ actions to promote awareness and advance reconciliation.

Hundreds of students and staff took part in the march around the university campus to honour residential school survivors and the children lost.

“For over 100 years we had children that were taken from their home and forced into residential schools,” Jacqueline Ottmann, First Nations University of Canada president, said.

“Many of them didn’t come home and so there were gravesites, graveyards within the school boundaries and so we honour those children. We remember those children and also the survivors.”

Two hundred students from northern Saskatchewan also took part in the smudge walk. The event also featured a morning pipe ceremony and community lunch.

“They provided an amazing energy to the smudge walk today,” Ottmann …