Thursday, Oct. 19 was a morning of acknowledgement and realization, a time for deep reflection, understanding , but also a time for celebration of a milestone, as Our Lady of the Rosary CES welcomed our esteemed guests, City of Vaughan Councillor Gila Martow, Trustees J. Wigston and A. Grella, Superintendent Chiutsi, Nicholas Galatianos, Student Success Specialist and Principal of Indigenous Education, Ms. Kyla King from the YCDSB Indigenous Education Dept, parents, staff and students.
Our Lady of the Rosary CES was truly excited to have all of these important members of our school community and the wider YCDSB system be a part of this important event in our school’s history, the commissioning ceremony to mark the establishment of our school’s local land acknowledgement, the result of a long journey which started in February 2023. The process involved months of research using print and digital resources, such as nativelanddigital.ca in which the students and indigenous education lead teachers engaged in researching the treaty areas that the Our Lady of the Rosary CES occupies and writing multiple drafts overseen by Zorica Risteska in the curriculum dept. and members of YCDSB Indigenous Education dept. As recounted by our Grade 7 students and staff, our school shared the various chronicles of this journey in full recognition that we are colonial people who seek to always and collectively acknowledge the truth of the intergenerational trauma experienced by many Indigenous communities in the past and today as a result of the residential school system in Canada and the fact that not all lands are treaty lands. On this day, we would recognized the hard work of our students: Mira B, Sophia L., Linda L., Kyler M., Liam PC, Tristan Q., Jayna S., Vlad S, Caleb S., and Liam T, and the Indigenous Education lead teachers at OLR, Mme. Colarossi, Ms. Puopolo and Ms. Amato in direct consultation with elder, Mim Harder and members of YCDSB Indigenous Education Department. OLR would also like to acknowledge Ms. E. Chung and the OLR choir for learning more about Cree and Objibway Indigenous cultures through music with an open courageous minds. OLR is proud of our students and teachers’ collective efforts to recognize the Indigenous lands that our school occupies, while heeding one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action, specifically, action 63, subsection iii: “Building student capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect.”
Thank you for joining us everyone on this important day!
