Dozens turn out for Similkameen Community Walk for Truth and Reconciliation
Published 2:35 pm Tuesday, September 29, 2026
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About 60 people took part in the Community Walk for Truth and Reconciliation on Sept. 29 with the Lower Similkameen Indian Band.
The walk was a bit over four kilometres, starting from the Chopaka Bridge over the Similkameen River, along Chopaka Road, over to the intersection with the North Chopaka Road and then back again.
Many of those on the walk were students from the ntámłqən snm’a?m’aya?tn School at the LSIB.
Members of the band council joined the walk, while Chief Keith Crow was forced to send his regrets.
The walk, like many taking place across Canada, particularly on Sept. 30 for the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, aims to bring the community together to reflect on the past and to build a stronger path forward.
Elder Herman Edwards shared some of his own experiences with the Residential School System, from how he remembered the Indian Agents coming to take his sisters away and threatening his mother if she said anything, until they finally came for him too.
“It was lonely, especially in the nighttime, in bed, when all you could think of was home,” said Edwards. “When I was there, I’d look to the west, I knew home was that way, somewhere. It was the saddest place in the world to be.”
At the Residential School Edwards attended, he said there were kids from bands across the Okanagan and Similkameen. They were separated into boys and girls and barred from speaking with each other. Although his own time at the school was brief compared to others, it still left its mark.
“My mother was talking to me, I knew what she was saying, but I could not answer,” said Edwards. “It took me a while to get back into our language, and it was only one year I went. One years time, I lost the language because I wasn’t able to speak. You were never allowed to talk about your culture or anything.”
The Okanagan Nation Alliance and Penticton Indian Band will be hosting a Walk for the Children on Sept. 30, departing from the Penticton Safeway parking lot at 10 a.m. before heading over to the Syilx Indian Residential School (SIRS) Monument located beside the kł cp̓əlk̓ stim̓ Hatchery on En’owkin Trail.
The SIRS Monument is built at the site where local First Nations families were forced to give up their children and where they boarded the trains to be taken to residential schools in Kamloops and Cranbrook.