‘Never again, and never forget’: largest walk for reconciliation yet in Penticton

‘Never again, and never forget’: largest walk for reconciliation yet in Penticton

Published 3:15 pm Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Five years after a hundred people came together to march in solidarity, over a thousand gathered to Walk for the Children with the Okanagan Nation Alliance and the snpink’tn (Penticton) Indian Band on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

They lined the the two-kilometre route, marching together from the middle of Penticton, across the Okanagan River Channel Bridge and through to the PIB Reserve and the Syilx Indian Residential School Monument. One-thousand-and-sixty people, according to the RCMP, the largest gathering yet in the five years of marches.

Syilx Residential School Survivor Committee head Roger Hall looked out at the crowd, and in them he saw people of shared spirit, who were willing to speak to settle their differences and to look out for one another.

“We want to walk hand-in-hand with our brothers and sisters, in what may be our last days here. When our people scramble about the land, worrying about the fires, the people are burning, the trees are burning, the houses are burning,” said Hall. “All this time, we are the caretakers of the land, we are the caretakers of the chidlren, the people, the waters, the animals and each other, and we want to win the day with love.”

Around the monument, to the sound of drums and Syilx songs, the people gathered together to reflect on the tragedies and past wrongs, and share in the spirit of standing up for what is right for future generations.

“This message has to continue, and by your show of support, this message only gets stronger,” said snpink’tn Chief Greg Gabriel. “What happened to our children, the many that never returned home, can never, ever happen again and can never, ever be forgotten.”

The Syilx Indian Residential School Monument is built on the site where local First Nations, including the PIB, were forced to bring their children to be taken away to residential schools.

The statue, built by Syilx artist Smoker Marchand, depicts two children returning home to the open arms of their parents.

The 2021 discovery of 215 unmarked burials at the Kamloops Residential School site, and thousands of others throughout Canada in 2021, spurred on the first march in Penticton that year. It also contributed to the establishment of Sept. 30 as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

The day is dedicated to honouring not just the survivors of Canada’s residential school system, but all those that are confirmed to have died and the many more that never returned home.

In the years since, there have been those who have engaged in denialism around residential schools, either by downplaying the documented harms perpetuated within them, or by insinuating that the burials, which have remained undisturbed since their discovery, aren’t legitimate. In 2025, that culminated in Dallas Brodie being banned from Syilx land after she shared a photo of herself with a sign saying “zero bodies” beneath the PIB’s Every Child Matters billboard, and in 2026 it comes after a group of white supremacists were seen on Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc land and displaying messages of “got bones?”.

Elder and Residential School Survivor Jack Kruger blasted that gathering, and emphasized that the burials had not been disturbed because that was what the First Nations wanted.

“Our children suffered enough beatings, rape, murder, they don’t need to suffer more by digging them up to show everybody who they are,” said Kruger. “Those cowards up there, I’d like to tell them, we’re not going to up those bones for their satisfaction, we’re going to leave them buried where they belong.

“I’m alive 76 years today. For the last 70 years, I remember my classmates that got killed, the things that happened. Night after night, every night, we wondered, ‘Are we going to be next’, to be murdered, to be traumatized.”

Kruger said that what he wanted was for those men seen in Tk̓emlúps to be educated, to learn about First Nations experiences, and that if they could picture what it was like to wake up the next day with all their children taken away, to feel what it was to starve, that they might stop being racist.

“Negativity breeds negativity, hate breeds hate, and everybody here, I’m so proud of you, you all breed love,” said Kruger.

The ceremony ended with a young First Nations man, his own face masked, who stood up and shared how he had joined others in going to Tk̓emlúps to do a smudging where the white supremacists had been, and to share a poem he wrote about it.

“It’s hard to come to terms with it, but we got to know that these young men, they’re lonely, uneducated, they don’t have people, they don’t have meaningful connections to our people,” he said. “Excuse me for wearing a mask, but this is how I protect myself, and you know, people wear masks because their scared, and I’m scared. The difference between us and them is that we have real reasons to be scared.”

How do I see my enemy as one of my friends
When I need to protect my family and respect the land that I’m in
Don’t give in to the narrative that they narrow you in
How do I see my enemy as one of my kin?

All of this calamity, I think I see the end
How can I give forgiveness when I have nothing left to give
Now we ain’t all that different, we’re just wearing different skins
But how do I give forgivenesss when there’s nothing left to give

A second son finds freedom in taking over First Nations
Hide your face on top of graves
Lie your face off
Deny your piece
Plead your case
But please don’t take what we cannot give
Because we could not give back those kids

White supremacist, mainstreaming extremist,
I cannot expect you to understand
And I don’t forgive you for what you did
But I’ll do the best I can to not pass on this sickness
Because I refuse to live like this and
And I think I see the end
So how do I see the enemy as one of my friends?