Germaine De Peralta
Thousands of people in bright orange shirts filled the spacious lawns of Canada’s Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Its grey stone buildings and spires rose behind the crowd.
It was Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as Orange Shirt Day, and I dared myself to go alone.
Phone prepped for photographs, notepad in hand, I navigated the crowd looking for a place to sit. I didn’t know a soul.
Eventually, I found a patch of grass beside rows of white folding chairs where guests from First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities were seated.
The ceremony began with drums.
The beats were low and guttural, carrying the voices of the day’s hosts.
Then their rhythms intensified, and the atmosphere grew solemn.
An elderly woman wiped tears from the deeply etched lines of her face. Nearby, a woman with long salt-and-pepper hair covered her mouth, her shoulders shaking.
The beats surged—faster, louder, more insistent. On the grass, a teenage girl in a green ceremonial skirt danced to the pounding drums and high-pitched singing, her scarf lifting and falling with her movements.
The drums pulled me in too, their strong vibrations resonating beneath my feet. For moments, their rhythms seemed to match my heartbeat, and my eyes filled with tears, though I couldn’t tell where they came from.
Then someone tapped me on the shoulder.
“Hey, come sit with us.”
A couple sat beside me, smiling. Sharon wore bright pink lipstick and had long grey hair, while her husband, Dennis, in his bright orange baseball cap, leaned back on the lawn, looking completely at home.
She unrolled her yoga mat, motioned for me to scoot over, and handed me a bottle of water. I liked her immediately.
They said they were from a Cree reserve near Peterborough and had driven for hours to attend the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation ceremony. We talked about their road trip and what they planned to see in Ottawa.
Sharon pressed a little dreamcatcher into my hands, its solid metal frame strong beneath its soft animal hide.
An hour earlier, I had been sitting alone, carefully observing the crowd, conscious of the distance between myself and the people around me.
But the drums had shaken loose my unease, and Sharon and Dennis had given me a place to land.
Across the lawn, a curly-haired child held a placard that read Every Child Matters. Parents shared drinks with their children while they sat on the grass. Camera cranes moved overhead, recording the ceremony.
It seemed nothing around me had changed—but I had.
For the first time that day, I was no longer watching from the sidelines.
I felt I belonged. ❤️