Honouring Indigenous veterans at Calgary’s Field of Crosses

November 8 is the Indigenous Veterans Day, and as part of the 11 days of remembrance, this day is dedicated to honouring the significant contributions of the Indigenous military service personnel.

On Wednesday, a ceremony was held at the Field of Crosses in Calgary, where amongst many veterans and Calgarians was Clarence Wolfleg Sr, an Indigenous veteran from Siksika Nation, who talked about how he and his father share the legacy of serving in Canada’s military.

“The stories of my father did tell when he wanted to relate to me, how to have courage and how to shoot and if you have a target, go for it. Don’t wait. Don’t hesitate,” he said. “Because in the military, you can’t hesitate when you move, you move while you’re gonna go down. You’re gonna come back.”

The main part of these Remembrance Day ceremonies is the flag raising at sunrise and the sunset.

At the the Indigenous Veterans Day ceremony, it was the school kids who created an ambience of honour, while everyone present at the Field of Crosses remained silent in respect.

Besides participating in the ceremonies, Calgary’s young students, those studying at the Calgary Catholic School Division, are working on a special project to research the names of all the veterans written at the crosses there and update their biography cards.

Anna MacEachern, who is a teaching and learning consultant at the Calgary Catholic School District says the hard work by these students is commendable.

“They look at databases, they look at historical records to find out all the information they can about these veterans and the soldiers that fought,” she said. “We have completed over 1,500 of the biography cards and so we still have about 2,000 to go but we have students working on it right now in our schools, researching the information about these soldiers.”

While Wolfleg appreciates initiatives like these, he says much more needs to be done to honour veterans, especially the Indigenous heroes.

Wolfleg says the city also needs to step up and make efforts to to rehabilitate the homeless veterans and those struggling to survive.

“The society has to step up and look for the soldiers and make them a little more comfortable than what they are,” he said.