~ Residential schools : the survivors speak ~

The following thread is based on this very complete report :

http://www.trc.ca/assets/pdf/Survivors_Speak_English_Web.pdf

It will be a WIP with additional entries, to highlight the testimonies of those who "persevered against and overcame adversity".

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{Life before residential school}

Many former students spoke of what their lives were like prior to going to residential school.

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These practices—and the languages in which they were embedded—are not things of the ancient past, but, rather, are vibrant elements of the childhoods of people who are still alive.

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"I’m come from a long way, I came a long way. I’m from Great Lake Mistissini. That’s where I was born in the bush. It was a pride for me to say that because I was born in the bush in a tent. It’s something that remains in my heart going to the woods, living in the woods. 1/2

It’s in my heart. Before going to the boarding school, my parents often told me what they were doing in the woods when I was born. What they were doing, we were in camp with other families. The stories my father told us, my mother, too." 2/2
- Louise Bossum

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"When I think back to my childhood, it brings back memories, really nice memories of how life was as Anishinaabe, as you know, how we, how we lived before, before we were sent to school. 1/3

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And the things that I remember, the legends at night that my dad used to tell us, stories, and how he used to show us how to trap and funny things that happened. 2/3

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You know there’s a lot of things that are really, that are still in my thoughts of how we were loved by our parents. They really cared for us. And it was such a good life, you know." 3/3
- Bob Baxter

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"I remember especially the winter landscapes, fall landscapes too. I remember very well I often looked at my father, hunting beaver especially. I admired my father a lot. 1/3

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And I remember at one point I was looking at him, I think I was on the small hill, and he was below, he had made a hole in the ice, and he was hunting beaver with a, with a harpoon, and I was there, I was looking at him and I was singing. 2/3

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I remember when I was kid I sang a lot, very often. I also remember that we lived or my, my paternal grandmother was most often with us, my, my father’s mother, and we lived in a large family also, an extended family in the bush. Those are great memories." 3/3
- Thérese Niquay

"In the forest, what I remember of my childhood was bearskin, which I liked. I was there, and it was the bearskin that my father put for us to sit on, that was it. That is why I’m pleased to see that here. 1/3

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And what I remember in my childhood also was the, my mother’s songs, because we lived in tents, and there was young children, and my mother sang for the youngest, and at the same time this helped us to fall asleep. 2/3

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It was benecial to everyone, my mother’s songs, and that is what I remember, that is what I am happy to say that it was what was, I was raised with what was instilled in me, so to speak." 3/3
- Jeannette Coo Coo

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"Yeah, when I first opened, like, when I first saw the world, I guess, we were outdoors and when I opened my eyes and started to, you know, and I was just a baby, I guess, and I, we were out in the land. 1/3

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The land was all around me, the snow, the sky, the sun, and I had my parents. And we had a dog team. We were travelling, I think it was on Banks Island, and I was amazed at what I saw, just the environment, the peace, the strength, the love, the smile on my dad’s face. 2/3

And when I wake up he’s singing a short song to me of love. 3/3
- Albert Elias

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"When I was a little boy, growing up to be a young boy at that time, my other memories included walking on the land with my father. My father was my mentor. He, he was a great hunter. 1/3

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So, I would go out with him on the land, walking in search of caribou, and I would watch him each time he caught a caribou, and I would learn by observing. 2/3

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As Inuit, I learned a long, long time ago that you learn by observation, and that’s what I was doing as a little boy becoming a young man at that particular period of time." 3/3
- Piita Irniq

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"It was very happy. We were always busy with the family. Everything was a family thing, you know. I remember gathering water from the one little brook that ran through Spotted Islands, where I was born."
- Rosalie Webber

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"With my grandfather, he took me with him at the young age, he took me, he taught me to work in the boats with him. He taught me how to repair boats. 1/3

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He will take me to talk to his friends and all I did was to speak their language and speak their Native tongue while they prepared fish around the fire. 2/3

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He took me wherever he went and I later learned that he was my lifeline. He helped me and guided me the best he could." 3/3
- Richard Hall

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"Trapping, hunting, fishing and harvesting of edible plants, such as wild rice and other edible materials. Total, total traditional style is what I call it. My parents were extraordinary people. They prepared me to be an independent individual. 1/2

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They taught me a lot of things that I’ve used throughout my life as a traditional person. They taught me how to survive." 2/2
- Anthony Henry

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"I would spend time with my parents, but not a whole lot. So, mostly my grandparents raised me. My parents never hit me, my grandparents. I didn’t know what, what it meant to be hit, physically abused. 1/6

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All I needed was one stare, or one look from my dad, or my grandfather, and my grandmother or my mother would always say “wâpam awa” [look at that one], then I would stop what I was doing, because I knew how to respect my grandfather and my dad, 2/6

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didn’t have to hit us, just, just took one look. And so I grew up with that. 3/6

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And if we were acting foolish, or anything like that, or misbehaving, or whatever, they, they would just, they would just tell us in a good, kind way not to behave like that, and or if we were acting too silly, or whatever, they would tell us to calm down. 4/6

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They would always tell us that if you’re gonna hit a high like that, you’re gonna hit low, and I’ll always remember that teaching, ’cause I tell my grandchildren the same thing. 5/6

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When they get too excited, or too animated, or laughing too hard, or tickling, or whatever on an emotional high, I’ll just tell them what my grandparents said, and I’ll never forget that." 6/6
- Noel Starblanket

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{Forced departure}

Many parents sent their children to residential school for one reason: they had been told they would be sent to jail if they kept their children at home.

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When Josephine Eshkibok was eight years old, a priest came to her home in northern Ontario and presented her mother with a letter. “My mother opened the letter and I could see her face; I could see her face, it was kind of sad but mad too. She said to me, ‘I have to let you go.’"

Isaac Daniels recalled one dramatic evening in 1945, when the Indian agent came to his father’s home on the James Smith Reserve in Saskatchewan.
«So that night we were going to bed, it was just a one-room shack we all lived in, and I heard my dad talking to my mom there.»[...]1/2

He said that, “It’s either residential school for my boys, or I go to jail.” He said that in Cree. So, I overheard him. So I said the next morning, we all got up, and I said, “Well, I’m going to residential school,” ’cause I didn’t want my dad to go to jail. 2/2
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Donna Antoine was enrolled in a British Columbia residential school after a visit from a government official to her family.
"It must have been in the summer, the Indian agent came to see my father. I imagine it must have been the Indian agent because it looked pretty serious. 1/2

So after some time spent there, Father sat, sat us down, and told us that this Indian agent came to tell us, tell him that we had to go to school, to a boarding school, one that is not close to our home, but far away.» 2/2

In the late 1940s, Vitaline Elsie Jenner was living with her family in northern Alberta.
« My parents were told that we had to go to the residential school. And prior to that, at times, my dad didn’t make very much money. Sometimes he would go to the welfare to get ration, 1/2

or get some monies to support twelve of us. And my parents were told that if they didn’t put us in the residential school that all that would be cut off. So, my parents felt forced to put us in the residential school, eight of us, eight out of twelve." 2/2

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Maureen Gloria Johnson went to the Lower Post school in northern British Columbia in 1959.
"I went there with a bus. They load us all up on a bus, and took us. 1/2

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And I remember my, my mom had a really hard time letting us kids go, and she had, she had a really hard time. She begged the priest, and the priest said it was law that we had to go, and if we didn’t go, then my parents would be in trouble." 2/2

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In the face of such coercion, parents often felt helpless and ashamed. Paul Dixon attended residential schools in Ontario and Québec. Once he spoke to his father about his experience at the schools. According to Dixon, “He got angry and said, ‘I had no choice, you know.’ 1/2

It really, it really hit me hard. I wasn’t accusing him of anything, you know, I just wanted some explanations. He said, ‘I, I will, I will go, I would go in jail, I will go in jail if I didn’t let you go.’” 2/2

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When she was four or five, Lynda Pahpasay McDonald was taken by plane from her parents’ home on Sydney Lake, Ontario.
“Why did you let us go, like, why didn’t you stop them, you know? Why didn’t you, you know, come and get us?” 1/2

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And she told me, “We couldn’t, because they told us if we tried to do anything, like, get you guys back, we’d be thrown into jail.” So, they didn’t want to end up in jail, ’cause they still had babies at, at the cabin. 2/2

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Albert Marshall hated his parents for sending him to the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school. Many years later, he asked his brother what the family reaction had been to his being sent to school.
« He didn’t answer me for a while, a long time. 1/3

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He says, “Nobody said anything for days,” because my father was crying every day. Finally my father told the family, “I failed as a father. I couldn’t protect my child, but I just couldn’t because you know what the Mounties, the priest, the Indian agents told me? 2/3

They told me, if I don’t, if I resist too much then they would take the other younger, younger brother and younger children.” Then he says, “It was not a choice. I could not say, take them or take the three of them. But I couldn’t say nothing and I know I have to live with that."

Jaco Anaviapik’s parents opposed his being sent to the Pond Inlet hostel in what is now Nunavut.
"When they started taking kids off the land to attend school the RCMP boat would pick us up. There is no doubt that our parents were intimidated by the police into letting us go. 1/4

They were put in a position where they could not say no. Even though they did not want us to go they were too afraid of the police, too afraid to stand up to the police. I am one of the lucky ones because my father did say no when they wanted to take me. 2/4

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He told them he would bring me himself once the ice had formed. I was brought here after the children who had been rounded up by boat had already started. That first year my parents came several times to take me home but they were refused by the area administrator. 3/4

Rather than be separated from their children, his parents moved to Pond Inlet. “After two years had passed my family decided to move to Pond because they knew I had to go to school." 4/4

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Some parents wanted their children to gain the knowledge they believed was needed to protect their community and culture. When Shirley Williams’s father took her to catch the bus to the Spanish, Ontario, girls’ school, he bought her an ice cream and gave her four instructions:1/3

“One was remember who you are. Do not forget your language. Whatever they do to you in there, be strong. And the fourth one, learn about the Indian Act, and come back and teach me. 2/3

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So with those four things, he said that ‘you don’t know why I’m telling you this, but some day you will understand.’” 3/3

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