~Phyllis Webstad, The Orange Shirt Society~
The following essay by Liza Haldane discusses the harsh and painful realities of Residential Schools and the experiences of those who endured them. This important history reflects the deep trauma suffered by Indigenous peoples. Please take care of your emotional well-being and choose a time to read when you feel ready to engage with this difficult subject.
My mother, Sybil Effie McKay, often tells stories of her childhood before residential school. A time when she was the ‘son’ in my ye’e’s (grandfather’s) eyes, as one of 7 sisters. Even as a young child, in the winter months, my ye’e would take her on the sleigh pulled by their dogs to get wood, to check traps and to hunt on their territory. My mother also has fond memories of helping her mother, my jiji, in their massive garden and preserving salmon, moose and berries. She remembers the smell of the wood stove and stories around the dinner table.
My mother never speaks of the day she was taken from her home by the Indian Agent and the missionaries, but she does share, her parents were reassured that she would be kept safe and that she would be fed and given an education. My mother never returned home until she was 16. Port Alberni Residential school is 1100 km, about 683 miles from my mother’s homelands, therefore, returning for summer was not an option. My father Percy Berti Haldane was sent to St. Michaels, in Alert Bay, and he also aged out in residential school. I just learned that my maternal grandparents also attended residential school. My ye’e (grandfather), went to Coqualeetza and my jiji (grandmother) never spoke of the school she went to.
It was a blessing and a curse to hear both my parents’ stories of their residential school experiences. Both my parents were sexually, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually abused in these schools. It helped me to heal knowing why my father was so violent and a raging alcoholic and why my mother could go weeks without talking to me or why she could never tell me she loved me.
The ‘Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement’ (IRSSA) has formally recognized 139 schools across Canada, but this number does not include the schools that operated without federal support. The first school opened in 1828 and the last closed in 1996 . . . 168 years of Indigenous children being taken from their homes by Indian Agents, RCMP, and missionaries, often without the consent of the parents, and awarded as dependents of the missionaries and nuns. If parents resisted, guns were pulled, and parents were arrested or threatened to be arrested.
The atrocities that were committed in these schools are varied and vast. Arriving at these schools, children’s hair was cut, they were deloused, scrubbed raw and given a number. This number was sewn onto all their clothing. “My name was Lydia, but in the school I was, I didn’t have a name. I had numbers. I had number 51, number 44, number 32, number 16, number 11, and then finally number 1 when I was just about coming to high school. So I wasn’t, I didn’t have a name, I had numbers.” (Lydia Ross) Another survivor recalls, the number was used to call victims forward at night.
If you had a sibling that was the opposite sex you were segregated and not allowed to speak to them, you would be punished if you did. If you had a younger or older sibling, you were also separated from them. “So even though I was there with my sister and I only seen her about four times in that year and we’re in the same building in the same mission. They had a fence in the playground. Nobody was allowed near the fence. The boys played on this side, the girls played on the other side. Nobody was allowed to go to that fence there and talk to the girls through the fence or whatever, you can’t.” (Daniel Nanooch)
Children arriving speaking their Indigenous language were beaten and if you could not learn English or French fast enough you were severely punished. There are numerous testimonies of needles being pushed through their tongues and electric shocks as a form of punishment. “A sister, a nun started talking to me in English and French, and yelling at me. I did not speak English, and didn’t understand what she, what she was asking. She got very upset, and started hitting me all over my body, hands, legs and back. I began to cry, yell, and became very scared, and this infuriated her more. She got a black strap and hit me some more.” (Marcel Guiboche)
If you take the time to google residential school survivor stories, you will uncover testimony after testimony of inhumane treatment. From being forced to eat rotten food to being beaten to near death for stealing food due to hunger. From being locked in closets to being chained in the basements. From slaps to murder.
Many children tried to run away and died trying, some even committed suicide, and many were murdered or died suspiciously in the hands of the missionaries and nuns. “I remember the one young fellow that hung himself in the gym, and they brought us in there, and showed, showed us, as kids, and they just left him hanging there, and, like, what was that supposed to teach us? You know I’m fifty-five years old, and I still remember that, and that’s one thing out of that school that I remember.” (Antonette White)
Although, it is becoming more common knowledge the legacy of abuse in residential schools, what is not being uncovered is the infanticide that happened in these schools, the torture, and the brutality of some of the murders. ‘Sugarcane’ is a documentary by Julian Brave NoiseCat and co-director Emily Kassie that explores the First Nation’s ongoing investigation into a school, which has heard accounts of disappearances, murders, systematic torture, rape and starvation of children, and newborn babies fathered by priests tossed into the school’s incinerator.
10,028 unmarked graves have been uncovered in the 11 schools that have been searched, leaving 128 schools that have not been touched to date. Even with the death toll and number of unmarked graves is in the tens of thousands; the truth continues to stay buried. Horrifically, there has been less than 50 convictions for the genocide that was committed in residential schools.
As long as my people continue to live on the streets in poverty and riddled with addiction; live in overcrowded homes in states of poverty; go missing and or murdered; die of diseases caused by poor quality of life; all on their own lands, justice has not been served.
Apology or no apology and endless words on paper mean nothing without action. How many generations of our people need to die as the world witnesses before Canada is sanctioned for genocide?
This is part of our shared history and in the wise words of Murray Sinclair, “We must never forget . . because this is a part of who we are. Not just who we are as Survivors, and children of Survivors, but who we are as a Nation. And this nation must never forget what it once did to its most vulnerable people.”
Luugaak
Liza Haldane