The Dominion - Stella August

The Strength to Carry on

mccabe.melissa — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:49:20 +0000

Residential school survivor speaks out as part of In Our Own Voices writing project

The stories that make up the In Our Own Voices writing project are the fruits of weeks of exercises, workshops, drafts and revisions. They are personal stories, written by members of the Power of Women Group, who organize out of the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre.

These are stories of incredible hardship, resistance, struggle, courage, and resilience; of grappling with and sometimes overcoming fear, addictions, abuse, and illness; and of persistent state violence and racism, dealt liberally and frequently, and usually without a modicum of justice.

Stella's is just one of the voices that you’ll find on the Vancouver Media Co-op site this month. In the place of fragments, a passing nod at a rally or a quick hello on the street, readers can walk beside these brave, powerful women.

—Dawn Paley

VANCOUVER—I was six years old when I was taken away from my parents and grandparents in Ahousat, BC and forced into a residential school. The Department of Indian Affairs came to our reserve every year in the 1950s, taking Native children away and placing them in residential schools to learn the White way of life.

In residential schools, under the federal policy of “aggressive assimilation,” we were stripped of our language, our culture, and our customs. We had to scrub ourselves clean until we were White. It is estimated that approximately 150,000 Native children were removed from our communities and forced to attend residential schools, with the last school closing only as recently as 1996.

I was forced to attend the Christie Indian Residential School and then the Mission City St. Mary’s Residential School. I felt like I was in a concentration camp. In these schools, we were punished for speaking our language. Our punishment was being kept in isolation in a dark room for the whole day. Often we would be fed food from the garbage and be forced to drink raw cow milk. We were strapped and beaten until we were too sore to stand.

If we did not get up on time in the mornings, the nuns would drag us across the floor, beat us, and make us go without breakfast. I remember every morning they would wake us up by saying: “You are not on the reserve; you are in White Man’s land. Indians are liars, filthy and good for nothing. You don’t want to live like an Indian.”

When we were silent, they made us talk. But when we talked, they did not like what we had to say and persistently hit us while repeating: “God doesn’t like you talking like that.” We were too scared to do anything. We would often go without food and there would be no activities. At nighttime we would often see the children taken out of their dorm rooms and they would come back crying and bleeding.

I was incredibly lonely in the residential schools. The priests and nuns did not like us making friends with each other. Even brothers and sisters were kept apart and forced to act like strangers with one another. From the time I was placed in residential schools, I did not have a single kind word said to me. No one appreciated me for the individual I was, or the culture I came from.

All I remember is being punished for anything and everything. I still have horrible flashbacks. I grew up with a tremendous amount of shame and loss of dignity. I believe that residential schools were prisons for young children.

I managed to get out of residential school earlier than the other children because one day my brother managed to sneak a phone call to my grandparents and told them to come get me. The nuns had beaten me so badly across my head with a stick and a ruler that my ears would not stop bleeding. My grandparents got me out of the school for a special doctor’s visit. The doctor determined that I had permanently lost my hearing in both ears. My grandparents were furious and kept me at home, refusing to send me back to the residential school. When the school called the Indian band office looking for me, my grandparents told the school and the Indian agents that the nuns had given me a severely damaged ear. The officials hung up the phone and did not try forcing me back.

When I was older, I moved to the Downtown Eastside. Almost 60 per cent of Native people and 72 per cent of Native women now live in urban settings with the erosion of the land base of our communities and Indian Act regulations limiting women’s access to housing on the reserves. I, too, drifted here from the Island and found work at a fish plant. Since then, this neighbourhood has become my permanent home.

Like me, most people here carry deep scars. It is hard to describe all the different experiences that women have, for example the history of abuse that has brought many of us here to the DTES, the brutality of child apprehensions that many of us have borne as a direct result of poverty, the fact that many of us do not know our parents because of the legacy of residential schools and colonization has destroyed our families, the chronic and often fatal illnesses such as AIDS and Hepatitis C that break our bodies, the grief of living through the deaths of our missing and murdered sisters, and much more. People who drive by us every day to work have no idea what nightmares we live with. My heart wants to shatter when I hear some of the stories about why people have turned to drugs and alcohol.

The Downtown Eastside is the poorest part of town. Low-income housing in the DTES is of such sub-standard quality that many prefer to sleep on the streets. Problems in the single-room occupancies include: absence of heat, toilets, and running water; presence of mold, bedbug infestations and rats; and illegal practices by landlords including refusal to return damage deposits, entering rooms without permission, and arbitrary evictions.

In the DTES Power of Women Group, we support our people to get proper homes. The government should provide a living wage and a decent home for all people so that we have somewhere to stay and so that no one has to work the street. A lot of our young people are working for drug dealers. Women who owe drug debts have much harm come to them, sometimes even death, like the murder of 22-year-old Ashley Machisknic last year. A lot of girls who have to work in the sex-trade are further abused by their clients and their pimps and often don’t get paid.

And then there is the constant harassment on the street by police officers. I have seen officers walk by and kick people while they are passed out or sleeping on the street. Our people are not able to defend themselves against guns and tasers. It hurts me to see people slammed to the pavement by police officers just because they are poor and nobody cares what happens to poor people.

But the hidden truth of the Downtown Eastside is that despite the poverty, criminalization, and trauma, we all care for each other and socialize with one another. Especially in the DTES Power of Women Group, where we are like one family and support the community on issues such as police brutality, child apprehensions, violence against women, and housing. Whether people are sober or high on drugs, we listen to each other’s dreams and desires to make this neighbourhood a better place for ourselves.

Stella's is just one of the voices that you’ll find on the Vancouver Media Co-op site this month. Readers can walk beside these brave, powerful women. This story is part of the Downtown Eastside Power of Women “In Our Own Voices” writing project. For more information and to read more stories, click here.

Stella August, from the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation, was born in 1945 in Ahousat, BC. She is a long-time resident of the Downtown Eastside. When she joined the DTES Power of Women Group she learnt that as a woman in this neighbourhood, she has a voice and a collective group through which to support her people. She is also a member of the Feb 14th Womens’ memorial march Committee.

Dawn Paley is a journalist and organizer with the Vancouver Media coop, where the full version of her introduction can be read. Stories from In Our Own Voices can be read on the VMC.

POW members at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre

The Downtown East side Power of Women Group Present In Our Own Voices Writing Project

In Our Own Words

Tim McSorley — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 06:12:18 +0000

Women living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside weigh in on the Olympics

The Downtown Eastside Power of Women Group is based at the Downtown Eastside (DTES) Women’s Centre. We are women from all walks of life who are working poor, homeless or on social assistance; and we are all living in extreme poverty.

Many us of are single mothers or have had our children apprehended due to poverty; most of us have chronic mental or physical health issues, for example HIV and Hepatitis C infections; many of us have drug or alcohol addictions; and the majority of us have experienced and survived sexual violence and mental, physical, spiritual and emotional abuse. Indigenous members among us are affected by the legacy of residential schools and a history of colonization and racism.

One of the many issues we are concerned with are the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games, which we have seen increase poverty and policing in the DTES, Canada’s poorest postal code.

Below, accounts from Power of Women members Stella August and Phillipa Ryan are accompanied by an illustration by member Priscillia May. Her image depicts the broken promises of the 2010 Olympics and the impacts of gentrification and criminalization in the DTES.

***

The DTES faces more homelessness and hunger than any other neighborhood in Vancouver. Every day, I walk by more homeless people on the street who are hungry, cold and wet. The Olympics have only increased this, creating man-made poverty which is unfair and unjust.

The government is spending billions on a circus, while putting people aside. They say they are fixing the city but how is the city being fixed if so many people are actually worse off? Across the city we are seeing cuts to education, decreased funding to the arts, more people unemployed. Is this the kind of society we want? The cost of renting in Vancouver is now outrageous. It is hard enough to live on a fixed income—whether pension, or social assistance or disability. Just in the DTES, 1,000 to 1,200 units of low-income housing have been lost since the Olympic bid due to closures and conversions to tourist rentals. Meanwhile, over 1,500 new market homes, primarily condominiums, are being built here.

We are also witnessing a dramatic increase in police presence in this neighbourhood. There are often six to eight police officers on just the one intersection at Main and Hastings. One day a few of us were walking down the street and heard a woman yelling for help. As we ran, we saw her being dragged out of a police car, getting kicked to the ground, and being handcuffed. She had apparently been chased by a guy with a knife and she ran into the police car for help. The police had dragged her out of their car, berating her for entering a police car, and arrested her. They did not do anything to help her. With the Olympics, this is the kind of increased protection we can expect.

Street vendors are especially being harassed and are given tickets for by-law infractions. The City has banned dumpsters from the downtown core, eliminating the ability of binners [dumpster divers] to make a living. All this to “clean up” the neighbourhood for Olympic officials and tourists; but what is the cost to humanity? They might be able to temporarily sweep things under the rug, but what Olympic legacy will be left for our grandchildren? The City of Vancouver and the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit are also trying to change the planned route of our historic Feb 14, 2010 March for Murdered and Missing Women, something far more significant and sacred than their Games.

It is easy to turn a blind eye to the plight of the DTES and to stereotype us all as alcoholics and addicts, but we are all humans and we all have a story. I am living proof of the residential school era. I was separated from my parents, my family and my culture. I lost my language. I was beaten and abused severely in residential school. All across Canada, Indian Residential Schools are one of the starkest reminders of the legacy of genocide against Indigenous peoples.

Like many others, I am not satisfied with last year’s formal apology from the federal government. The apology was supposed to start a new relationship with Indigenous peoples, one based on respect. But the 2010 Olympic Games represents just one of the many examples of the continuation of the same kind of colonial relationship: we are not consulted, are forcibly displaced, and endure increasing poverty for their benefit. This is not the start of a new relationship. This is why to me the apology is like a slap in the face, the kind you experience in an abusive relationship where one day you are beaten, the next day you are sent flowers with a sorry note, and then you are beaten again.

This is why I and the DTES Power of Women group are united against the impacts of the Olympics and we have been doing a lot to make our voices heard and our opposition strong. There is a lot of power and unity among us; we may be poor but our spirit is not. All my relations.

—Stella August

When one hears "Olympics," one thinks of good health, strength and endurance. There seems to be few, if any, Indigenous athletes in Canada. The powers that be have been trying to break the spirits of Indigenous people with poverty so that we will sign away our lands and rights by their treaty process. Over 150 years our once abundant forestry and fishery have been taken and so we have gone from being free self-sustaining individuals living off clean, rich land to being beggars in our own country. Chemicals from monocultural farming, manufacturing, mining and the tar sands continue to pollute our once pristine air, land and water. None of the stolen lands or assets have benefited the people to whom it once belonged.

The ugliness of our lives, such as drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, chronic unemployment, watered down education and health problems from an inadequate diet are just some of the prices we have paid for the so-called democracy of Canada which continues to justify the thievery of our lands and resources. In spite of the apology for the residential school experience, the policy of racism and genocide continues. I saw my parents resist injustices just as they told us our ancestors resisted from first contact; so it isn't as if Indian Affairs doesn't know what is wrong with the system that they have imposed on us. We now know that the government has designed our lifestyle by micro-managing our lives the way they, as partners to other so-called democracies like the USA, did to the Iraqis and the Palestinians.

The only improvement to our lives that has been bandied about recently was to legalize prostitution. I suppose it is so our government acts as our pimps as the Australian government has done. The Australian government recently sent a leaflet to all prostitutes recommending they use numbing agents so they can service more clients! After dishonoring the contribution of Indigenous people in the First and Second World Wars, the military is promising to pay for post-secondary education for the descendants of those veterans so they can go kill other people's children. The military are particularly targeting tribal people with this program so none survive to lay claim to their lands and resources. It looks as if the only way Indigenous people in Canada will be taxpayers is through prostitution and the military. The so-called "Indian Problem" will never go away as it is a multi-billion dollar industry.

The Olympics should be terminated. Its standards have been achieved by cheating. Of what practical value is winning the gold? Look at the price the Peruvians have paid for their gold. Such frivolity is unacceptable when there is so much poverty in the world. Such high standards of physical excellence going hand-in-hand with bankrupt moral ethics—to what purpose? Why is there so much slavery when there are so many so-called democracies? Perhaps that is why they need to deliver it at the point of a gun. Sorry is not good enough for what has been done to our humanity. It is no longer about educating them. They have made their choices; let them pay through their karma.

—Phillipa Ryan

Stella August was born in 1945 in Ahousat, BC and is a long-time resident of the Downtown Eastside.

Phillipa Ryan was born 1943 in Kitwanga, Skeena River, BC. She has been a resident of the Downtown Eastside off and on since 1980.

Priscillia May is from Wet'suwet'en Territory. She is an activist, artist, actor and volunteer in the DTES. She has been involved with organizing the February 14, 2010 memorial March for Murdered and Missing Women. A single parent, her child is her stone, who inspires and encourages her.

For up-to-the-minute Olympics resistance coverage, check out the Vancouver Media Co-op, and the Convergence website. Follow the VMC on twitter!

Rings over East Vancouver