The Dominion - residential schools

Reconciliation Takes Two

dawn — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 09:43:57 +0000

Residential school survivors gathered in Saskatoon critical of federal government's actions

Note: This article may be triggering. For immediate emotional support, the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line is available toll-free at 1-866-925-4419.

SASKATOON—The thunderclouds had scattered by morning when the sounds of footsteps, engines and drumbeats converged in Saskatchewan last month. Thousands of Indigenous residential school survivors, their relatives and people from different walks of life gathered in Saskatoon, traveling from all four directions.

From June 21 to 24, laughter, tears, songs and stories were in the air at Prairieland Park, where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada held its fourth national event. Survivors who gave statements about their experiences and participants who witnessed the event reiterated the importance of documenting and understanding the truth of residential school history. But on the reconciliation of that history, consensus was not even on the horizon.

"There were approximately 15,000 survivors registered for this event," Commissioner and residential school survivor Chief Wilton Littlechild told the crowd gathered for the closing ceremonies of the national event. "And there has been a lot of truth-telling."

Half the estimated number of residential school survivors in Saskatchewan, the registration was the largest to date. Countless others also attended the event and more than 5,000 viewers from countries around the world tuned in to the live webcast.

The event's Education Day also had the highest participation on record. Nearly 2,000 grades seven and eight students from public, Catholic and First Nations schools attended the national event to hear from survivors and learn about residential school history. Over 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children attended residential schools operated by the federal government and various churches from the late 1800s until the 1990s. Their languages and cultural practices were forbidden. Many suffered physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

The event in Saskatchewan marked an important midway point in the commission's activities, said Littlechild. Statement-gathering, research and outreach events are ongoing across the country, but the commission must also hold seven national events, according to the mandate established by the 2007 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. Winnipeg, Inuvik and Halifax hosted events during the first half of the commission's five-year mandate, with Saskatoon marking the mid-point before Quebec, Vancouver and Alberta.

"We shift our focus now from an emphasis on truth to an emphasis on reconciliation," said Littlechild.

But whose emphasis will be in focus remains to be seen.

Representatives of various churches and the federal government, parties to the Settlement Agreement along with survivors of more than 130 residential schools, have made apologies and often speak of reconciliation in the present tense. References are often made to "a new chapter" in Canadian history, placing the "sad chapter" of residential schools mentioned in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 2008 statement of apology firmly in the past.

Many residential school survivors have publicly expressed skepticism, anger and doubt about reconciliation. But another critical perspective is found within the commission itself, in Lead Commissioner Justice Murray Sinclair.

At a regional event in Victoria this past April, Justice Sinclair said that the role of the commission is to begin a conversation with Canada about what reconciliation means. The commission fully expects that reconciliation would take at least as long as the 130 years during which residential schools operated. The issue is about more than the abuse many suffered, he added.

"This is a conversation about an attitude about a whole race of people," said Justice Sinclair, echoing a view that many survivors have expressed about the continuity of attitudes, policies and legislation from the residential schools and the founding of Canada through to today.

"You don't have to forgive your perpetrator to begin your healing," he said, addressing the residential school survivors gathered in Victoria. "Coming to terms does not necessarily require forgiveness."

Frustration and doubt about reconciliation with Canada have also been expressed by members of the commission’s advisory Indian Residential School Survivors Committee.

A member of the Survivors Committee from Saskatchewan, Eugene Arcand played a key role throughout the Saskatoon event. He seemed to be everywhere over the course of the four days, addressing the students at Education Day while accompanied onstage by his granddaughters, speaking at the opening and closing ceremonies, and greeting just about everyone.

Arcand is affectionately referred to by many as any number of variations of the nickname Bird. Like Big Bird, he towers over almost everyone else, but many in Saskatchewan look up to him for more than just his height. Other residential school survivors at the event would tell each other if the Bird was coming their way and wait to shake his hand, meet his family or thank him for the work he has done.

Arcand spoke of his own experiences with truth and reconciliation at a Circle of Reconciliation panel on Friday afternoon. Residential school survivors were seated in a semi-circle alongside representatives of the parties to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. The Métis Nation was also represented onstage, although its members were largely excluded from the agreement.

"The truth is somewhat easier, when you can come to it," said Arcand. "Reconciliation has been difficult. It takes two sides."

"I was there at the apology," he said of the Primer Minister's statement of apology to former residential school students in June 2008, on behalf of all Canadians. "I was a little boy the night before, crying in my room."

"It's been difficult to talk out of one side of my mouth about truth and reconciliation when in another side of my heart I have very strong feelings about the actions of the federal government," said Arcand, mentioning the Canadian government's halt to funding for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, mandated by the Settlement Agreement.

"Actions speak louder than words," he said. When he explained that leaders—not only those of the federal government, but also First Nations leaders—must be evaluated not by what they say but by the legacy they leave behind, the room erupted in applause, whistles and cheers.

Arcand was the first of ten people to speak during the Circle of Reconciliation. Seated directly to his left was former Assembly of First Nations (AFN) Grand Chief Phil Fontaine. Directly across from him was current AFN Grand Chief Shawn Atleo. John Duncan, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC, formerly INAC), was also present onstage.

In his own presentation about reconciliation, Duncan followed the path other institutional representatives have sometimes taken at commission events and told personal stories. He spoke of the dislocation of his home community in a coal-mining region in BC's interior. He told of his childhood confusion when his mother told him that his Squamish best friend Richard from the neighbouring Capilano reserve might not be returning to public school in North Vancouver for grade five.

Duncan had a ten-minute opportunity to respond to direct challenges from survivors regarding federal funding cuts to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and other organizations, the exclusion of the Métis from the agreement, and other relevant actions taken by the Canadian government. He did not take it.

No one participating in the Circle of Reconciliation mentioned that the court-mandated Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement that ended the largest class-action lawsuit in Canadian history is only an agreement until it is broken. If any party to the agreement—such as the Government of Canada, for example—does not fulfill its obligations, representatives of the original plaintiffs—residential school survivors—can return to court.

Many residential school survivors not participating in the panel sessions or in the event in any official capacity were also critical of reconciliation, both in their statements to the commission and in conversations offstage.

Paul Sylvester was enjoying his pancakes on Saturday morning, sitting in the sun at the edge of a long table under the food tent in Diefenbaker Park. The free breakfast was served before the long 12-hour day ahead at the national event across the street. Finishing his pancakes, Sylvester set up an impromptu smoking section while speaking about the land near his community of Turnor Lake. A Dene residential school survivor, he also shared his thoughts about the event and reconciliation.

"It'll never be forgotten or forgiven, no matter how big a conference you set up," Sylvester told the Vancouver Media Co-op. "To me, here, it's just a gathering. Numbers, that's all."

Sylvester gave statements to the commission earlier this year, at regional hearings in both Prince Albert and La Ronge, in northern Saskatchewan.

"The first one was pretty rough. It was just tears," he said. "Between the first and the second one, I felt a lot lighter. After the second one, it don't bother me no more."

Sylvester takes strength from the memory of his mother, he said. He is the eighth of 23 children, although eleven passed away, most as infants, from malnutrition. Despite all of the loss and everything she went through, his mother always told him to stand tall and keep his head up.

He has been retired for a decade, but Sylvester continues to be active in grassroots political activity in his own territory and beyond. In spite of his own experience in the residential school system, he believes in the importance of education. He is currently working with the Office of the Treaty Commissioner in Treaty 10 territory on a "Teaching Treaties in the Classroom" project, developing curriculum for elementary and high school courses.

"There's not too much curriculum in the classroom about the lifestyle of the Dene People, of our survival on the land, or the history," said Sylvester. The First Nations history currently taught in the province is largely focused on southern Saskatchewan, he said, and it has not been easy to advocate for revisions.

"It's a give and take," Sylvester said of the struggle to change curriculum in order to include Dene history, Treaty history, and the issue of self-government. "It's viewed as a thing of the past."

But the passion that Sylvester has pursued throughout his life is getting to know Dene territory directly on the land. As a young boy before attending residential school and as a youth after he returned home, Sylvester accompanied his father along his trapline, taking notes and drawing maps. He prides himself on continuing to live off the land, tracking and hunting animals, working the trapline, and using local resources to make his own canoes and snowshoes.

And to deal with the trauma of his residential school experience, Sylvester turned to the land he has known since childhood.

"I did my reconciliation already," he told the Vancouver Media Co-op. "I done my healing on my trapline. When I go out on my trapline, there’s peace."

Fred Sasakamoose also found some healing in walking on the land. He led a three-and-a-half-day Indian Residential School Survivor Walk from the residential school he attended as a child to the national event in Saskatoon.

"I walked to get here," he said, seated in the middle of Friday's Circle of Reconciliation panel. "I walked 130 kilometers."

Sasakamoose, 78, now has more than 40 grandchildren and 40 great-grandchildren. He took five of his grandchildren with him along the walk, which began at the place where St. Michael's residential school once stood, in Duck Lake, Saskatchewan.

The building is no longer there. He had to use old stones and memories from over 60 years ago to attempt to answer his grandchildren’s questions about the location of the building and the makeshift hockey rink where he learned the skills that would later propel him to a brief professional career in the NHL.

"I thought I would hear screaming and crying, because that's all I knew," said Sasakamoose of his visit to the grounds. He was sent to residential school in 1940 at the age of six, along with his eight-year-old brother whose abuse he witnessed before being himself sexually abused at the school. He gave his statement to the commission at a regional hearing earlier this year.

"I thought I would leave everything behind. I told the story so many times. I told myself I'm never going to do it again," he said. "I want to leave it behind me now. I want to be healed. I no longer want to carry that load."

But he still carries the memory of five children from his reserve who were sent to St. Michael's and never came back. They are buried somewhere on the grounds that he visited, he said.

"Every footstep that I've made, it was for the people that never told their story, that are gone," said Sasakamoose.

As the event came to a close on Sunday evening, the sky began to cloud over as people prepared for the journey back to their families, communities and territories. Many will gather again at the commission’s remaining national events in Quebec next spring, Vancouver in the fall of 2013, and later in Alberta. Others will turn to their families, communities, or back to the land for healing.

The discussion about reconciliation will continue. The truth-telling will continue. And the memory of the thousands of children who never lived to tell their stories remains ever-present.

"When we leave here it’s going to rain, just for a little bit," said Eugene Arcand during the closing ceremonies. "Those are going to be the tears of those who couldn't be here, transformed into raindrops."

As people left the event and began to make their way home, in all four directions, the raindrops began to fall.

Sandra Cuffe is a Vancouver-based journalist and went to Saskatoon to cover the national event. This article is the fourth in a series funded and published by the Vancouver Media Co-op about the TRC and the residential school system and legacy.

TRC Saskatoon

Hishuk Ish Tsawalk: Everything is One

stephlaw — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 09:08:04 +0000

Recovering an Indigenous language in Canada

MONTREAL—Kathy Robinson is a language warrior. At the age of 81, she is one of the last two fluent native speakers of Tseshaht (pronounced “tsi-sha-aht”), a language once popularly spoken on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

Tseshaht is not the only language indigenous to Canada that is at risk of disappearing.

Of the 50 Indigenous tongues in Canada, most are in danger of extinction. Globally, the last speaker of a language dies every two weeks. There are at least 2,500 endangered languages and dialects destined for extinction in the next 100 years, according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger.

“This all happened because of residential schools; we’ve almost lost everything,” said Elder Robinson when asked why her language is disappearing. “We’ve pretty well lost our language, except for a few that kept it.”

Elder Robinson said the residential school system played a huge role in diminishing the number of speakers of Native languages because Indigenous children were forced to speak English. Now, Robinson is fighting to keep her Native language alive.

“I’d just like to leave behind what I know, so the next generation will know this,” said Robinson, who is a mother of 10 daughters.

The Tseshaht people are one of 14 Nations that make up the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council.

Robinson has devoted the last 33 years of her life to creating language materials for the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations. Learning from her elders, she developed the foundations of the Tseshaht curriculum that is still used at the local Tseshaht community school. The school is called Haahuupayak, which means “a tool (yak) for teaching with love (haa huu pa)."

Over the decades, Robinson has revived dances, songs and stories for her community's children that are based on her early memories and on ethnographic interviews found in linguist Edward Sapir’s notes, which she has spent 15 years translating and analyzing.

Two of her daughters, Jessica Stephens and Katherine Robinson, are also involved in language revitalization. Jessica is a member of he First Peoples’ Heritage, Language and Culture Council (FPHLCC), which developed FirstVoices.com, an online language documentation and education resource.

“[My mother] brought along all her old memories to the children and teachers,” Stephens explains. Her mother started by translating simple objects from English to Nuu-chah-nulth. She then got excited about puppets, which led to translating all the English nursery rhymes, colours, numbers, animals and “everything on earth” into her language.

“There wasn’t any real money back then for a First Nations curriculum. My mother and her co-worker worked long, hard and cold hours to get this done,” Stephens said. “They worked for peanuts but their commitment and passion forged them on.”

Today, First Nations languages are taking on new forms. The FirstVoices team in British Columbia, of which Elder Robinson’s daughter Katherine is part, provides online tools to enable First Nations communities to preserve their Indigenous languages in digital form. New media tools now provide a new pathway for transmitting and conserving oral cultures threatened by extinction.

Soon First Nations people will be able to send text messages to each other in Indigenous languages—thanks to an innovative mobile application that FirstVoices will launch on April 22. It will be available in BC’s 34 languages, which include 60 dialects.

The new texting application, called FirstVoices Chat, is generating a huge buzz among First Nations youth.

“Access to the applications on mobile devices has really sparked an interest in youth to get involved with language. They are going to be able to text everyday in their own language,” said Peter Brand, FirstVoices Co-ordinator.

FirstVoices Chat is one of several new mobile apps that provide multimedia First Nations dictionaries and phrase collections with audio recordings, images and video. The apps are a mobile extension of language collections archived by First Nations communities at FirstVoices.com. They incorporate touch-screen keyboards that use the unique characters for each of the 34 Indigenous languages of BC, as well as an English keyboard.

FirstVoices also runs a language program called The Language Tutor, which has been implemented in several schools in BC. The software offers computer-based language learning courses that are tailored for specific First Nations cultures. Parents have used it in collaboration with local teachers to create successful language immersion environments in several communities.

"It's very exciting to see the new generation of language champions emerging right in front of us," said Peter Brand.

Jessica Stephens said her mother recognizes how essential computers are for revitalizing their language and developing new materials, but that taking computer courses brought up a lot of her mother’s fears from her experience in residential school.

“Her fear was up and she was resistant, but she had to go if she wanted her language to have a chance,” Stephens said. “So she overcame her fear and learned.”

“She liked it and was confused by it, but she kept typing and today she is an efficient computer geek,” Stephens added. “My mom is always on the computer translating the stories. She remembers the people who she is translating. She knows them and has talked to them so it is like she is the link. She loves, absolutely loves translating their notes.”

Elder Robinson is celebrated in her community for having contributed so much of her energy to create a Tseshaht dictionary, books of traditional mythology, collections of song lyrics and children’s stories.

Michael Kelly, a member of the Elders Team from the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, shares Robinson’s belief that residential schools and other historic assimilatory practices are the root cause of the demise of many Indigenous languages.

“When I came back from six years at residential school, I was like a stranger in my own family,” Kelly said.

For Kelly, six years was long enough to lose everything he once had.

“I used to be able to understand our language as a child,” he said. “When my mother died, when I was nine years old, I went to residential school and I was forbidden to speak it; I was a heathen if I spoke it.”

Kelly, along with 22 other elders from different communities in BC, are currently taking part in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s events scheduled in First Nations communities throughout 2012.

Kelly, in an interview in the city of Port Alberni, Vancouver Island, affirmed that the first step towards Indigenous language revitalization in Canada is the healing among the elders who survived residential schools.

“They come in with a lot of anger and guilt,” said Kelly of many First Nations elders. “'Why did I let this happen to me when I was so young?' They’ll blame themselves, and the priests and brothers and prefects, who taught us how to be guilty and think we are not worth anything, and that we are nothing more than drunken Indians.”

But that anger and guilt might be somewhat relieved for those sharing their stories—often for the first time—and by having their voices heard and their experiences validated, Kelly said.

“The pain does not go away,” said Kelly. “The healing is really important so they don’t have to walk around with their heads hanging down, not trusting people, afraid of who they are.”

Stephens affirmed that although healing is important for the elders, it is not an easy process.

“Spiritual healing can only take place when the elders are ready for it. It is a romantic thought that we open this healing door and they all walk in. Life is not like that. Some will never walk in, others will peek in, while still others will take a quick glance, feel too much fear, pain and shame and run far away. The severely wounded can’t even go near the door. Some people wish that we could just heal ourselves quickly and maybe it would go away and they wouldn’t have to hear it again.”

Anna Luisa Daigneault is an anthropologist and language activist from Montreal. She currently works for the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages in the US and is involved with several language revitalization projects in Peru, Paraguay and Chile.

Kathy Robinson

Residential School Survivors Share Their Stories

Tim McSorley — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:19:18 +0000

Truth and Reconciliation Commission hears testimonials at Eskasoni

ESKASONI, NOVA SCOTIA—Truth can be an ugly thing.

It was to hear some ugly truths that people gathered in Eskasoni on Friday, October 14 for a session of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. The commission is holding hearings on Indian Residential Schools across Canada. The Canadian government supported more than 130 such schools for over a century, during which they were run by a variety of Christian churches. These schools took children from their parents at a young age for the explicit purpose of destroying First Nations cultures, languages and ways of life.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission invited anyone involved in or affected by the residential schools to make a presentation. Most of the speakers were survivors who attended the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School, which was the only such school in Atlantic Canada. It was in operation from 1923 to 1967.

Benji Lafford, a survivor from Eskasoni, spoke about being taken to the train station by uniformed government officials at the age of six.

“I was an ordinary child,” he said. “I went to school in Eskasoni for a while. I didn’t understand anything about the English language at the time. Mostly we were speaking Mi’kmaq. When my dad was alive, he taught us in Mi’kmaq. We chopped wood, we would get water, we would make sure everything would be okay for the next day so we wouldn’t be hungry or cold for the winter. As a young boy, I didn’t understand why they took me away from my homeland and from parents.”

Lafford and his brothers and sisters were all sent to the residential school. He said that as a child he wondered what he did wrong.

“I know now that we didn’t do anything wrong because we were innocent,” he said. “We stopped at almost every train station. We saw a lot of Native children standing on the side of platform. There were no families, no relatives, no uncles, grandfathers, nobody to say goodbye to them. No hugs. There were a lot of children crying.”

Upon arrival at the school, the children were met by the nuns and priests who ran it. The boys and girls were separated. They had their clothes taken away and their heads shaved.

“They scrubbed us so hard, trying to take the Indian away from us,” he said. “They said, you have no parents to come and help you. You have no grandparents to help you.”

He said he recalls, in later years, little boys crying as they approached the big red school, and as an older boy, he knew there was no way to help them.

“Once we got locked up behind those closed doors, no turning back. No turning back at all. You can’t run away because they always bring you back,” he said.

The children were not allowed to speak the Mi’kmaq language. Any violations of the rules were punished harshly.

“If you said a word wrong, you were going to get hit on the head, boom! Say your prayers right. Kneel down right,” he said. “We’d get hit on the head when we were saying the rosary at night. After an hour, our kneecaps would get sore.”

One rule was that children were not allowed to go to the bathroom after 10:00 pm. Lafford said he became a bed-wetter as a result and was forced to carry his soiled bedclothes on his head through the cafeteria at breakfast every time it happened.

“They strapped us almost every night,” he said. “Bend down and touch your toes. Take your pants off.”

He described it as “just like being in a cell.” Punishments also included being locked in cupboards. He described being slapped for speaking Mi’kmaq. His mother died while he was at the school, and he remembers being yelled at for crying in bed after he found out.

“Life went by, days went by, years went by,” he said. “I hope to my creator that things like that will never happen to anybody else. It was hard to let go of things that you loved. It’s not easy to be a child and to grow up in a different world. It’s not easy to walk with your head up when your head is down.”

Lafford attended the residential school until it closed in 1967. He finished his schooling in Toronto, and considered staying there, but decided to return to Cape Breton.

“I went back to my community, where I belong, where I can speak my language, to be with my family, my uncles, my aunties, my cousins, my friends,” he said. "That’s where I wanted to be.”

His experiences at the residential school continued to affect him. He said he drank and used drugs when he got older, often ending up in jail. He had difficulty with jobs and relationships. He said he thought about suicide at times. But then everything changed.

“I became a dancer,” he said, “a traditional dancer. I love that powwow music. I like the sound of the drum. I like the sound of the people singing. My life changed. I respect myself, I honour myself and I love myself, who I am today.”

Grand Chief Ben Sylliboy from Waycobah also spoke about his experiences at the residential school, which he attended for four years, starting in 1947. He was six years old and attended with his two sisters.

“My mother ended up with TB in ‘47,” he said. “We were put into the residential school. During that time, there was a thing called centralization, where the people from Whycocomagh were forced to go to Eskasoni to live here. There were nine families that remained in Waycobah, one of which was my parents. We had everything. We had our own farm. My father worked. The only problem was, my father couldn’t look after us. So we ended up going to Shubie.”

He recalls being forced to speak English.

“The only language we knew was Mi’kmaq,” he said. “Being put in an environment where you didn’t know the language, it was a difficult thing. I couldn’t even ask to go to the washroom.”

He said the school officials told the children they would never amount to anything.

“They said, the only good Indian is a dead Indian,” he said. “Even the nuns told me that. That hurt everybody.”

He said the boys in the school stuck together, becoming comrades. But the boys were kept strictly separated from the girls.

“The hardest part was, you weren’t allowed to talk to your sisters,” said Sylliboy. "I would have liked to have a little 15 minutes together. But we weren’t even allowed.”

He said when their parents visited, the visit was supervised by a nun, and they were only allowed to speak English. Letters home were also dictated by the nuns, with the children all writing the same thing that was written on the board.

“That’s how we communicated with our parents,” he said. “We couldn’t tell them what was really going on, the beatings we’d take.”

In the winter, children were sent outside regardless of the circumstances.

“I remember one time I had a sore stomach,” he said. “Diarrhea. I knocked on the door and knocked on the door. They wouldn’t open the door for me. So I dirtied myself. Eventually a nun came to the door. She said, what’s wrong? I said, I’ve got a sore stomach. She said, you shouldn’t knock on the door. She banged my hand on the door until you could see the bruises. Here, you can see the scar. That remained with me for 66 years.”

After four years, his mother recovered, and he was able to go home. He contracted tuberculosis and spent four years in hospitals. He credits the elders, including Caroline Gould, with helping him re-learn the Mi’kmaq language and reconnect with Mi’kmaq traditions.

Georgina Doucette of Eskasoni said leaving the residential school was also difficult.

“Coming back into my community,” she said, “I felt as if I didn’t belong. Even my grandmother said of my brother and I when we went to stay with her, she told her friends, you know these children who come out of that school, they’re not right in the head. Those were words from my own grandmother. We no longer spoke the language, we no longer had that connection with family because we separated for so long. We didn’t belong in the White world, and we didn’t belong in our community.”

She said it took her a long time to cope with her experiences, and she turned to liquor at a young age.

“I passed on that legacy to my children,” she said. “When I sobered up 24 years ago, I looked at them. And I kept apologizing. I feel deep down, this is the road I set for my children, with alcoholism. And their children drink and do drugs. I feel very guilty. It’s hard to shake that guilt when you’ve carried it for so long.”

She said she was unable to talk about the residential school for a long time.

“I never talked about the residential school because I had nothing good to say,” she said. “I never told my children stories of what happened to me. It’s hard for me to try and forgive, but I know deep down I have to forgive myself first.”

She said she is still on a journey of healing, which started with a family powwow and a return to traditional ways.

“The revival of our culture was really needed,” she said. “I’m proud of how far we’ve come, and I know we have a long ways to go. The whole community has to get together. That’s the only way we can get through it, talk about it, cry and move on.”

Margaret (Sylliboy) Poulette of Waycobah went to the residential school at the age of four. She remembers some fun times, such as going swimming in a nearby lake, but even those memories have a sad side to them. She spoke of making herself a doll out of a cleaning cloth, and having the toys sent by her parents taken away by the nuns to be given to an orphanage.

She said she can barely remember a time before the residential school because she was so young when she went there. She says she does recall waiting for her dad to come and get her and take her home.

“You know at night when a car comes up and the light goes round the room,” she said. “That night a car came up and the light went round. I thought it would be him.”

Children were assigned English names and numbers at the school.

“My number was 54,” said Poulette. “I’ve seen a lot of abuse in the classroom. They picked on people who had darker skin.”

She recalled a blind girl being strapped for not being able to read, and a boy who stuttered having his mouth held open by a stick all day. Another boy was punished by having to wear a dress and have the other children feel the bones of his head where the nuns said “his horns were coming out.” Another girl spilled milk and was strapped for it until her hands turned blue. Children who tried to run away were punished by having their heads shaved. Children who vomited at meals were forced to eat the vomit.

She said they did celebrate holidays, such as Christmas.

“I remember making streamers for decorating,” she said, “but Santa never found us there.”

Commissioner Wilton Littlechild said a lot of the stories resonated with his own experiences as a boy attending a residential school on the Prairies. The commission is visiting First Nations communities across the country collecting such accounts.

Prime minister Stephen Harper apologized to residential school survivors on behalf of the Canadian government in 2008.

“I didn’t accept his apology, to be honest with you,” said Benji Lafford, “because it didn’t come from the heart. Someone just wrote that on a paper and said, read that to the survivors of the Indian Residential Schools to ease their pain. A lot of survivors never got to ease their pain.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission came out with a court settlement with residential school survivors in 2006.

Commissioner Marie Wilson said the commission aims to share these stories with all Canadians.

“We think it’s non-Native people who don’t know the story, but very often it is also the Aboriginal children and grandchildren who have never been told these stories,” she said. “They don’t have a context for why things have been the way they have been. I think it’s an extremely important transference of knowledge to share that.”

This article was originally published by the Inverness Oran. Read also Joyce MacDonald's column on the subject of truth and reconciliaion.

Chief Sylliboy

Margaret Poulette

My Story of Domestic Violence and Child Apprehension

mccabe.melissa — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:34:42 +0000

A dispatch from the In our Own Voices writing project

VANCOUVER—I was abused by my ex-partner, who is also my children’s father, for ten and a half years. I had four children with him—Angela, Rosalie, Mike and Jackson. I was beat all throughout my first pregnancy, and as a result my girl Angela was born a month early. She did not develop properly and was born with her heart on the right side of her body. She was a Mother’s Day baby, born on May 13, 1973, at 5 lbs 11 oz. I named her Angela Michelle because she looked just like an angel. She only lived to the age of 16 and died on January 17, 1990, in Prince George.

It is for her and in her memory that I tell this story.

You might be wondering why I stayed in a violent relationship for that long? I grew up without a dad and was often called a "bastard." I was always taunted with sayings such as, "Do you even know who your dad is?" It hurt a lot to be bullied and I did not want my own children to go through the same experience. So I silently suffered the abuse. At the time I did not realize that it was equally bad, if not worse, for my children to witness the violence of their father beating up their own mother.

I tell this story for the women who are still in abusive relationships so that they will have the courage to get out. Anyone who controls you and physically and emotionally hurts you does not love you. We have to understand that violence against women is always unacceptable, and as Native women we are five-times more likely than other women to die as the result of violence.

I became an alcoholic while I was in the relationship. The alcohol would numb the pain of being beaten; it would numb me for when he got home in the evenings so I could tolerate all the kicks and punches; it would numb me against his false accusations of me cheating on him when he was the one cheating on me with other women.

As a result of my drinking, the Ministry of Child and Family Development (MCFD) became involved in my children’s lives. I had several visits from MCFD over the years and they told me to stop drinking and to get counseling, but I could not stop drinking. They also told me to leave my ex-partner, but I had nowhere to go. For years, MCFD kept apprehending my children. Sometimes they would take my children away for a few weeks; sometimes it was for a few months.

Then in December 1981, in a surprise visit, MCFD workers came to my home. I was not home, but my children’s father was supposed to be home. However he had left them alone in the house and the upstairs neighbour called MCFD. MCFD apprehended my children, this time seeking a permanent order. That meant that my young children, ages one to five, were going to essentially be kidnapped from me forever.

I broke down and started drinking even more heavily. I felt that if I did not have my children, then I had nothing to live for and would rather drink myself to death. One night in March 1982 I drank so much that I felt my heart was going to stop. That night I decided that I did not actually want to die an alcoholic and that I had to fight for my children.

I quit drinking cold-turkey. I went for alcohol counseling at the Native Courtworkers Society and also enrolled at Native Education Society to get my GED. I finally left my partner. After a few months I was able to get two-hour supervised visits with my children every six to eight weeks, but only after I appealed the decision by MCFD to deny me visits entirely.

After I won my right to supervised visits, I decided to appeal MCFD’s decision to apprehend my children permanently. I did not even know that I could appeal this decision until I was informed by an advocate at Native Courtworkers that I could. I realized that MCFD had not informed me of my basic legal rights as a parent and did not actually care to fulfill their responsibility and mandate to keep families together. I felt that as a survivor of violence and as a Native woman, I was being re-victimized by being labeled as a bad mother who was unable to protect her children.

After four years of fighting in the Court system, I finally won my case and my children were given back to me in 1986. Throughout the four years I often felt like giving up but I knew I had to fight for my family. The MCFD social worker reported to the Court that I was ‘not showing love and affection’ to my children. But the Court-ordered psychologist determined that there was lots of affection between us and said that it was clear that my children wanted to come back home. I thank Dr. Diane Mitchell for helping me win my case by recommending that my children be returned. It is frustrating though that we have to rely on these professionals to validate us.

The whole system of child apprehension is grossly unfair and unjust. From my experience and those of other women I know, it seems that the Ministry is interested in keeping children in the foster system rather than returning them to their parents. Most of the children in MCFD’s custody are Native children. In BC, Native children are 6.3 times more likely to be removed from their homes than non-Native children. I believe this is both a continuation of the residential school experience—where children are torn away from their families and communities are destroyed—as well as a consequence of residential schools, which has forced Native families into social dysfunction with rampant alcohol and drug use and abuse in the home. I feel like the odds are stacked against us, but still we continue on.

I am now 29 years sober and my three beautiful children—Rosalie and Michael and Jackson—are parents themselves. Once I had my children back, I told my boys to never hit a woman because it is like hitting your mother. I still live with the guilt about what happened to my deceased daughter Angela. I also felt responsible when my other daughter Rosalie was in an abusive relationship worse than mine. I felt that she thought it was okay to be abused because she watched me take it. But now my daughter Rosalie is happy and has a beautiful eight-year-old daughter named Kayla. My son Michael is 31 years old and has been clean from heroin for several years now. He is working and has a two-year-old daughter named Tayla. My youngest son Jackson is 30 years old and recently graduated from the Academy of Learning. He has a wonderful ten-month-old baby girl named Gianna. I am so proud of my children and thank the Creator for every new day. Love to all my family and friends.

B. has lived in Vancouver for 35 years. She is from Bella Bella. She is currently 29 years sober and volunteers at the Downtown Eastside Womens’ Centre. She loves being part of the DTES Power of Women Group because the group fights for everything she has been through—from violence and abuse to child apprehension—and gives her a voice! She also marches in the February 14th Womens’ Memorial March Committee for her murdered sister and niece.

Recently, B. was in the hospital for two months due to double pneumonia. She went through surgery for her right lung on December 28, 2010. She feels lucky to be alive and would like to thank all her family and friends for their prayers and visits, which meant a lot to her.

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, please visit http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group

B. Photo by Joe Philipson

Québec Native Women's Association responds to Harper's apology for residential schools

Anna Carastathis — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:34:47 +0000

Ellen Gabriel.jpg

The Québec Native Women's Association has called upon the Canadian government to acknowledge that residential schools were an act of genocide.

Statement by Quebec Native Women's Association/Femmes Autochtones du Québec

Re : Government of Canada's Residential School Apology
June 11, 2008, Kahnawake

Quebec Native Women recognizes the Prime Minister's official apology concerning the genocidal experience of Aboriginal people in the history of the Residential School system. While the apology to Aboriginal peoples is long overdue it is contradicted by the oppressive policies of the Indian
Act.

The heinous crimes committed against Aboriginal children who were victims and survivors of the Residential School experience must be dealt with beyond mere apologies and monetary compensation.

December in Review

Stuart Neatby — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:32:31 +0000

Halted deportations, Lakota secession, and social tension in Latin America

In Vancouver, 1500 demonstrators effectively paralysed the Vancouver International Airport and halted the planned deportation of 48-year old paralysed Punjabi refugee Laibar Singh on December 10-- international Human Rights Day. The vast majority of the supporters were members of Vancouver’s Sikh community, who had been mobilizing and campaigning against Singh’s impending deportation to India for months, while he lived in sanctuary within a Sikh temple. On January 9, a second attempt by the Canadian Border Services Agency to deport Singh was thwarted after officials showed up at the Nanak Sikh Temple in Surrey at 4AM to find 300 of Singh’s supporters blocking the entrance to the temple. Singh’s supporters have argued that he should remain in Canada on Humanitarian and Compassionate grounds due to his medical needs.

The Canadian Supreme Court ruled that the Safe Third Country Agreement-- legislation that has cut refugees' eligibility to remain in Canada-- was illegal. The STCA, enacted by the Martin government, prohibits political refugees from remaining in Canada if they have landed first in the US. The ruling declared that the United States could not be deemed a “safe” country for refugees due to its violations of the UN Convention Against Torture and the Refugee Convention.

The Lakota Sioux nation made steps to legally secede from the United States on December 20 in Washington after Lakota representatives withdrew from all treaties signed with the US. Following years of discussions amongst treaty representatives within the various Lakota communities throughout Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana, the notice of withdrawal from the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties was hand-delivered by a four-member Lakota delegation to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the US State Department. According to delegation members, the legal basis for this withdrawa stands with the continuous violation of the 1851 and 1868 treaties by the United States, as well as the conditions of extreme poverty that exist within the Lakota communities.

Environmentalists have perhaps won a partial victory after the United States and Canada both backed down from their obstructionist positions at the UN Climate Change Summit in Bali. After the summit was extended an extra day, Canadian Environment Minister John Baird, who had been dogged by a delegation of Canadian youth activists throughout the week, reversed his original position against a binding target of 25 to 40 per cent reductions of carbon emissions from wealthy countries by the year 2020. The United States also agreed in the end to endorse the “Bali roadmap,” although only after the section requiring binding targets for all nations to collectively reduce carbon emissions was removed. Some environmentalists have argued that the summit’s key failing was the “single-minded focus on getting Washington on board,” to the detriment of actually achieving firm carbon-reduction targets.

In Haiti, grassroots leader Rene Civil was released after spending 20 months in prison. Civil was a member of the Lavalas party of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and was also a leader of the Popular Power Youth (JPP), a grassroots organization of youth from poor communities. Civil was arrested in August 2006, shortly after organizing a demonstration calling for the release of political prisoners and the return to the country of Aristide. However, another grassroots activist, Wilson Mesilien, acting director of the September 30th foundation, a human rights organization, was recently forced into hiding after receiving death threats. Mesilien’s predecessor, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, remains at large after he was kidnapped by unknown figures last August. The US and Canadian governments took part in the military overthrow of Aristide in 2004, and Canadian RCMP officials currently head the UN training program for the Haitian National Police, which is accused by Haitians and international observers of human rights abuses including mass murder, sex trafficking and rape.

In Pakistan, in the midst of political turmoil in the week following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the United States government announced it would approve the nearly five-hundred million dollar sale of eighteen Lockheed Martin fighter jets to the regime of Pervez Musharraf. Although no definitive investigation has been carried out of Bhutto’s murder (the Pakistani President has refused to allow a UN investigation of the killing), many of Bhutto’s supporters, as well as Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, have expressed belief that elements of Pakistan’s military may have been behind the assassination, and have criticized the continued sale of arms to the regime.

A new report issued by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade has found that Canadian arms sales reached $700 million, the highest levels ever recorded, in 2003. This figure did not include sales made to the US which, if counted, would have brought the total sales of Canadian arms to over $2 billion. According to Ken Epps, an arms control researcher with Project Ploughshares, many of these sales were made to countries with dubious human rights records, such as Colombia, China, and Saudi Arabia. Epps also noted that the Pakistani military purchased $250 million worth of helicopters from Canada between 2004 and 2005.

The Bush administration’s case for war with Iran was dealt a severe blow after sixteen different US intelligence agencies concluded that the country had ended its nuclear weapons more than four years ago. Despite this, George W. Bush, claimed publicly that he still believed Iran to be a threat to the United States. The completion of the report by the National Intelligence Agency had reportedly been held up and postponed by vice-President Dick Cheney for two months.

In Toronto, a new report by the provincial government has found that, despite crackdowns, 31,000 people currently receive a "special diet" supplement designed for welfare recipients with medical dietary needs. The supplement, valued at $250 extra dollars for food per month, is an obscure and often overlooked government program. The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has publicly set up special diet clinics throughout the city and province in recent years, arguing that individuals on welfare live in conditions of state-sponsored poverty, which limits their dietary health. Over the last two years, this campaign effectively redirected over $30 million of provincial revenue into the hands of the province's poorest residents.

Recent reports from human rights organizations in Chiapas, Mexico indicate that the Mexican government is ramping up its military presence in regions under heavy influence of the indigenous Zapatista Liberation Army. According to the Centre for Political Analysis and Social and Economic Research, a human rights NGO based in Chiapas, there has been a marked increase in the presence of military and paramilitary deployments within this Southern Mexican state which, coupled with an increase in expropriations of land occupied by indigenous Mayan sympathizers of the Zapatistas, has prompted IPS News to dub this escalation “the worst onslaught by state forces in the last 10 years.” Since the 1994 uprising by the Zapatistas, indigenous self-rule has been quietly built within the region, as the Zapatistas have established their own health, education and development programmes, while forming their own governing “caracoles,” or good-government councils.

In Bolivia, clashes continued between middle- to upper-class supporters of the the Democratic and Social Power (PODEMOS) political party and the social movements and indigenous communities united under the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) of current president Evo Morales. Partisans of the right-leaning PODEMOS, which include the governors of four eastern departments, have been staging blockades, strikes, and demonstrations for months against the proposed constitutional changes championed by Morales and the social forces united under the MAS, largely movements of the country’s majority poor and indigenous peoples. The constitution would grant the central government greater control over the country’s rich natural resources, but would also guarantee expanded autonomy for departmental governments and indigenous communities. The opposition disagrees with the limitations on land ownership established in the document, as well as the redirection of departmental gas revenues to a new National Pension Fund for all citizens of the country over the age of sixty. Late last month, the opposition has declared autonomy from the central government for the city of Santa Cruz, establishing a new police force, television station and special ID cards.

The Ontario government finally announced that the province will be returning the Ipperwash Provincial Park lands to the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nations. This announcement follows the conclusion of the Ipperwash inquiry into the 1995 Ontario Provincial Police killing of Dudley George last May. The land was originally expropriated from the Stony Point band in 1942 to allow the federal government to build a military base.

First Nations survivors of the Canadian residential school system received their first cheques as part of a $2 billion compensation settlement for the collective experience of mass sexual and physical abuse suffered by indigenous children at Catholic-run schools between the 1950s and 1980s. Eighty thousands First Nations people are eligible for this compensation, which is paid in lump sums, and which amount to an average of $28,000. This amount, however, only accounts for the federal government’s portion of the settlement; The Catholic church is also responsible for paying 30% of the settlement. Although viewed by residential school survivors as an important milestone in the process of achieving justice, the size of the settlement pales when compared to a similar settlement given to Australian aboriginals of the “Stolen Generation,” whose treatment at the hands of their government throughout the twentieth century bears many striking similarities to that of the Canadian aboriginal experience.

In New Orleans, police attacked, tazered and pepper-sprayed public housing residents who had arrived at city hall to take part in a “public hearing” about the proposed demolition of 5000 public housing units in the city. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there remains a homeless population of 12,000 within New Orleans. City Hall and private developers have nonetheless intensified efforts to demolish public housing in order to make way for commercial property and high-priced condominiums. Police had initially erected a metal gate around city hall, prohibiting public housing residents from entering the building. Fifteen were arrested in total as the council passed the motion in favour of the demolitions. Residents have pledged to continue fighting, and have called for supporters to travel to the region and take part in a campaign of direct actions against these home demolitions.

Officials in India have conceded that the construction of the World Bank-backed Narmada Dam is illegal. Shri Afroz Ahmad of the Narmada Control Authority admitted that the construction of the dam to the height of 121.9 metres has led to the illegal submergence of houses and farms, particularly those of the Bhil tribal people, many of whom have been struggling against the construction of this mega-dam for more than twenty years. Critics of the dam have demanded that its size be reduced in order to avoid flooding still further indigenous communities, and continue to fight for land for those who have been displaced by the dam’s construction.

Hundreds of trade union demonstrators gathered in Toronto to protest the proposed Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, while approximately 30-40 activists with the Canadian Union of Public Employees picketed the office of former Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mackay in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Critics from trade unions, human rights organizations, and ecumenical organizations in Canada have argued that this trade deal has been negotiated in complete secrecy, after a dramatically similar trade deal between the US and Colombia met with overwhelming opposition within Congress due to human rights concerns. Colombia currently has the worst human rights record of any country in the Western Hemisphere, and more trade unionists are killed in the region than in the rest of the world combined. Little has been made public about this trade agreement, nor of the timeline for its implementation, but public officials have speculated that the trade pact could be completed within the next few weeks. Many Colombian activists have argued that this trade agreement encourages para-military political violence against indigenous peoples, trade unionists, afro-Colombian communities, and poor people within resource-rich territories, and also provides the framework to “legalize and legitimize” this economic and political terrorism. Meanwhile, reports of increased military and para-military attacks upon indigenous protests against land expropriation have emerged from the Southwest Cauca in recent weeks.

African political leaders have rejected a neo-liberal trade agreement with the European Union, which would have forced punitive duties upon imported goods from the continent, such as sugar, meat and bananas, which would have competed with European producers. The “Economic Partnership Agreements” have been the subject of protests by trade unions and social movements throughout the continent, and were voted down during an EU-Africa summit in Lisbon. The increased amount of investment from China in Africa has likely provided the subcontinent with a greater amount of breathing room in negotiating such trade deals in recent years.

Lakota Map

Laibar Singh and Supporters