BishopAccountability.org
	Healing from Crushing Native Wounds By Andrew Hanon Edmonton Sun March 17, 2008 http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Columnists/Hanon_Andrew/2008/03/17/5027726-sun.html Ray Harris is working hard to repair his relationship with his adult children. The 64-year-old is also determined not to repeat with his grandchildren the mistakes he made with his kids. "I go skating with them, go sledding, I go to hockey tournaments," he says. "We have a lot of fun together. I'm much more patient than I used to be." When he was raising his own children, it was a different story. Harsh, strict, unyielding - he raised them the way he was raised in native residential school. "I parented my kids like a supervisor," he explains. "I loved my children, but I was very rigid with them. It was all I knew." Harris, a hereditary chief of the Gitxsan people of northern B.C., spent 11 years at the Edmonton Indian Residential School near St. Albert, from 1955 to 1966. Like other out-of-province kids, he boarded at EIRS even while he attended Jasper Place high school. Like thousands of other aboriginal kids across Canada, Harris was taken from his family and sent to a residential school. They grew up in an institution where obedience, discipline and efficiency were stressed, instead of the nurturing and affection most kids get from their parents. Former students recall stories of horrific physical, emotional and, in many cases, sexual abuse. On top of that, the church-run schools' aim was to convert the children to Christianity. Many were told their parents' belief system, culture and even their language was evil. Like a lot of kids sent to residential school, Harris felt like a prisoner, one who'd been handed over to his captors by the very people who were supposed to keep him safe: His parents. He grew up resenting his mother, who he was convinced had willingly sent him off to school. "Really, she was coerced," he says, "but I didn't know this. I blamed her for everything I went through and because of that, our bond was severed." Despairing over having her children taken from her, Harris's mom died at age 40. "She just gave up. She drank and drank and drank until she died." Haunted by a maelstrom of emotions - anger, resentment, hatred, guilt, shame - Harris became an alcoholic, too. Because he was emotionally stunted, relationships with his first wife and children deteriorated. Realizing that he was flushing his own life away, Harris quit drinking 19 years ago. A few years later, he sought help to deal with his emotions. "I started over," he says. He began the painstaking work of trying to rebuild his relationship with his kids, a task that he's fully aware will be a work in progress for the rest of his life. "We're speaking to each other again," he says. "It's healing." He's remarried and has stepchildren and grandchildren. Harris now uses what he's learned in the past two decades to help other residential school survivors and their families learn and heal. He's looking forward to when the federal Truth and Reconciliation Commission begins its work with former residential school students this year. Too few people - including the kids who attended them - understand the long-term damage the residential school system inflicted on people, their families and even entire communities. "It's important," says Harris. "Everyone needs to know what happened and how it affected us. Non-natives need to hear these stories, too."
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