By Elise Stolte
Vancouver Sun
June 30, 2010
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Alberta+ceremony+remembers+residential+school+students/3222604/story.html
| Harry Joseph Cardinal, 84, from Good Fish Lake, Alta. pauses during a ceremony to remember the children from First Nations and Metis communities who were students at the Red Deer Industrial School (1893-1919) in Red Deer, Alta. on June 30, 2010. Cardinal's mother Flora Bird attended the residential school which was operated by the Methodist Church (now the United Church of Canada) and the federal government. Photo by Ryan Jackson, edmontonjournal.com |
On the banks of the Red Deer River, the names of the children were called out, one by one.
Benjamin Boyd, Samson Cree Nation. John Moonias, Louis Bull First Nation.
And the list continued, naming the more than 300 children who attended the Red Deer Industrial School from 1893 to 1919. All of them are dead now; some died at the school itself, and are buried in a long-neglected graveyard that was only recently rediscovered.
Wednesday's event was the first official ceremony to publicly recognize the fates of children who died in a residential school.
Wilton Littlechild, one of the commissioners on the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission, called it a "freeing the spirits" ceremony. Many children were sent away to residential schools and never came home, he said.
"Children who went to boarding school tried to run away, died trying to run away, and never came home," he said.
But this ceremony will free those spirits to pass on to the other world, "whether you call it heaven or happy hunting grounds," he said.
"They finish their journey because of what you're doing," he said, thanking the several hundred people who came to the ceremony at Fort Normandeau, just outside of Red Deer.
Many of them were former residential school students themselves.
Larry J. Crane, from Tsuu T'ina First Nation, said it was important "not to forget but to forgive, to feel." He attended residential school in Brandon, Man., from 1967 to 1969. "This is for everybody because (residential schools) affected all of us, even to this day. It still affects us," he said, pointing to the loss of parenting skills and the high number of aboriginal children in foster care and aboriginal adults in prison.
Archeological evidence and school records suggest between 27 and 65 people, including five staff members, were buried on a small strip of land on the banks of a creek about a 10-minute walk from the former Red Deer Industrial School, just west of Red Deer.
The school building has since been destroyed, and the cemetery itself disappeared from property records years ago. But a private landowner preserved the site, along with four wooden headboards. In 2005, an area church decided to try to heal relationships with local bands by researching what happened and honouring the dead.
The Red Deer Industrial School was built by the federal government and operated by the Methodist Church from 1893 until it closed in 1919. Children were supposed to split their time evenly between school and working in the fields, although former students later said work often took most of the time.
Conditions were miserable at many residential schools, especially during the early years. In the close confines of the live-in facilities, tuberculosis and other epidemics killed.
Red Deer Industrial was no exception, according to a 1993 University of Calgary study. The school reported problems with drainage from the boy's bathroom contaminating the well, and federal records show a third of the 62 students admitted between 1893 and 1895 died at the school or within a decade of leaving it.
In a 1907 report, the federal chief medical officer said the school had the "worst mortality rate in the industrial schools examined across Canada."
Red Deer is about 160 kilometres south of Edmonton.
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