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	'Let Me Find My Talk' Cape Breton Post October 19, 2011 http://www.capebretonpost.com/Opinion/Editorial/2011-10-19/article-2780672/Let-me-find-my-talk/1 Duncan Scott, deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs and celebrated Canadian poet, said in 1920 that: "I want to get rid of the Indian problem. Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question." Rita Joe, residential school survivor and celebrated Canadian poet, wrote a poem titled "I Lost My Talk," which begins: "I lost my talk; The talk you took away. When I was a little girl. At Shubencadie school. You snatched it away: I speak like you; I think like you; I create like you; The scrambled ballad, about my world." Those two statements book end (though not in a strict chronological sense) Canada's residential school experience, which is the focus of the five-year, $60-million Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which hosted a hearing in Joe's home community of Eskasoni last week. Although government-funded, church-run residential schools in Canada date back to the 1870s, it wasn't until 1920 (when Scott made his now infamous speech and 12 years before Joe was born) that it became mandatory that all native children between the ages of seven and 15 attend residential schools. Compulsory attendance ended in 1948, but the last residential school didn't close until 1996. It's estimated that more than 150,000 children were taken away from their parents — often forcibly — to attend residential schools, which usually forbid students to speak their mother tongues and participate in their cultural activities. Reports of physical, mental and sexual abuse are common. Funding for the commission is part of a $1.9 billion compensation package announced by the federal government in 2005. Tens of thousands of residential school survivors were eligible for individual monetary compensation. So, if former students were compensated financially, what's the purpose of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? According to its website, the commission "hopes to guide and inspire aboriginal peoples and Canadians in a process of reconciliation and renewed relationships that are based on mutual understanding and respect." Such vagueness is seldom welcome by the media, which seeks cold, hard facts and clear goals. But this situation is different. The commission's work is a process as opposed to a means to an end. Residential school survivors are encouraged to tell their stories — either publicly or privately — to help them heal and to contribute to a combined narrative that can be shared with future generations as yet another reminder of the pain and suffering that one group of human beings can inflict by conducting an experiment on another group of human beings. Joe, who died in 2007, ended her poem "I Lost My Talk" with: "So gently I offer my hand and ask, Let me find my talk; So I can teach you about me." Arguably, no words could better illustrate the motive of those who are willing to open up old wounds in order to tell their painful stories.
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