What Survivors Have Told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Ottawa Citizen
June 2, 2015

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/what-survivors-have-told-the-truth-and-reconciliation-commission

Alongside its recommendations, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Tuesday released a compendium of stories from some of the survivors of the residential school system that brutalized thousands of aboriginal Canadians.

Here are some of their voices:

On being removed from their homes and sent to the schools:

“They load(ed) us all up on a bus and took us. And I remember my mom had a really hard time letting us kids go, and she had, she had a really hard time. She begged the priest, and the priest said it was law that we had to go, and if we didn’t go, then my parents would be in trouble.” – Maureen Gloria Johnson, who was taken to Lower Post School in northern British Columbia in 1959.

“I was kidnapped from Port Renfrew’s elementary school when I was around six years old, and this happened right in the elementary schoolyard. And my auntie witnessed this, and another non-native witnessed this … These are two witness trying, saw me fighting, trying to get away with, from the two RCMP officers that threw me in the back seat of the car and drove off with me. And my mom didn’t know where I was for three days, frantically stressed out and worried about where I was, and she finally found out that I was in Kuper Island residential school.” – Howard Stacy Jones.

“We got taken away by a big truck. I can still remember my mom and dad looking at us, and they were really, really sad-looking. My dad’s shoulders were just hunched, and he, to me, looked like his spirit was broken.” – Alma Scott, taken to the Fort Alexander, Man., school when she was five years old.

On arrival at the schools:

“As soon as we entered the residential school, the abuse started right away. We were stripped, taken up to a dormitory, stripped. Our hair was sprayed … They put Oxfords on our feet, ’cause I know my feet hurt. They put dresses on us. And were made, we are always praying, we were always on our knees. We were told we were little, stupid savages, and that they had to educate us.” – Elaine Durocher, taken to the Roman Catholic school in Kamsack, Sask.

“You know, to get stripped like that by a female, you know, you don’t even know … it was embarrassing, humiliating. And then she’d have this, you know, look or whatever it was in her eyes, you know. And then she would comment about your private parts and stuff like that …” – Brian Rae, given a physical inspection by female staff at the Fort Frances, Ont. school.

On using their own language:

“A sister, a nun started talking to me in English and French, and yelling at me. I did not speak English, and didn’t understand what she, what she was asking. She got very upset, and started hitting me all over my body, hands, legs and back. I began to cry, yell, and became very scared, and this infuriated her more. She got a black strap and hit me some more. My brother, Eddie, Edward, hear me screaming, and came to get me.” – Marcel Guiboche, at Pine Creek School.

“Just for saying thank you to someone who gave me something in the school. I was caught by a brother of one of the workers, and I was strapped so severely that when we went to supper, my cousin Ivan had to feed me because my hands were so swollen from the straps.” – Alan Knockwood, punished for speaking his own language at Shubenacadie.

On loss of identity:

“My name was Lydia, but in the school I was, I didn’t have a name, I had numbers. I had number 51, number 44, number 32, number 16, number 11, and then finally number one when I was just about coming to high school. So, I wasn’t, I didn’t have a name, I had numbers. You were called 32, that’s me and all our clothes were, had 32 on them. All our clothes and footwear, they all had number 32, number 16, whatever number they gave me.” – Lydia Ross, a student at Cross Lake.

“I didn’t know I had an older sister until I was I think probably 13 years old and somebody came and introduced us and said that we were sisters.” – Sheila Gunderson, who went to residential schools in the Northwest Territories.

“I remember one time my brother, he had an abcess or something there, and it burst. They took him to the hospital. They didn’t even tell us that my brother almost died. They didn’t tell us nothing. Then we find out after, we just find out he was gone. I think it was to a hospital they brought him, and they didn’t tell us my brother almost died. ” – Joanne Morrison Methot, enrolled in the same school as her brother.

“I wasn’t even allowed to talk to my brothers, and I had three brothers there. Two of those brothers committed suicide. Yeah, it really hurt not to be able to, and I couldn’t even talk to my sister, and she was on the same side as me, but she was a, she was a junior girl. .. it was really lonely not having my mom, and not having my brothers or my sister.” — Beverley Anne Machelle, at the Lytton, B.C. school.

On estrangement from parents:

“When I was in residential school, then they told me I’m a dirty Indian, I’m a lousy Indian, I’m a starving Indian, and my mom and dad were drunkards, that I’m to pray for them, so when they died, they can go to heaven … I never saw my mom drink. I never saw my mom drunk. But they tell me that, to pray for them, so they don’t go to hell.” – Florence Horassi, at the residential school she attended in the Northwest Territories.

“(I) looked at my dad, I looked at my mom, I looked at my dad again. You know what? I hated them. I just absolutely hated my own parents. Not because I thought they abandon(ed) me; I hated their brown faces. I hated them because they were Indians; they were Indian. ” – Mary Courchene, recalling what she was taught in the 1940s in the Fort Alexander school in Manitoba.

On physical and sexual abuse:

“I remember the one young fellow that hung himself in the gym, and they brought us in there, and showed, showed us, as kids, and they just left him hanging there, and, like, what was that supposed to teach us? You know, I’m 55 years old, and I still remember that.” – Antonette White, on a death at the Kuper Island school.

“I was taken out night after night after night. And that went on until I was about 12 years old. And it was several of the male supervisors plus a female. And it was in the dorm; it was in their room; it was in the carport; it was in his car; it was in the gym; the back of the crummy that took us on road trips; the public school; the change room.” – Frances Tait, sexually abused by staff, students and supervisors at the Alberni school.

“I remember that he had struggled with me really, really hard and I fought back and fought back and I don’t know how long it was, i just fought and pretty soon he just, I don’t know what he did, he had restrained me somehow. And when that happened, he had sexually abused me … ” – Richard Morrison, a student at Fort Frances in the 1960s.

“And this woman, what she did to me, and how she molested me as a child, and I was wondering why I’ll be the only one being taken to this room all the time; and to her bedroom and stuff like that. And I thought it was normal. I thought it was, you know, this is what happened, like, to everybody, so I never said nothing.” – Pahpasay McDonald, sexually molested by a staff member at the Roman Catholic school in Kenora, Ont.