Residential School

Those of you who know me well know how I can stand up for other people – wade in and have my voice heard.  Less so when it is very personal or if it is about me.  Although never said to me explicitly, I always sensed that I should stay quiet, hide, just in case.  In case what?  I didn’t know.  Being raised by a residential school survivor and a parent who spent time in a French Catholic orphanage I think it was bred in the bone.  Stay quiet – don’t cause anyone in ‘authority’ to pay attention to you because that never turns out well.  I am grateful I grew up loved and wanted and cared for and I love and admire my grandparents and parents and relations for who they are, all that they did and accomplished.   We are a family of survivors.

But when we are reminded, again, of the genocide of the first people and the children found buried at the same residential school where my grandmother and two aunties were forced to go, it is not a time to be quiet or hide.

Canada does not want to pay compensation to the remaining residential school survivors of St. Anne’s.

This school had the electric chair that they used to punish children and also to study the effects of electricity on the human body.

The information in the Canada Food Guide was informed by scientific studies on children in residential schools.  That is how we learned the minimum requirements of what a person needs to eat without dying or succumbing to disease.  It is not a surprise that my grandmother did not talk much about life at the residential school, but she did talk about always being hungry.  Always, always hungry.  Imagine in a land of plenty growing up starving, surrounded by people who treat you as if you are less than human.

There can be no question that children in residential schools were abused in so many ways.  They did not get to live with the people who loved them, who wanted them, and they watched their friends die and they were forced to dig their graves.

For all of these reasons, if you are moved to, I invite you to write an email or a letter to the Prime Minister of Canada (who, along with his cabinet, abstained from voting in a motion put forth by the NDP that Canada drop it’s ‘belligerent and litigious approach to justice) – that you don’t approve of these actions, that indigenous people are people.  That Canada drops all lawsuits against indigenous peoples.  That the millions of dollars spent fighting in courts be used to provide all reservations with clean water.  Stop arresting those who are protecting unceded territory, pay compensation to St Anne’s survivors.  It won’t undo past actions, but it is a meaningful act of reconciliation.  Every letter makes a difference.

This is not meant to make anyone feel badly – too many people do not know about this, or the extent of the horror.  We cannot change the past but if we do not face this, together, we, all of us, cannot heal.

All my relations