Yesterday I wrote
Part One of this series on Canada's residential schools. Part one talks about the justification used to forcibly herd First Nation's children into huge permanent boarding schools run but Catholic and Anglican priests and nuns. The children were ripped from their homes on the reservations, put on cattle trucks and then put into trains and sent away forever to these residential schools. The purpose of these schools was to "get the Indian out"of the children. To assimilate them into white culture and language. I recommend you read Part One first before moving on to Part Two.
Today I continue the series. I'll tell some of the stories from those children and talk about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission...and I'll talk about death. The deaths of 6000 children.
The stories are hard to bear, but must be heard. They are the stories of those who as young children, some only four years old, ripped from their homes and families and brought to purpose built residential schools. Some never saw their families again. 150,000 FN children were brought to these schools over the span of a 140 years. There are not very many survivors now left to tell their stories.
One of them is Murray Crowe who lived in Kitchenuhmaykoosib, northern Ontario. He was sent to two different residential schools in Pelican Falls and Poplar Hills. He remembers his first heartbreaking nights in the schools:
“The hardest thing about going to the school is the first few days when the light goes out in the dorm,” said Crowe. “That’s when you know you’re not with your mom anymore and that’s when you start crying.”
He remembers being strapped for crying...on both sides of his hands. Because when the pain got so bad he'd turn his hand over, and the strapping continued until his hands were a bleeding mess. He was seven. He also remembers severe punishments being meted out for speaking his native language. It took 45 years for him to be able to speak it again.
Mary Hookimawillillene was placed in a school for 6 years. She recalls how the girls had to put their underpants on the end of their beds. A nun would come in and sniff each pair. If she found one smelling of pee, she'd hold up the undies and loudly tell every girl what a dirty girl the owner of the peed panties was.
Hookimawillillene recalled one young girl who couldn’t stop crying.
The nuns locked her in the basement. Her cries could be heard in Hookimawillillene’s dorm three floors up.
“I could hear her crying for help,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep just listening to her.
Bad as these stories are,
there are worse. The children were used as guinea pigs. Six residential schools were a part of experiments on nutrition during 1942 and 1952. TB was a problem in the early part of last century. By the 30's it was noted that by improving the housing and sanitation of FN, the incidence of TB dropped considerably. But when vaccines came out, it was also noted that it was cheaper to vaccinate than spend money on improving FN living conditions, so experiments on vaccines began for FN children. The BCG ( bacille Calmette -Guerin) was given to some children in residential schools. The vaccine was controversial because 71 children in Germany had died from contaminated dosages . However, the experiment in Canada proved successful. Testing and surgery still continued on FN peoples, so as to find a cure for the disease. Why FN? Many doctors and politicians considered FN people a vector for the disease. The racist phrase "dirty Indian" comes to mind. That is exactly how FN were thought of. Does this bigotry remind anybody of the Teabillies fears of Honduran immigrants?
During the 140 years, out of the 150,000 children forced into residential schools, 6000 died at the schools. Most of those dead children were buried on or near the school grounds, but the parents were never notified of their children's deaths. They weren't given an opportunity to bury them or grieve for them. They didn't know until their child just never came home again. Even then, they never knew for sure. Many children ran away and simply never made it home.
That 6000 figure is just an estimate. Not all the provinces have handed over their records yet. BC is due to hand over their electronic records of 4,900 FN children's deaths at the TRC ceremony in Edmonton. Not all of those recorded BC deaths are from children in residential schools. How many are, is yet to be determined.
In 2008, Prime Minister Harper issued a formal apology to First Nations, and along with that apology, a compensation package was sent to every survivor of residential schools. The compensation to date has been 1.9 billion. Along with that apology and compensation, a Commission was set up to record the stories of the survivors and to make recommendations. It was called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. On Tuesday June 2nd, that Commission was completed and 94 recommendations were set out
The report on the Recommendations contains 94 recommendations that need to be implemented. I have written down the subheadings only here, but you should go read the whole thing..
1) Child Welfare.
2) Education
3) Language and Culture
4) Health
5) Justice
6) Reconciliation
7) Royal Proclamation and Covenant Reconciliation
8) Settlement between Parties and signing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
9) Equality for FN within the legal system
10 National Council for reconciliation
11) Professional Development and Training for public servant
12) Church apology and Reconciliation
13)Education for Reconciliation
14)Youth Programs
15) Museums and archives
16) Missing children and burial information
17) National Center for Truth and Reconciliation
18) Commemoration
19) Media and Reconciliation
20) Sports and Reconciliation
21) Business and Reconciliation
22) Newcomers
The healing process for the survivors and their families has begun. It will be a long road to recovery, but worth it.
Thank you for reading.