She escaped but lost her right to education
By Beverly Anne Sabourin & Peter Andre Globensky
The Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission recently completed four years of public hearings recording story after story of appalling physical and sexual abuse, neglect and selective cultural genocide. But there are some narratives coming out of this colonialist and racist period that will never be heard.
There are stories from those who escaped the clutches of Indian agents and religious orders but who were nevertheless sideswiped by this terribly misguided policy.
Margaret Alice Agnes (not her real name), an 84 year-old Anishinabe-kwe from the north shore of Lake Superior is one of these stories. Born in 1930 on a north-of-Superior reserve, Margaret, her parents and many siblings lived the hard but satisfactory life of the early 20th century Anishinabe, blending the best of First Nations culture with some of the material trappings of settler society.
In addition to reaping the resources of the land he so much honoured, Margaret’s father worked as a woodcutter and prospector. Margaret’s mother often worked alongside her father, as well as tending to the growing family.
“We didn’t have a lot of things, but we were rich and happy in many other ways,” she says.“We had what we needed and what we didn’t have, we didn’t miss!”
Margaret was able to attend the community elementary school and was about to complete Grade 3 when her life changed dramatically. Her father had witnessed Indian agents relocating community children to a residential school in Thunder Bay — “for their own good and for a long time,” as Margaret tells it. Knowing of the anguish this would cause both the children and he and his wife, he knew instinctively this was wrong.
“I remember him coming home and telling my mom to pack up the kids and whatever we could carry,” she recalls. “We were going into the bush and we would leave the very next day. I didn’t know what was going on and I was afraid.”
Margaret was to spend the next eight years of her life in the bush in a one-room trapper’s cabin with her parents, siblings and nature as her only teachers. They were hidden away from the clutches of the clerics and government agents who thought they could “civilize” Native children by destroying their cultural identify and the language they used to express it.
“I remember my dad telling my mom that if anybody came around when he was not there that she should not sign any papers for anything and that the kids were not going anywhere.”
When Margaret came out of the bush at 17 and went directly to work in the lumber bush camps, she did so with only a third-grade education.
“I taught myself how to read, to write and to count,” she says. “I was to old to go back to school.”
Margaret might not have endured the experience of being in a residential school classroom, but she has certainly suffered because of the system’s existence. As a single parent, she struggled all her life with low-paying jobs and often had to rely, reluctantly, on social assistance to raise her children.
Even though she “survived” the residential school period, she was still denied a birthright enjoyed by every other Canadian child – the right to a basic education in her own community.
Beverly Sabourin, recently retired as the Vice-Provost of Aboriginal Initiatives at Lakehead University, is a citizen of the Pic Mobert Ojibwe. Peter Globensky is a former senior policy advisor on Aboriginal Affairs in the Office of the Prime Minister.They invite your comments at basa1@shaw.ca