Preserving Indian Residential School legacy

“I’m a survivor of a Residential School so it’s important for me that each generation is aware of what has happened to us in the Residential School and that history does not repeat itself. I’m especially concerned after I heard the Supreme Court of Canada has decided to destroy the Residential School Survivors’ evidence that they told about their stories, their abuses: their sexual abuses, their physical abuses, their emotional abuses and their spiritual abuses. I want to be that voice, until I die. Their stories must be repeated.”

                                                                                                                                       – Theresa Okima Hall

By Kelly Anne Smith

WARNING: This article describes abuse in graphic detail, some sexual in nature, that readers will find disturbing. If you feel any distress from this article, please call The National Indian Residential School Crisis Line toll-free (1-866-925-4419).

 

NORTH BAY— Participants were seated in a circle to hear Theresa Okima Hall speak. When she introduced herself, she spoke in a gentle voice; however, when she repeats the horrors she was told of Residential Schools, her voice is stern. And when she vows to fight to keep the stories alive so it would never happen again in Canada, her voice thunders with determination.

Invited to Canadore College on Orange Shirt Day, former Justice of the Peace and Chief of Attawapiskat First Nation, Theresa Hall spoke to students on being a survivor of the Indian Residential School system.

The stories she told were not just her own. She holds in her heart the memories of suffering children. She heard their stories as a judicial panel member determining testimonial evidence.

Holding an Eagle Feather, Theresa spoke in English.

“I speak and write my language (Cree) fluently. My Mom made sure I was able to write my language. I think I was five-and-a-half-years-old because my sister who is three years older than me had gone on to Residential School. So I wanted to be able to write to her. I was determined.”

Theresa talked about her mother helping her.

“She said you must memorize it if that is what you want to do. She showed me, ‘This is what you have to learn’. I memorized the Cree alphabet. She said, ‘Sound out your words whenever you want to write to your sister’. I did. And that’s how I learned. At the time, I didn’t know why she wanted me to learn my language. My goal was to be able to communicate with my sister who I was so close to at that time. I still am.”

Theresa looked for healing after being a survivor of the Residential School. She began to take part in ceremonies.

“And that’s how I turned my life around…I attended two Residential Schools. One that’s St. Anne’s in Fort Albany. They’ve made the news. And also Fort George, Quebec for three years. That’s where I learned the French language. I don’t speak it now.”

“Prior to Residential School, I was raised on a trap-line for the first five years of my life. I learned to honour the creation. I was taught that our relatives are the animals and birds – the animals that we hunted and the birds that we hunted, and the fish we ate.  I was raised in a winterized home—the teepee. It was covered with a padding of mud. It was actually very warm. And I loved it. It was a very loving childhood that I was raised in by my parents and my extended family – my aunts and uncles and also the community of people that were with us at that time. There were three or four families in that surroundings. We helped one another. If my mother had to go and chop wood, we were cared for by the other families. There was never a fear of being left alone. My mother didn’t have to worry.”

“At the age of five and half years old, I left all of that. And I entered the Residential School at the age of seven. That’s when my world crumbled.”

“We lived in an institution that was very bare, unloving, uncaring. The only positive thing that I can think about in Residential School is that the nun who was looking after us at that time was a cousin of my mom. I didn’t know that at the time, but my mother spoke to her and said, ‘Look after my daughter’. Nevertheless, there were teachers who made sure that whatever we were taught by our parents – the culture, the language, and the ceremonies – were the work of the devil. The only way to get to Heaven was through the Catholic church. Beliefs of my grandparents would for sure send us to Hell—that was drilled into me. ”

“As a survivor, as a student of that Residential School, I used to fear before going to bed. I was in fear the devil was going to get me for whatever reasons the nuns, and teachers who were nuns, had planted in my head. And the priests, who made sure they preached about those things, every Sunday, and every day of our lives we were in school.”

“We got up at 6 a.m., no matter what age, you were to be at the chapel by 7 a.m. We marched. Everything we did, we marched two by two. At 7:30 a.m. we marched to our dining room table. We marched out of there at 8 a.m. for the older kids to do some chores.”

“In 1994, when I was on the Justice of the Peace bench, I was asked to sit on a panel to see whether there would be enough evidence that survivors were telling about abuses we encountered in school – physical, sexual, and spiritual. Since I was part of that panel, I heard my former Residential School mates tell me about the rapes they encountered at the age of 14. I’ll tell you about the lady I was very close to. She has now passed on.”

Theresa proceeded to recount the story of her former Residential School mate.

“We were the best of friends but I didn’t know she had been sexually abused. She said, ‘One night in our dormitory, a nun came and said, ‘Come, your brother wants to see you’.’ She had younger siblings and she was very protective of them. She was also apprehended by the Children’s Aid Society. I recall those apprehended by the [Children’s Aid Society] got it even worse than us.”

She continues in her friend’s voice.

“When I got there Theresa, there were two men in the room but they’d put paper bags on their heads with eye holes. They proceeded to rape me.”

“This was at night. No local people would be there at night. They only came to work in the school during the day. It had to be the religious brothers. Those are the ones she claimed raped her. Nine months later, she was taken to the hospital in Fort Albany. It’s burned down since. They gave her a gas to make her sleep and they cut the baby out.”

Theresa motions across her abdomen.

“It was like this where they made the incision. They took the baby out.”

“She may have been in and out when she was being cut open. She could hear the baby, the cry of a baby and then that was the end of it and then she doesn’t remember.”

“She was locked in the basement for the whole time of recovery. No one was allowed to go there. But she took me there in 1994. She asked if I could hear the cry of a baby. At this time, the hospital had been abandoned. You had to go downstairs and up the hall into an old chamber where it happened. Inside the hospital, there were two furnaces. She believes that’s where the baby was burned after it was born.”

“I was not the only one to hear that. There was a panel of five people she relayed that story to. That’s just one of [the stories]. The other one that stuck in my mind was told by a former Chief from my home. He has passed on. I worked with him.”

Theresa repeats what he said.

“I was nine-years-old. One of the brothers took us to his room. There were five of us. He asked us to masturbate. We looked at each other and we didn’t know what to do. We were so embarrassed to be asked that in front of our little friends. The brother yelled at the top of his voice, ‘I asked for you to masturbate or else you are going to get the strap’. And they did. He was a pedophile, this brother. He wanted to see who he could abuse.”

Theresa explains her intentions.

“I want to talk about these stories as I heard them. I also believe they should be recorded. I intend to do that. The four other panel members are still alive and can verify what I am saying.”

“Not so long ago, the Supreme Court of Canada, made a ruling that agreed with the federal government to destroy the testimonies, the evidence gathered, the testimonies by the former Residential School students, the Survivors of Residential School. The government is still abusing us as Aboriginal people.”

“When the Prime Minister apologized, I was Chief of Attawapiskat. Instead of attending the meeting at the parliament buildings with the other leaders, I chose to stay home. Two men from my community who are now Elders went because their brothers did not return home. They ran away from the harsh environment and abuses that took place at the Residential Schools, but they didn’t make it. They found evidence of their journey.  They saw rafts that had broken up. They were trying to make their escape.”

“That’s why I’m here.  I believe in honouring the Survivors of the Residential Schools. But government is still at it, trying to destroy that evidence. And it’s up to us, each and every one of us, to ensure that the legacy of the Residential School survives.”

Theresa sternly says that it wasn’t enough when the Prime Minister apologized, “For destroying our culture, our language, and our well-being as Survivors of the Residential Schools.”

“It is not only the Survivors that are suffering or have suffered as a result of what happened to us. The abuses we suffered. I have extended that violence towards my children, second generation. That’s why it is important for us to heal what we encountered as children at a young age.”

“No one should have to go through what we went through. It would have been okay if the government would have said to us we are going to provide you with a western education but you can keep your culture and your language. That would have been more positive to do that than forcefully try to assimilate us in western culture. We would have made it as a proud nation of people and languages. Here we are still fighting to have it in our schools.”

Theresa took a moment to recompose herself and quietly said, “I find it hard every time I recall”.

Theresa calls for support from Canadians.

“We need our non-[Indigenous] people to support us. Cry out for us. Help us. That’s why I’m here. I want to make sure that those Survivors and those that lost their lives and never went home are remembered.”

“I recall another lady who has since passed on. She was an Elder when she spoke. She said there was a bishop and she was a witness. She witnessed a boy who spoke and said he didn’t like the food. A seven-year-old boy didn’t like the food. He told it to a nun. The priest happened to be there. She said the priest was not a bishop at that time yet. [The man] was six-foot-two, a very heavy man with a bushy beard. When he spoke, we were afraid of him because he had a thundering voice. The lady I talk about is Nancy. She said that because he refused to eat the food he was given, [the man] took exception to it.”

“And when everybody was gone except for Nancy, he took the boy and slammed him against the – you know how there’s a step?”

Theresa has motioned a step-like shape with her hand.

“The pointy step. He slammed him against that. When he didn’t move, he asked Nancy to pick him up. Nancy’s first response was, ‘You pick him up, you are the one that killed him’. The boy died, right there in front of them.”

“So, those abuses, they’re murders. That’s what they are. They killed babies. They killed babies putting them in the furnaces. There’s two people murdered and Nancy passed on.”

“We need to record them and hear the Survivors who are still here. We are getting on in years.  We need your help, each and everyone of you.”

Theresa looked at each person listening wide-eyed.

“I’d like to hear you make that commitment so I can take it onto others. I thank-you, miigwech.”

Theresa Okima Hall then warmly hugged each listener in the room.

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled the collection of accounts of abuse of students of Residential Schools to be destroyed, citing privacy of claimants and perpetrators. There are 38,000 accounts that will be retained for a 15-year period before destruction. Survivors can choose to have their records preserved before the deadline.