Category Archives: Indigenous–Indian Residential Schools

A Voice for Justice: Murray Sinclair

Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools, Indigenous--Reconciliation

 

I first heard about Murray Sinclair when he and I were both pretty young lawyers who both worked in the same judicial district of Manitoba. He worked out of Selkirk and I worked in Steinbach.  He became an associate for Howard Pawley a lawyer and cabinet minister in the Ed Schreyer government and later a premier of Manitoba. I had a modest rural practice.

 

Justice Sinclair was born about 2 years later than I. He was appointed a judge of the Provincial Court of Manitoba, later of the Queen’s Bench in Manitoba. I vaguely remember that I was a bit jealous when he was appointed a judge. After all, I thought, he was younger than I was. How could that be?  Well, its simple. He earned it. He later became Associate Chief Justice of Manitoba and served on the Manitoba Justice Inquiry looking in to the unjust treatment of indigenous people by the provincial judicial system.

We only met once many years later after he had been appointed as Chair to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (‘TRC’) of Canada. I vaguely remember when that Commission was established, I thought people were making too much fuss about those schools. It was my ignorant evaluation that those schools were a matter of a few Catholic priests who were bad apples and who had horribly sexually abused children. What they had done to the children in their care was awful, if true, but no one else was to blame. I was wrong—dead wrong as it turned out.

A few years after the TRC was established and stories starting coming out that things were much more serious than we had realized. It was much more than  a few bad apples. Those schools were a result of systemic racial segregation, white supremacy and suppression of many indigenous children by the government of Manitoba and often by schools operated by various Christian churches.   Many children had been taken against their will from out of the love and care of their parents or guardians.

I remember the first time I heard Justice Sinclair speak on the history of residential schools, to a group of people who had been appointed to various government commissions and administrative bodies. Then I heard him a second time when he spoke to a group of Canadian lawyers at a meeting of the Canadian Bar Association. Those were  eye-opening experiences. I realized then that the issue of residential schools went deep into Canadian society and was a serious mark on that society. It was a stain on our honour.  After his talk I went up to thank him personally for opening my eyes.  Had he not opened my eyes I might have remained ignorant of the injustices created in the name of Canada against some of its most vulnerable citizens. We owe him and his fellow commissioners a great debt for the work they did on our behalf.

Justice Murray Sinclair was a giant of Canada who together with his fellow Commissioners brought to the attention of a nation the horrendous abuse, discrimination, and suppression of indigenous children in Canada. In doing that he did a great service to our country because he brought these injustices to the attention of the world and opened a path toward reconciliation. Otherwise, many white people like me would have remained ignorant of this great injustice. Justice Sinclair was a powerful voice for justice and the world should be grateful.  He was a true hero of Canada who made the world a better place. of Canada.

Lately I heard Justice Sinclair say there will always be those who deny history.  I agree. we see that all around.  After all, there are always those who prefer comfortable myths to the truth. For example, a few years ago the premier of Manitoba at the time, Brian Pallister, believed the myth that European settlers who came to Manitoba came solely to build and not destroy.  I wish it were that simple.

I remember what Justice Sinclair said: “this nation must never forget what it once did to its most vulnerable people.” Who has ever uttered a greater truth?  Justice Murray Sinclair was a great and clear voice for justice. He was a Canadian treasure. A Canadian hero if ever there was one.

Psychopaths and Sociopaths raising children

Abuse of Power, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

Usually, Father Doughty took a boy to his room at Kuper Island Indian Residential School, but occasionally, often under the influence of alcohol, he would just jump into bed with a boy in the dorm and have sex with him while the other children were listening. But the boys all stayed silent about the abuse. As Duncan McCue the CBC host of the podcast series said, “for many the abuse and silence carried on for years, bottled up, ravaging their hearts, minds, and souls.”

These were the “fathers” that were raising indigenous children in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools because the government thought it would be unwise to let them be raised by their savage parents.

For years, after he was an adult, James Charley, one of Doughty’s victims, said, “My wife had to clean up the mess.” That, of course, is a very common occurrence. The children who are abused later abuse others, including the ones they love the most. This is what they learned in  residential school. This is how the problems are rolled down the generations. Religious leaders taught this to them. Victims of abuse later lashed out at other vulnerable people. They didn’t learn to be good parents. They learned to be abusers. This is the hideous legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools.

As one member of the community said, it is a community in which “Psychopaths and Sociopaths raise children and that has everything to do with missing and murdered children.”

The effects of the abuse truly do cascade through the generations. It is never fair for us to suggest to the victims, or even the next generation,  that they “should just get over it,” as I have heard more than once. It really is an ignorant and unbecoming comment to make.

 

Oblates were Holy Men

Abuse of Power, Exploitation, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

I want to warn people this post contains some difficult details of abuse at Kuper Island Indian Residential School. I don’t want to emphasize the sexual abuse because the abuse at such schools went so much farther than that. But these issues should not be avoided either.

Brother Glenn Doughty was a young Oblate at the school who had been taught (indoctrinated?) to sacrifice himself to God. He would not pursue wealth. But there were things he would pursue—with determination. Doughty was stuck on a remote island where there was little he could do except look after a bunch of kids. Yet Doughty thrived there.

The Oblates at the school were tough. They dominated the children. Now that was not uncommon in schools at the time.  I also attended schools in Steinbach at about the same time  where the teacher tried to dominate the children, but the domination in our schools was on an entirely different plane than Kuper Island.

The Oblates ate relatively lavish meals, at least compared to the less than modest fare of the children. This special treatment for Oblates was of course justified, the brothers universally felt, on account of the sacrifices they made for God. They “deserved” lavish meals.  So at least they thought. As Duncan McCue of the CBC said, “they had a strong sense of entitlement.” That is not uncommon for religious leaders of young children.

One day Brother Doughty told Tony Charley, one of the students, that he would be getting his own room. Charley thought this was a special privilege. That wasn’t quite right. In Tony’s first week in the dorm after he stopped being a day student and became a dorm resident, he was invited into Doughty’s room. Doughty told Tony “We should get to know each other.”

When it was time to sleep Doughty told Tony to sleep with him. “he grabbed me inside my pyjamas and started to rub my penis. Then he grabbed my hand and put it over his penis, so I did the same thing. It was very shocking to have that happen.”

Father Doughty was friendly with many boys in the dorm often inviting them to his room for the night for what he called “magic tricks.” Tony encountered Brother Doughty regularly. Tony did not know what to do. He wondered, “This is a holy man. Why is he doing this?” He could not understand it. At the time Tony knew little about sex. There certainly was no sex education in the Catholic school. The abuse lasted from September of 1967 to December of 1967. After that Tony exercised an act of resistance.  Tony moved to the upper bunk bed, and Doughty stopped coming. But of course, he moved on to other boys in the dormitory including Tony’s younger brother James. There are always more victims available in a residential school. There was an endless supply of vulnerable children far away from protection.

That is of course heaven for sexual predators. And hell for the victims.

In the hands of the Oblates

Abuse of Power, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

What was it like to be a student at one of the most notorious residential schools in Canada? One episode of the CBC documentary on Kuper Island told the story of two very young indigenous brothers James and Tony Charley who shared their accounts of multiple incidents of sexual abuse at the residential school on Kuper Island and in particular abuse they suffered at the hands of a young Oblate who was the chaperone for more than 30 young boys as part of a special trip to Expo 67 in Montreal.  This was brother Doughty.

This incident came as a bit of a shock for me. I was also at Expo 67 that summer as part of a trip I made with 4 friends on a mad adventure to Montreal. For us it was a joyous experience.  For the young indigenous boys, it was not all idyllic. Far from it in fact. They were in the hands of brother Dooughty.

The Oblates are an order of Catholic missionaries who ran nearly 50 residential schools in Canada including Kuper Island Indian Residential School. The order was founded in the 19th century with a mission to evangelize the poor. This missionary spirit was important. Most teachers at residential schools had degrees, but their wages according to Duncan McCue, the CBC the host of the podcast,   were “Piddling wages.” Why did they come to such schools to teach? What was it that attracted them there? Perhaps it was a steady supply of vulnerable children.

Survivors James and Tony Charley shared stories of horrendous sexual abuse at the hands of members of the Oblate at Kuper Island Residential School who they trusted absolutely as a representative of God.  They had been taught that everything the Oblates did was in the service of God. Even if it seemed strange these were men of God who should be considered spiritual leaders.

This spiritual element of the abuse added a cruel existential element to their experience.  Their stories showed in the words of Duncan McCue  “The abuse poisoned every aspect of their life at the school, even things that were supposed to be fun.” Or things that were supposed to be sacred.  It doesn’t get much worse than this.

Each child had different experiences in those schools. Some experiences were much worse than others. Some survivors testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that their experiences were positive. But those were rare. And very few if any were spared.

Destroying Families/The Real Savages

Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

Recently I talked to woman I know personally, whose mother was a Residential School survivor who  had been adversely affected by her experience in school. She told me that the problem was that as a result of her mother’s separation from her family she never learned how to be a parent. She had no one to teach her. In fact, she was taught at the Residential School that her mother and father were incompetent parents even though that did not align with her mother’s experience. Yet her church and the government told her that was true. But, neither the school nor the government taught her mother how to be a mother. She had to learn on her own.

I think we can all agree that this would have been very difficult. This was one of the many problems with Indian Residential Schools that I knew nothing about until I read the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This created a generational problem. Parents who never learned to be parents then raised children in less than ideal circumstances and those children later became parents of their own, and also lacked proper experience. This is how such a problem cascades through the generations.

James and Tony Charley, both students at Kuper Island Residential School, were part of a 3 generational family that attended the school on Kuper Island. Their mother attended as did her parents. But the family was not kept together at the school and the children were not allowed to bond with their kin. They were kept separate and apart.

One of the survivors of the school talked to the CBC about how efficient the order of oblates of the Roman Catholic Church were destroying the families. As soon as a child arrived at the school,  they were separated from their siblings. This is consistent with what the Canadian Prime Minister John A. MacDonald wanted. He wanted to separate children from their “savage parents.” And as the survivor told CBC radio, “they were very good at that. They did a pretty damn good job of separating us.” If two brothers were at school at the same time they were still kept apart as much as possible.  They were very good at that. They were not so good at education. Who really were the savages?

Calling the Indigenous people savages is a way of dehumanizing them. Once dehumanized murderous intent, or genocidal intent finds fertile ground.

That of course brings up the question. Why did they do this?  James had an answer: “To destroy families.” Their purpose was to destroy families! According to Duncan McCue of the CBC, 

“That is exactly why Canada’s first prime minister created residential schools. Separate children from their ‘savage’ parents. It was an all-out war on indigenous families. In many ways it worked.”

 

Mission accomplished!

Canadian society is still paying a heavy price for such mistakes.

What happened to Richard Thomas at Kuper Island Residential School?

Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

Richard Thomas, a student at the Kuper Island Residential School of British Columbia, and one of the main subjects of the CBC documentary podcast series, was smart, kind and well-loved. He was having no problems in school and he wanted to go further in education. Then inexplicably, days before his graduation, which he was excited about, Richard was found dead in the Kuper Island school gym. He was hanging from a rafter. His death was ruled a suicide — with no further questions as to why. CBC pieced together a portrait of the teenager through his own writings, and found an old coroner’s report and police report that raised more questions than answers about how Richard Thomas died.

The day Richard’s body was found the children were in the custody of brother Dufour. The officer based his report entirely on statements from Brother Dufour. That report said Richard was upset by his parent’s divorce, which Belvie, his sister, said never happened. The police report also referred to the fact that Richard’s journals talked about death.  But remember he lived in an Indian residential school where death was common. That did not necessarily mean he wanted to die.

The reports also showed Richard was not having trouble in school and wanted to go farther in school. It did not sound like a boy ready to commit suicide, but such students don’t always act rationally.

It seems the police officer might have had tunnel vision and closed his eyes to the alternatives, besides the report of Brother Dufour.

The death was ruled a suicide. But was it?

To try to answer this question, CBC reporter McCue turned to an expert—Kona Williams. She is Cree and Mohawk. She was also the first indigenous pathologist in Canada based in northern Ontario and she was asked to review Richard’s autopsy. She has a lot of knowledge about deaths in residential schools and had a unique insight. Her father was a residential school survivor.

She said the autopsy was brief and said the cause of Richard’s death was “strangulation”. Williams said she would have described the cause of death as hanging rather than strangulation. The word “strangulation” implies that the death was done by somebody else. It was that word that led Richard’s sister Belvie to think Richard had been murdered. In the autopsy there was no indication of bruises which are typical in cases of strangulation by another person. The autopsy was very brief. Only a page. Based on that Williams could not offer an opinion on whether he had been murdered or not. The report was far from definitive. At the time it was an adequate autopsy report, but today for a death in a school there would be much more information available. Many pages more.

That does bring up the issue whether or not the investigation was inadequate. Residential school children received very poor treatment while alive. There is no reason to think an investigation after death would have been any better.

As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report showed, often families of residential school children were not even told when one of their family members had died in school. It is possible that the death of Richard was hardly investigated at all. It really would not have been surprising.

There was no indication that  authorities really wanted a thorough investigation of what happened at that school which closed in 1975. Like other schools in recent years in Canada, bodies were found buried there in graves that were unmarked. Sometimes there are good reasons to go looking farther into unmarked graves. This was one of them.

Escape from the Canadian Alcatraz

Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

In the CBC podcast Kuper Island, Philip Joseph told Duncan McCue the story of a young boy who tried to escape from Kuper Island. Unfortunately, he drowned.  The body of the boy washed up on the beach.  The other students were all forced to go to the beach to see the body on the sand. It was felt this would be for their own good. One of the priests warned the survivors as they stared at the body, what would happen to them if they chose to try to escape.  The students stared at the body and saw a crab climb out of his mouth. It was a horrific memory that would last a life time. Philip tried to look away, but a priest hit him over the head with a 2 by 4 plank. He said they were kept there for 2 hours looking at the body. Joseph bit his lip until it was bleeding. He tried not to cry for, “if you cried, they really beat you up.”

 

Philip Joseph had to stare at a dead child a second time. The other one was Richard Thomas. He wanted to look away again, and again, was hit for failing to look. The priests told the young students looking at the body of Richard hanging in the gym, “If you feel sorry for yourself this is what is going to happen to you. Is that what you want?”So the young students tried not to feel sorry for themselves even when they were beaten or abused or when one of their family was beaten or abused. Joseph said, “every day reminds me of residential.”

Sounds a lot like Alcatraz doesn’t it? Our Canadian Alcatraz I guess.

 

Intergenerational Trauma

Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

In the CBC podcast on Kuper Island Residential School, Duncan McCue made an important point about residential schools: “the death of a child in a residential school isn’t a thing of the past. It travels like ripples over water, touching the generations.”

Richard Thomas, an Indigenous student at Kuper Island Residential School in British Columbia,  died in 1966 but it is not a thing of the past. That death continues to be present. That is how inter-generational trauma works. For example, Belvie’s son John Thomas, was affected by residential schools even though he never attended one.  His mother’s experience affected his mother and he paid the price for that. Growing up with his mother was extremely difficult. She was an active alcoholic and as a result he became an alcoholic as well.

The pain Belvie experienced at the residential school affected the rest of her life and the lives of those around her. That pain included the pain of experiencing her brother’s death. That amplified the abuse she experienced directly.

John Belvie explained it this way:

 “Here is something that is extremely difficult for me. My mom gets insanely abused by these nuns and priests…that is somebody that is messing with you, and the problem for the next generation is that we get messed up by the people that are supposed to be nurturing us. Our own parents are the one’s that are mangling us.”

 

That is how inter-generational trauma works. And it is ugly.

After Richard died the students were forced to look at the body of Richard hanging in the gymnasium. Can you imagine that? That disturbed all the other students deeply. John Thomas said such a sight was “fuel for alcoholism.” But John wanted to learn the truth about his uncle Richard Thomas. He concluded that Richard had been sodomized by a Catholic priest at the school and then killed by that priest. How much more horrific can things get?

John wanted to see justice for his uncle. Specifically, he wanted to know that people cared enough about justice for his uncle that the authorities would actually pursue justice for him by locking up the perpetrator.

 

After Richard passed away, Belvie’s entire family eventually turned to alcohol to mask the pain. All of them were young when it happened and all of them in turn were also abused at the school. Each one of them was abused! It seemed like her entire family was trying to kill themselves through alcohol or in other ways. 2 out of 17 “succeeded” in doing exactly that.   Belvie was somehow able to break through the trauma. Belvie was 73 years old at the time she was interviewed for the podcast. She just wanted to live in peace and believed that finding out what happened to Richard, she believed, would bring her peace. She believed strongly that he did not commit suicide.

 

The Case of Richard Thomas

Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

Duncan McCue of CBC travelled to Penelakut, an island off the coast of B.C., and the site of the Kuper Island Residential School. The community has torn down the reviled building, but the dark memories of what happened at the nearly-century old institution linger. Survivors James and Tony Charlie gave him  a tour of their old school grounds, and they looked into the mystery of what happened to one boy, Richard Thomas, who did not make it out alive. He died at age 15. He was he was the brother of Belvie I blogged about earlier.

The only thing that was certain about Richard’s death was that it was not caused by natural causes. Richard was found dead hanging from a rope thrown over a light fixture where the students discovered the body. Some children suspected the priest who had been regularly mean to Richard for some reason also killed him. Others think Richard was driven to suicide by the intolerable repeated abuse that he suffered. The priest was charged with sexual assault in another case, but died before the trial.

The first few years at the school Richard actually wanted to become a priest. That was a big deal. Indigenous people rarely had such aspirations.

However, Richard’s enthusiasm for the priesthood dwindled after a few years in school. Days before his graduation from Kuper Island, Richard phoned home and let his family know how excited he was about his graduation. He also said when he got home he was going to talk about everything at the school. He did not say what it was.  His family never heard from him again. Two days later the police called and told the family Richard had committed suicide. They didn’t believe it. Why would a boy who was so excited about his graduation commit suicide so close to the glorious event? It made no sense.

The coroner told them it didn’t seem right and suggested they look into it.

Richard and Belvie’s mother tried to find out from the Oblates, a religious order who ran the school at Kuper Island. She was told, “You have heard all you’re going to hear.” People had told McCue that the reason Richard was upset was that he had heard his parents were divorcing. This was not true. They were never divorcing. They remained together.

Another story circulated through the school that Richard had been killed. Given the circumstances this made sense. Belvie believed Richard was murdered. Much of the podcast series by the CBC explores what happened to Richard Thomas.

The Police Investigate Kuper Island

Exploitation, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools, Sexual harassment/Assault

 

I will give a trigger warn ing here. Some of this post is very graphic and people might find it disturbing.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported about a 1939 police investigation into the Kuper Island residential school that had been sparked by a series of cases involving children running away from school/home. After months of archival requests, the CBC team got a copy of the report. It was a RCMP report about 6 boys who took 2 canoes from indigenous people on the island.

The RCMP officer who was investigating though did not do what officers usually did, namely march the kids back to school. He was actually interested. This officer actually asked the children for a statement. He asked the children why they had run away. 2 students said they did not want to go back because it was “ bad.” Another said a priest, whom he named, tried to commit “unnatural acts” with him. Parents of all 6 boys did not want to send their sons sent back to the school. The fathers were very angry. One threatened to go to the school with a shotgun. The officer suggested follow up was needed. As a result the RCMP gathered more than 50 statements. The officer said, “I am convinced conditions are not as they should be re the school.”

Here is a statement by one student:

“One day just before Christmas [name redacted] took me out on his boat. He told me to take my pants down in the boat as we were going to go to bed. “If I didn’t,” he told me, “I am going to throw you off the boat into the water.” He got into bed beside me. He tried to stick his thing into me. He could not get it in. So he asked me to play with his thing. I had to do it because I could not get away from him.’

 

There were multiple reports from girls who said the church Fathers were assaulting them in the laundry room. McCue said “the volume of statements here is staggering. This isn’t just one or two kids who are saying this. This is dozens of children.”

Then the Department of Indian Affairs [‘DIA’) got involved. What did they do? They tried to have the officers labelled as insubordinate! But they changed their strategy after reading the statements of the children. The priest who took the boy out in the boat was assigned to another mission in another province, where, of course, he was free to molest again.

A school employee was dismissed.  The Department of Indian Affairs (‘DIA’) arranged for him to leave the province too. As a result, the local Catholic Bishop sent furious letters to Ottawa. Bishop J.C. Cody wrote, “Though quite cognizant of certain breaches of morality, I fail to see any advantage in ruining an institution because of some individuals supposed or even real misdeeds.” He didn’t even care if the allegations were true! Since the suspects were out of the province the case was closed. No further investigations. No charges were laid.

Duncan McCue of the CBC reached what I believe was the right conclusion: “As far as the government and church were concerned, investigating and prosecuting wrong doers took a back seat to protecting the school’s reputation.” After full investigation nothing happened!

So, for Belvie, one of the girls at the school, the abuse continued. One day a father told her that her brother was sick and asked her to follow him to the infirmary. That was unusual because girls usually did not mix with their families or others in the school. There she met another man—one of the priests. He grabbed her and covered her nose and she passed out. When she regained consciousness, she was on the floor naked. She did not know what had happened. She went to the bathroom because semen was running out of her body. She was 11 years old.

Although Belvie did not report it to the authorities it is highly unlikely that anything would ever have happened. As Duncan McCue said, “In the 85-year history of the residential school at Kuper Island, only one person was ever charged—Glen Doughty. But it was clear there were many serial abusers at the school. Not just one bad apple as you so often hear. And it wasn’t only male employees. ”

Belvie made a startling remark about the nuns: “They had no time for us, unless they were sexually abusing us.” Belvie endured 5 years of abuse at Kuper Island, until she left in 1962. But her brother Richard had to stay. More about him later