Category Archives: Indigenous–Indian Residential Schools

A School they Called Alcatraz

Exploitation, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

Kuper Island was an island, surrounded by ocean. Yet children tried to escape. And like Alcatraz it was very difficult to escape. One of those children, Emil William escaped in 1907 but drowned in the ocean as a result. This really was a case of ‘sink or swim’.

CBC reporter Duncan McCue reported in his podcast about Kuper Island as follows: “By the 1940s and 50s, school officials were writing about an epidemic of violence. One case threatened to expose the depth of the problem.”

Then there was  the  case involving two  indigenous girls, Patricia and Beverley Joseph who untied a boat and sailed for freedom. Sadly, they never made it. The body of one of the girls was found in the ocean. The other disappeared completely. An inquest was held but the jury did not  ask why girls would try to flee by boat in the night and dead of winter.   What made it so bad there that they would take such a chance? After 15 minutes of deliberation, they ruled the deaths accidental. It was the fault of the young girls. The victims were blamed. Pretty simple right?

The girls were Belvie’s cousins. McCue interviewed her for the series. Belvie, like her cousin,  did not like the food at the school. Now I know students often don’t like the food at their schools.  But the complaints at Residential Schools were in a class of their own. If you don’t believe me  read the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report. It was eye-opening.  She was fed bowls of raw, sour, lumpy porridge. She said she was always hungry. This was a very common complaint at residential schools. One time when government inspectors were coming they each got 2 pork chops. When the inspectors failed to arrive, they had to give their pork chops back. But did the girls take such dangerous chances because of bad food? Probably not.

Other girls in the school warned Belvie that there were dangerous people in and around the school. When she was 11 years old, she was told to bring the towels down to the laundry room. While there she heard a sound near the laundry that scared her. So, she ran, but fell down and hit her head. When she came to, she was naked lying on the towels and she felt like she had been riding a bike and had fallen down on the bicycle bar. She didn’t know what happened. We can guess what happened. But we don’t know.

Belvie  said pretty well every girl who was more than 10 years old was sent to bring towels to the laundry room. In time they all learned what happened there. She said, “This brother was raping them all.”

Can you blame young girls for trying to escape?  Is it their fault if they drown? Or it perhaps, more complicated than that? The School was called Alcatraz.

2023 Reconciliation Day

Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools, Indigenous--Reconciliation

Today was Reconciliation Day.  Many of us still don’t know what that means. We want to  support reconciliation but don’t know how to do it. I am not saying I do. I remember though what Niigaan Sinclair  a well-known indigenous spokesman in Manitoba told me af few years ago when I asked what an old white guy could to to participate in a small way towards reconciliation.  He said it was not up to him to tell  an old white guy from Steinbach what he should do to. He said it was not his business to tell me that. It was up to me to offer something. It was not up to the offended to tell me what to do.

Sinclair though did give a hint. He said I could talk to white friends.  Many of those, he said, would not listen to him, or read his articles in the paper, but the white guys might listen to me. I assured him not many would, but I thought then, and do now, that this made sense.  I should reach out to white guys and women and just offer my point of view.  For what its worth (I know not much as I am certainly not an influencer) but I might reach a couple of people. Maybe not convince them but to engage them. That is one of the reasons I have continued to blog about some of these issues.

Today I accepted an invitation to the Seniors club in town to attend a dinner in recognition of truth and reconciliation. We were entertained first by 2 young indigenous hoop dancing girls Kimberley and Charisma Mason. The girls were 14 and 15-years-old.  They were descendants of residential school survivors. Trauma from such schools, one of them said, had changed the lives of the student. For example, it disconnected them from the love of their parents, kin, and communities. That was not surprising. Until fairly recently, indigenous people were not even allowed to practice or share their ceremonies, including dancing or potlucks. Who ever though such a prohibition was a good idea?

They explained how pleased they were to present to us Steinbachers as for many years indigenous people were not allowed to perform their own dances or ceremonies. They also explained that the dancing “told a story.”  For example, with the hoops they made images of an eagle fledging from a nest. Or a hunter firing a bow.

Later Lorne, an indigenous  male dancer also performed in full regalia. He said he was a professional dancer who was paid a lot of money to dance.  As well he had spoken to music students at Yale University to explain his form of dancing and how it was related to music. He said he had used the example of a baby at a powwow falling asleep to the beat of loud drums, because the baby felt it like the mother’s heart beat in the womb.

The most interesting thing for me was seeing how thrilled the performers were to share their culture.  They were very proud to do it and were very happy to have us old white people from a seniors club in Steinbach see them perform.

Reconciliation, no doubt, will take generations. Probably as long as the abuse took, which is about 150 years. But it was nice to participate, even in a very small way.

Meegwetch

Kuper Island Residential School: A School with a Graveyard

Exploitation, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

 

On the CBC podcast about Kuper Island, Right off the bat, Duncan McCue had a question for us listeners: “They called it a school, but what sort of school has a graveyard?”

The first school I attended in Steinbach after kindergarten was affectionately (or not) called “Miss Kornelsen’s school”. It was named after the longtime spinster principal of many years. Frankly, I always thought Miss Kornelsen was a bit deranged, but she was not sociopathic. That school was in Steinbach for more many years, but it did not have a graveyard. I never heard of any school that had a graveyard. Have your? There were no rumors circulating that it did. Kuper Island Residential School had a graveyard! Why? That is a pretty good question.

160 unmarked graves were found at that school located in a community of about 300 people. Why so many graves?

The school operated from 1889 to 1997. That is 108 years which is a long time, but why 160 graves? Doesn’t that seem like a lot?  How many children died at your elementary school?

Of course, in the last couple of years that many Indian Residential Schools (as they were called) had graveyards.  How many schools with mainly white children had graveyards?

Kuper Island Indian Residential School  was a school that was meant to “kill the Indian in the Child” since that was the deliberate policy of the Canadian government. If you don’t believe, that read the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. It is eye-opening. You will be confronted with some uncomfortable truths. See how much truth you can stand. But these schools killed more than “the Indian in the child.”

This is CBC series is the story mainly about 3 children from that school. 2 of them were survivors. 1 was not. It is also about a small community that is haunted by what happened there. It is a story about children who were wrenched away from their family, their language and their culture to be raised in an uncaring (by and large) institution. It was done because Canada thought this would be for the good of the children.

One of the survivors was much more blunt. He said “the children there were sent to be raised by psychopaths.” It was a chilling thought. How was that? Waht happened there?

The series of podcasts uncovered truths that had been buried—pun intended—for too long.

The school was burned to the ground in 1980 because the community could not stand having it around after it was closed. It housed too many awful memories.

 

Canada’s Alcatraz: Kuper Island Residential School

Colonialism, Exploitation, Genocide, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools, Residential Schools

 

Penelakut Island, formerly known as Kuper Island and renamed in 2010 in honour of the Penelakut First Nation people, is located in the southern Gulf Islands between Vancouver Island and the mainland Pacific coast of British Columbia, Canada.  The Penelakut First Nation people are part of a larger group called Hul’qumi’num people. The island has a population of about 300 members of the Penelakut Band. It is not a large community, but it has suffered largely. Through no fault of its own.

The island and the Indian Residential School were the subject of a CBC radio series turned into podcasts. It is worth listening to it.

 

The host of the show, Duncan McCue travelled to Penelakut where the Kuper Island Residential School was located.  Some people called the school “Alcatraz.”  Think about that for a moment. A school supported by a church and the government of Canada was called Alcatraz. Canada’s Alcatraz.

 

Long after the Kuper Island Residential School was torn down, the survivors are still haunted by what happened there. Investigative reporter Duncan McCue of the CBC  exposed buried police investigations, confronted perpetrators of abuse as well as victims of abuse.  He also witnessed a community trying to rebuild — literally on top of the old school’s ruins and the unmarked graves of Indigenous children. The podcast he helped produce is well worth listening to as long as you can stand uncomfortable truths. I know that many of us can’t while others are tired of hearing about them. Some of these say, ‘Why can’t we get over it?’

That is a good question. Others say that their people also suffered abuse. Mennonites, for example, in some cases make such claims too. And they are right. But I don’t want to get into a suffering Olympics.  The point is not who suffered worse. I just want to point out it is difficult for survivors of residential schools, and even their descendants who have suffered inter-generational trauma, to  “get over it.”  We should learn about what happened to them first. The rest of us should be sympathetic before we become critical. Not many people in Canada had inflicted upon them schools where they had to attend even though they were designed to disparage their parents, inflict physical, emotional, and sexual abuse upon the children.  These schools were part of a Canadian system of oppression. Some even called it genocide. Who knows how we would react to such a situation.

 

The rest of us are lucky sit didn’t happen to them. Even though this happened for many decades, it was kept secret. I went to school in Canada for 20 years, including 7 years at university, and never heard of it once until after I had left that university. When I first heard about residential schools  found it hard to believe and later I thought it was a case of a few bad apples. It was more than that. More than 130 residential schools operated across Canada. As the Canadian Museum for Human Rights has described them, “The schools were a deliberate attempt to destroy Indigenous communities and ways of life. They were part of a broader process of colonization and genocide.”

I have read the executive summary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. I recommend all Canadians do the same. This history was hidden from us. I want to learn about that history. I think it is important for us to know that history.

Right now, I ust want to look at what happened in one residential school.  1 school out of 130. It was Kuper Island Residential School.

 

Exposing the Truth

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools, Travel

 

One of the things I have been doing a lot of here in Arizona is going for long walks. I have enjoyed this immensely.  I have  often listened to podcasts as I walk.  I particularly like CBC podcasts. Now I can listen to their radio shows when it suits me. Sometimes technology is a blessing.

While in Arizona, I listened to an interesting podcast by Connie Walker a Cree journalist. It was called “Exposing the Truth.” She quoted Justice Murray Sinclair who was the Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission ‘TRC’) who said at the last of its events: “There is not a single indigenous person in Canada today who has not been touched by the legacy of residential schools.” I mulled that one over. It must be true it comes from Murray Sinclair.

 

The TRC’s final report directly linked the violence indigenous women suffered and the violence indigenous women face today. The TRC exposed this uncomfortable truth. Indigenous women are 3 times as likely to be the victim of a violent  crime compared to other women in Canada. And indigenous women are 7 times more likely to be murdered  than other women in Canada.

 

And yet some good people ask where is the data that establishes system racism in Canada. The fact that such people ask such a question in light of these facts itself demonstrates that systemic racism lives in Canada today.

When the land is special, but death is normalized

2022 Inferior Trip to Superior, autumn, Colonialism, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

I love maple leaves just before they die. Maple Leafs of Toronto not so much.  Maple leaves,  attain a stunning beauty just before death consumes them. The tree doesn’t die; the leaves die and fall to the ground. On the ground we see their last grasp at beauty. I am always amazed by their shape and colours. Even from behind they look wonderful.

A number of deaths in and around Thunder Bay have brought back painful memories of Indian Residential Schools to the people of the region. This has sparked fear among many indigenous youth. Particularly, when it appears that the deaths have been normalized.  When nobody cares it’s time to be scared. And when there is nothing special about the deaths, you know it’s dangerous out there. It’s the same thing the indigenous women have felt in Canada for decades.

Yet at the same time, the land is incredibly  beautiful. Reminds me of what W.B. Yeats once referred to as “beauty like a bended bow.”  As Julian Falconer, a lawyer acting for indigenous people said in the film Spirit to Soar, as he was flying over the region I was travelling by in my car:

“We are flying where Jordan Wabasse was found. Nobody needs reminding of how tragic these losses, these deaths, are to indigenous communities. But I also think that you can’t talk about Thunder Bay without appreciating how special the land is. That creates the ultimate irony. Easily some of the most beautiful landmarks in the world are here with some of the ugliest dynamics in the form of racism. All of that is part of the story. And the whole story needs to be told.”

Wisdom from a lawyer. How rare. Go figure.

The land is special, the people are special, and things get complicated. We have to appreciate that. There are no simple answers here, because there are no simple truths. Truth is usually complex.

 

 

Fear and Trembling

2022 Inferior Trip to Superior, autumn, Colonialism, Exploitation, Indigenous People After Contact, Indigenous Treaties, Indigenous--Indian Act, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

I love autumn and in particular the maple leaves of autumn.  What is more beautiful?

The Canadian federal government in 1876 introduced the Indian Act. It has been amended a number of times since then, but is still on the books. That statute gave the federal government authority over indigenous people. Indigenous people were shocked by the introduction of that statute, since many of them had recently entered into treaties which they thought guaranteed them sovereignty over their own lands and peoples while agreeing to share (but not cede) the land with non-indigenous Canadians. That law actually gave the federal government the authority to completely control the lives of indigenous people in Canada. That statute gave the federal government the power to take away indigenous children from their homes and send them to church run government funded Indian Residential Schools. There were eventually more than 140 residential schools across Canada. 150,000 indigenous children were taken from their families and sent to these schools often at considerable distance from their home communities and far away from their families. The last school closed in 1996. Again, this is not ancient history. This is yesterday. And the ill-effects of those schools live on in the lives of descendants of the survivors.

 

The Indian Act is a piece of legislation that amounts to the extreme use of colonial power and paved the way for exploitation of indigenous people. It is based on the false notion that whites were superior to indigenous people. I will have more to say about that legislation in future posts.

 

Children are still leaving their homes and families and communities just to get an education.  Now they do it by “choice.” Many go to places like Thunder Bay where they are the objects of powerful and deep racism. Of course, indigenous people are compelled to go there by economic circumstances. Many of these modern students report that they feel unsafe in places like Thunder Bay. One said, “I feel like I have to look over my shoulder every second, or I’m going to, you know, get hurt.” Many are scared because they know of others who have gone missing.

Of course, the 7 deaths of indigenous students in the Thunder Bay area brought painful recollections of Indian Residential Schools where often young children were sent to schools far away and never came home. Was this not comparable to that? Were we living through another heinous event like that?

Torn from Her Family at age of 5

Genocide, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools, Indigenous--Reconciliation

 

At the Pat Porter Centre on September 27, 2022, we were lucky to sit beside Vivian Barkley, sister of Jennifer Wood, one of the presenters.  Vivian came all the way from Kitchener Ontario to support her sister Jennifer Wood today. I was impressed. Both of them are residential third school survivors. That means 3 generations of their family went to a residential school.

 

Vivian told us how she had been swept into an Indian Residential School at the age of 5. She explained that the authorities had really gone into their community to roust up older children, but when they came to their house she was included. She said it was a shocking day when she was torn away from her family and community at such a young age for totally inexplicable reasons that she could not understand. Her family was very poor and could not afford to pay for her to come home for her school holidays so mostly for 5 years she stayed in the school separated from her family. Can you imagine what reasons the educational authorities might give to justify their actions of ‘kidnapping’ these children and taking them away from their homes?

 

It is not without reason, that such actions are considered by the UN Genocide Convention to be genocide. This is how that international convention, which has been signed by Canada, defines genocide:

 

In Article II of that Convention:

 

“…genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

 

“(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. [emphasis added]”

 

Was Canada guilty of genocide.  The Truth and Reconciliation Commission called it “cultural genocide.” Was that qualification necessary? It also says that everyone complicit with such acts can also be punished along with the perpetrator.

Christiane and I were both struck by how much Vivian was free of rancor and resentment notwithstanding how she had been treated by Canada.  How would you feel if Canada did that to your children? What would it take for you to want to reconcile with such a country? Is it something that can be done in a couple of weeks? Or a couple of years?

For Christiane and I this was a remarkable day. We learned some harsh Canadian truths by watching the program.