Kuper Island Residential School survivor Belvie Brebber told CBC’s team investigating conditions at that school, about her five years at Kuper Island Residential School, a time filled with fear told  them about  cruelty and sexual violence there. Belvie made it out alive, but her younger brother Richard Thomas did not. She described a terrible phone call that shattered her family forever, and why she never believed the school’s story that her beloved brother died by suicide.

Belvie hated the school at Kuper Island, but many children in many places hated school.  She wanted to run away and did stay away for a while, but her father got a warning letter from the government that if she did not return to school her father would be put in jail. They also said he would lose custody of all of his children, and they and he would have to pay a $500 fine. Not only that, but the children would not be able to go to school anywhere else in the province. Those were pretty big threats. According to Duncan McCue,

“It wasn’t an idle threat. Police regularly went to Indigenous parents to enforce  orders  and  the indigenous people were told they would have to pay a fine if they did not comply. If parents couldn’t pay a fine, they faced jailtime and risked losing all their kids.”

So her parents drove her to the ferry and shipped her off to school. For indigenous people it was usually easier to acquiesce.