In the summer of 2010, I attended the inaugural Truth & Reconciliation event in Winnipeg on behalf of the United Church Observer. The United Church was one of the denominations involved in the residential school system.

Good Medicine

Residential school survivors give voice to painful memories at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s sharing circle in Winnipeg.

“When I left school, I was so angry,” said Chief Robert Joseph, one of many residential school survivors who testified publicly at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s sharing circle yesterday afternoon. “But I didn’t know where to direct my anger. I became an alcoholic. I didn’t know how to raise my family.”

In front of hundreds of witnesses at the Forks in Winnipeg, Joseph described the disorientation and loneliness he experienced at a residential school in Alert Bay, B.C. He missed his parents, and although his sister attended the same school, their contact was mostly limited to waving at each other in the cafeteria.

Like the other speakers, Joseph made it clear that his school years had a lasting impact on his life. “I’m 70 now, and it’s taken almost all that time to share some of these secrets — painful, degrading secrets,” he said with a catch in his voice, before alluding to sexual abuse at the hands of two different people.

But for all the tears that were shed, the sharing circle had an atmosphere of warmth and sanctity. Volunteers drifted around serving the participants fresh water. Young kids passed a soccer ball back and forth outside. And the smell of sweetgrass smoke from a smudging ritual wafted gently through the tent.

In the centre of the sharing circle sat a medicine box, a symbol of both the damage that has been done and the hope that it can someday be healed.

Survivor Albert McLeod told an allegorical story about a group of healers who came together from every direction to break stones, extract medicines from them and mix these medicines together. The result was a medicine a hundred times stronger than anything they’d had before they met.

“We are the medicine that is gathered in from every direction,” McLeod said. “And at these ceremonies, we have people who can open the stones and take the medicine out.”

The circle’s moderator, Clément Chartier, administered a bit of the so-called best medicine: laughter. “I have some compensation news that’s going to make some of you very happy,” he joked. “If you ever tried to run away from school, the government is now going to pay for your mileage. At federal rates.”

Sharing stories was good medicine, too, according to some survivors, even though the sadness in their voices revealed how hard it was to do so.

Charlene Belleau spoke about her grandfather, who died by suicide at school and was not given a proper burial because of the way he had died. But her relief at talking about it was clear. “We’ve been working for this day for 30 years,” she said as a friend placed his hands on her shoulders. “And now that we have a voice, we can start breathing again. We can start living again.”

Today’s Broken Families

First Nations, Inuit and Métis children are far more likely to end up in foster care than their non-Indigenous peers.

As we were warming ourselves next to the sacred fire at Winnipeg’s Truth and Reconciliation event yesterday, a new acquaintance named Ernie told me about his upbringing as a foster child on a farm in Nebraska. Although his biological family are First Nations people from the Winnipeg area, his adoptive family are non-Indigenous Americans. Ernie said he had a happy childhood but that at the age of 43, he is still trying to find a place that feels like home, and to figure out his identity and beliefs. “It’s taking time to warm up to Canada,” he said, describing how he had sought out his biological mother and brothers as an adult. “I’m still discovering myself.”

Ernie’s story is slightly unusual because of his adoption in the United States. But in other ways, it’s a very common one. Approximately one in 10 Indigenous children in Canada are in child welfare care, according to a report prepared for the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada (FNCFCS). By contrast, only one in 150 non-Indigenous children are in care.

This great discrepancy is at the heart of a complaint that has been before the Canadian Human Rights Commission since 2007. Submitted by the Assembly of First Nations and the FNCFCS, the complaint alleges that children on reserves receive approximately 22 percent less child welfare funding from the federal government than other children receive from provincial governments, resulting in a kind of two-tiered system. 

The most common reason for non-Indigenous children to be reported to child welfare services is physical, sexual or emotional abuse. By contrast, many children on reserves are reported because of poverty, poor housing or caregiver substance abuse. The FNCFCS claims that a lot of these problems could be addressed without sending children into foster care if First Nations child welfare agencies had more adequate resources.

For the moment, the Canadian government is fighting to have the human rights complaint dismissed for technical reasons. But even if the government succeeds, the issue of child welfare funding is not likely to be forgotten anytime soon by Indigenous activists and leaders.

In a speech at the TRC’s sharing tent on Monday, Métis leader Clément Chartier pointed out that there are actually more Indigenous children in foster care now than there ever were in residential schools at any given time. “Residential schools have ended, but our children are still being taken away,” he said. “A lot of them are sent to non-Aboriginal homes, and a lot of them don’t know who they are when they turn 18.”

Restoring Connections

The damage caused by residential schools echoes through the generations. But sharing stories of the hurt is bringing young and old together in Winnipeg.

The story of the Canadian residential school system is partly about a broken link between generations. Parents were forced to give up their kids, and children were forced to live without their parents’ love and teachings. According to many of the survivors, the lost connection between successive generations is where a lot of the damage has come from. “My father told me how quiet and sad it was in the town without the sound of children playing,” recalled one woman earlier this week in Winnipeg at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s first national event.

For this reason, I’ve been touched to see the extent to which younger and older people have been mingling at the gathering. A survivor who rose to speak yesterday specifically asked for a young person’s hand to hold, “for strength and energy.” The young man who made the TRC’s medicine box proudly introduced the elder who coached him on its construction. And at the Métis jamboree, everyone from teenagers to elders danced the jig together. 

The generations that survived the residential schools are the ones that have received the most attention and honour at the TRC event, and rightfully so. They are the ones who withstood a childhood in “those strange, cold institutions,” as one survivor put it. 

But the story doesn’t stop with them. The web of people who are indirectly affected by the residential school system stretches far and wide, and it includes a lot of people who weren’t even born yet when the schools closed. 

Yesterday I met Alexus Young, a public speaker and filmmaker who was molested and raped as a child by a man in his community. “In 2003, I went back to my hometown and inquired about the person in question,” he said. “Because I wanted to know why — why did I have to endure that?”

He learned that his abuser had been abused himself at a residential school. “The elders found out about it one night after this man had been drinking,” he said. “That’s how the truth came out.” 

Young feels that it’s his mission to speak to young people about violence, alcohol abuse and other issues that could affect their lives. Most of the young adults he knows were not dramatically abused like him, but they still struggle with the general social and familial disarray caused by the residential schools. “We have to remember that there are a lot of young people suffering right now.”

The damage from the residential schools will not pass away along with the survivors someday; newer generations have already inherited it. But the intergenerational sharing that has happened this week provides hope that today’s youth will also inherit a rich culture and a sense of purpose. Young certainly has. “In my work, I’m following the Creator’s plan for me,” he said. 

Dancing at the Forks

The first Truth and Reconciliation event winds up with a spirited powwow, but much work remains to be done.

On my way to the Forks in Winnipeg yesterday, I mentally prepared myself for heart-breaking stories of the kind that I had heard each day during the first national Truth and Reconciliation event. But instead I found a joyful powwow in celebration of National Aboriginal Day, which officially takes place on Monday, the longest day of the year.

After two days of rain and a tornado warning, calm weather had returned to the Forks. “The sun is watching us,” said the powwow announcer. “It’s a good sign.”

For seven hours, drummers pounded and sang to accompany dancers dressed in beautiful regalia such as eagle feathers, beaded moccasins or jingle dresses, which are covered in aluminum cones that clink rhythmically each time the dancer takes a step. 

Governor General Michaëlle Jean attended the powwow and said that everyone — whether directly affected or not — has a duty to break down indifference toward the suffering caused by colonialism and the residential schools. The Governor General’s words reminded me of a moment the previous day, when Elaine Jacobs, a member of the United Church’s Living into Right Relations task group, stood up and said, “Any non-‘Natives’ who are here, tell your friends and family about our history.”

“And tell them there’s no need to envy what we have on our little reserves,” she added, referring to the resentment some non-Indigenous people feel toward the rights that First Nations people have under treaties. “The treaties were made under duress,” she said. “We gave up this beautiful country. In return, we asked for things like health and education, but what we got was epidemics and residential schools.”

Although the TRC event is over now, there’s still plenty of work to be done. A lot of painful memories have been brought to the surface, and the kind of support that will (or will not) be available to survivors when they return to their communities depends on where they live. 

Before leaving, I visited the sacred fire and made an offering of tobacco, as I’d been taught to do earlier this week. The fire was not extinguished at the end of the ceremonies. Instead, it was left to slowly and naturally burn itself out.