There is no worshiping of idols, or of a God;
only the deep respect and appreciation for Natural law and karma. What that means for me is to respect nature,
the trees, the water, the wind, the sun and all living beings. More importantly,
to actively do what I can personally to grow, spiritually and mentally. My
belief is that being an authentic Indigenous person is respecting the teachings
of the Dene, my parents, my grandparents and my ancestors. We tell our story with our drum. This image, a Dene drummer is my brother-in-law John Mercredi.
Residential school did not take away my identity as
Denesuline. I am grateful my parents didn’t attend residential school and
continued to speak our mother tongue and to practice our culture.
I have always understood spirituality as being in
harmony with nature, a lesson I observed from my Dad, Isidore Deranger and
other Dene hunters in the hamlet of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta.
The recent devastating discovery of 751 souls in unmarked
graves on the grounds of a former residential school in Saskatchewan has
shocked all Canadians. And this is less than two months after another discovery
of more bones on former residential school grounds in British Columbia. I feel an even greater urgency to distance myself
from being Catholic. These discoveries are sickening.
To be clear, it is not because I am ashamed. It is because I feel survivor’s guilt that I came out of residential school for the most part unscathed. It took me years of careful introspection to reach this conclusion. I have read a good deal about similar guilt experienced by survivors of the Holocaust. But of course the survivors did nothing wrong.Is this a reckoning? Reckoning and release are
impossible when we operate under a code of denial or delusion. Perhaps what is needed is to designate an annual
month to the remembrance of children who perished in residential schools.
I spent seven years at Holy Angels Residential
school in northern Alberta, I was not beaten, starved, abused or electrocuted. I am grateful that I was born 15 years late,
and at the time I attended Holy Angels Residential school in the mid-60s and early
70s, approximately 15 years before it was closed, and the building was demolished.
By the time I was a student at residential school the culture in the school was
different. Perhaps it was because of the leadership of our principal Father Mousseau
OMI or the changes in the church after Vatican II, but for whatever the reason
I was spared some of the degradation of former students, including
contemporaries of mine and some of my own siblings.
At the time I was there, a young priest, Father Mousseau
was instrumental in making some positive changes. We who lived in Fort Chipewyan were allowed to
go home on the weekend; we could speak our native language, and in truth a
number of nuns and priests spoke Dene or Cree. He played Beatles songs blaring
through the speakers on weekends and in the summer months. He also opened his office so we could come
read comics or books in summer. I continued to have a positive friendship with
him until his death in the early 2000s.
On balance, I believe I was treated humanely. I
have come to understand that it is okay to speak the truth about my positive
experiences. I have also acknowledged that many former students had horrible devastating
experiences, some even from my own immediate family. With the discovery of unmarked graves there
is no denying that something unthinkable happened to these children. The question then becomes: what do we do
about it?
Lately, as more former students become
comfortable in telling their truth I discovered that two former students from Holy
Angels were committed to a mental institution for nothing other than not being compliant
or running away home. My older sister who is 8 years older than me was one of
them. Learning about this I wondered,
how many more former students were sent away to a mental institution for no
reason, to be stigmatized as mentally ill?
What care were they given?
On June 24, 2021 751 students buried in unmarked graves at Cowessess First Nation at a former residential school in Saskatchewan
were discovered. Both these discoveries, the first one in BC and the latest in
Saskatchewan touch people’s humanity. Many tears have been shed by people who
were not in residential school at this confirmation of what many people might
have regarded as unfounded rumours.
I find it difficult to believe that no one knew
about this. This news came less than a month after a discovery of 215 bones of
former residential school in BC former residential school, Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc First Nation BC.
The shocking news led to efforts to employ ground penetrating radar at all other
former residential school sites across Canada.
The disbelief and horror of the remains of 215 children, some as
young as three years old, is amplified with the news of another 751 remains discovered
last week. It is inconceivable to me
that no one knew what was happening in those schools. Estimates have been made
that thousands of unmarked graves exist in former residential schools. These estimates – mere statistics – did not
move people the way these discoveries.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission sought an addition to its
mandate to get better data on child graves at residential schools. The federal government turned them down.
I am convinced that as more ground penetrating
work is being conducted it will uncover more bones on former residential school
grounds. I pause in silent contemplation
of this horror. This is Canada! We have
a right to be angry. We can be wounded
and accountable. We can grow and heal as we move on as a society.
The Church knew, and the government certainly also
knew. People in the communities must have demanded answers why their babies
didn’t make it home. My own mother put her 14 year old son on an airplane to the
hospital in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories.
She never saw him again. Is he in an unmarked grave, waiting for radar
to disclose his bones? My very own
brother…
The Catholic Church does not have Indigenous
spirituality and humanity. The Church called us savages and create policy to eliminate
our identities but also take our land. They were so negligent that they did not
provide proper care. They acted as if we
were disposable, not worthy of normal human dignity or their compassion. Their
policies literally murdered us. And the
government of Canada, always penny-pinching when it came to our needs, did not
provide adequate nutrition or medical care. They did not think to provide the very human
need to the bodies of students who passed away in residential schools home for
a proper sacred burial or consider their families need for closure. They treated us as less than human. All of this callous brutality in the name of “civilizing”
our people.
WHAT DO DO NEXT?
1
DESIGNATE JUNE AS AN INDIGENOUS HEALING MONTH
2
FUND INDIGENOUS CEREMONY IN EACH COMMUNITY TO HONOR THE CHILDREN
3
DEVELOP CURRICULUM K-12 TELLING THE TRUE STORY OF RESIDENTIAL
SCHOOLS IN CANADA
4
CULTURAL HEALING ACTIVITIES IN EACH OF THE FIRST NATIONS
ACROSS CANADA
5
DNA IDENTIFYING FAMILIES OF THE STUDENTS FOUND IN UNMARKED GRAVES
An Indigenous Health Month would be filled with Indigenous
cultural activities, including the development of curriculum in K-12 in the
schools identifying, and telling the true story of residential schools in
Canada. That is how we should honour the students who perished in residential
schools across Canada. To that end, funding should be provided to all First
Nations across Canada to develop this curriculum and create a campaign in their
communities in honour of residential school children who died. This is how we
take back what was lost and move away from victimhood and retain agency in all our
lives.
How do we move forward as a society that allowed
this horror to take place? We must first
acknowledge what happened. For some reason the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
tried to do this by revealing some of the horror stories but yet the swift condemnation
from people did not come. And records
from residential schools were not released even after court order. What they
could provide was statistics.
This devastating news of uncovered bones has rekindled
pleas for accountability from the Catholic church that ran most of the schools,
and the removal of all monuments of Canadian leaders whose set up residential
school system. Where does that leave reconciliation?
APOLOGIES AND REMOVING
MONUMENTS
In my opinion the time for apologies and removing
monuments has passed. Those gestures are meaningless in light of these horrific
discoveries and simply does not do enough to correct what happened.
What is required is a concrete plan moving
forward something like the Nuremberg Trials that investigated the criminal Nazi
actors involved in the Holocaust during World War II. The problem in this instance, is that it
happened too long ago. Many of the witnesses are likely long dead. In order to
heal we still need to make sense of what happened and why it was allowed to
happen. Had this process occurred in the 1970s we might have had a chance for
redemption and closure. However, I continue to be hopeful that the truth may still
be revealed, and the people and entities who are responsible or are Complicit in these events are brought to justice.
Personally, as a former residential school student,
I looked to my ancestors who came before me and thank them for showing me that
we carry the blood of survivors and we can always live free, never to live as a
victim of anyone or anything.
What has helped me over the years is the idea
that I am not a victim and I have the agency to create the life I have. I made
a conscious decision to step out of victimhood so that I can see the
possibilities of a better future for me and my children, just as the parents,
brothers sisters, aunts and uncles are feeling after these horrific discoveries.
We have plenty of evidence that shows Indigenous
peoples in Canada are resilient. Our peoples have faced many generations of
attempts to erase our cultures, language and identities. We have survive the dispossession of our
lands. The Indian Act still
governs much of our lives. Yet we persist.
They left early
in the morning, at the end of July 2021 for the 12 hour journey to the end of
the road in northwestern Saskatchewan at our lake we call “Luezan Tue.” It is over a thousand kilometers from
Edmonton, Alberta and its name means “Trout Lake.” They wanted to fulfill our
brother’s last wish to bury his ashes at that lake where our father made a home
1n 1973 with several of my brothers and sisters and stayed there year round, a
stunning place not only for the natural beauty but its sacredness.
Fulfilling such
a sacred duty is an essential tradition for Indigenous families to assist the
spirit to continue its journey into the spirit world. It is the reason that the
recent discovery of thousands of unmarked graves at former residential school
properties was so egregious. Not only
that the families not have opportunity to say goodbye the trauma of not knowing
what happened to their babies compounded the trauma knowing that the spirit of
these children were not properly guided into the spirit world by their
surviving families. 
