Someone has said "the desire to remember outweighs the benefits of forgetfulness." My memories of residential school, like those of many aboriginal Canadians, sound like this: "You're good for nothing!" "You're such a pest!" "You're no good!" For many aboriginal Canadians like me, these are words that conjure up childhood memories.
I arrived as an innocent and scared five-year-old kid. Very quickly, I was given the number 248, showered, scrubbed, and cleansed. Others were already corralled through. My hair was cut down to the scalp. I was shown my locker. Good thing I was beside my older brother. He was known as 249. Thus began the assimilation of Angus Clarence Cockney. I remember it well. Like the movie, Shawshank Redemption,I arrived innocent but my fate was sealed. I was sentenced to 12 years for just being native.
Most grown Canadians have childhood memories that are mainly positive. But for many aboriginal Canadians, childhood memories include the experience of residential school. Surprisingly, many other Canadians do not know of this once widespread national system focused on assimilating the aboriginal people into today's society. Let me share a memory of that experience, a memory that still impacts me.
I was eight years old. It was time for the longest hour of the week -- Catholic mass. The priest at the altar was mumbling in what I figured was Latin. It was confusing. I looked at my somewhat cloned buddy beside me. We all sported brush cuts and were dressed in suits with suffocating ties and jackets. His face mirrored the confusion each of us was feeling.
He and I were two of 300 young native kids from around Canada's Western Arctic. We were brought in to spend the school year in Inuvik. Our parents were hundreds of miles away and we longed for their compassion. Instead, we were under the strict guardianship and care of the nuns and priests and supervisors. After the last of the countless Amens, I sarcastically "thanked God" that mass was over. Our pent-up energy was quickly released running back to a place that was called "home," Grollier Hall, a Catholic-run residential school. Today, that building is demolished but memories of my time there are not as easily pushed aside or erased. This is just one memory of a childhood that some say was "stolen." Yes, like most aboriginal people of my generation across Canada, the residential-school experience has an impact on life today. This and many other memories of the residential-school experience are being heard across Canada, where all of us who attended, rightly termed as "survivors," are beginning to admit and share what happened.
Recently, there have been a number of articles written about experiences of the former residential-school system. One article profiled Matthew Coon Come, the national chief for the Assembly of First Nations. His experience and memories of residential school still affect him. The effects that Mr. Coon Come and myself feel today are just two examples of many stories being heard across Canada. Other stories have spurred on the establishment of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
The Foundation, as stated in the funding agreement with the federal government, "was established for the purpose of funding eligible recipients for eligible projects to address the healing needs of aboriginal people affected by the legacy of physical and sexual abuse in residential schools, including the intergenerational impacts." That legacy is defined, in part, as "family violence, substance abuse, physical and sexual abuse by others, loss of parenting skills and self-destructive behaviours." No doubt these problems exist and are acknowledged but, for the purpose of healing, it is even more important to determine the cause. In the case of the residential-school system, one has to realize that the experience was all about the treatment of aboriginal people, which was mainly negative. That treatment and abuse affected every person's character.
How?
One former student has said, "Indian residential school destroyed the sense of value and worth." Is this an apocryphal statement? Quite the contrary. First of all, the quote comes from someone who actually experienced and survived the residential-school system. Secondly, I remember the nun at Grollier Hall frequently shouting, in French, the insult, " Espèce de fatigant!" We heard this on a daily basis. Loosely translated it means, "What a pest." But to all of us, the tone of her voice meant that we were good for nothing.
While in the shower, we were told many times to try and wash off the colour of our skin. The relentless attack on our character soon made most feel inferior and unworthy. Combine this kind of verbal treatment with physical and sexual abuse and one can quickly understand the impact it had on our character.
The effect of this negative treatment continued well after leaving residential school. Some former students succumbed and committed suicide. Most live self-destructive lifestyles, while some have dealt with it and lead a normal or successful life. Yes, residential school "destroyed the sense of value and worth." But this conclusion is not confined to the residential-school experience.
In the report, Sacred Lives, Canadian Aboriginal Children and Youth Speak Out About Sexual Exploitation, a quote reads, "Many believe that they are profoundly defective and unworthy of living." In the same document a female youth says, "I grew up feeling I had no worth. I didn't put any worth on myself because I wasn't worth anything."
Aboriginal people are not unlike any other race; the need to feel a sense of purpose or significance is intrinsic.
One can only look to other examples to illustrate this point. From the Christian point of view, one can read from the Book of Genesis that the first man, Adam, was given a responsibility to tend the garden of Eden. I'm sure that this gave him a sense of value and significance.
At residential school, our need for a sense of value and significance was compromised and therefore affected and still impacts the behaviour of the survivors.
If the federal government is to tend its garden, it will have to give back the sense of value and worth Canada's aboriginal people once had. Small steps have already taken place. The Innu are no longer nobody: They are now registered under the Indian Act.
And if the Aboriginal Healing Foundation is to affect change in the communities across the country it will have to give back to survivors what the residential-school experience took away: a sense of value and significance. Combine this with a sense of security, and healing will happen. Angus Cockney is an Inuit sculptor living in Canmore, Alta. He spent 10 years in a residential school in Inuvik.