The school of hard knocks

MONTREAL (CUP)

CHARLIE WENJACK RAN AWAY FROM the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School outside of Sault Ste. Marie in northern Ontario 27 years ago.

Dressed in only a cotton windbreaker, he tried to walk more than 400 miles through the northern bush in late fall to return home to his father.

What caused Charlie Wenjack to run out into the freezing rain? A report released re- cently by the Assembly of First Nations, called Breaking the Silence, attempts to uncover the horrific legacies of Indian Residential Schools.

Indian Residential Schools existed in every province and territory from the end of the last century into the 1970s. Most schools were barren and forbidding structures isolated from both native and white communities. The ma- jority of the schools were run by Catholic and Protestant missionary organizations.

Residential schools were established in order to “‘reclaim Indian children from their savage state.’ They were seen as the way to Christianize and civilize native peoples so that they could assimilate into the Canadian main- stream.

These schools would exist ‘until, in the words of former minister for Indian affairs Duncan Campbell Scott, ‘‘there is not a single Indian left in Canada.’’

Breaking the Silence attempts to reclaim some of the experiences from these schools of cultural destruction. Thirteen native men and women recount stories from their lost child- hoods. As the authors acknowledge, ‘‘some individuals will be shocked by its content. . . others will close their eyes and refuse to see.”

In the words of the respondents, the schools emerge as institutes of extreme disci- pline-and cruelty. Students were ruled with an iron fist, and any minor infraction of one of the multitude of rules was punished with corporal or mental abuse.

Lashings with leather straps were rou- tine, often in front of the entire class or school. Students were usually made to drop their pants to receive the blows.

Students were also punished by being deprived of food. One student from the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia remembers ‘‘just pure bread and water to eat, laying on the floor. . . oh, I don’t know how many days.”

Bed wetters were also dealt with cruelly. Another student from the Kamloops school recalls having to wrap the wet linen around her head before she was beaten.

Speaking a native language provoked Similar abuse. In almost every report, students Temember being punished for speaking their languages, even if they had just arrived at the School. One student remembers having her head shaved for speaking Cree. Others were

beaten or given extra cleaning duties.

_The report details almost every form of abuse imaginable. Sexual abuse was common and girls and boys were raped or made to perform sexual acts for their guardians.

Another woman remembers how as a young girl she was ‘‘strapped into an electric chair and then zapped with electricity.’’ The charge left her knuckles, hands and forearms bleeding.

Charlie Wenjack was a frail 12-year-old when he ran away from school. All Charlie Wenjack took with him for his flight home was a glass jar full of matches and a worn CNR schedule.

Cold, alone and unable to read the Eng- lish schedule, he walked along the tracks as

night fell and the freezing rain came up. kak

The acts of extreme violence towards genera- tions of children were not random or aberrant. Rather, they were physical manifestations of an institutional system that wanted to destroy native cultures by targeting the most vulner- able section of already-vulnerable communi- ties.

The philosophy of native education by whites was simply a blatant form of cultural genocide. Generations of colonial administra- tors felt that the ‘‘Indians’ ignorance and superstitious blindness’’ was the greatest im- pediment towards native people becoming ‘*useful members of society.’

It was the European ‘duty’ to “‘raise [the Indians] to the level ofthe whites.’’ Fortheir part, native people welcomed offers of educa- tion and training. They realized that their social and economic position was changing due to the ever-encroaching Euro-Canadian system. Although they wanted to learn to read and write, ‘‘they had no wish to assimilate.”’

Part of the policy was set out in a Government of Canada commissioned report in 1847. It concluded that Indian education was not simply ‘‘training of the mind,” but also had the purpose of ‘‘weaning them from the habits and feelings of their ancestors, and acquiring . . . the customs of civilized life.’’

Residential schools reflected the geno- cidal philosophies of their religious and gov- ernmental masters. Every aspect of life --daily mass, meals, class-time -- was designed to separate children from their traditional ways,

‘their traditional religions and their families.

Asstated by a turn-of-the-century cabi- net minister, ‘‘in order to educate the children properly, we must separate them from their parents.”’

He believed that parents would be a bad influence on their children, causing them to forget their Christianity and civilisation. He concluded that to have any beneficial effect, ‘‘we must catch [them] very young.””

Forced isolation from their culture did

The Ugly history of native education

not end when native children were taken from their communities. As Egerton Ryerson ob- served, ‘‘nothing can be done to elevate his [or her] character without religious feeling.”’

Religious instruction was mandatory at most schools. Children were taught that their parents were pagans, and that they would be sent to hell.

Asa former Kamloops student remem- bers: ‘“This made me ashamed of my parents.”’ The message to students was that ‘‘it was evil for us to practice any of our cultural ways.”’

The students were told they would ‘‘go to Hell and burn for eternity if we did not listen to their way of teaching.””

The curricula of the schools was an- other form of attack on native values. The method of instruction itself was alien to the native children, as were the subjects taught.

Native people were excluded from the curriculum, made invisible in the history of the “‘discovery’’ and ‘‘exploration’’ of the ‘‘New World.’’ As one student remembers, there was “*no history about B.C. . . .we learned about Henry the Fifth and Eighth, and all those guys.”’

Afternoons in most residential schools were spent teaching the students trades and crafts. Or, in the words of one student, trying to create ‘‘white people with brown skins.”’

Skills included farming and carpentry for boys and cooking and sewing for girls. Although this instruction may have imparted a more practical education than discussions of the Tudor Dynasty, the underlying lesson was still one of native inferiority.

Another student remembers being taught how to wash and wax a floor, despite the fact that none of the students came from homes with wooden floors. The woman remembers the underlying messagethat the European way was right -- that a home without a wooden floor was simply not a home at all.

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They found Charlie Wenjack’s body on Oct. 23, 1967. He was lying four feet from the train racks. The map was gone and the matches were unopened. The coroner determined the cause of death as exposure and exhaustion.

The sense of puzzled grief was summed up by a CNR worker: “‘We tell this man he has to send his son to one of our schools, then we bring his boy back in a luggage car.”’

During the 1960s and 1970s, residen- tial schools were eventually closed. This was due to a combination of government stingi- ness, reformed political climate, and native resistance.

The government grew tired of support- ing a system which did not produce the prod- ucts it had hoped for. Those schools not taken over by local native band councils have been left derelict across the country.

Native resistance to the schools was always a factor in the system. Many parents

refused to surrender their children, or moved out of the range of the missionaries -- to hunting or fishing camps.

The children would also resist, by run- ning away continually, or by even attempting to set fire to the schools.

This resistance was eventually politi- cized by native leaders. In 1970, the Blue Quills Indian Residential School in northeast- ern Alberta was occupied by local native peo- pleand became the first school tobe completely administered by native people.

The legacy of residential schools con- tinues to be influential to the present day. The legacy is felt not only in the current revival of native forms of education, such as at Blue Quills, but also in native communities across the country.

As J.R. Miller points out in his book, Skyscrapers Hide theHeavens, most of the current native leaders, such as Ron Georgeand Ovide Mercredi, came from residential schools.

Although both men used their residen- tial education toattend universities, Ron George has pointed to residential schools and the abuse and isolation he suffered there as a key factor

in his later struggles with alcohol and domestic abuse.

Veronique Thusky, of the Montreal Native Friendship Centre, sees many former students who ‘‘have problems having healthy relationships with their communities.”’

Due tothe cultural attacksof the school, many students areconfused as to which ‘‘val- ues to follow.’’ She fecls many students have struggled to maintain a balance between tradi- tional culture and their experiences at residen- tial schools.

Thusky believesthat many students have kept “‘the violence within themselves,’’ thus perpetuating the violence and abuse of residen- tial schools.

The authors of Breaking the Silence believe that ‘‘scores of individuals [have been] lost,’’ and have turned to alcohol and other forms of abuse in order to ‘‘cope and/or for- get.”

Educational renewal is occurring with programs that reflect native culture and tradi- tional practices. A recently-announced pro- gram at the University of Saskatchewan is an example of the new direction of education.

The Assembly of First Nations hopes Breaking the Silence willsupport its demands for compensation of abuse victims, as well asan inquiry into the school system. Jean Chretien, former Minister for Indian A ffairs under Pierre Trudeau, has not made any moves in this direction.

ak The main auditorium of Trent University is named after Charlie Wenjack. The University of British Columbia, the University of Sas- katchewan and Trent University all offer pro- grams in Native Studies.