Warning. This article may trigger those who are victims of residential boarding schools in Canada and the US, and those who have been affected by all manners of abuse.
“For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.” – Sir Thomas More, Utopia
I have written and rewritten this post over and over. Being a second and third generation of residential school survivors, as the news that broke from Kamloops, BC of the 215 children found in unmarked graves I was overcome with emotion. Grief, anger, sadness, shame and in some respect relief.
The news that Canada and the US had a horrific secret, that they took countless indigenous children forced from the arms into schools that beat them, cut their hair, degraded and verbally abused them, then ultimately sexually abusing them as well. The world was shocked, friends of mine reaching out and saying, “Is this true? We never knew.” The thing is, we knew. We knew all along.
Growing up in an Indigenous family and within the Indigenous communities of Windsor and Six Nations Ontario Canada, we knew. As a people who culturally share a verbal history, we were told of what happened to our family members, why our grandparents could no longer speak their language, why substance abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse and brokenness was prevalent. My father shared a story with us from his youth as we were children. He asked my great grandmother if she could teach him her language (Mohawk of Six Nations) and with tears streaming down her face she shook her head and said “I cannot make the words come from here (pointing to her head) to here (pointing to her mouth).” I can distinctly remember the first time my father shared this story with me, his eyes filled with tears as he remembered how broken his grandmother was. The truth is, they beat children who only knew their language (some as young as 3 or 4) until they spoke English. Heartbreaking.
I remember a story my mother shared of her father, who was in residential school until he was 16. He ran away, joined the US Army having lied and saying he was 18. His intent was to go to war and die, rather than return to residential school where he was abused beyond what my words can share. Let the fact that at 16, being killed in war was the better option, offer some perspective.
These children were then sent home, raised by abusers and not knowing any better themselves as they were “lucky” enough to some back home alive, and they in turn would raise broken generations. Today, our families, our people struggle to overcome this part of our history. Then these 215 beautiful souls cried out from the earth and gave a voice to what we have been carrying for generations.
I cannot speak for all children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren of residential school survivors, but I can speak from my own personal pain and experience. Intergenerational trauma has manifested in my family in the forms of verbal, emotional, physical and sexual abuse, alcohol and substance abuse, suicide and mental health issues and shame.
Heart in a bottle
High on a shelf
Fragile, but just out of reach
Cause you build a fortress
With the distance you keep
But when your heart aches
Doesn’t it cut deep?
You don’t have to suffer
Suffer in silence
You don’t have to suffer
Suffer in silence
Don’t you know that your
Heart can feel like an anchor
When you keep it all inside
No no, don’t suffer in silence
Withered in sadness
And hurting inside
But feeling afraid to impose
So you’re an island
But you don’t have to be
Cause if you’re inclined
You can talk to me
But you don’t have to suffer
Suffer in silence
– Susan Aglukark, Suffer in Silence
I remember sitting in the dark in the back of my parent’s car driving to Toronto and watching the headlights pass as I sang this song, Suffer in Silence, we all sang at the top of our lungs. This song echoed through my heart constantly. The burden that was the knowledge of knowing what happened to my family in those schools, the trauma that caused my stomach to flip when I had my first child and praised God that I did not have to face him being taken from me against my will and risk never seeing his round smiling face again. It welled up in me and grew into shame. The shame of the behaviors of my family, the shame from knowing their hurt. The shame from suffering in silence.
Every Child Matters brought light to the shame, and there was a relief that it was illuminated and cast out. The intergenerational shame of feeling like it was our fault, we were the savages and that is why it was kept out of the history books, the shame that anchored to me and pulled me down was released. I cannot fully explain why it is this way, but it is. It was a darkness that was tangible and visceral that was always there.
Today, as Every Child Matters, Orange Shirt Day (Canada) and Truth and Reconciliation (Canada) events will be held, I ache for the loss of generations but honor the voice they have given to this generational shame. It is only by sharing, given a voice to the broken, forgiveness and healing will we see true reconciliation.
What is Orange Shirt Day, Residential Schooling, Every Child Matters, and Truth and Reconciliation? See links below.
https://www.orangeshirtday.org/
https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/national-day-truth-reconciliation.html
https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/
https://www.nicwa.org/boarding-schools/
earnest mom 