Talking about the Indian residential schools is a touchy matter for both the Church and aboriginal peoples. After all, remembering what happened in those schools would make anyone feel uncomfortable.
There was one such school in Nova Scotia, located in Shubenacadie, near my home community of Indian Brook. More than 2,000 Mi’kmaq and Maliseet children from across Atlantic Canada were shipped away from their home reserves to attend the school while it operated from 1932 until 1967. The school was run by two Roman Catholic orders, the Sisters of Charity and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
The school once stood on the highest hill in Shubenacadie. You couldn’t miss it as you approached the village. The building towered over the entire community in a very commanding and domineering way.
The Shubenacadie Indian Residential School shut down a year before I was born, so my memories of the school are of an abandoned, three-storey, brick building that was falling apart. But the ragged shell of the school with broken windows still struggled to tower over the community, until its remains were eventually burned to the ground in 1986.
As a child, I heard the stories about the school from various family members and my parents’ friends. And I joined my childhood friends from Indian Brook in retelling those stories in our school playground, not far from where the residential school once stood.
Those stories we shared as children are still vivid in my mind. There were accounts of brothers and sisters not being allowed to talk to one another, of children being forced to eat their own vomit, being physically abused by their educators and not being allowed to return to their home communities during the summer break. There were also incredible stories of children being punished for speaking their aboriginal language.
The stories I heard were usually about my father’s cousins from Cape Breton who attended the school. My father told me that as a child and teenager, he would hike or ride his bicycle to the residential school to visit his cousins. But they were only able to talk to one another over a fence. No students were allowed to leave school premises. And whenever we visited relatives in Cape Breton, the conversations around the kitchen table would always include stories about the residential school and the abuses that happened there.
I’ve interviewed many former students throughout my career as a journalist, and what they’ve told me is really no different than the stories I heard during my childhood. But what disturbed me was the underlying theme that began to emerge from those interviews. Over and over again, former students told me that their education was minimal, at best. They were taught skills that only a farm hand or a house maid would find useful.
Today, nearly 900 of those former students are in the midst of a class-action lawsuit against the federal government, which set up the school, and the Roman Catholic Diosese of Halifax that ran it. They’re seeking an apology and compensation for the abuses they suffered at the hands of their educators – physical, sexual and emotional abuse, loss of culture and language, as well as child labour.
I could never imagine someone telling me in school that the best job I would ever get is that of a house maid or a farm hand. I could never imagine someone telling me that it’s impossible for me to achieve my academic goals. But that’s what former students told me about the residential school. Their school experience was preparing them to be low-paid servants, with little hope they would have the academic skills to become doctors or lawyers.
As I constantly reiterate in my columns, I am a fortunate person. My school experience was positive. All of my teachers were encouraging, and some were even inspiring. And because of that, I was able to go on to university to earn two degrees and have a career as a writer and journalist. And it’s encouraging to know that my other aboriginal friends were also able to achieve their career goals: One of my closest friends is a lawyer; another close friend is working as an accountant.
But what really makes me sad, as well as frustrated, is that the potential of almost two generations before me was never really encouraged and nurtured by their educators.
Maureen Googoo is a Mi’kmaq journalist living and working in Halifax.
