Touring through a Troubled Past Geronimo Henry Now Guides Visitors through His Former Residential School. but the Pain and Memories Linger Still, by Sheila Dabu, The Star, August 6, 2007

Touring through a Troubled Past
Geronimo Henry Now Guides Visitors through His Former Residential School. but the Pain and Memories Linger Still

By Sheila Dabu
The Star
August 6, 2007

http://www.thestar.com/article/243417

Brantford–He could be mistaken for Elvis, with his jet-black pompadour and sideburns, were it not for the number 48 tattooed on his right hand.

Children in residential schools were assigned numbers to keep track of them. Getting a tattoo of his number was Geronimo Henry's own idea.

Henry, a 70-year-old retired Elvis impersonator from the Six Nations reserve near Brantford, says without the King of Rock'n'Roll's music, he couldn't have survived jail time, divorce and addiction after struggling with undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) all his life.

Geronimo Henry talks about surviving ten years of childhood trauma in the Mohawk residential school in Brantford.
Photo by Glenn Lowson

"Elvis showed kids what people can do," he says. "You can be somebody if you try."

On a steamy afternoon , Henry is standing in front of the "Mush Hole," the name students gave the Mohawk Institute because of the oatmeal they ate for breakfast.

"If you got that mush and threw it against the wall, it would stick on there," he says with a laugh.

The three-storey, 19th-century residential school closed in 1970 and today forms part of the Woodland Cultural Centre, a museum showcasing aboriginal art.

Now an occasional tour guide at the Mohawk Institute, Henry has stopped going to counselling but says he has many of the symptoms of "complex PTSD."

It's identified by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation as specific to aboriginal people resulting from years of historical trauma – including residential schools – which was passed down from generation to generation.

Henry married a former classmate but they never spoke of what happened there. He also used alcohol to numb the pain. Eventually, Henry says, his dysfunction contributed to the collapse of his marriage and damaged their six children.

Henry entered the school at age 5 1/2 and left at 16. He says he "didn't know any different."

"That's quite a few years, 25, 30 years being a drunk. End up in jail. Fighting. Getting beat up. Trying to take other women," he admits.

Henry leads the way inside the former school. At the headmaster's office, he pauses.

"If these walls could talk . . .

If indeed they could, they might well tell the now-familiar stories of humiliation, abuse and stolen childhoods.

"They'd deny us our schooling," he says, telling of how the boys got up at 6 a.m. to do chores at the chicken coop and the pigpen, feed the horses and cattle, and milk the cows. Then there were the 60 tonnes of coal that arrived by rail each fall. The boys took turns and spent half the day unloading the shipment within a week. Meanwhile, the girls had to cook and clean.

Some academics and aboriginal advocacy groups have classified this as a form of child labour.

Henry turns left into the main hallway and stops in what used to be the infirmary.

After the fact

Most Canadians associate post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD, with the trauma of war.

Yet it is estimated 2.5 million Canadians, not all of whom have not been engaged in military combat, will suffer from PTSD in their lifetime.

Although there is no known cure for PTSD, antidepressants and cognitive therapy are used to treat the symptoms, which include anxiety, anger, flashbacks and depression.

If left untreated, severe cases of PTSD can lead to suicide.

This is the second installment in a three-part series in which the Star's Sheila Dabu looks at the journey of three PTSD survivors and how they're coping with an illness some label a "silent killer."

"When I was here, all you got was a pair of shoes and a pair of pants and a shirt," he says. "No undershorts."

Henry makes his way to the third-floor dormitory for boys and recounts a puzzling incident.

"One time, I don't know what happened, I lost my mind," he says.

"I guess there used to be a door here or a cubby hole. And in the morning, I was in there. I wouldn't come out for some reason. I don't know what's happened. I went crazy," he continues.

"Or maybe I got sexually abused. I don't know. Why did I go in there during the night and then in the morning, I wouldn't come out?"

Years later, another classmate told him of being sexually abused in that same room. Curious to know if there were more suffering like him, Henry started a group for survivors called the Lost Generation in 1997. He found 800 of them.

On the way to the basement, Henry stops.

"When my program was running, this person came up to me and she says, 'You remember where that vegetable room was? That's where I got sexually abused in there.'

In the dark, damp corridors, near the storage rooms and the playroom, Henry says he heard this was where the school master "was getting after some girl, trying to feel her up or somethin' and she was just fighting until her sister came out and started kicking him."

The tour over, Henry crosses the parking lot and heads toward the back of the school. He examines the red brick wall and runs his fingers over the carved initials of former students. R.B., ALBERT, G.M., but no G.H. Henry didn't carve his initials here.

"We'd even start crying around here," he says, running his fingers over the faded letters. "There's all memories along the wall."

Now, Henry and tens of thousands of survivors await compensation after a recent court-approved $1.9 billion settlement.

Henry helped kick-start the lawsuit for the Six Nations. And although he has accepted the settlement, Henry says no amount of money can erase what happened to him or any of the other survivors.

"I don't think you forget those years . . . It's like scars on your heart," he says, "Once those scars are there, they can't ever be healed up completely. They'll always leave a mark there."