Victims, Families Gather at Boyle Street Co-Op for Broadcast
By Elise Stolte
Edmonton Journal
June 12, 2008
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=7bdfc9a4-fcf9-4b12-ab50-36edb1e98594
EDMONTON - If tears came, few made it down the cheeks of those gathered in a downtown drop-in centre to watch Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologize for the residential school system.
Most were dry-eyed and quiet.
"It's not a very good environment to be vulnerable in," said Jane Slessor, an outreach worker at Boyle Street Community Services. "This is a tricky, tricky thing for people."
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| Mary Jane Mitchell and her husband, Les Mitchell, listen to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's apology at the Boyle Street Co-op on Wednesday. Harper apologized to aboriginals who were forced to go to residential schools, where many say they were abused. Photo by Greg Southam |
Harper apologized from the floor of the House of Commons for a century of residential schools that tore children from their families and culture, and made them vulnerable to abuse.
Slessor's job is to help former residential school students access the counselling services and cash payouts available through a 2006 settlement. Many don't talk about their experiences, she said. They push the memories aside, often with drugs or alcohol.
"It's like funerals," said Karen Bruno, Slessor's colleague and the daughter of two former students. "Some people can handle it, some can't.
"They're not at the point of healing. These are people who have been numbed for years."
Drop-in staff prepared the room carefully Wednesday morning.
A female elder cleared the room, then lit sweet grass and circled around the tables. The grass was left burning on a table so former students could wash themselves in the smoke.
Participants wrote the names of former students who have died on a sheet of paper near the smoke.
About 40 people sat on metal chairs and several clapped when Harper paused in his remarks.
Nancy Rattlesnake, 51, wiped her eyes when the prime minister said it was wrong to separate children from their parents. "We apologize for failing to protect you," he said.
After the apology, people sat down for a turkey dinner.
Rattlesnake attended Ermineskin and St. Michael's residential schools for four years but said she never talks about the experience with her children. "It's still too hard to explain. (My kids) would think I was making it up."
The apology "was all right. It was a beginning," she said.
A Cree singer offered a song to remember those who have passed on, including her uncle, who lived on the street and finally told her, a month before he died, that he had been sexually abused by a priest at the school in Fort Chipewyan.
Mary Jane Mitchell, 51, came to the community centre wearing a neatly pressed shirt and tinted sunglasses. She went to Holy Angels Residential School in Fort Chipewyan for nine years and came out unable to trust anyone, she said.
"I had beatings, name calling, sexual abuse, starvation, abuse in every sense of the word."
She said she was so scared she used to wet her pants.
Later she moved to Edmonton, and in 1978 became a Christian, a faith she said has taken her on a path to healing.
She stood up to pray for the group after the apology.
"Because I am a Christian, I have to accept that apology, I have to forgive," she said. "I would say it was very sincere, and with all that clapping, I know it was accepted."
Contact: estolte@thejournal.canwest.com
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