The Guardian
October 4, 2011
http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/News/Local/2011-10-04/article-2766826/Shame-and-hurt-from-residential-schools-wide-reaching,-commission-told/1
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| Shame and hurt from residential schools wide reaching, commission told |
Perhaps Rev. Phil Callaghan can feel the lash of a leather strap that sharply struck the bare buttocks of a young Janet MacDonald.
Callaghan wasn't present for MacDonald's childhood nightmare years ago in Shubenacadie, N.S. at the only residential school in Atlantic Canada.
He wasn't there when the then five-year-old girl, taken from her aboriginal home by an "Indian agent'', cried herself to sleep each night in a place where no one seemed to care.
Nor did Callaghan bear witness to MacDonald being forced to eat cold porridge or have her face rammed in the mushy mess for pushing the terrible-tasting offering aside.
The minister heard his share Tuesday of what MacDonald and so many other aboriginal children endured, from brutal physical punishment to unspeakable sexual abuse.
However, he was steeped in shame well before people sat in front of a microphone in Charlottetown Tuesday to share disturbing experiences with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada -- a commission established as part of a landmark deal reached with survivors who had filed a class action against the federal government and the churches.
Callaghan, a former pastor of St. Bonaventure's Catholic Church in Tracadie Cross, spent more than nine years with the aboriginal community on the Scotchfort reserve.
He told the Commission Tuesday he was exposed to the shame of the church's contribution "to this horror story''.
That shame, he said, is part of who is today.
Callaghan said through acknowledgement of churches' shameful treatment of aboriginal people, ""we need to learn how to live and how to be a better race...and a more humane people.''
Before testimony began Tuesday, commissioner Marie Wilson stressed that all people that chose to sit down in front of the microphone would be considered expert witnesses.
"We need for it to be a complete story,'' she said.
"So this is your day to come forward. Teach us what you know.''
What MacDonald hoped to convey to the Commission and the 35 or so people in attendance was that the harm and suffering she endured in Shubenacadie has stretched into a life-long torment.
Addiction to alcohol and pills contributed to her being severed from the ones she loves. Even today, she seldom sees any of her four adult children and seven grandchildren.
MacDonald hopes her "brothers and sisters'' hear her plea across the country.
"We need to be united,'' she said.
Commission chair Justice Murray Sinclair said reconciliation could mean different things to different people.
He noted that residential school survivors, like MacDonald, often talk of reconciliation within their own families.
"Because they don't want this pain to continue, to pass on from generation to generation,'' he said.
"There is perhaps some inherited guilt and some inherited shame.''
For Ken Williams, working with aboriginal students in residential schools in western Canada was a true privilege. He learned so much from the people and their culture.
"It is what I learned that made me a better person,'' he said.
Williams, though, came to the microphone with a heavy heart after finally deciding he needed to say his piece.
"We tried our best and we made mistakes,'' he said of residential schools.
"I just want to let people know that we did hurt people but much of it was not intentional.''
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada hosted the hearing Tuesday at the Rodd Charlottetown in preparation for the Atlantic national event Oct. 26-29 in Halifax.
Several people gave public testimonies that were recorded by the Commission and at least one person gave a testimony in private.
There were more than 130 residential schools across Canada dating back to the 1870s. The last closed outside Regina in 1996.
David MacDonald, a former P.E.I. MP and United Church of Canada minister who is part of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, says there are approximately 1,000 survivors still alive who attended the school in Shubenacadie with approximately 140 living in P.E.I.
About 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were forced to attend the schools. Many were taken against the wishes of their parents.
The $60-million commission has a mandate to learn the truth about what happened at the schools and to share that information with Canadians.
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