" Imagine Your Five Year Old Being Taken Away" - Wilson

By Sian Thomson
The Courier-Islander
November 6, 2013

http://www.canada.com/Imagine+your+five+year+being+taken+away+Wilson/9130075/story.html

Carihi teacher Ray Wilson looks at his oldest daughter, who is soon turning five years old, and knows if he lived back when Residential Schools were in existence, now would be the time "they" would be coming for her.

"They" are the Government of Canada who, according to survivors of Residential Schools, aimed to destroy Aboriginal culture by assimilating Aboriginal children into "good Christian Canadians". Under the Indian Act of 1876, all Aboriginal people were, by legal definition, wards of the state. School administrators of approximately 143 schools were assigned guardianship, which meant they received full parental rights.

Three of those schools were on Vancouver Island. "Imagine your five year old being taken away from you and sent to a school where you would have no contact and likely not see them again," said Wilson, who is from Cape Mudge and, after graduating with his teaching degree, returned to Carihi to teach.

"What would you have done? Imagine if there were no children anywhere in your community, They were all gone. What would that do to the psyche of the adults there?" he said.

Wilson is still reeling from his experience attending the Truth and Reconciliation Conference in Vancouver in September. The four day event was the sixth of seven mandated under the Residential Schools Settlement Agreement between former residential school students, First Nations groups and the Government of Canada.

The commission, established in 2007 as an independent body to inform all Canadians about what happened in more than 120 years of residential schools in Canada, is expected to deliver a full report by 2014.

Indian residential schools were established in the 1870s, funded by government and run by churches with the last one closing in 1996. More than 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children were taken from their families and placed in the schools. At least 3,000 children never got out of those schools alive. Many believe because of those schools, Canada's aboriginal peoples still harbour distrust for government in general and school systems in particular.

It's one factor behind the estimated 45,000 aboriginal students not in school today. It is also a factor behind the high numbers of aboriginals (children) in care, in poverty, and incarcerated.

From Truth and Reconciliation on page 1. Wilson did not realize how emotional it would be to listen to the testimonies of people who had suffered so much.

"It was well done and it had integrity," he said. "There were people walking around with Kleenex to offer and putting them in big garbage bags there were so many tears, there was debriefing. It was meaningful. I am so proud of the people who got up to share the most horrific details of their childhood in front of hundreds of people. Many have never even talked about it to their families."

He heard many things that are hard to talk about.

Little children having DDT (a toxic pesticide) put in their hair after having it cut off because they were considered dirty by virtue of their race. Children used in medical experimentation including starvation and deliberately contaminated with tuberculosis, and punished if they spoke their native language.

"Another lady who went to school with her little sister but they were separated and she couldn't help her," said Wilson, "A woman said she did not know she was aboriginal until she was in her 20's and someone pointed it out to her, because her mind had been wiped out at Residential School. One man doesn't remember his parents, he never knew them and was never returned to them."

"Many aboriginal kids today, including those I teach, do not even know about residential schools because no one talks about them," said Wilson. "My family doesn't. It is just too horrific to relive."

Wilson wants the Ministry of Education and the Campbell River School District to do something about the intergenerational effects of this tragedy.

"Because they were raised by people who had been so badly abused, the next generation were, at times, unable to parent their own children," he said. "In fact, the lack of parenting skills is one of the most profound outcomes of the residential school system. It is perhaps one of the most inevitable outcomes, too, because of the extremely negative social conditioning of residential school students."

"The graduation rate for Aboriginal students at Carihi is 60 per cent," said Wilson. "The importance of school is just not there, not passed down. Our schools do not speak their language, do not teach their culture, sure you can get a language class for one semester out of the year and you can have aboriginal day or aboriginal week but there is no continuity, these things should be every day."

"You have to start with education there has never been a better time to incorporate aboriginal programs make it meaningful," Wilson said. "Not one day not one week but every day. Who has written our text books? Whose history are we teaching? Even my non-aboriginal students, when I talk about this, ask why they are not being told about this."

"Nelson Mandela said that education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world," said Wilson, "When this report comes out in 2014, I hope everyone is listening."

Contact: sthomson@courierislander.com