CANADA
The Province
BY ELAINE O’CONNOR, THE PROVINCE SEPTEMBER 17, 2013
As a child, Vancouver Aboriginal educator Dallas Yellowfly recalls hearing the story of a wild woman who lurks in the forest ready to snatch children.
It’s a traditional First Nations story used to discourage children from wandering. Sadly, it’s more than allegorical.
In a very real way, it came to pass, when an estimated 150,000 First Nations children were ripped from families, sent to residential schools, stripped of their language and culture and often abused.
“The story of the wild woman is the segue into the real story of the Indian agents who would take children to residential schools,” Yellowfly explained.
On Wednesday, the public school cultural facilitator will re-enact that story at the University of the Fraser Valley’s Indian Residential Schools Day of Learning. His presentation includes a theatre piece, “Qualena”, plus testimony from two survivors of St. Mary’s residential school in Mission — Cyril Pierre and Joe Ginger — detail the abuse they endured and what they’ve had to go through for compensation.
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