CANADA
Ottawa Citizen
Alongside its recommendations, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Tuesday released a compendium of stories from some of the survivors of the residential school system that brutalized thousands of aboriginal Canadians.
Here are some of their voices:
On being removed from their homes and sent to the schools:
“They load(ed) us all up on a bus and took us. And I remember my mom had a really hard time letting us kids go, and she had, she had a really hard time. She begged the priest, and the priest said it was law that we had to go, and if we didn’t go, then my parents would be in trouble.” – Maureen Gloria Johnson, who was taken to Lower Post School in northern British Columbia in 1959.
“I was kidnapped from Port Renfrew’s elementary school when I was around six years old, and this happened right in the elementary schoolyard. And my auntie witnessed this, and another non-native witnessed this … These are two witness trying, saw me fighting, trying to get away with, from the two RCMP officers that threw me in the back seat of the car and drove off with me. And my mom didn’t know where I was for three days, frantically stressed out and worried about where I was, and she finally found out that I was in Kuper Island residential school.” – Howard Stacy Jones.
“We got taken away by a big truck. I can still remember my mom and dad looking at us, and they were really, really sad-looking. My dad’s shoulders were just hunched, and he, to me, looked like his spirit was broken.” – Alma Scott, taken to the Fort Alexander, Man., school when she was five years old.
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