CANADA
CBC News
Jason Warick · CBC News ·
May 06, 2018
Jenny Spyglass wishes she could forget the day she walked in on a priest raping her sister, Agnes.
“I’m a little better now, but I hate thinking about it,” Spyglass, 76, said in an interview with CBC News.
It’s not the only traumatic memory of her time at Delmas Indian Residential School — little brother Reggie dying of tuberculosis, older brother Martin left outside to suffer massive frostbite to his hands, Spyglass herself being locked for long periods in a dark, concrete basement, and the near-starvation rations of oatmeal, beans and biscuits.
“I still hate porridge,” she said.
Like more than 30,000 residential school survivors, Spyglass and her surviving siblings applied for compensation under a national program.
They were awarded between $10,000 and $20,000 each.
“We got abused, then robbed. I guess there’s nothing we can do about it now,” said Spyglass, who now lives in North Battleford, Sask., and took up powwow dancing late in life as one way to heal.
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