Harvey Trudeau says there was a place on the grounds of the Spanish Residential Schools where students were not allowed to go. A restricted area.
Though Trudeau isn’t sure what was there, he deeply believes that the technology used to discover the remains of 215 children in Kamloops, B.C. would be of use. When he went more than 20 years ago to revisit the site, located west of Sudbury on the north shore of Lake Huron, he knew there was something wrong.
“But I was only seven when I was there, I was too young to understand.”
It wouldn’t be a surprise if there were. Volume 4 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report, Missing Children and Unmarked Burials contains statistics related to the number of deaths at the 139 residential schools across Canada.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Register of Confirmed Deaths of Named Residential School Students and the Register of Confirmed Deaths of Unnamed Residential School Students puts the number of deaths at 3,200. That number is now updated to 4,100 children.
In 32 per cent of these deaths, the government or school did not report the name of the student who died.
How could they when, for example, many students at the Spanish Residential school were referred to by numbers rather than their name.
In a quarter of those 3,200 deaths, there is no gender recorded. Forty-nine per cent of cases have no recorded cause of death, and in most cases, the child’s body was not sent home to their family.
Trudeau was only at the Spanish Residential School a short time, from 1957-1958, but says what he does remember is enough. What he has learned since, both as a Sagamok Anishnawbek elder and councillor with Sagamok First Nation, as well as a member of the Ontario Indian Residential School Support Services, is enough to break even the strongest soul.
It is his memories of the school that began to affect him even as he was transferred to what was then called ‘day school’, moved from the Spanish Residential school in the Town of Spanish to the provincially run school on the Sagamok reservation.
But his memories, and the memories of all those who attended the schools, are important. Before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the legacy of the schools lived on mostly in memories — this is not the history that is taught in schools.
“The Indian Residential School legacy is the best kept secret in Canada’s history,” said Trudeau. “It’s not taught as a curriculum in provincial schools. The only reason I ever heard about residential schools is because I went to one.”
There were two schools in Spanish, one for the girls and one for the boys, located across the street from each other. Despite the school being run as one unit by the Jesuits of English Canada, the students were not allowed to see each other.
Trudeau, his three older brothers and two older sisters went to the schools. He was never allowed to see his sisters, and was discouraged from speaking with his brothers, and certainly not in his first language of Ojibwe.
“We were beaten for speaking our language. They restricted us, they assimilated us, they indoctrinated us into their belief systems.”
Trudeau said that moved through generations. When you are taught as a child that you are wrong, imperfect, only suitable if changed, it becomes a part of your subconscious, he said. “They taught us that, they burned that train of thought into us.”
Even at a time where discipline was often physical, the punishments visited on the Indigenous children was harsher. Tales of children having their knuckles rapped by teaching nuns for writing with their left hands weren’t uncommon decades ago. Far from a rap though, Trudeau’s brother had the fingers on his left hand broken by a teacher-nun so he would have to use his right predominantly.
And that is the abuse, the violence, that was disclosed. Much of it hasn’t been.
Trudeau testified at the settlement for the Indian Residential School Settlement hearings and he began working with the Ontario Indian Residential School Support Services, an organisation that provides emotional and cultural support for survivors of the schools. He heard stories from those outside his family and felt a deeper understanding of what had happened to his people.
“There was physical abuse, mental abuse, spiritual abuse, emotional abuse. And yes, sexual abuse. I won’t say any names, but there were people that I knew were sexually abused by different males and different times on the same day. There was sodomy from the priests, and sodomy with whatever object they could find. That’s the kind of sh-t that was happening.”
The ongoing effect of the trauma is insurmountable for some. Trudeau said, in his mind, the long-term effects are “we didn’t know why we are the way we are.”
He’s referring to the loss of the culture, but also, what it truly means to be colonized.
“We were socially dysfunctional,” he said. “Alcohol was rampant in the community. The solution is understanding what happened to us. We were colonized, indoctrinated and assimilated and not grounded in our culture.”
Trudeau said that while the school tried to take his language from him, they did not succeed, directly anyway.
“They didn’t take that from us, because we were born into language, it was in us,” said Trudeau. “But as we grew up, as we had our children, we did not realize we should be speaking Ojibwe to our kids. We had to backtrack.”
Trudeau had his issues as well.
“I grew older, and I came to realise that there’s something wrong with the way I’m behaving. And that’s the impact and legacy of the residential school.”
In addition to believing firmly that Canada’s true history should be taught in all schools, as unpleasant as that may be, he hopes that the federal and provincial governments realize that they have to become accountable for their actions.
“And not just the government, but the churches. The Catholic Church has yet to apologize and the greatest majority of the abuses occurred in the Catholic churches. Bear the responsibility of this tragedy,” said Trudeau. “And pay due respect to the children.”
