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On National Indigenous Peoples Day, in the wake of Kamloops, reconciliation seems far off, survivor says

For Michael Cachagee, chair of the Ontario Indian Residential School Support Services and a residential school survival, reconciliation can’t happen until the children who never came home are finally found
20140620 Michael Cachagee Residential School Survivor KA
Michael Cachagee, a residential school survivor, is seen June 20, 2014 in front of the former Shingwauk Indian Residential School (now Algoma University) in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. Kenneth Armstrong/SooToday

The Canadian Government describes National Indigenous Peoples Day as “a day for all Canadians to recognize and celebrate the unique heritage, diverse cultures and outstanding contributions of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.” 

The date, June 21, was chosen as it was already a special day for many Indigenous communities (and countless other cultures as well) as it is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.

For non-Indigenous people, perhaps there could be more focus on the “recognize” portion of the federal description, said Michael Cachagee, a member of Chapleau Cree First Nation, chair of the Ontario Indian Residential School Support Services, and a residential school survivor himself.

While that begins for many at the idea of reconciliation, ‘reconciliation’ is a word Cachagee said he can’t even comprehend.

“The word reconciliation doesn’t exist in my language,” he said. “In my language, Cree, even in Anishinaabe language, the word doesn't exist, the concept doesn't exist.”

It may also be because Cachagee can’t quite reconcile the treatment he and his generation faced at the hands of those who ran the residential schools in Canada, all 139 of them.

Cachagee was in residential schools from the age of three until the age of 16, attending St. John's Indian Residential School in Chapleau, the Bishop Horden Indian Residential School in Moose Factory, and the Shingwauk Indian Residential School in Sault Ste. Marie. He has an older brother who was with him, and a younger brother who was ripped from his mother at such a young age that he was given to the girls in the school to raise.

They were forcefully taken from a mother who had also been to the St. John’s Indian Residential School and who knew exactly what her beloved children would face. And yet she was powerless to stop it. Her children came home, but many more did not. 

Cachagee confesses quietly that he thinks those who didn’t go home again may have been better off in some ways.

He was physically and sexually abused by a priest he refers to as “a monster.” 

“He had a club foot, and I can still hear it sometimes in my dreams, dragging across the floor,” he said.

Cachagee said he watched helplessly as four children died. He was forced to carry them, dig their graves and then lay their tiny, lifeless bodies in the cold earth. He doesn’t remember how they died; he was too little. But he does remember the feeling.

He also remembers the lack of feeling from the adults around him. 

“Why was there nobody crying, in mourning,” he said. “You got a little girl here, seven or eight years old, laying in a box. No mourning, no tears, no nothing.”

The feelings he remembers most are being cold and hungry all the time. Food needed to be kept cold with ice, and when that would run out, the children ate rotten food as there was nothing else.

They were fed an average of 1,000 calories a day and examined by doctors to see the effects of malnutrition, “for research,” Cachagee recalls.

One child Cachagee remembers running away was beaten so badly when he was caught that he was transferred immediately to the infirmary. Then, the other boys were brought to see him — not for comfort, but to be told this is what would happen to them.

But the children already knew. Cachagee said they even knew to always sleep with covers on, even when it was hot, because if the light landed on your skin when the door opened in the night, you would be a victim.

That is what troubles him about reconciliation. 

In English, there is reconciliation (noun): The restoration of friendly relations, or the action of making one view or belief compatible with another. There is conciliation (noun): the action of stopping someone from being angry; placation; or the action of mediating between two disputing people or groups.

It is the aspects of making beliefs “compatible,” the “restoration of friendly relations,” the “placation,” and the “mediating between two groups,” that baffles and angers Cachagee.  

“What are we, as Indigenous people, reconciling with Canada, when the relationship that we had with Canada was never one never one of conciliatory exchange,” Cachagee said. “What are we reconciling? Are we going to reconcile our own demise? Reconcile our own people subjected to colonial rule?”

As a residential school survivor and chair of a support service that sought to offer some measure of justice for the other survivors of what politicians often refer to as “Canada’s darkest chapter,” Cachagee wonders when that chapter will end. 

He wonders this considering there have been calls for years to search the grounds of the schools for remains like those of the children found in Kamloops. 

Those remains were breaking news in 2021 despite the fact that as part of the testimonies included in the Indian Residential School Settlement class action suit, which was settled in 2006, they were supposed to be found. 

It began in the “late ’80s, early ’90s,” said Cachagee. “There was recognition and then also compensation for physical and sexual abuse, but also we were adamant that one of the things that would be recognized and dealt with was the question of unmarked graves. Some form of recognition to those children who never made it home.”

They did not receive the portion that dealt with the children. And instead of further investigating the schools, Cachagee said the Canadian government instead offered what’s known as a truth commission — in this case, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). 

But there is not as much truth as one would think, and Cachagee said that begins with the federal government not only running the commission itself, but granting immunity or “amnesty” for any crimes committed.

The TRC was based on truth commission models created in South Africa after Apartheid and in Australia after attempts to eradicate the Aboriginal population there were ended. But these models both grant amnesty to anyone who testifies, leaving justice behind in the pursuit of knowledge.

In many ways it could be the only way to gain much-needed information for investigations, but as Matt James of the University of Victoria notes in his article Uncomfortable Comparisons: The Canadian Truth and Recompilation Commission in International Context, a truth commission’s capacity to offer justice and accountability is affected by the injustices it is investigating, the socio-political context and the nature of the mandate.

His research-based article concludes that “these factors, compounded by considerations unique to the Canadian context, all mitigate against success.” 

When examining the TRC’S intent, nature and context, according to James, it fails to live up to its stated goals of truth and reconciliation. 

Cachagee said the TRC and even the Settlement Agreement hearings would poorly investigate several aspects of the crimes committed against him, against his siblings, friends and community. It would also give immunity to the perpetrators.

Perpetrators like a nun that Cachagee recalls vividly.

Each morning waking to wet sheets, one child in particular would be beaten by this nun every morning because he wet the bed. Cachagee said she, too, was a monster, and after opening the door each morning she would move to this child’s bed with glee, hoping to catch a stain of yellow.

At seven and nine years old, Cachagee and his brother would wake in the middle of the night, check the child’s sheets for wetness, then wash them as thoroughly as they could in a bucket of cold water and set them on the old, barely functioning radiator to dry. Just before morning, they would remake the bed.

But she would be disappointed and often take that anger out on everyone, including the little boy.

These are the acts, the misdeeds, the abuse, the neglect and the sheer torture that was given amnesty during the TRC, and never fully investigated as part of the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, Cachagee said.

No justice, no accountability, but now calls for reconciliation. For Cachagee, this is impossible while the remains of so many children are still lost. He is hopeful about the new calls for the investigation of all residential schools and said he will continue to fight for the other children to be brought to their families, to be home once more.

He hopes for justice and accountability, but you’ll have to excuse him if reconciliation is not in his mind. 


 

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Jenny Lamothe

About the Author: Jenny Lamothe

Jenny Lamothe is a reporter with Sudbury.com. She covers the diverse communities of Sudbury, especially the vulnerable or marginalized.
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