Nazaire Azarie Bird
St. Michael’s Indian Residential School and Fort Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School
THE INTERVIEWER: Could you please say and spell your full name for us.
NAZAIRE AZARIE BIRD: Okay. My name is Nazaire Azarie Bird; and it’s spelled N-a-z-a-i-r-e A-z-a-r-i-e B-i-r-d.
Q. Thank you. Where do you come from?
A. I come from Canada.
Q. Right on. Whereabouts in Canada?
A. Little Red River Reserve, north of Prince Albert.
Q. What school did you go to?
A. My first few years were in Duck Lake, St. Michael’s School in Duck Lake. I was short-changed a couple of years, but that one we’re working on.
I also went to school in Lebret, Saskatchewan. It’s an Indian Residential School in the Fort Qu’Appelle area.
Q. Okay. Excellent.
Do you remember what years you were there?
A. Yeah. I went to school —
That new information that we got, I went to school in 1938.
Q. Okay.
A. Yeah. Right up to ’51. In Lebret I was there in ’50-’51.
Q. Okay.
How old were you when you first went to school?
A. Six years old. My grandmother used to tell me (speaking native language), which means you went to school when you were six.
Q. Okay.
A. I’m talking to you in Cree on that one.
Q. Yup. What was life like for you before you went to school?
A. Well, we lived in a log house. In them days there was no power, no electricity. All we had was wood, wood stoves, and I used to haul snow to melt for water. The living was pretty good. Being a young kid, when you’re a young child, you know that you’re being loved by your grandparents and your parents.
My dad died when I was four years old so I was raised by my mother and grandmother.
Q. Do you remember the first day you went to school?
A. Yeah, I remember. The Priest came to the Reserve that day. He used to come on Sundays to say Mass. I told my grandmother that the Priest is here and it’s time for me to go to school. But everything was spoken in Cree. So I slapped on my moccasins, my little rubbers, my hand-sewn pants, my hand-sewn shirt and hand-sewn jacket and I had a little fur hat. But that was thrown away before I hit the Residential School because the boys would be laughing at me wearing a little fur hat, eh.
When I got to school all I met was a bunch of little boys, guys about my size. That was the beginning of the Residential School.
Q. How did you feel about leaving?
A. Well, I didn’t feel too bad because I was one of the guys that wanted to learn, more than A, B, C, D, and more than 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That’s the reason why I think that I went.
Q. When you got there, what was it like to arrive at the school?
A. Well, it was different. It was a big building and there was a lot of commotion and boys around. We didn’t have that back on the Reservation.
What else?
Q. How were the teachers?
A. The teachers?
Q. Um-hmm.
A. Well, to be honest with you, sometimes I didn’t know because I never spoke English. I didn’t understand anything what they were saying, but there were guys that understood English and they talked to me in Cree and that’s what the Sister said. From then on I followed along.
Q. Did they think it was okay for you to speak Cree?
A. Well, they had no alternative. It’s all the language I knew. And I think most of the boys, too, they spoke Cree.
I just want to make a comment on that. There’s a lot of people who said they weren’t allowed to speak Cree. I don’t know what school that was, but the school I was at, everybody spoke Cree.
Q. Oh, okay.
A. Maybe somebody else afterwards looking at the school maybe those guys weren’t telling the truth. But that’s the truth. That’s the way it was.
Q. Okay. And did you have a uniform when you went there
A. No; no uniform. There was no such thing as a uniform. I think they gave me a different set of clothes, after taking off my Indian clothes.
Q. Were you allowed to go home for summers?
A. Yeah. We were allowed two months out of twelve months; two months out of twelve months, and you were only allowed to stay twenty-two —
In eleven years you were only allowed to stay twenty-two months on the Reserve from the school, and the rest of the time at the Residential School.
Q. Wow.
A. Yeah. I lost a lot of my culture that I was supposed to have. I lost it at the Residential School. My grandfather used to make Sun Dances. But I used to go and watch. They used to sing, like the Native people are singing today, but I didn’t pick it up because I didn’t stay long enough on the Reserve to pick it up.
But if you want me to sing, I’ll sing a song for you in Latin!
Q. Oh my goodness. I’m very tempted to ask you to do that. (Laughter)
A. Oh, no, don’t.
Q. I’m just joking. You said you had some pictures that you wanted to show.
A. Yeah.
Q. Do you want to show them now?
A. Yeah. Am I still on camera?
Q. Oh yeah, you’re still on camera.
A. Holy smokes.
Q. Don’s good. He’s got this going the whole time.
A. I’ve got a whole bunch of pictures.
Q. Do you want to go grab a couple?
A. How can I show them?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Just hold them up like that (indicating).
A. Oh, okay.
Another thing, I was stationed in Germany for two years, as a paratrooper, in my younger days. By the time I got back from there I was a German, because I spoke German.
Q. Oh, wow.
A. If somebody wants to —
We used to practice in our barracks how to speak German.
Just hang on, hang on here guys.
Q. Okay.
A. By the time I got out of the Armed Forces as a paratrooper I put in forty-three parachute jumps. We used to jump in the various parts of Western Canada, like Wainwright. We made a lot of jumps in Wainwright and we made jumps in Cold Lake, Alberta. And then we went to Nome, Alaska in ’62 in the winter time. The snow was —
There was lots of snow and it was cold. We made a jump in Nome and then we were on exercise for twenty-eight days with the Americans. We were testing the weapons, new weapons they had, the 7.62 millimetre, firing the weapons, seeing how they would react in the cold weather.
And then in 1963 we jumped in Tanner Cross, Alaska, and then we were there for another twenty-eight days on a maneuver with the Americans. They were testing their snowmobiles, whatever machine that moves on the snow, they were testing them. We went about forty-eight fellas on that exercise.
What else?
Q. Do you have any ones that are about your Residential School?
A. Not in this picture.
Q. Do you have any in your group of pictures?
A. Yeah.
Q. Those are the ones that we’re most keen to see.
A. I’ll show you.
Q. I’d like to see all of them. Maybe after.
A. The picture I want to show you, he went to Vietnam. He was part of the Airborne. There’s an Airborne outfit in the States, this guy here. His name is Stanley Lapointe. He’s from Muskeg Lake Indian Reserve.
After we got out he went to the States to join the American Army and he was in the Airborne outfit. He got shot twice while he was in Vietnam. Every time a guy got shot over there, he got a Purple Heart. I guess that’s one of the highest ranks they got.
And the other guy is from Cardston, Alberta. I think he went to school, too, somewhere. His name is Don Mills.
Is that it?
Q. Yeah. Good.
I want to hear more about you in school, about your experience there. It sounds like things were pretty good. Did you enjoy going to school?
A. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know too much about the first years because of the lack of language. My English wasn’t —
I had a hard time grasping onto it but eventually I did.
After a while I done okay, except for the few hardships that we got from some of the supervisors and the priests. They were the only things that spoiled a young kid.
Shall I tell you the experience that I got?
Q. Yeah.
A. The worst one of all…
It seems like when a person is being picked on by somebody, I think I was one of them, we were coming out of the mess hall and I slipped a piece of bread here in my shirt. As I’m walking out the priest was at the door waiting for me because the priests used to sit way at the front out there and he’s asking me, “What have you got there?” I told him I got a bread. He just took it. And he says, “You go into that…”
There’s a cubicle where they had the recreational equipment.
So I went in there. I didn’t know I was in trouble. I think I was in trouble but I wasn’t too sure until he came in with the strap. You know, one of them straps that was this wide and about this thick and about this long (indicating). He had a good grip on it. So he says, “Take your pants off.” So I took my pants off. “Take your shorts off.” So I took my shorts off. “Now you kneel there.” So I knelt down with my bare ass.
The next thing I know I got the first one. The first one really hit. He would really hit, wind up, you know. You know how they wind up. Six times. At that time I was about eleven years old. At the first strap you cry. In the meantime I think he hit me a couple of times on my penis when he was strapping me. I told that to my lawyers and they never done a dam bloody thing about this.
Anyways, that’s what happened there. That was the worst one of all I got.
Q. Wow.
A. And then I couldn’t sit down. You know them welts, I must have got them. When I was sitting I had to actually sit kind of sideways, you know. That was the worst experience I had. I never thought I would get strapped like that.
But in the meantime I was starting to learn pretty good English too, eh. I was eleven years old.
The other one —
Another one who used to pick on me was a supervisor. I’m going to mention his name. His name is Alfonse Reikers (ph.). He’s from Humboldt, Saskatchewan. He used to be a supervisor there. He’s one of these people, I think he was a red neck, or some dam bloody thing like that. He used to walk straight, like a big shot.
So one day I got him riled up. I don’t know what I did, but he made me stand right against the wall. I was standing there and the next thing I know, he’s going to punch me like this (indicating). I slid down and he hit the cement wall. He bruised his —
If I would have stood there, if I hadn’t moved, he would have punched me right in the nose, or somewhere around here and probably broken my nose. But anyways, I slid down. And then he grabbed me and he took me to the principal at that time, who was Father Latour (ph.). George Marie Father Latour was the principal at that time. They went into the office and they shut the door. They were talking. They were talking for a while. “I don’t know what kind of lie is that”, the supervisor said. But anyways he went out and the priest told me, he says, “Roll up your sleeve.” So I rolled up my sleeve. “You look up that way.” So I looked up that way. Two times he strapped me here (indicating). “On the other side now.” Two times here, too.
You know them buggars, when a fella is going to strap somebody they really wind up, too, like that. That’s probably what they did, eh. That’s the second time.
Another time we were doing exercises in the school Play Room. Mr. Reikers (ph.), that’s the same guy who punched me, he says, “You come out in the front here and do that.” I told him, “No.” You know, that guy just wind up and slapped me right across the face.
Q. For no reason?
A. I told him I didn’t want to do it. Let somebody else do it, eh. But he was picking on me, this guy. I went and sat down on the bench crying. That was one of the worst ones there is. People like that I don’t know why they made us suffer. I had experiences that I never had on the Reserve. I picked them all up from the White people at the school I went to. Indians don’t do that, back in them days when you were a young kid. Your parents look after you, or whoever is looking after you.
Yeah, that’s one of the —
Another time, another worst one of all, not the worst one but one of them. In the spring time I lost one of my rubbers. You know when the snow is melting and there’s water. I lost one of my rubbers. That supervisor sent me out. He said, “You go and look for it.” That’s that same Mr. Reikers (ph.). So I went out looking and I couldn’t find it.
We had a barn where they kept the cattle and horses. I seen this Father, Father Latour coming. They had a rail along the school yard and I was standing there with my foot up like this (indicating). I had no rubber. He seen me but he just kept on going. That guy, he was supposed to be a man of God but he didn’t even come and talk to me, or ask me, but he never did. He kept on walking.
So that same night I was up in the Infirmary in a bed, sick with pneumonia. That Sister that looked after me, Sister (something) she says that she kneeled down and prayed for me. I was there for —
I didn’t know nothing for four days. Then I finally came out of it. Then she came out with a bowl of soup and a toast because that’s the first time I was going to eat something in four days. It really went good, eh. So that was one of the times.
That’s neglect. Because of the Father, and the supervisor, they didn’t look after us. They would rather see you —
They were bullying us most of the time, I guess.
Q. Wow. I wanted to ask you. When you went to Lebret School, why did you change schools from St. Michaels at Duck Lake?
A. I’ll give you the reason why. In 1948-49 we won the Provincial Midget Championship at St. Michael’s School in Duck Lake.
Q. For hockey?
A. Yeah. We beat all the White teams that year in Saskatchewan, Midget age.
The reason why I went to Lebret is I was a hockey player and they wanted two hockey players at Lebret. At that time it was Juvenile age next to Midget, and then Juvenile, so that’s the reason why I went to Lebret.
Do you want to take a picture of it again?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Um-hmm.
A. That’s me (indicating). I was sixteen years old at that time, fifteen or sixteen.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Point yourself out again.
A. This one here.
That’s the reason I went to Lebret. They wanted hockey players.
Q. How did you like Lebret?
A. Oh, Lebret, that’s another new experience because I didn’t know the guys. But they all accepted me when they seen me get on the ice and they know that I was a hockey player so I got along with everybody.
Q. How were the teachers?
A. Lebret was good. I was doing my Grade 9 at Lebret. It was a good school. The guys accepted me as one of the guys. I played baseball, too, in them days. I got along with them guys. I made the baseball team.
Lebret at that time, too, had a band. So that one guy he says, “Here, you play these drums, these snare drums.” I didn’t know how. But I used to play the snare drums in that band. I’ve got a picture of that back at home from Lebret.
Q. Wow.
A. Yeah.
Q. After you finished Lebret, was it shortly after that you joined the Army?
A. Yeah. I was out of school for three years and then I joined the Canadian Army.
Q. What did you do in that three years? Did you go back home?
A. Yeah. I stayed home. I looked after my grandmother. I used to haul water for them, chop wood for them. We were still using wood. They used to have a coal oil lamp. I used to look after them. And then I had to leave them because I wasn’t —
I wanted to advance myself. I had a feeling I had to advance myself. I didn’t want to live on the Reserve all my life, not like the ones back at home. They were living on the Reserve all their lives. They hardly went anywhere, them people.
But me, I seen the country, I seen the world. I seen Germany. I seen Copenhagen, Denmark. I seen Amsterdam, Holland. And in my hockey days I went to Santa Rosa, California and San Francisco, and we went and played in that arena in St. Petersburg, Florida. We had a hockey team called the Wagon Burners. The guys were the best guys, the best players in Saskatchewan; not the best but they selected the best to go and play for the Wagon Burners. Fred Sasakamoose
— Trancriber’s note: Fred Sasakamoose was listed on the Chicago Blackhawks website as a former player.
was there that time. He played in the NHL with the Chicago Blackhawks. There was a guy by the name of Ray Ahenakew (ph.), he played for the Saskatoon Quakers, Senior Hockey.
Q. Wow. Did you get married?
A. Yeah, I got married in my last two years in the Armed Forces. I met my wife in North Battleford. That’s the time when they used to have fairs. Nowadays they call them exhibitions. I met her in the Fair Grounds.
Q. Did you have kids with her?
A. Yeah, but not right away. We went together for two years and eventually we got married. Her name is Eliza Big Ears. So I went and registered. That summer I got married I went and registered in the office. You know, in the Army they’ve got an office and I told them. The lady there, I said, “I got married.” So that lady came and gave me an interview. “What’s your wife’s name?” Elizabeth Big Ears. All them secretaries, they laughed. It sounded funny, I guess.
Q. Especially from such a funny guy!
A. It was a funny name, I guess. So that’s what happened.
Out of that marriage I got four sons. One of the guys I talked to is the youngest one. He’s working in Utah. Cameron Bird is his name. And I’ve got two daughters.
Q. Do you have grand kids, too?
A. I’ve got a few. I don’t know how many. I don’t keep track. My wife keeps track of that.
Q. Do you feel like you had to heal from your experiences in Residential School, or were you pretty much okay?
A. Pardon me?
Q. Did you feel like you had to heal from your experiences in Residential School, or did you feel like you were okay and you just went on with your life?
A. No. Because of the beatings and the strappings, your mind kind of —
When I was growing my family I used to kind of slap my kids around, too, because I got slapped around in Residential School. You know, that’s the worst thing. I feel sorry for what I did to my kids. Not all the time, but once in a while. It’s because of the way they treated us at the Residential School. It was their fault.
Another thing is I used to drink. I drank lots. My wife says she was pregnant one time and it was deep snow. Today it hurts me, hurts my feelings. I hurt right here (indicating). She used to go and cut wood while she was pregnant in the deep snow. She told me that. Boy, I felt bad.
I never used to drink. In the Residential School you couldn’t drink. But when we left the Residential School most of us, the majority of us I think drank.
It also seems that the people getting lots of money are the ones that have been in jail and never worked at one steady job in their lifetime. They’re the ones that are getting lots of money. I might as well brag about myself. I’m the guy that works all my life. When I go to apply for that CPP, whatever you call them lawyers —
All they paid me was —
All I got was $1,102 after telling them all my experiences from 1999. I told my experiences and all they gave me was $1,102. You know, them people are going to make a whole pile of money if they make a book and sell it. They want to make money on that, make money on us. But not right now. But in about twenty years time they will be doing that.
What do you call that lawyer in Saskatoon? I can’t think of his name right offhand. But anyways, that’s the way it was.
Q. Can I ask you one more question, because you talked earlier about you don’t drink any more. How long has it been since you’ve had a drink?
A. I’ve been sober for thirty-four years now. I quit smoking in 1967, so I don’t know how many years that would be.
Q. Lots.
A. Yeah.
Q. That’s all the questions I have. Do you have anything else you want to share? Our tape is about to run out, so if you do, hold onto that thought. We could put in a new tape if you want us to.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: We’ve got about two minutes.
Q. Okay.
A. This training that people are giving, it’s good for people that are there. But what about the other people that are not there. They should be here listening, too. They’re the ones that need most of it. They want to hear. They want to listen to what’s happening. And there’s some of them back at home. They went to Residential School. They’ve never been to anything like this. This is about the fourth one for me to attend this kind of a thing.
Q. Do you tell people about it?
A. Yeah, back at home I try and tell them.
Q. Well, we really appreciate you telling your story. You will help a lot of people.
A. Yeah. Also back at home I’m a farmer, too. I’ve been farming for eighteen years.
Q. Oh wow. What do you farm?
A. Wheat and barley, and sometimes weeds!
Q. Oh yeah. I have them in my garden.
A. Not the kind you smoke!
Q. Me? (Laughter) I’m scandalized.
A. I guess that’s it for me.
Q. You’re done. Thank you very much.
A. There’s one more thing I forgot to mention.
Q. Okay.
A. This happened in Residential School. See this elbow? I never got compensated for that. They never give me nothing for that. This finger here, is just about dead now. Look at the finger on the other one. One is bigger and one is shorter. This one is getting shorter and this one’s got a big bone. I broke that in school. I’m not getting compensated for this. I’ve been asking. You’ve got to re-apply, they told me. That’s that lawyer. I told them about it but they didn’t give me nothing. They say that people like this with broken —
They get so many thousands of dollars and me all I got was $1,000 out of the whole deal, eh. So they tell me I could re-apply but I don’t know how I’ll make out. So that’s about it for me.
Q. My goodness. Well, good luck with everything. And thank you so much.
A. Things will be all right. I’ll be seventy-six in May.
Q. I can’t believe you’re seventy-six. You look good, may I say.
A. Thank you. That’s it.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: That’s it.
— End of Interview
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