THE INTERVIEWER: Could you please say and spell your name
for us?
JANET EASTER: My name is Janet Easter; J-a-n-e-t E-a-s-t-e-r.
Q. What Residential School did you go to?
A. I went to MacKay Residential School near Dauphin, or in
Dauphin, Manitoba.
Q. Was it a Catholic school, or was it Anglican?
A. I believe it was Anglican.
Q. What years did you go there?
A. I went there about 1972 to at least 1976.
Q. How old were you when you started?
A. I was twelve years old.
Q. Did you go to a day school before that?
A. No, I didn’t. I went to my home Reserve.
Q. Okay. There was a school on your Reserve?
A. Yes. I don’t know what you —
Q. A Reserve school.
A. Yeah.
Q. You went for the day and came home at night like a regular
school?
A. Yeah.
Q. Do you remember your first day of Residential School? Can
you talk a little bit about that?
A. I remember leaving home and wondering where I was going.
There was me and my brother, my cousin and a couple of other people. I
Page 2 of 11
remember going with barely any clothes because our family was a big
family. There were eleven of us in our family. I remember leaving and I
remember not having a suitcase because we didn’t have any suitcases
back then. I remember not having very much stuff. I think all I had was a
plastic bag to take with me on the bus. They came and got us by bus.
I was wondering where we were going and why are we going.
Where are you taking us? It was kind of confusing because we were at
home and then all of a sudden they are saying we have to go somewhere
to go to school. We were kind of wondering where we were.
Q. What was it like when you got there? Do you remember that?
A. It was confusing. There were a lot of us. There were busloads
of kids from all over. The bus ride was long from my community to
Dauphin. It was a long trip and we were sitting in the bus and wondering
where are we going.
Then we pulled up to the Residential School. There were lots of
kids there. There were a lot of buses, busloads of kids were coming and
there were a lot of people. There was a lot of activity and a lot of people
looking for students and taking them here, taking them there, taking them
all over the place.
Q. Did they give you a uniform right away?
A. There were actually no uniforms there. They didn’t have —
I don’t remember having any uniform.
Q. Did they set you up in the dorm and give you a bed and stuff
like that?
Page 3 of 11
A. They assigned rooms to students. I’m not sure how they did
that. There were a lot of people calling out your name, but they separated
us. I was there with my brother and a couple of cousins. I ended up
staying with someone else. I’m not sure how they did that.
Q. What was a typical day like at school? What time would you get
up and how would you start your day?
A. We would get up early. There was a buzzer. It was early
because everybody had to go and shower. These were open showers.
We all had to get up and get in line and go shower. If you had a
toothbrush you would go and brush your teeth. We didn’t really have
toothbrushes. I remember that I didn’t have stuff like that. We barely had
clothes because we came from a big family and there were a lot of us and
we didn’t have any clothes.
Q. So the school didn’t supply toothbrushes for you?
A. I think they might have. I’m not sure.
Q. What about the food? What was it like?
A. The food was a lot of oatmeal, a lot of toast, and we had to go to
the main building. There was a big building where all the younger kids
were and then there were 2 other buildings where the boys were and the
girls, the Grade nines, I guess. We were in one of those buildings so we
had to get up and walk to the main building where the cafeteria was,
where they fed us, and we all had to file in and they told us where to sit,
like what area to sit so we would know where to go. Everybody had a
seating plan so you would see all the little kids filing in from ages 6 to
whatever. We would see them filing in and everybody had their own
Page 4 of 11
little —
We had to line up and get our food. We had trays. The food was
pretty well the same every day.
Q. What about lunch and dinner?
A. Lunches were sandwiches. We had to take it to school. It was
a bag lunch. It wasn’t very good. It was the same sandwiches and maybe
an orange, or whatever. But we always had to take a lunch because the
bus —
There were buses that picked us up at the main building and we
would go to school in town. So that was pretty new.
Q. Are there any memories that really stand out for you at
Residential School, things that happened that you could share with us
today?
A. I remember being in school and kids would make fun of us
because we didn’t have very many clothes and we would just go to school
in the same clothes.
Q. Were there non-Aboriginal kids in the school you went to?
A. Yeah. There were non-Aboriginal kids and they would make fun
of us and laugh at us.
Sometimes at night a bunch of us would go for walks downtown
and walk home. I remember one time we were chased by a car full of
non-Aboriginal kids. They were just chasing us, trying to run us down, and
we were running all over the place trying to get away from them and they
were just after us. They were calling us names: dirty Indians, wagon
burners, and they were throwing rocks at us. We had to run and hide from
Page 5 of 11
them. We hid between houses and sometimes we would run down to the
bushes and hide there because we were a bunch of young girls walking
about and guys used to chase us.
They threw rocks at us like they were going to —
They really hated us. So that was really one of the bad things I
remember about being in Residential School and being hated by the other
kids. Or they would totally ignore us as if we weren’t there. It made us
feel invisible, like we weren’t valuable. It just makes you feel worthless.
You see all the other kids with better clothing, better everything,
and we had nothing. We were poor and we didn’t have clothes. I
remember we had barely any clothes. I remember having to wear the
same pair of jeans. Maybe I had 2 pairs of them. So it was really —
I think it really bothered me in school.
Q. What about the Staff at the school? Were they aware of the
racism that was going on and things that were happening to you?
A. At that time, no. The teachers at the school, the high school,
nobody did anything about it.
Q. Were any of them racist as well? Did you have any
experiences?
A. I don’t remember any teachers really saying anything. Nothing
really stands out.
Maybe the supervisors at the boarding school, at the Residential
School itself, there were supervisors there that would call us names. One
of them used to pinch us and pull our hair. I don’t know what she was
trying to do, but that’s how she got our attention. If we didn’t listen she
Page 6 of 11
would pull at our ears, really hard. A lot of us would get punished for not
doing anything. If we were late —
They were very strict about the hours, the curfew. We had to be in
at a certain time or they would come looking for us and make us come
home. They were very strict on a lot of things.
You couldn’t eat after a certain time. If you were hungry, that’s too
bad. If you missed supper that’s too bad. You had to go to sleep. If you
missed supper, that was okay with them. They didn’t try to get you to eat.
Q. Are there other memories that really stand out for at the
Residential School?
A. There are a lot of bad ones. There was a lot of drinking. We
were young; twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old and sometimes we would
go downtown and get alcohol. We would get some of the older boys to
buy alcohol and then go drink somewhere in the bush.
I remember being only about twelve years old and a couple of the
guys were forcing liquor down my throat. They were holding my arms and
they were forcing a bottle of beer down my throat because I didn’t want to
drink. So that’s how they made me drink. I guess they were trying to
make me drunk. I didn’t want to. They were saying, “You have to.” So
that’s how I started drinking. There was a lot of drinking going on there.
A lot of things happened with other students. I think I was pretty
lucky that nothing really happened to me. I used to make sure that I would
go home. I would go back to the school. There were a whole bunch of us
who used to go around together. We would kind of look after each other.
There were other kids from other communities close by, so they would
Page 7 of 11
watch. There was maybe a group of 5 of us and we would watch each
other. I was the youngest one of all the girls and they used to make sure
nothing happened to me and made sure I went home. We all looked after
each other. We kind of stuck together so nothing happened.
Q. Do you think your experiences at Residential School affected
your life?
A. Yes, it did.
— A Short Pause
Q. Just take a moment. It’s all right.
— Speaker overcome with emotion.
Q. Do you want to stop for a minute? Do you want to take a
moment? Are you okay?
A. I feel like I’m all alone.
Q. Does it help coming to something like this and seeing other
people?
A. Yeah. I feel like I don’t belong anywhere. I feel I’m not part of
my family. I’m the only one here.
Q. From your family?
A. Yeah. I don’t feel connected to them. I feel like I’m away from
them. I’m not close to them. Other people are close to their families and
I’m not because I wasn’t there. I left when I was twelve and I’ve been out
ever since. I don’t know how to relate to my family. And it hurts. It just
makes me feel, you know, where’s my home and what happened to my
family.
Page 8 of 11
It is affecting me. I have a teenage daughter and she asks me:
“How come you don’t tell me that you love me and how come you don’t
give me a hug?” She said, “How come you don’t do that?” I didn’t know
what to tell her. I didn’t know what to say.
The main reason for coming here is to maybe sometime she will be
able to look at it and understand why we can’t feel anything.
Q. Have you been able to talk to her at all about your experiences?
A. She knows I went to Residential School but I haven’t really said
anything about how it was over there. I just told her I lived there when I
was twelve and she’s thirteen. I was at that age when I left. I can’t
comprehend her leaving me. I wouldn’t want to send her anywhere.
Q. Did a lot of the memories came back when she came to the
same age that you were when you went away, when she turned twelve?
A. Yeah. I was wondering how could people do that, send their
kids away like that? I could never send my daughter anywhere. I don’t
even let her out of my sight. I keep a very close eye on her. I don’t let her
go out. I have to be there. I want to protect her and not let her go
anywhere. How did that happen? How did people let their kids go, you
know?
That’s what I can’t understand. Why did they make us go
somewhere? What if I stayed home maybe I would be closer to my family,
closer to the rest of my brothers and sisters.
Q. Do you talk to them at all any more?
A. Yeah, I do. But we don’t really talk like how brothers and sisters
should talk. We talk like we’re acquaintances. We don’t really —
Page 9 of 11
There’s no closeness, really. We are just kind of living like we
know each other, but we don’t really know each other. Things like that.
Even my mom —
Q. Do you think when your daughter gets older – she’s pretty
young still – but do you think when she’s older you will be able to talk to
her a little more about things you went through at school?
A. I was thinking of maybe taking her to counseling because I think
it’s kind of affecting her. I think sometimes I still engage in addictions, like
alcohol, and she sees that. She says, “Why are you doing that?” Why are
you drinking? And I say, “You don’t understand.” She gets really mad at
me and screams at me. “I don’t want you to drink”, she’ll say. I would say
to her, “Well, that’s the only way I have to make the pain go away.” She
says, “Mom, I’m never going to drink like what you’re doing.” She doesn’t
like me doing that.
Q. Have you been to any healing yourself?
A. I did some counseling but I never kept up with it. I know I still
have to go. There’s still a lot of things that I can’t really talk about. I don’t
know if I will, but I know I still need a lot of counseling. I don’t know when
that will happen.
Q. Well, you had the strength to come here today and that’s a
good sign. That’s good. You came here for your daughter.
A. Yeah, for my daughter.
Q. She knows that love is there. I know it’s hard for you to hug her
and she doesn’t understand that yet. But that love is there and she’s
Page 10 of 11
feeling it, for sure. I think that you are here today and that’s courageous
and strong. You’re onto the right path.
Do these things help when you see other people and when you see
that people are starting to recognize what happened was wrong and a
horrible thing. Is that helping with that stuff coming out?
A. Yeah, it’s helping a lot. I knew there were a lot of us. I knew
there were a lot of things that happened but I guess it just seemed normal.
It just seemed normal. I thought everybody went that way, but then I
found out later that some people didn’t. Some people stayed home with
their families and some of us were taken away.
There are so many of us that I know, lots where I went and a lot of
us have mental problems and we have difficulty relating to people. We all
keep a good front. We don’t like to show our real feelings a lot. We try to
put on a mask that we’re happy and nothing is bothering us. But I guess
it’s part of surviving is that you have this mask and nobody can touch it.
But inside it’s not what the world sees. It’s something else and you don’t
really like yourself.
Q. Well, thank you very much for coming today. I know it’s hard to
sit there.
I just wonder if there are any final things you would like to say
before we wrap up?
A. I just want to make sure that my daughter and everybody else
knows and finds out what went on, and that it shouldn’t happen again.
Page 11 of 11
Q. And it won’t because people like you can come forward and say
what happened. So thank you very much. You did a great job. I know it’s
hard. Give a big sigh. It’s over.
A. Thanks.
Q. I’m so sorry.
— End of Interview