Richard Kistabish
St. Marc’s Indian Residential School
THE INTERVIEWER: Okay. I’ll get you to say and spell your first name and your last name so we can work on the audio level.
RICHARD KISTABISH: Richard Kistabish. R-i-c-h-a-r-d
K-i-s-t-a-b-i-s-h.
Can I say the last part of my story first?
Q. Yes.
A. I’m from Pikogan. I’m a member of the Abitibiwinni First Nation.
It’s funny that I do this in English.
Q. That’s okay.
A. It’s all right.
Q. All right, Richard.
A. After I finished my school I was looking for a job. Indian Affairs offered me this job called Liaison Officer of Education for all the Algonquin people around the Abitibi area. One of my duties was to fill up this form called IA352. These forms are the official documents that each parent must sign in order to have their kids go to Residential School. This happened in 1972 during the spring and summer time.
During the summer months of that period I went to visit this community called Gitsikagik (ph.) Grand Lake Victoria. This community has no Reservation, no infrastructure, nothing. They don’t have land to have a Reserve for them. They are still nomads. They are still practicing the traditional way of life.
One day it happened that I meet the chief of that community.
Do I have to say his name?
Q. No.
A. His name, anyway, is Sam. He was an old man. I guess he was an Elder in that community at the same time. Anyway, he was the leader, the chief. He saw me a couple of times before I had this conversation with him.
One day it was raining. It was really a bad weather day when I arrived at their camp, at their place. He asked me to get in his tent. I sat there on the floor with him and his wife was serving me the traditional tea. They had a big pot on the fire. He asked me some questions, but the lady there finds this man so offensive because we should make him eat first and then he’ll talk later. So that’s what happened. So I eat and after that I started to talk.
He asked me what I’m doing and all these questions. At the end I showed him the document; IA352. That was the most important document for me because from that document there was a statement made by the parents that they gave up all their responsibility. They gave this responsibility to the Queen, to anyone actually, where their kids would go.
He asked me to translate all the lines of that document. It’s 8 ½ by 14 on both sides. They have all those little characters that were in this formula. So I took the whole day just to translate every word in that document, both sides of the document. As I translated the wordings I realized at that time the wording that I use in my own language was so inappropriate or meaningless sometimes, or too powerful at the same time to be aware of what I was actually doing. I was taking away the kids by having those parents signing this document.
He made me realize that after questioning some of the wordings in there. He asked me why I was doing this. So I told him that it is part of my job. I’m being paid to do this job. That’s how I have my work. It’s that.
He asked me why. That was the first time that I tried to make sense of this word called “work”. I was not able to grab the meaning of that word in my own language. At the same time I realized that I’m going to be like the guys at the Residential School, the old thing, to take away their kids.
They took me when I was young, when I was 6 years old. It brought me back to that situation and I was starting to realize a little bit what I’m doing.
During that period of questioning and trying to answer the questions of this man I took some time off in order to think about it. We made some comments about my work there, but also about me being in school the first year. He asked me how was it and how I felt when I was in Residential School. So the whole thing, my whole day made me realize, I started to get conscious about the way I am, the way I feel or the way I’m supposed to be, I guess.
It was a big moment for me to be, I guess, starting to be aware of what I was doing. So at the end of the day —
When I arrived there it was about 9 o’clock in the morning. When I left it was ten at night. I didn’t realize the time during that period. I know at the end of the day when I left I told the chief that I was not doing this thing any more and I’m going to bring back all those forms to the office.
I went to the office the next morning and I gave back all the forms to Indian Affairs and I left.
So that’s the starting point of my healing journey. I guess I could say that, yeah, because that day was the day of —
I didn’t have any awareness, I didn’t have any soul maybe as a Native person. I turned back and I started trying to understand what it was I was doing there.
Then I was starting to be interested in what was going on, what happened, in that Residential School. So that’s the day I always remember because it was the time for me that I turned around and I started not a new life but a new way of thinking, a new way of asking myself questions before doing things.
Q. So what was it like when you started to recall your journey? What was the first thing you remembered?
A. Lost. I was lost. Losing things. Losing stuff that I was not able at that time to point out exactly what I’m losing.
There was one thing I always remembered and it was that when we arrived on the first day at this Residential School, I was telling to myself there was a mistake somewhere that happened. Mom and dad couldn’t make that kind of mistake, they can’t make that mistake. They must be fooling around or they must have been cheated, or something. So I was expecting them to get me one of these days, like tomorrow or the day after. But they never showed up.
Until on my birthday, October 19th, I was lucky at that time because it was on Sunday. My parents were allowed to come and to visit me for a short period. It was really short. It looks like it was 5 minutes maybe. But the whole family came down with a taxi. As soon as I saw them I told them, “Just give me 2 minutes, I’m going to go get my stuff and I’m going with you, going back with you.”
That’s the most painful experience of my life on that day, on my birthday. Wow. I was stopped by the Priest not to go beyond the door to get where my stuff was. I turned around and I said, “That’s okay, I’ll leave all my things here and I’ll go back with my parents and my brothers and sisters.”
It didn’t happen like that at all. It was iee, iee —
It was very bad for me because when it was time for them to leave, when I turned around, I decided to go with them. I walked with them and I was holding my mom’s hand and my father was walking in front of us. I guess they knew at that time it was impossible. There was something that was going to happen there.
I have repeated this story many times when I was in counseling.
My mom went in the taxi and all my sisters and brothers were in that car. My dad was sitting in front. My mom was behind. I tried to get in between my mom and my sisters but I just can’t so I was trying to push my mom to move and to give me a small space for me. But it didn’t happen. So they just closed the door. Then I realized that there’s another mistake that happened. Why are they doing this?
I noticed that around the car the Priests, the Oblates, they call them le frere, they were around the taxi. The more I talk about this, the more I see clearly the picture of what was prepared for me. I guess they knew at that time I was going to try to leave with the family. So they closed the door and the window was open because my mom was starting to cry at the same time and she wanted to kiss me goodbye. I grabbed —
You know when the door is like that (indicating), a space there. So I grabbed it with my hand like this (indicating) and I hold it. The taxi is starting to roll. I was running at the beginning but at the end I was being dragged in the dust. I made it up to the gate like that. Finally everybody was coming, all the Priests and the Nuns were coming and they tried to separate my arm in order for me to let the taxi go and I was exhausted after a few minutes of fights there. So they left. That was the separation, I guess, lost.
Q. What was your mom doing during that time?
A. I didn’t see her. To make things worse, the taxi was black. Wow. I never saw her after for a long period of time.
I was classified at that time as the big baby kid. I made a scene. I was fighting. I was shouting, crying, fighting and kicking, kicking the tires of the taxi. It was a big fight. I fought really hard not to be left there. This feeling was awful at that time because I thought I was the lucky one who will be home pretty soon, of all the 200 kids there that day watching me make this big scene, this big fight. It was so hard and so painful at the same time.
It was a big loss. I don’t remember the days after this in my mind. I’m trying to figure out what happened because —
— A short pause
Q. How old were you when you first went in? Do you remember?
A. Six.
Q. And how old were you when you left?
A. Sixteen.
Q. Sixteen. When you were in school there did you remember anyone of authority who might have been nice to you, like gave you a hug and told you it was going to be all right?
A. No.
Q. Never?
A. Never.
Q. What about the other kids? Do you have a friend that you remember?
A. It seemed that we were kind of scared or afraid. I don’t know exactly what that was about, about friendship. We knew each other, most of us, but we never had a chance to do things together before going in that school. Between the ages of 1 to 6 there’s not much of a relationship that was being developed between us because of the way we were living. We were nomads. We were traveling by canoe so we were on the trap line most of the time. During the summer months we were camped beside the church.
Q. Did you have the opportunity to go home during the summer time?
A. Yeah.
Q. So when you got to go home did you develop a resistance, a resilience almost to become stronger to leave your mom and dad again? Did it make you stronger?
A. When I had a chance to go home after this trauma that I had with my mom and dad and my sisters and brothers saw me, they were witnesses of the thing that happened, when I go home I didn’t feel the home. I didn’t. I went there because it was the only place that I could go, I guess. The sense of the joy of returning home was great when I was in that school. But when I arrived all this joy and dreams that I had to be home again was not there. It was gone. It was as if I just had time off at Residential School, just as if I had another space to be around for awhile until I get back to school.
I had a really hard time to say that I’m going to be here for the rest of my life, to stay in the family. I knew it was over at that time. It was no use for me to have some dream of being family again and being with my brothers and sisters again for a long time because I’m going to be away again. So I didn’t have that feeling to be connected again with my family. It was a strange sense of life to be like that. You are in your family and you don’t feel the family side, the family sense. I had a really hard time to cope with the situation. I knew at that time it was going to be like that for a long time.
Q. What about your brothers and sisters? Were they in school, too?
A. They went. They went to school. Two years after me my younger sister came with me. But I didn’t see her the whole year.
Q. Why is that?
A. We were separated; girls on the one side and boys on the other.
Q. Did you look for her?
A. Of course I looked for her. But we were not allowed to communicate. I remember one time —
I don’t know why they did this but there were lots of people that had sisters in that Residential School. One time only, I remember this, we were allowed to speak to our sisters in that school. It was done in the corridor, in the hall. One side is the boys and the other side would be the girls and we were trying to find a spot to be able to communicate but with a person walking right in the middle of the alley. That’s the only time I met my sister and I was not even able to talk to her, just to look at her. And she doesn’t want to look at me.
— End of Part 1
Q. So before you went into school your sister that you got to see in the corridor, before you went to school were you and her pretty close?
A. Before I went to school, yes.
Q. She was your younger sister?
A. She was my younger sister, yeah.
Q. So you must have completely adored her?
A. At that time, yes. And my brothers too, Monnnie (ph.) and Jojo (ph.). We are ten in the family.
Q. Wow. So when you got out of school and when she got out, was that same feeling still there?
A. No.
Q. Where did it go?
A. I think the separation, to be apart like that, was a fact we assumed would be there for the rest of our lives, I guess.
We are just starting to try to connect over the past few years now, but it’s so difficult. It’s not hard but it’s so unnatural, I could say. It’s not part of us any more. It’s not there. We know we are brothers and sisters but that’s about it. We don’t communicate with each other. We don’t know what is going on in the life of the other ones. We know we have kids, but that’s about it. We don’t have that kind of warm relationship.
I lost 2 of my sisters not long ago, about ten years ago. Two of them died because of alcohol abuse.
Q. Did you ever have the opportunity to get that relationship bonded again before they left?
A. Yeah, we had an opportunity to develop that. But every time that we tried to organize something to reconnect again as brothers and sisters, we always had the booze and the dope that gets involved in those things. It kind of freezes our feelings, I guess, about the relationship that we’re supposed to have. Even after some of us went for treatment and healing journey stuff, it is not there. It’s not there. The relationship that we’re supposed to have as brothers and sisters is not there. It’s as if this thing is not reachable again.
There was so much destruction that happened. I guess it’s too much bad things that happened to each one of us that we cannot express our feelings towards each other.
Q. Did this affect you as a father with your own children?
A. Yeah, I think so. I’ve got 2 bunch. One with my first was my older kid, she’s thirty. I just found out yesterday that she was thirty! And my boy is twenty-five. My family relationships with my wife was not good at all. After 3 kids I decided to leave. And then I was not able to have a family, the normal family. So that was really bad for them, for my kids, for me to be like that, for me to leave them just like that.
I’m trying to reconnect now and we have much more of a good relationship now because of the healing process that I went through. I’m trying to recuperate the years that have been missing with them, and also trying to build some kind of relationship with my kids, trying to be a father again, trying to be a good father again. It’s really hard. Sometimes they blame me for the things I have done and they are right to blame me. I guess I have started to accept the consequences of this thing that happened to me and to them also.
It is hard.
Q. Is there another memory you would like to share with us, something that might have happened at school? Is there anything else, whether it’s good or bad that kind of stands out?
A. Poison. Medication or drugs, whatever. One time 3 or 4 years after the opening of this Residential School, everybody, all the kids in that Residential School were sick; 200 people sick in bed. One of the things that heals us from that sickness is the one that spoke French words will heal first, or will heal faster. It happens like that. Then when the people heard about this new medication, when you speak French you’re going to heal, you will be no more sick. Then you can go out there again. We were lying in our beds for days, weeks. And then we started to speak French and a miracle happened. We were alive again. That’s why I always have that impression that we have been drugged. We’ve been experimenting with some stuff for those.
For myself I lost 3 days of my life at that particular period. I went to the Infirmary, the nursing place. It’s not the same spot as where we sleep. It’s another place. I know I went there for 3 days and I don’t remember anything about the 3 days. It’s a black thing. I know this because some of my friends told me that I was away for 3 days and they asked me if I was sent away, if I went away to another place.
But I don’t know if I went to another place, but I know when I lost consciousness I was in that room, and when I wake up I was in that room, but it was 3 days later that I wake up. So I don’t know what happened during that period of time. But there was nobody who was sick any more when I came down after I woke up.
Q. But everyone was speaking French?
A. Everyone was speaking French. Most of them were speaking at least one sentence of French after that.
Q. Wow.
A. It was amazing. We were starting to be model students.
I was good. I was really good at that time because I finished first. I was first in class and I was a model at that time. I knew how to speak French.
It was up to Grade 7 at that time you could go, but after that when you wanted to go to Grade 8 you have to go downtown, in Amos. But still you have to live at the Residential School. So we traveled those fifteen miles daily.
And we finished first, always first class in that school. When I came out of Residential School after ten years I was allowed to live with my parents and continue to go to school. Still then I didn’t have to work hard to get those notes to be first in class. This thing to be first in class made the White students really mad at me. I’m better than them, an Indian guy. It was good. That was the good thing that I had from Residential School, the only good thing I guess.
But I think it was a matter of survival also to have good grades and not to be bothered by those people. Just do your thing. If you get first you’re not going to be punished. I was trying to survive.
Q. We hear stories of different types of abuses. You talked about the emotional abuse and the mental abuse being away from your family. What about the other abuses? Did you see anything?
A. Yeah. The beatings. Sexual abuse, too. Oh yeah. I was a witness of those abuses, especially the beating and the humiliation. Some of my friends pee’d their bed during the night. So they have to walk around all day with their blankets on them, the whole day. Beatings happened really often, daily. Some of them are always the same ones who got beat up.
I know that most of the people that I know and I saw them get beat by the Priests, all those people are dead today. They are not alive, and they were the same age as me and younger. They didn’t make it.
Sexual abuse was daily, too. Nightly, I should say. That was terrible seeing those young boys going in that room. We were always questioning: What are they doing in that room?
Q. Did anyone ever talk about it?
A. To me; no. No.
Q. But when the boys came out they were sad?
A. They were crying. They were crying. There was nothing we can do to help them, I guess.
There was also this guy —
His skin was so dark. He was a good hockey player, not better than me, but he was a good hockey player. We were chosen to go to the first Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament in Quebec City. You know that big thing in 1959. I was ten or eleven at that time. There was a team from —
This is a good story.
There was a team from Amos. That’s a city about fifteen miles from that place that was looking for another 3 Indians to play together and to be part of that team in that city, Amos. So I was one of them, and Marcel and Matthieu. Marcel was the one who had really dark skin, really dark. He looks like a Black guy. After being officially chosen and officially that we were going to Quebec City during that period of time, the Priest decided they had to change the skin colour of Marcel because he was too dark.
So what they did, he plants the guy once a week in water with Javex. Every time that we take our shower this guy was always missing. We didn’t know why he was missing and suddenly we find out that he was up to his neck in the water with Javex, trying to turning him white. That was terrible. This guy got crazy after a while.
Q. Marcel did?
A. Marcel was his name. He believed that he was a White man when he left. He said the colour of my skin is no more a problem because I’m White now. He believed that for a long period of time that he was a White guy. He was a good hockey player but he didn’t make it.
I guess the guy today is dead. I never heard of him after that.
Q. Wow. That’s crazy.
A. They made him believe that he’s White.
Q. But you don’t know if he is alive today?
A. No, I don’t know that.
Q. Poor Marcel. They just made him stand in Javex?
A. They put it in the water in the bathtub. Nights like that in that bathtub.
Q. Just to play hockey?
A. Just to play hockey with us, with the White guys. (Laughter)
We were playing against Guy Lafleur at that time. Guy Lafleur was 9.
Q. Okay. So we’ll wrap this up. Just one more quick question.
If you could sum up your experience what Residential School meant to you in a sentence, what would it be?
A. Lost, I guess. Losing.
Q. Okay. Thank you.
— End of Interview
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