Rev. Mary Battaja
Choutla Residential School
THE INTERVIEWER: Could you say and spell your name, please.
MARY BATTAJA: Mary Battaja, no middle name. M-a-r-y B-a-t-t-a-j-a.
Q. And that’s Reverend?
A. Um-hmm.
Q. What Residential School did you go to?
A. Chooutla Indian Residential School, in Carcross.
Q. What years were you there?
A. I believe it was 1954 to 1958.
Q. How old were you when you started?
A. Around 8 years old.
Q. Do you remember what life was like before you went there? Can you talk a little bit about that?
A. Yes. I was born and raised by my traditional parents, and my community people are very traditional, where we spoke the language and hunted, fished, trapped and lived 3 miles down the Spirit River, 3 miles from Mayo Town. We were located there in a small village where our people didn’t even speak the English language.
I believe the Anglican Church brought teachers to our village for Grades 1, 2 and 3. I still remember their names: Lillian Conner (sp?), Cindy Dougall (sp?) and Mr. Brownlee (sp?). We had school in the church for the children and we really liked it. We really liked the teachers and the children just loved going to school and going to the teacher’s house.
Then for some reason the government —
I remember talking to my parents, and I can remember too, the Indian Agent at that time as they were called, a man came down and said to the people in the village that they had to move out of the village today. So there was a lot of mixed feelings of sadness and you could hear people crying and children crying and people packing up their personal belongings like food and blankets. You can only take what you needed because you had to carry this 3 miles, walking up the trail to town.
Once we moved to town, you could hear walking up the back route there, it’s a Cat road, you can hear people crying. It’s kind of like being sent away from your home. That was our home. My dad built the cabin and when we got to town we had no place to go. There were no homes to go to because it’s not like today where people have homes and Indian Affairs gave people houses.
So my dad went to the trader who owned a store and made a deal with him to cut wood for him to get tents so he got 2 tents. He set them up all through the seasons, like the 4 seasons we lived in tents year-round. I think we lived there for about 4 or 5 years before we actually rented our first home from this old White man who rented it to us for $15 a month. At that time my dad only made $13 on Friday unloading freight trucks because there were no jobs, either. When we had to pay our rent to this old White man we thought he was really taking our money away from us. It was a lot of money.
Life was really good for us before the Residential School. People were close and helped each other and they lived off the land. They knew everything about the land and they were very strong people. They are survivors, you know, even through the harsh winters. They knew what they had to do to survive and live on the land. They teach their children at a very young age. In the old days the aunts were expected to teach the girls and the uncles were responsible for teaching the boys, and so they had a system, their traditional way, that really worked for them. They practiced that until the White people came up to this country.
I remember when we moved to town we didn’t even speak the English language, but we spoke our own Northern Tutchone language. It was really hard. So we used to go into the stores and restaurant, and even though you didn’t have money you sat there and listened to the White people talking and ordering their food. So we would listen really hard and when we went home we copied them, as kids, you know. So that’s how we learned.
At that time I believe the Native kids weren’t allowed to go to the public school system, so that’s when they sent us off to the Residential School. Going off to the Residential School, I remember that, too, the first day we went.
Q. Can you talk about that a little bit?
A. I remember my mom and my dad telling us that the government said we had to go to school and take us away from home. They got us ready to leave and I remember we left home, which was Mayo, on September 6th, we would leave, and then return June 28th.
How we traveled to school from Mayo to Carcross was on Gordon Yardley’s big old horse truck which had just wooden railings around and a canvas over it. There was a little stepladder that we climbed up and we took our belongings with us in a little bag as we went along. I remember my mom would curl our hair and dress us up.
We would pick up kids along the way.
— Speaker overcome with emotion
— A Short Pause
Then we went to Stewart, Pelley – at that time it was called Saw Creek – Carmacks, Whitehorse, and some of the kids from Haines Junction met us here. Then we went on to Carcross and we would arrive there about 7 at night. As soon as we got there they assigned us to supervisors. They assigned us our number. My number was fifty, and that’s how they identify you.
The first thing they did was take the children and divide us into Juniors, Intermediates and Seniors, so you were separated right away from your siblings or your older sisters and brothers. I had 2 other sisters who went to school and we had a little brother. He’s almost the same age as me. When we got to school they separated the kids.
Then they would give you your clothing, a nightgown, and a uniform and you would go off to the showers. At that time I remember rows of sinks in the bathroom and there was kerosene oil in them and you had to put your head in there to clean your head in case children had lice, I suppose. But we knew that we came from a very clean home and it was very hard for us to do this. But if you didn’t do it, you would be punished, you know, so it was not easy.
Not good memories.
Q. What about the food? What was it like?
A. We got breakfast, lunch and supper. It was very basic food. I remember if we got eggs it would be at Easter time and they were cooked in a big pan and just sliced in squares. A lot of time we had porridge, liver —
Surprisingly, I still like to eat these foods because they keep telling me it’s good for me!
The kids had chores in the kitchen, and when we had dessert we usually had prunes, figs, or stuff like that, and you had to count 3 per child. I remember if any were missing we would stand up for as long as it took for somebody to confess eating the fruit that was supposed to go to the children.
Q. Did you work in the kitchen? Was that one of your chores?
A. Yeah.
Q. What were some of the other chores you had to do?
A. We were assigned to different work, like cleaning the Dormitories, Play Rooms, Washrooms, cleaning the institution, the whole building. The best place to work we thought was working in the Staff Dining Room because they got the best food, and we managed to get some of that sometimes. I won’t tell you how we got it. But just don’t get caught!
Q. Are you sure you don’t want to tell us?
A. Well, they always had side tables with all this food that we don’t get, so there’s always 2 kids assigned to clean the Staff Dining Room, so we would help ourselves with a little dish and they had the side table with a long tablecloth and you would go underneath it and have a good little feast while the other kid is on the watch, and we would take turns. That way you can go back and tell your friends that you had a good meal.
Today I think to myself, children deserve all good things and we know that was stealing. Our parents always would teach us it is wrong to steal. It’s always good to ask. So we learned to do things that were not good.
Q. What about the education you received? Do you think you had a good education there?
A. You had no choice. When you went into the classroom you can’t talk, you can’t turn, you just get into your seat. Everything is timed and you have to have your assignments done. One of the things we were always so proud of was how well we did in our class because of the strict discipline. I believe the kids got really good grades. We used to be so proud of that.
But at the same time the teachers, some of the teachers were not always good to the children. I remember if I got into trouble the teacher would throw chalk at you, or strap you, and if you as much as turn around or whisper to another child you would get sent to the principal’s office and you could be sure at the end of the day you will get a strap. That happened quite often.
But for myself in some ways I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to have the education, but when I learned that there was so much abuse in the system, I asked myself, “Is any education worth it if you are going to abuse children to learn?”
I learned from my traditional parents that learning is a good thing for a child and they should be happy and they should be able to make mistakes, not to be abused and to be punished. I always thought that was sad, how many children had to go through that.
Today there are still a lot of First Nations students who don’t like school and don’t want to get educated because I don’t think very much has changed. I always believe all children should be treated in a manner that they should come to love, and receive an education and everything that comes with it.
Q. Are there any memories from the school that really stand out that you would like to share with us today?
A. One of the things that I really find was sad was we weren’t allowed to talk our language. Today I speak my language very fluently. We weren’t allowed to speak with our brothers. They were separated from us. But some of us used to go in the bush and speak our language and meet up with our brothers, as long as you don’t get caught.
I don’t know why we had to be punished for speaking our language and keeping our traditional ways because that’s our identity. I don’t know if it was reversed, if I went to the teachers and said that they can’t speak English, you can’t eat your traditional food, you can’t wear your traditional clothing, I don’t know if they would like that, or if they would be able to live with that.
Also, when we used to write letters once a month to our parents, they would give us a sheet of paper, a stamp and an envelope, if they didn’t like one thing you said in the letter it went in the garbage can. I remember to this day my classmate, a boy, wrote home to his parents and he asked his parents to send him some dry fish and some dry meat because he missed his traditional food. And the teacher made fun of that. He said, “How can you eat that?” “It would smell up the place.”
I could see tears in the boy’s eyes. We understand where this child was coming from. You don’t make fun of them, so we supported each other like that because we knew better, how our ancestors had taught us.
Then when we received mail or parcels from our home, it was always first read by the principal and a supervisor, and if they didn’t like what was in that letter we never received it. I remember my mom and dad sent me a brown plaid dress. It was size sixteen. It still had a price tag on it, $13-something. And they showed it to me but I never wore it because I never saw it again. I suppose it got thrown out, you know.
My little brother – he’s not my brother by birth to my mother – but my aunt, when she gave birth to my little brother John, she died, so my mother and father just took him and raised him. So he is our brother. So we raised him up and he went off to school with us, too. One day I didn’t see him in class, or the next day, so I talked to my sister and we started asking where is he. And then the supervisor finally told us that he was sick in the Infirmary.
We asked to see him and then we had to ask, how many times, before the Infirmary nurse gave us permission to visit with him for a few minutes. That was the last time we saw him because they sent him I believe to Edmonton and he died there. We never saw him again.
Q. Do you know what he died of?
— Speaker overcome with emotion
Q. Before we move on and talk about life after Residential School, you have some notes with you. Would you like to look at those for a minute to see if there is something else you want to share?
A. Yes.
Q. Okay. Just take a moment and look at your notes to see if there is something else there you would like to say.
Q. Just take your time. Are you okay?
A. Yeah.
— A Short Pause
A. I just need to get rid of this stuff, I think. It’s been a long time.
Q. Is this the first time you have shared some of these things?
A. Pretty much, yeah.
Just about the spiritual part. When we were in the school First Nations people were always spiritual people. In the Western way I suppose they identify that as religion. It was never a form of religion to us. It’s a way of life, and the land and everything on it.
In them days as a child I can remember the Minister and the people wherever they went they had prayer times, whatever they needed to do, it was part of their daily lives. But once we got into the school when we get up in the morning we would pray, the whole school. We would go off to our chores, then at breakfast we would pray again before breakfast, and then after breakfast, after all the meals. Then we go off to the chapel before class and we have another prayer session. Then we go into class and before the class started we would have another prayer.
After school we go to supper and before supper we have prayers again and after supper. Then at night we go to the chapel for prayers, and then in the evenings before bed time we had prayers again. We started our day, every day was like that.
I remember some kids, I guess it was too much for them, and then on Sunday we had services at least about 2 or 3 times a day. Everything you did was not by choice. I love singing. I always did. So my friend and I we joined the choir. But the choir leader didn’t feel we were singing high enough, or something, so he said we couldn’t sing for a period of time, and then we got punished. We didn’t know why.
Then we had bible studies. You had to do all these things. You can’t choose to or not. It’s part of the school.
The children used to sometimes play sick or hide when they didn’t want to attend church, or something. And that’s sad. It’s very different from how we were taught. Like I said, our Old People and my parents are very spiritual people and prayer time is a special time. We loved to come together to pray, sing and worship.
That all changed so a lot of us were turned away from —
Sometimes you would hear students talk about “if God is so good, why are things done this way because it hurts us more than it does us good?” So you just go along with whatever happens or you’ll be punished.
Many times if you’ve had enough and you don’t follow rules, at the end of the day you end up in the principal’s office and be strapped again, but that was worth it to many of us.
My sisters, both of them, they ran away from school, and when they came back they received harsh punishments. I remember my oldest sister – she died 2 years ago – when her and her friend Joan, who I spoke to today, came back, or were brought back to school, they had to dig a ditch from the school to the principal’s house with a shovel. We looked out the window and watched them. Right after that they would just get their meal and straight to bed, for a long time.
We thought it was funny because there was this girl from my home town. She has died now, too. She passed away. We used to call her the Runaway Committee because she was a funny girl. She had this long green coat with a little fur around, and she’s got this notepad and pencil and would say, “Who wants to run away?”, and she would take names down. Some of us, we don’t want to get in trouble, so we would hide from her.
Q. Did you ever try to run away?
A. No. I was too young and too afraid. And at the school, too, you were taken away from your community and people you know and put among strangers. A lot of the Staff I believed were from England. They were very foreign and very different.
You had to look out for yourself. You don’t know the people so you are always on the defensive, making sure that you take care of yourself.
Most of the kids would hang out with kids from their own community. Sometimes kids would get angry and there would be fights, so you had to always be on the lookout so you feel safe.
Today, often because I’m an ordained Anglican Priest, people ask me, “After going through all this, why are you a priest?” I said, “Well, I’m a priest who doesn’t abuse children.” “I love children and I love my work and I love helping people.” “That’s who I am.” And my Elders have been my mentors and they said there is a need for people like myself, if you have special gifts you have to use them. So that’s where I seek to work towards being a priest.
I also went back to school and became a Social Worker. I worked in the hospital, here in Whitehorse General Hospital for many years, helping people. I really enjoyed that.
Q. Do you find that helps you as well?
A. Oh yes, it helps me. People have said to me that when I was very young I always liked helping people and liked being around people. I was very close to my parents and when we came back from school, like I said, we used to go home June 28th. The truck would arrive at the school. The kids would take their personal belongings and you would curl your hair, put on your best clothes and down the road you would go again.
I remember the first year when we arrived home at Mayo, the truck pulls up on the front street. When we got off the truck we went the long way around to our houses. We were shy with our parents and I don’t know if we even greeted them. We knew that changes had taken place, I suppose.
And then some of us, like for myself, my last year at Residential School I think in 1959 was the first time the government had allowed the public schools to open to the Natives, so we went there. We tried to go to school there again but we had a hard time because there was a lot of racism against Native children and you can’t go to school. We were smart children and we really wanted to get educated and get good jobs. My dream was to be a nurse, but when you’re a child and young, it’s hard to do things if you don’t have the support —
— End of Part 1
At the end they took one of my sisters’ mukluks and threw it away, and I was scared to go home and tell my sister because she would keep asking me to bring back her mukluks. And I never did. So we used to say “I wonder if Residential School wasn’t so bad because at least we were there together and we didn’t have to go through this, too.”
Q. So how was life after Residential School? Do you think that your experiences impacted your whole life?
A. When I came home from the Residential School my mom died very shortly after. So I kept going to school, but going through this with my friends we just felt it wasn’t worth it to go through another system that was not going to work for us. We would go to school, but we didn’t go to school.
And then my dad found out. He was very upset. But I told him, “I can’t go to school.” Then he said, “Well, you have to look for a job.” In them days there was always jobs working in the restaurant washing dishes, or in the hospital. So my first job was to work in the restaurant washing dishes.
After that I worked in the hospital washing dishes, so I thought I really had a good job so I didn’t have to go to school.
So I did that for a while and then I met my husband. I got married very young. He’s a wonderful husband. We are still married today, after forty-six years. Leo is a real wonderful man. He came up from Italy looking for a gold mine, working in the mines. That’s where I met him. We had a family and I lived and worked with him in the mines.
Q. Have you ever talked to him about your experiences in Residential School?
A. Yes, he knows, because there were times when we were first married I wouldn’t sleep in the dark. I always had a light on and he always tried to figure out how that is. I was very private about a lot of things and I would just say “it’s because I’m young”, and then as I got to know him and I trusted him I started talking about my experiences in the Residential School.
He was my main support and he really cared and he’s gentle. He was part of my healing journey, I suppose. And today he still is because today he made supper when I came home. We had roast moose meat and gravy and potatoes. He’s really a good person. When I told him I had to go out again, he said, “Where are you going?” And I said, “Oh, I have to do an interview about Residential School.” He said, “Oh, good.”
Q. What about your children? Have you talked to them about Residential School?
A. Like I say, after I got married I guess I was on a roller coaster. I met this wonderful man and my life is going to be good and beautiful, so I kind of shut off all that Residential School experience stuff. Once I got into the workforce working with other people I was so busy helping other people and doing things I wanted to do, I just never really had time to deal with my own residential experience.
When the Residential School issues started to come out, even in the church, because I was a First Nations person I would be the one asked to speak to that, you know. And then when I started reading up on it and going to Conferences —
Like I said, we have AISEP (ph.) which is Indigenous People in the
Anglican Church, which is big nationally, working side-by-side with the Anglicans. We just nominated an Aboriginal Bishop to oversee all the Native churches across Canada.
It’s when I start going to these Conferences that they were doing workshops like we just did today, and that’s when I really started to deal with the Residential School Syndrome. Like I said today, when you hear the stories, people’s horror stories and the hurts and the cries, it just has an impact on you. Pretty soon you kind of get dragged into it with your own stuff and start to trigger some memories and some traumas.
So I thought, “This is not easy”, so you kind of try to avoid it, but then I said to myself, “Why did it take me so long to even talk about it, except to my husband?” I was talking to an Elder and I said that maybe God is giving me this time to have peace and heal until I’m ready. He said that it could be. “But Mary, you need to talk to somebody.”
So I always talk to my Elders who are my mentors and people I really love and trust.
With my children, you know, you pass on what you learn. You heard the story today —
Jackie told the story about the generations of women cooking chicken who would cut the legs and arms off and put them in the pot. The grandmother did it, the mother, and the daughter, so I suppose that’s how it is with your children. When you have children, you pass on the teachings of what was taught to you because you were told it was the right and good thing to do.
Q. Do you take time for yourself now?
A Yeah, this is my third year off work.
Q. How does that feel?
A. Wonderful. I’m really glad I did. I spend a lot of time with my friends, my family, just doing things for myself. The thing I love doing the best is doing beadwork with my friends. I have wonderful friends and support people who take are of me. My friends will come by and take me for a ride. I don’t even have to drive, and they will take me for lunch. I just sit back. It’s nice that people care about you and do nice things for you.
With my children I was very strict with them. There were rules and you just model things you were taught, not knowing it’s not the way. We should have taught the traditional way, not the government or religion way. So I believe my children have the impact of that, too. So I had to sit down with them and talk to them. They understand.
Q. Is that something you have done? Have you talked to them?
A. Yes. And I’m still talking to them. I really love my children. I’m very supportive of them.
My son just had a baby girl, so that’s something to celebrate. She’s a beautiful baby girl. My husband and I are all excited about that. So something good comes out of bad things, I believe. There’s always a new start at the beginning of another day.
I try not to live in the past. I really believe that for myself my past is sort of a blueprint of my hurts and my pains to a brighter and a better future. I use that to make the changes for a better life for myself and whoever I help. But it’s not easy.
This is the first time I actually got to go to a Conference. In the past I’ve been asking around, “what do you do?”, “who do you talk to?”, how to even get information, and I’ve asked this at big GA meetings to my First Nations Band, but I never got an answer.
So I finally got bold enough and told my sister we’re going to this Conference because I’m going to phone the Band Office and tell them to put our name on the list like about a month and a half ahead of time. That’s how I came here.
Q. Are you glad you came?
A. Yeah.
Q. Do you think it has been worthwhile? I know you said it was hard, but you just said a few minutes ago sometimes good things come from bad. Do you think in a few days you might find that this helped?
A. Oh yes. And I’m going to take it from there. A lot of information they shared with the Elders asking about finances and taxes and all that, and I think those are very important questions that can better one’s life. We can go along every day in our life spending money, but in the end maybe we don’t know what we’re doing. So that kind of information is very useful to First Nations people. Because all my life growing up I know that money has very little value to Indigenous People because people say it is because we never had anything. I say, “How can you say that?” We were very rich. We had healthy food, natural food, we had the whole land. We had spring water. Now everything is contaminated. You go to the store to buy frozen foods. It’s not good for you. We used to grow gardens and store vegetables in the cellar. We didn’t have to go to the bars to be entertained.
My dad used to have a radio and he played it every Saturday and we would catch the Inuvik Station of jig music and we kids used to dance and entertain the Elders. We would get our treat and then go to bed. They would carry on visiting and telling stories.
Q. Good memories.
A. I still have photographs of my father when I was a child about 6 years old. My dad was an amateur photographer. One day when I went back to visit him in Mayo he was tearing them up and throwing them in the garbage. I said to him, “Oh, don’t throw them away.” He said, “They’re old people, just a bunch of ghosts and have no use.” And I said, “Well, can I have them?” So he said, “Yeah.” So I was trying to save an album full.
I got pictures of the way our people lived, how they did potlatches and ceremonies and family photos and burials. So I know the history of my people very well, and I speak my language very well, Northern Tutchone. I’m very fluent. I translate for people. It’s wonderful, but I have a hard time finding anybody to talk to, because people say they forgot how to speak their language.
I often hear people say, “Well, if there’s no money for language or culture, we can’t do it.” I said, “How did the Old People a long time ago speak the language and live traditionally when we had no money?” I think that’s something I always believe in is really belongs to us. It’s our heritage and our identity, and if we really want it, we can do it. We just need to do it. But if we don’t do anything we’re going to lose it. That’s why I keep speaking my language. Sometimes even when I’m home by myself I talk to myself in my language because it’s really easy to forget if you don’t communicate with someone. It’s really funny sometimes when you don’t hear the language being spoken, sometimes it is comical.
Q. That’s good practice.
A. Yeah, it is.
Q. We are almost out of time. Are there any final words you would like to share?
A. I would just like to say, as an Elder, I would like to encourage the children who went to Residential School and their families to continue to work on this because it’s not going to go away. I’ve said that to the Church, too. When we work together in unity for something that is good, in the end we will find the good.
I would also like to thank all the people who have gathered at this Conference which had also encouraged me and empowered me to continue to do my own healing and hope for the good in the end, and I’m sure it will happen.
Q. Thank you very, very much for coming today and having the courage. I know it was hard, especially at the beginning when you weren’t sure about it. So thank you so much for coming.
A. Thank you. It seems to me this hour is the longest time of the week for me.
— End of Interview
***
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