Gordon Spence

My name is Gordon Spence. I’m First Nations from Tataskweyak Cree Nation in Split Lake, Manitoba. I am from northern Manitoba, a place called Tataskweyak. It’s on the shores of Split Lake. I live in Ottawa now, I’ve been here for thirty-five years and its now my home.
It’s kind of my story, but it’s about what I saw and it’s about four boys that tried to run away. Well, I think people need to know, about what happened, and also I need to get it out of me, its something that bothered me for a long time so, I think I need to speak about it and share it with people. It tells about survival, from brutality. Survival from a regime of terror and brutality… is the word I can use to describe the best. The story takes place in 1964-65, that school year. The Residential School was in Norway House, Manitoba. I don’t think it had a particular name other than Norway house Residential School. Well, there was many students that witnessed this. I don’t know all their names, I don’t remember any of them, really, except one… the ones that were brutally punished. One of them was my best friend, I guess at the time. The others I don’t remember their names. There were four of them that tried to leave the Residential School… and I guess they were friends, and the role I guess, they had, they all wanted to leave the Residential School. And, that’s about as far as I can tell you. They were friends that had a common interest with trying to leave.
One year in Norway house, which is when this incident happened – and I was also in the system, for eight years in Dauphin, Manitoba. The Residential school was McKay Indian Residential school. Yes, I attended two. Norway and McKay in Dauphin. About the four guys that tried to escape… they tried to leave the Residential School and I believe this was in the Fall of 1964, because that’s the time when we’d go – as young boys – go hunt chickens in the Fall, its kind of a tradition that First Nations peoples did where I come from, northern Manitoba. I was not involved in it directly, but they were trying to leave because they didn’t want to be there and what they did was… they took a tube of a tire and made sling shots so they could hunt, as they ran away I suppose, and I don’t know how far they got… but they got caught and they were brought back to the Residential School… and they were brought back brutally, like escaped convicts… and, what happened was, what I witnessed was… unbearable.
They were, their punishment was severe. They were – everyday after school – they were told to strip naked – all their clothes – and they were told to stand in the hallway naked… from right after school until supper time, for about two hours a day… and, it was in a hallway where everybody could see them. The dorm and all the beds were on one side, the hallway was this way, and there was an elevator there, and on this side were the washrooms, and right here was the office of the supervisor. So they were basically standing right in front of the supervisor’s office… and, they stood there for two hours everyday after school until supper time, like I said, and for about – Man this went on for a long time – It seemed like at least a week, maybe two weeks, everyday… and just before supper we’d all be told to gather by our beds, and the boys… those four boys would still be standing there. The supervisor would say a prayer – grace, our supper grace – and once he’d finished that, he’d take the boys in the bathroom, one at a time, and whip them, with a stick… or a willow of some sort, I know it was a stick… and we could hear the kids screaming, the boys screaming. It was brutal. It was painful. It was frightening, and very sad to see… and it hurt us tremendously. Especially my friend, to see him like that. One at time, they were hauled into the bathroom and whipped, and they had to come back and stand where they were.
So once they were all whipped… the rest of us boys were, we were all told to go down for supper. So we’d all march downstairs… and in the dining room, the boys were on one side and the girls were on the other side, and there was a table in the middle… and so, we’d all be seated. We couldn’t start eating until these guys were marched in. So they’d march them in, with them wearing their pajamas, like prisoners… and they’d sit them down at their table… and that was it. So we’d have dinner… and that’s basically what happened.
No. I don’t recall any investigation – at all. Nobody spoke of it, I mean I guess we were all scared… punishment, you know? There was a lot of brutality in that school, at that time… a lot of bullying. And it was not… I don’t think anybody reported that to the supervisors, supervisors never really did anything, you know? They have maybe even encouraged it by not doing anything about it. It was, no, I don’t think it was ever reported.
No, not really. I just needed to tell about this, you know. It releases a lot for me… and this is actually the easiest it’s been for me, to be able to tell this story. There’s a lot of things that happened in these schools, and that’s one of many incidents that, you know, that took place.
Well, I don’t really have a message… but I do encourage Canadians, non-Aboriginals in particular, to know the truth about aboriginal people – the history of what happened to our people – and don’t judge us, until you know the facts, you know what we had to go through. We’re not all bad people… we all love our families, like you do… and we all have children, we all love our children… and we’re caring, forgiving people.