THE INTERVIEWER: I’ll get you to spell your first and your last name for me.
BASIL AMBERS: Mon prénom est Basil; Basil, et mon nom de famille est Ambers; Ambres.
That’s an interesting part of my life. When they went round to the villages to give Indians Christian names, my grandfather’s name was Umbus (ph.). That was his Indian name. They anglicized it to Ambers, not realizing that he was going to have a lot of grandchildren and things like that. So we all became Ambers and yet he was the only one that was supposed to be Ambers.
Q. Vous n'avez jamais pensé à le changer?
A. Oh, once in a while. I had an uncle. He asked the Interpreter, “What do you call a raven?” He wanted to be called Jim, you know. So the Interpreter said, “I don’t really know, but I think that’s the one they call crow.” So he became Jim Crow. He didn’t know that it wasn’t raven. (Laughter)
Q. That’s cute.
Dans quelle école as tu été?
A. St. Michael’s in Alert Bay.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous comment c'était là-bas? Comment était votre premier jour?
A. My first day? Marina’s father was my first cousin. Him and I were standing together in the long hallway in St. Mike’s and the supervisor said, “When you hear your name called you say ‘here, sir’.” So they got to Michael’s name and he didn’t answer. Three times the supervisor called his name and he still didn’t answer. So he came down the line and hit him over the head with the clipboard and told him, he says, “I told you when you hear your name called you say ‘here, sir’.” Well, I piped up and said that his name is not Michael, his name is Narookin (ph.). It was the only name I knew him by was his Indian name. I didn’t know his English name.
Q. Avez-vous eu des ennuis pour cela?
A. Oh, of course we did. My mother once asked me, “Are you really bad?” I said, “Why do you say that, Mom?” “Well”, she says, “every time we come here you always have to stay in. We can’t take you out.” I tried to explain to her that you didn’t have to do very much in order to lose your privileges. You lost your privileges just for looking at a supervisor the wrong way.
I went to Court with Canada and the Anglican Church. I got licked really badly by a farmer there at St. Mike’s. We were going up the field to pick rocks up off the field. I was flipping these tiny little pebbles up in the air and one of them hit him above the boot. He turned around and grabbed me by the hair and he says, “Throw rocks at me, will you!” He knocked me right out. I never really recovered from that beating. So I took them to Court for what happened and I won my case.
It was really funny because the Adjudicator for Canada was sitting across from me —
Oh non. Elle était assise à côté de moi. C'était l'arbitre de la province de la Colombie-Britannique qui était assis en face de moi, et l'avocat de la province et l'avocat du Canada, ainsi que l'évêque de Victoria. C'était presque comme si c'était moi qui avait fait quelque chose de mal et je me sentais vraiment drôle à propos de tout cela. Je leur ai dit ça. L'évêque a essayé de s'excuser auprès de moi et il a fait un si mauvais travail que je l'ai simplement fait taire.
Mais j'ai quand même gagné ma cause.
Q. Bien. De quoi te souviens-tu d'autre à propos de l'école? Quel genre de nourriture as-tu mangé?
A. We were hungry constantly. I became a table captain so I had to dish out the food to the kids at my table. Quite often I never got enough to eat myself because I ended up giving too much to one or two of the kids. We used to go —
La rivière Nimpkish était juste en face, à seulement quelques kilomètres de là, et nous y allions à la senne traînante pour le saumon rouge au printemps. Mais ils ne nous ont jamais nourris avec un seul saumon rouge. Il était utilisé pour le commerce pour d'autres choses. Nous n'avons jamais mangé notre propre nourriture à l'école. Tout ce que nous avons mangé était la jonque qu'ils nous ont donné.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous de quoi il s'agissait?
A. Oh oui. Tout cela était indésirable. Pour le petit déjeuner, nous avons eu du porridge, mais il y avait des asticots dans le porridge. Nous nous plaisions à avoir du fer pour compléter la bouillie. (Rire)
Everybody wanted to work on a farm because they grew stuff, eh. We used to hide things like turnips and potatoes and stuff like that just to try to fill that empty spot in your stomach. It got to the point that to this day I will not eat turnips. I ate too much of it in St. Michael’s. I don’t mind potatoes.
See, we worked half a day. We only went to school for half a day. I worked for five years in the boiler room at St. Mike’s, feeding the boilers big slabs of wood and stuff like that. We only went to school half a day right ‘til you got to Grade 8. And normally that’s when they threw you out of school and sent you home, was Grade 8. That was the cut-off point of your education. There were four of us who ended off —
We were the first four people who were legally allowed to go past Grade 8. There was one girl from Bella Bella and a young fellow from Prince Rupert and one girl from Alert Bay and myself. We all went —
They didn’t teach us in St. Mike’s. We all went down to the village in Alert Bay. There used to be a high school where the police station is now, and that’s where we went to school. Two of my friends, because they didn’t do well in school, got kicked out. One of them only got to Grade 3. They kicked him out. I almost cried when they left because that was my only hold to sanity was those two. It was tough.
Q. Pourquoi pensez-vous qu'ils étaient votre seule forme de raison? Qu'y avait-il à propos de ces deux gars?
R. Eh bien, ils étaient cruels. C'était un endroit cruel. L'amour n'existait pas. Il n'y avait qu'une seule enseignante là-bas que j'aimais vraiment, qui était vraiment humaine dans tout et dans sa façon de vivre et tout ça. Elle était mon enseignante de 8e année. Mais les autres vous frapperaient tout aussi vite à la tête que vous regarderaient.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous de son nom?
A. Evelyn Moore was her name. I’ve often wondered what happened to her. I used to try to find out where she went to, and stuff like that. I never ever did find out. She went and taught up in Nisga country there, near the end of her career.
Q. Et elle était vraiment gentille?
R. Elle était vraiment gentille.
Q. Elle a vraiment fait de son mieux pour enseigner?
R. Non seulement pour enseigner, mais elle était totalement humaine pour moi. Je l'aimais vraiment.
Q. Oh, that’s nice. It’s always good when you hear a story where someone tried really hard to teach and to be nice.
A. And it was very evident with all the kids. They followed her around and hung onto her skirts and stuff like that, because she was a real human. But I don’t know. I used to always say if I had a nickel or a dollar for every time I got licked I’d be a rich man today.
Q. C'était si souvent?
A. Oh oui.
Q. Wow.
R. Nous avons été surpris en train de voler des pommes une fois. Ils avaient un verger. Nous avons été à court pour cela. Nous avons non seulement été à court pour cela, mais nous avons perdu tous nos privilèges pendant un mois.
Q. À quelle distance était la maison de l'école?
A. Oh, about thirty miles, by water. So it wasn’t easy. And it was shortly after the Depression and during the Second World War, so my dad couldn’t come in all the time. Even when he did come in I wasn’t allowed to see him. That’s when my mother made that comment about me being real bad.
Q. Wow. Vos parents sont-ils allés au pensionnat?
R. Non.
Q. Non?
A. See, that was the thing. The other thing that happened was I started to lose my ability to speak Kwiakah (ph.) and my parents were only comfortable in Kwiakah. They weren’t comfortable in English because they didn’t go to school. So I had to relearn Kwiakah all over again, just in order to talk to my parents.
Q. Wow. Et les frères et sœurs? Sont ils allés?
A. That was the funniest part. I was adopted. I was adopted right from birth by my aunt. So the one I call “mother” in reality was my aunt. But my real sister was there. So was one of my aunties. One of my older brothers was there when I was there, but we weren’t allowed to mingle. So I never ever talked to my sister once in St. Mike’s, never talked to my aunt and I never talked to my brother because we weren’t allowed to get together.
Q. Était-ce difficile?
R. Pardon?
Q. Est-ce que c'était difficile à faire?
A. Oh, of course it was. Of course it was. I loved my sister and I was really close to my auntie. I actually grew very close to my brother, too. After we got out of there we worked together for years. Our uncle had a logging camp and we worked for him. That was the only thing St. Mike’s taught me was how to be a workaholic. I worked and worked and worked for years and years. My first marriage failed because of that because I was never home.
But I came out of St. Mike’s and actually I was a very angry man when I came out. It took a long time to reconcile to the fact that it had happened and it was past and it was time to start looking forward. I got involved in all kinds of things when I got out of St. Mike’s. I went to work for the government and I worked with emotionally unstable boys for a number of years up in the Kootenays.
Then I came back home to the Coast and I ran for Chief of my Band and I got in. I went to my first meeting as the Chief Council and I was absolutely appalled at how the Department of Indian Affairs was handling our leadership. I didn’t know what to do. I was going to quit.
We had a very well-respected Elder who was the Chief of the Campbell River Tribe. I went and knocked on his door; old man Bill Cullen (ph.). I told him that we’ve got to do something. This is absolutely ridiculous. So the old man said, “Sit down, son, I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.” So we sat up all night, the old man and I, and talked about all the problems of our people. He said, “Okay, you know what to do now. Go talk to the Tribes and we’ll see if we can revive our Tribal Council again.”
And we did. We revived our Tribal Council. I got elected to Chairman. I was the Chairman for ten years. Then I went to work for the Nimpkish. I started their Salmon Enhancement Program and ran it for ten years. I also started the Coat Workers of British Columbia with Professor Jackson from UBC. Him and I started it. I worked as its head for a while. So I’ve done many things in my life all because of my experience in the Residential School.
Alors, quand nous avons commencé à nous réunir et à parler de guérison et de trucs comme ça, nous nous sommes rencontrés à Victoria, plusieurs d'entre nous, et nous avons créé l'Inter-Tribal Health Group. J'ai travaillé plusieurs hivers à Tsow Tun Le Lun et j'ai travaillé avec eux.
Quoi qu'il en soit, ma santé a commencé à s'améliorer parce que je m'impliquais trop. Nous avons mis sur pied une Commission royale d'enquête sur la santé à Alert Bay; six d'entre nous. Nous sommes allés à Ottawa pour nous battre pour les recommandations, les recommandations issues de cette commission royale. Tous les points pour lesquels nous sommes allés à Ottawa ont gagné et nous en sommes sortis à l'hôpital d'Albert Bay, à la clinique d'Alert Bay et à la maison de convalescence d'Alert Bay.
Q. Bien. Quel âge aviez-vous lorsque vous êtes allé à l'école pour la première fois?
A. I don’t think I was seven. I was around six and a half.
Q. That’s pretty young. How old were you when you left?
A. I don’t know. I was there nine years apparently. I didn’t know. We didn’t know how long we were there. Nobody cared. We didn’t care about education. That wasn’t the point. Survival was the thing that we cared about and survival was the only thing that motivated us, all my friends. Do you know Bobby Joe (ph.)? Well, I told Bobby not too long ago, you know, pal, if you think about the amount of people that went to St. Michael’s together with? And he said, “Yeah.” There’s only a little handful of us left. That’s all. Dozens committed suicide, drowned or drank themselves to death. Some went under with drugs. So it’s really a sad tale. Who the hell cares about education? I didn’t. I didn’t care about education. I guess if it wasn’t for Evelyn Moore, I probably wouldn’t have gone any further in school. I probably would have just walked out.
That’s what happened to my cousin. When his mother found out that he got licked the first day in school, she took him out right away and absolutely refused to listen to anybody that was threatening her to send him back.
See, the thing that’s happening is that it was very gradual. You could see the change happening where the women started getting a better and better education and now there’s men getting a better education. But it has taken that long for education to become a focal point and for education to mean something. It didn’t mean nothing to my generation; absolutely nothing. It was a way of just trying to exist.
Nous avions une peur terrible de la loi et des choses comme ça parce que c'était toujours une menace. Certains de mes amis se sont fait tabasser par des policiers et des trucs comme ça.
Q. Avez-vous déjà essayé de vous enfuir?
R. Pardon?
Q. Avez-vous déjà essayé de vous enfuir?
A. We used to run away all the time. That’s why my friends got kicked out. (Laughter) This was during the War. We got kicked out of the Cadet Corps. We were in Cadets. I had just been promoted to Corporal and that very day they ripped my stripes off me and took my uniform away. (Laughter)
I was a rebel right from Day One. It took me a long time to accept a lot of things. It took me a long time to reform my life, to put it into the direction of trying to do something. And I did. For years I’ve been —
Je connais tous les politiciens indiens là-bas parce que je travaillais avec eux. Nous avons combattu tant de batailles partout. Moi et le chef de la nation haïda là-bas, nous avons mis en place le moratoire pour arrêter le forage pétrolier de Haidi-gwi (ph.) À Port Hardy. Ce moratoire est toujours en vigueur. Et c'est nous deux qui l'avons fait!
Q. That’s fascinating.
R. Et puis, il y avait un type qui allait installer une usine de ferrochrome à Port Hardy, et j'étais le porte-parole de notre bande lorsque nous nous sommes battus. Nous l'avons arrêté.
Il y avait aussi un bûcheron qui avait un titre en fief simple sur une île juste à l'extérieur de notre bande. C'était notre île cimetière. Il voulait commencer à tomber des arbres sur les tombes, hein. Nous avons donc emmené tout le village là-bas, les anciens et tout le monde et nous l'avons arrêté. Ils nous ont donné un juge à la retraite pour servir de médiateur entre nous et le bûcheron et nous-mêmes. Nous avons gagné ça. Le gouvernement a acheté cette île pour nous et elle nous appartient maintenant. Encore! (Rire)
Q. Good for you. That’s really good.
Lorsque vous avez quitté l'école et commencé à vous connecter avec votre famille, vos frères et sœurs, avez-vous discuté avec eux de ce qui s'est passé au pensionnat?
A. No. No. It was too sore a point to discuss. We didn’t want to talk about things like that. As a matter of fact, my uncle owned a logging camp and he went to Residential School, and so did his brother who was the second-in-command in camp. We were all related, every one of us in camp. My brother was the woods foreman and my second oldest brother was the yard engineer and I was the loading engineer. My kid brother was the head loader. So we worked together for years. It must have been well over twenty years that we worked together.
Q. Mais c'était trop dur d'en parler?
A. Yeah. Too hard to talk about it. We didn’t talk about it.
Maybe the odd time somebody would mention something, but we shut up about it right away. Why talk about pain? You’ve got to start growing. You’ve got to start experiencing life. I used to kid my friend, Thomas, that he was always trying to smell the roses from the wrong end because he would end up on the ground, sniffing at the bottom end of the rose!
Q. That’s a good point.
Quand vous étiez au pensionnat, comment étaient les modalités de sommeil? Est-ce que tous les garçons sont restés dans une même zone?
A. Ouais. Il y avait trois dortoirs; deux en bas et un en haut. Les garçons du lycée dormaient en haut. Les lits étaient à peu près aussi éloignés (indiquant). Nous étions plus de deux cents là-dedans, donc l'espace était limité.
Q. Quelle était votre journée moyenne?
R. Eh bien, selon le mois, parce que, comme je l'ai dit plus tôt, nous devions travailler une demi-journée. L'école comptait plus de vingt vaches et une trentaine ou une quarantaine de porcs et 1 500 poulets.
Q. Avez-vous mangé de cette nourriture?
R. Pardon?
Q. Avez-vous mangé de cette nourriture?
A. No. No, we never did. We used to have to get up at five o’clock in the morning to go and milk the cows. That was done every day, seven days a week. And if it was your time to work in the morning then you went to your job. Like me, I used to have to go to the boiler room and go to work. The only ones that didn’t work were the real small kids. I think I was about six years old when I started working in the boiler room.
Comme je l'ai dit, nous avons appris à travailler tôt.
Q. Étaient-ce les surintendants masculins qui occupaient en quelque sorte le dortoir des garçons?
R. Le quoi?
Q. Étaient-ce les surveillants masculins qui occupaient en quelque sorte le dortoir pour hommes?
A. That’s right. In Dormitory 3 there was a room in the corner and that was his room.
There was sexual abuse and stuff like that. I never was involved in any of that, but I used to watch kids going into that guy’s room in the middle of the night.
Q. Saviez-vous ce qui se passait?
A. Not really because the kids didn’t talk about it. Why talk about something that you are disgusted with? You don’t bring it out. It’s sort of a no-no.
Q. Ouais.
R. Il y avait très peu d'état-major, donc la force était à l'ordre du jour.
Q. Wow.
R. Nous avions un sergent-major anglais à la retraite qui enseignait aux cadets, donc il était très strict. Si vous étiez en décalage, il est venu derrière vous et vous a giflé hors de la ligne. Cela arrivait tout le temps.
Who are you going to complain to? There’s nobody to complain to. You weren’t allowed to see your parents so by the time you seen your parents you had forgotten about the incident waiting for the next thing to come up. It was a tough life.
Q. Diriez-vous que vous viviez dans la peur tous les jours?
A. Oh, all the time. All the time. I remember one day I was working in the woods, cutting wood for the boiler room. My friend was coming down from working on the farm. So I hollered at him. I said, “Where are you going?” “I don’t know”, he said, “they just sent for me.” So he went in. About an hour later he comes out and he’s crying. So he says, “We got strapped.” Never to this day do we know why he got strapped. They didn’t need much of an excuse. It was a tough life.
I have a lot of idiosyncrasies that are still with me today because of St. Mike’s. For instance, if I put food on my plate I’ve got to eat it all. That’s left over from Residential School that you ate everything on your plate. I could never understand people who eat only part of their meal and then send it back. I couldn’t do that, even to this day. I’m getting closer to eighty than I am to seventy. (Laughter)
Q. Que faites-vous d'autre? Quelles sont vos autres particularités? Que faites-vous d'autre qui, selon vous, vient de cet endroit?
A. Oh, it’s all kinds of things. I can’t begin to list them. After a while it just becomes a part of your life. You don’t even think about it any more.
And all the ones that died, you know, some of the best friends I’ve had in this world all passed away at a young age. It’s kind of hard to take.
Q. Ouais. Avez-vous encore des amis en vie?
R. Pardon?
Q. Est-ce que l'un de vos amis des pensionnats est toujours en vie?
A. Oh yeah. Frank Nelson. I count him as a good friend, and all his family. There’s a whole bunch of us, Bobby Joe and them, and we get together. We all became very involved in our culture, every one of us. Last week I went to Alert Bay to a potlatch and I’m always asked to speak at potlatches and funerals and weddings. I’m either speaking in Indian or in English, one of the two, depending on what the occasion is.
Q. Quand avez-vous réalisé que vous aviez besoin de guérir?
R. Pardon?
Q. Que vous aviez besoin de vous en guérir?
A. Oh, a long time ago. When I first started thinking about it there was nothing. There was no organization that you could go to and ask for help. There was absolutely nothing. That’s why I decided to stop doing thigns on my own and why I started talking to all the guys like Bobby Joe and Frank and all them. We had to start the process ourselves, that it was necessary. I have always felt that the Canadian public doesn’t understand and never will unless we —
In Fort Rupert we decided that we needed to do something. So what we did was we invited people to come to our village, all the people who had things to do with us. We invited doctors, lawyers, school teachers and nurses and they lived right in our Big House for a week. I was the commentator for the whole thing. But we had to quit doing that because we didn’t have the money to continue.
Mais à ce jour, je reçois encore des lettres de différents agents de la GRC et des trucs comme ça et ils viennent toujours me voir pour parler de problèmes.
I’ve been aware of that for years. I’ve known that we needed to start the process. People challenge me constantly. That Ambers, he’s an Indian agitator! (Laughter)
Q. What would you like to say to survivors who haven’t found their healing journey? What would you like to say to them to encourage them maybe?
A. Well, you’ve got to heal. That’s number one. You’ve got to heal. And you’ve got to look at yourself. You’ve got to come to the conclusion that you’re not a bad guy or you’re not a bad woman, or whatever. We need to get back to the roots of a lot of things.
Une des choses que j'ai essayé de promouvoir dans l'une de nos réunions, une grande réunion que nous avons eue, était de retrouver le sentiment de respect pour nos femmes que nous perdions. Nous ne respections plus nos femmes. Très souvent, nous les avons maltraités. Nous n'y sommes jamais parvenus à cause du mal que les gens avaient.
During that meeting there was one old fellow who got up and he had been raped by a priest. He almost went crazy. One of his friends suggested why don’t you go to Confession and maybe you’ll feel better. So he went to Confession and when the person on the other side started talking he realized it was the priest who had raped him. And he had also tied him down in a chair while he raped his five-year old sister.
How are you going to get back —
— End of Part 1
…watching you go through a miserable lifetime and not me. I’ve always felt that if you’re going to do anything and if it’s going to be successful, it has to be really done properly. And not only properly, it has to take more than just one or two get-togethers. That’s one of the reasons why I got involved in the healing thing. Because I felt it was necessary that we do that and necessary that we explore all possibilities of creating that healing and not allow people to change that direction.
That’s what happens at times. We change the direction because as people get more educated they see things in their way. With us it’s from the heart. When we feel for the problem, we feel for the problem and we’re not happy if somebody tries to monkey with it, to change the direction.
Q. It makes sense. I’m really glad that you spoke up, too. Because we shouldn’t be so submissive.
A. That’s right.
Q. Savez-vous ce que je veux dire?
A. Ouais.
Q. I feel like when people start to ask questions that they’re on their journey or they’re learning about their own healing. It’s all right. There have been many many times in some places they won’t. They are so submissive to whatever process is in front of them.
A. And it bothers me when people come up to me and say, “You’ve got to learn how to live, man, you’ve got to learn to accept these things. It’s happened. It’s gone.” It hasn’t gone. The Residential Schools thing is the biggest factor that has shaken the Indian people down to their roots and it’s the thing that has changed our total look on history.
Even our way of eating and stuff like that —
We had a meeting with a doctor here a week ago. He was talking about diabetes. He tried to tell me that you inherit diabetes from your parents. I told him that I think that’s a pile of crap. He says, “What do you mean?” I says, “I lived in an area where there were five little villages, all close together, and there wasn’t one person in those five little villages that showed any signs of diabetes. How can you inherit something that’s not there?” I told him that diabetes, as far as I’m concerned, is because of the crappy foods that you’re now feeding us, and all the crappy foods that we’re getting out of the stores. I says that if you want to fight diabetes then you’ve got to fight it at its source. I told him, I says, “Look at what has happened to the fishing industry: it’s dying.” And I says that fifty years ago I told people you’re going to have to start learning how to eat Hemlock bark and Fir needles because that’s going to be the only thing left that you’ve got to eat because we’re destroying all the rest.
Je me fâche parfois quand j'y pense.
Q. That’s all right. I know how you feel. I feel the same way. We should have been honouring the ancestral food pyramid that existed. I just lost four people I loved because of diabetes; my parents, my sister, and I just lost my niece in December.
A. Ouais.
Q. She was younger than I am. That’s not right.
A. Yeah, that’s right. I don’t know.
Q. Que pensez-vous avoir appris du pensionnat? Avez-vous appris quelque chose de précieux ou de bon?
R. Rien. Rien que je n'aurais pu apprendre par moi-même à l'extérieur.
Q. Pensez-vous que cela a appris à notre peuple à haïr?
A. Oh, absolutely. I took a long time to re-evaluate my relationship with my parents. I loved them. I loved them dearly but I didn’t have the ability to so love because it was driven right out of me. That’s what happened in my first marriage. I didn’t realize that my wife was having problems. I wasn’t home enough to realize that. In a lot of ways it wasn’t that I didn’t care. It was because it had been driven out of me. So it was really a tough way to look at life.
Q. Cela a-t-il affecté votre rôle parental?
A. Oh, of course. I’m really close to my kids. I’ve got seven kids. I’m really close to my kids now because I made a point of —
I’ve had two major operations. I had a multiple open-heart surgery and I had a cancer operation. While I was laying in the hospital in Victoria I started thinking about my grandchildren and great grandchildren, you know. I had accumulated a lot of stuff because I always had a good job. So I thought to myself it’s time I started looking at them kids, you know, and start making an effort to pass on these things that I’ve accumulated.
So I lined all my grandchildren up in my mind and I started figuring out what I was going to give away. I gave everything away. I had forty baskets. I had $80,000 worth of potlatch regalia. I had four big solid gold bracelets with watches on them. I had guns and stuff like that. I gave the whole works to my grandsons. I told them after I says, “All I own now is a cheap Timex watch; that’s it.”
Et quand j'ai gagné ma cause avec le pensionnat et l'église, j'ai emmené la plupart de mes petits-enfants au West Edmonton Mall et nous y avons passé deux semaines. Nous avons dépensé tout l'argent que j'ai reçu du gouvernement!
Q. That’s nice.
Alors étiez-vous admissible à une compensation, comme cette dernière ronde de chèques de compensation?
R. Je l'ai.
Q. You got that as well. Yeah. That’s good.
A. Yeah. That’s when I found out I was in there for nine years. (Laughter) I didn’t realize I was there that long.
Q. When did St. Michael’s close down?
R. C'était dans les années 60. J'ai aidé à le fermer.
Q. Parlez-moi de cela.
A. Oh, we just started petitioning everybody and telling them —
Well, it was obsolete. It was no longer answering even the things they wanted, eh. They tried to make good little farmers out of Indians and stuff like that. So it wasn’t working anyway. So there was a bunch of us that forced them to close it. But to this day I will not go into that building. It has too many painful memories for me.
Je suis allé avec tout un groupe d'aînés à Alert Bay pour aller au musée parce que je siège toujours au conseil d'administration du musée parce que j'estime que le conseil d'administration du musée peut nous aider dans l'idée d'enseigner la langue et des choses comme ça. Aucun des aînés qui m'accompagnaient à Alert Bay n'entrerait dans ce bâtiment. Ils nous ont dit que nous pouvions aller le voir si nous le voulions. Ils s'assirent tous sur les marches et pleurèrent.
So when you say that the healing journey has started, it hasn’t really, you know. The Elders haven’t changed their minds about a lot of it. When they outlawed the potlatch they finally admitted that they did the wrong thing, but it’s still on the books. It has never been repealed. It’s still on the books. It is still being outlawed. A lot of the Elders when the masks came back, or some of the masks came back I should say, some of the Elders couldn’t talk. They had a big celebration in Alert Bay. This old fellow that I really love, he couldn’t speak when they asked him to speak. He was one of our big Chiefs. He just sat there and cried.
So what do you —
Mon père a perdu plus de six cents pièces de décoration lors des confiscations du potlatch. Seulement vingt-deux pièces sont revenues et ce n'étaient que des pièces mineures. Il y avait des masques de loup et des trucs comme ça. Le reste était des hochets et des choses.
Donc, quand vous parlez des pensionnats indiens et de choses comme ça, tout s'entremêle avec toutes les autres choses qui se sont produites comme quand ils ont interdit les potlatchs.
Q. La Loi sur les Indiens et toutes ses restrictions?
A. Oh, tout fonctionne. Tout cela interagit ensemble.
Q. Ils vont tous de pair.
A. Yeah. Yeah, they all go hand-in-hand. It’s really hard to divorce yourself from any of it. So when you talk about Residential School you’re only talking about a part of it.
Q. Yeah, one piece of it. From the conception and design of the Indian Act and the huge plan, there was a plan —
A. That’s right.
Q. – there was a huge plan. In order to understand the Residential School part of it you have to know the Indian Act and the restrictions that came along with it.
R. Ils ont fusionné des groupes partout et rien de tout cela n'a jamais fonctionné. Cela n'a été que des problèmes.
Q. Tous, y compris les systèmes électoraux.
A. Yeah. I belong to a little Band. My father was Tlowitsis (ph.) and my grandfather was Montaglia (ph.). The Montaglia People were very progressive little Band. They had their own logging camp and they also had a seine boat. So in fishing time the whole Band went out fishing. When it was logging time they all went logging. So we had a lot of money in Ottawa because you couldn’t just do anything with that money. Ottawa said that you’ve got to give it to us. We’ll put it in the bank for you.
Quoi qu'il en soit, Turner Island n'a jamais été beaucoup de terres. On ne leur a donné que quarante-sept acres et de ces quarante-sept acres, vous ne pouviez construire que 13 acres. Alors ils ont regardé autour d'eux et ils ont vu notre petite bande, la Montaglia, et nous avions plus de mille acres. Alors ils nous ont fusionnés avec Turner et ils ont dit qu'ils allaient faire une vitrine avec Turner. Tout le monde allait avoir une maison et ils allaient utiliser l'argent de Montaglia pour le faire.
So we build two dams in Turner for water. One held thirty-six thousand gallons and the other one sixteen thousand. We plumbed all the buildings and then we hired an electrician and he wired all the houses and we bought the first generator and then we were broke. So our Chief —
By this time I’m out of St. Mike’s.
— he says, “We’ve got to go to Alert Bay, son, we’ve got to go and talk to the Indian Agent. We’ve got to get our money back.” So I said, “Okay.” He says, “Do you want to come because you understand the English language. You’re going to be our spokesperson.” So we went to Alert Bay only to be told that there was no money, that we were broke and Ottawa wasn’t going to pay us back a cent.
So we went back home and our hereditary chief said that we’ve got to split again, son. We’ve got to try to get out of this. This is bad. But we couldn’t to this day. We lost our land. We even lost our name. There’s no more Montaglia name left anywhere outside of us knowing.
Q. Ouais.
A. So it still goes on. As I say to me it’s all part and parcel of what they have been doing to us, not just the Residential Schools.
Q. I totally agree with you. I’ve studied the Indian Act and I know the plan. I saw how it was executed.
A. I find it really hard to try to explain to people the whole circle of things that has happened. I’m one of the major spokespersons for the Kwiakah Band. Any time we do anything I’m always asked to be a part of the planning and also part of trying to right what is wrong. I don’t know.
Q. I don’t know if I’ll see it in my lifetime but I want to do the best I can to educate our story tellers so that story can get out.
R. J'espère aussi que cela a un impact.
Q. And I believe it will because we are —
I didn’t know the importance of that plan and what had happened. I didn’t know all of that.
A. Ouais.
Q. Because I wanted to know where did the aggressive assimilation policy come from and who invented it. And then I wanted to find out where did Canada learn it from? Well, they learned it from the United States. And then I found out that Adolph Hitler actually commended Canada and the US Government for how they treated their Indian People. I researched all of this Basil, and it’s mind boggling to me.
There was a resistance. There were people like yourself and your father who were out there —
A. All the people that preceded me, all the leaders that we had, say, sixty years ago, they didn’t have any education so they didn’t know how to fight. They didn’t know who to go to or anything like that. It has only been in the last two or three generations —
Q. Si cela. Si ce.
A. – that we’re now starting to get people who are taking up the law and things like that. I’ve got a lot of friends who are lawyers.
Q. Ce seront les conteurs, les avocats et nous tous qui travaillerons ensemble en synergie pour dire la vérité. Parce qu'à l'heure actuelle, le Canada est protégé par les Nations Unies.
A. Oh yeah. Well, I don’t know. I sure hope it works.
Q. Que voulez-vous que les gens sachent de vous?
R. Moi?
Q. Oui, et votre voyage.
A. I don’t care. I’m just about ready to go upstairs and go home. I’m seventy-six. I don’t care. Hell, all the people said, “You should write a book.” What the heck do I want to write a book for? Gee whiz! I have a hard enough time living without having —
This guy who is driving me has just bought a book. He says, “You’re in this book.” I says, “Oh?” “Yeah”, he says, “and I’m going to give it to you to read.” I haven’t read it yet! (Laughter)
I’m in about four books.
Q. So what do you want Canada to know about us in terms of —
R. Je veux que le Canada sache qu'il nous a fait du tort et qu'il commence à réparer certains de ces torts qu'il a commis.
Okay, one of the things that has happened which I looked at quite a number of years ago, is that they caught us all living in our winter homes. So when they came around to give out land we were given our winter homes, but the process was that there was no economic development in those winter home areas. Especially us, because we call ourselves the Potlatch People, winter time was a time for ceremonials. It wasn’t a time for work. You paid attention to your culture. That really impacted heavily on most Bands. We had no way of making money, which we need to do now, not that I feel like money is the answer. It’s just that I feel it’s necessary to put bread and butter on the table. I’m not much of a guy to expound on the need to become a millionaire or something like that.
Q. Voulez-vous que vos petits-enfants voient cet entretien?
A. Ouais. Je veux qu'ils sachent qui je suis, qui j'étais.
Q. Que leur diriez-vous? Pourriez-vous leur donner des conseils?
A. I tell them all the time that there are two things that are really important in this world: one is your family and the other is the friends that you make. I say if you pay attention to that you’ll be fine. You’re not going to lose too much in the process. You’ve got to know your family. Our family is very close and I’ve got some very good friends. I’ve got friends that I’ve had for close to fifty years. We get together every so often. We always know what’s happening with the other guy, you know.
Every time I get sick I go to Victoria. I have two close friends there. His wife is a Registered Nurse and she takes care of me when I’m sick. (Laughter)
J'avais l'habitude de travailler avec l'autre à Alert Bay. Lui et moi avons fait toutes sortes de choses ensemble. Nous avons construit ma petite maison en rondins ensemble et des trucs comme ça.
Q. Génial. Eh bien, merci beaucoup d'avoir partagé votre histoire.
A. Okay. Let’s hope it’s —
Q. Merci beaucoup. Merci de nous aider aujourd'hui.
— End of Interview