L'INTERVIEWEUR: Charles, pourriez-vous s'il vous plaît nous dire votre nom complet et l'épeler pour nous?
CHARLES SCRIBE: Je m'appelle Charles Scribe. L'orthographe est Charles Scribe.
Q. Merci beaucoup. D'où viens-tu?
A. I’m originally from Norway House.
Q. Oh. Et à quelle école es-tu allé?
R. À Norway House, j'ai fréquenté l'école Jack River. Il était également connu sous le nom de Jack River Hostel, ou école Notre-Dame. C'était une école missionnaire qui était dirigée par les Oblats.
Q. Excellent. Vous souvenez-vous des années où vous y êtes allé?
A. I started school there when I was six years old. I spent nine years there. I attended as a day student for those nine years that I was there. It was run by —
Nos professeurs étaient des religieuses et il était dirigé par un prêtre. Le directeur était un prêtre et il y avait des frères, je suppose, qui faisaient partie du personnel. Il y avait là des laïcs bizarres, mais en général, il était dirigé par les religieuses et les prêtres.
C'était une sorte de moment traumatisant d'être là. C'était semblable à être dans un pensionnat. Nous devions respecter tous les règlements et toutes les choses religieuses qui nous étaient imposées.
One of the things I remember clearly when I was growing up as a young boy was my mother and dad were Residential School survivors but they maintained this concept of family. They concentrated on that. Before we went to school they were very adamant in maintaining a family nucleus. We weren’t Catholics at the time. We were Anglicans when I was a young boy. Although we were Anglicans we attended Sunday School in a church that was evangelistic, or Pentecostal, you know. This was during my pre-school years. We had the opportunity to visit the Sunday School. It was a really good experience for me at that time because the Sunday Schools were run by a Minister and his wife. He had a son and a daughter so he had the type of family that everybody looks for. Most of his teachings were family oriented. He taught us the biblical stories about Jesus and his growing up, things like he was a carpenter’s helper. They covered all the things that were positive.
À ce moment-là, nous avons senti que nous n'avions aucun problème. Tout était positif. Notre style de vie et tout était positif. Tout était propre et pur, même dans cette école.
Dans notre communauté, nos méthodes traditionnelles étaient presque perdues. Tout le monde était devenu christianisé. Mon père a maintenu le christianisme très fort. C'était un vétéran de la guerre. C'était un père de famille et par conséquent les histoires que nous écoutions étaient très positives et liées à la famille. J'ai apprécié ça. J'ai bien aimé y aller.
Ma mère a maintenu ses méthodes traditionnelles et elle nous a également fourni ces enseignements. Mais elle n'était pas de notre communauté. Elle était d'une autre tribu en dehors de la communauté. Son peuple était plus fort dans le maintien de ses habitudes traditionnelles, alors elle nous a tenus informés de la façon dont les choses sont pour les Indiens dans un aspect traditionnel. Néanmoins, nous avons suivi les enseignements de Jésus, les enseignements qui ont été enseignés par ce ministre et sa femme. Nous avons grandi de cette façon jusqu'à ce que j'aille à l'école.
Q. En quoi cela a-t-il tout changé pour vous?
A. Well, one of the things that was most traumatic was seeing the way that the Catholic Church depicted Jesus. One of the things that really traumatized me at that age was seeing this man, you know, that we’ve got to respect, hanging on a cross and he was all bloody with thorns on his head and a stab wound in his side and he was nailed to a cross. When I saw that it was really traumatic. The Nuns and the Priests were telling us the reason why this occurred was because Jesus died for your sins.
I said, “What do you mean by sins?” They said that we’re all born with sin, we’re born with original sin. I wondered why because we always believed that we were born into this world pure and everything was positive. So I wondered what they meant by original sin. So I asked the question: What is original sin? It took a while for the Nuns to answer it but their answer was because your mother and your father committed a sin in order for you to be born. The sin that they were talking about is that they had sex together. And we weren’t aware of this at that age, you know.
Q. Parce que vous n'aviez que six ans.
A. Yeah. It was shocking. It was really traumatic to learn that my mother and father were committing this sin in order for me to be born. So it was very devastating and very shocking. I couldn’t look at my parents again the same way. My feelings toward them changed.
They were Residential School affected too. They were a little bit distant from us. They didn’t put us on their knee and embrace us the way a normal family would do. But nonetheless they showed us that they loved us and when we heard this story it was really traumatic to me to understand or to learn that my mother and my father had committed a sin because of their holy union. It made me feel really dirty. It made me feel bad. It really had an effect.
L'autre aspect qui était vraiment déroutant était que nous leur avons demandé pourquoi vous êtes des religieuses et pourquoi vous n'avez pas de mari. Ils ont dit qu'ils étaient mariés à Jésus et ils nous ont même montré leur bague. Ils ont dit que cette bague signifie que nous sommes mariés à Jésus. C'était déroutant parce qu'ils avaient tous des bagues, tous, vous savez, et ils ont tous dit la même chose, toutes ces religieuses. C'était vraiment déroutant pour moi en tant qu'enfant parce que nous apprenions qu'un homme et une femme s'engagent l'un envers l'autre pour la vie et seulement envers eux-mêmes. Voici un groupe de femmes mariées à Jésus. Et encore une fois, c'était assez choquant. Cela nous a choqués. Cela m'a choqué. Encore une fois, je ne me sentais pas trop bien en les regardant. Il semblait que ce n'était pas réel.
We grew up that way. We noticed that in the school a lot of the kids with us were feeling the same way but they probably didn’t know how to express themselves.
Q. Avez-vous été autorisé à poser des questions? Ont-ils répondu gentiment lorsque vous avez posé ce genre de questions?
R. Non. Il leur a fallu beaucoup de temps pour répondre et parfois ils ont refusé de répondre.
One of the things —
Comme je le disais plus tôt, l'une des choses qui était vraiment déroutante était le fait que je suis né avec le péché originel. Nous sommes finalement devenus catholiques à un âge plus avancé.
Q. Toute votre famille?
A. Ouais. La raison pour laquelle nous sommes devenus catholiques était ma mère et mon père pensait que nous pourrions obtenir une meilleure éducation dans le système des pensionnats catholiques. C'était leur sentiment à l'époque et probablement parce qu'il n'y avait pas d'autre moyen de nous éduquer.
Q. Vous êtes allé à l'école de jour pendant toutes ces années?
A. Depuis neuf ans.
Q. Vous aviez le droit de rentrer chez vous le soir et d'être avec votre famille?
R. Nous avons pu rentrer chez nous le soir. Cela nous a donné une pause et cela nous a donné un refuge, un endroit où aller, un refuge. Cela nous a donné cela. Nous avons donc pu rentrer à la maison et oublier ce qui se passait à l'école.
Il y avait d'autres étudiants qui résidaient là-bas dans les communautés périphériques. Ils ont été pris là-bas. Beaucoup d'entre eux nous ont approchés parce qu'ils souffraient. Ils étaient seuls. Ils n'avaient personne vers qui se tourner.
There was a Brother in the school, one of the Brothers – I don’t really want to name him at this time – but he would go around looking at little boys. He would go around reaching for them and basically trying to find out which one would not respond. That was his way of searching out which little boy he would be able to I guess probably molest. So that was going on.
Q. Cela vous est-il déjà arrivé?
R. Cela ne m'est jamais arrivé parce que j'ai pu rentrer chez moi en courant. C'était l'un des avantages que j'avais d'aller à cette école de jour, c'est que si je sentais que les choses n'allaient pas au sein de l'école, alors je pouvais m'enfuir, courir à la porte.
Q. Avez-vous pu parler à vos parents de ce qui se passait?
A. To some degree, but at that time they were kind of closed in. They felt that we shouldn’t be talking about these kinds of things, especially if it related to a religious type of thing. They themselves were taught to respect Christianity and the stories that existed in the bible.
Q. They probably couldn’t have done anything anyway.
A. Ouais. Il n'y avait aucun moyen de recours. Il n'y avait nulle part où ils auraient pu se tourner. Ils cherchaient un moyen de mieux éduquer leurs enfants et nous étions cinq. J'avais quatre sœurs. Donc, ils cherchaient cela et ils voulaient que nous grandissions pour être compétitifs dans la société. Nous avons pu le faire dans une certaine mesure sans difficulté.
Une des choses qu'ils n'arrêtaient pas de nous dire dans le système des pensionnats indiens, c'est que nous devions être éduqués pour pouvoir nous intégrer à la société. Une fois que nous serions en mesure de nous intégrer à la société, nous pourrions avoir une maison de luxe avec un garage pour deux voitures, une clôture blanche et des trucs comme ça. Ils nous apprenaient à se mêler à la société, à en faire partie.
But it wasn’t working for us because to this day I still don’t have a white picket fence. I was never able to achieve that. So they were giving us a false sense that if we become educated then we would get these things. But in order to get those it was very difficult to achieve and consequently a lot of the students that I went to school with resorted to alcohol because of the frustration they were suffering from. They were thinking they were going to achieve this but they were never able to because of the way society is, you know. So that was one of the things they suffered. It was one of the things they suffered.
Q. Aviez-vous l'impression d'avoir souffert de cette expérience et de ce traumatisme également?
A. Well definitely. The experience I described to you in the beginning about the relationship between my mother and father being sinful was really traumatic. I learned later on in life that pre-puberty, our life between the time we’re born and the time we achieve puberty is the most important time in our life. Whatever occurs during that time is going to affect us the rest of our life. This definitely has.
Although I’ve been married for thirty years now, in my younger days I couldn’t establish a good relationship. Every relationship that I tried to get into turned out to be dysfunctional. So it was difficult to establish or build any kind of family because of what you learn at that age, particularly when you learn that the holy union of man and woman is sinful. So that was really traumatic. It was a really traumatic time. I grew up feeling heavy all through my life and I grew up looking at my mom and dad the way I shouldn’t. They gave me a feeling of anxiety, they gave me a feeling of depression and all these things. That was rooted at that time when I was six years old. I was still in my age of childhood. I hadn’t even reached puberty and I wasn’t prepared at that time to hear those kinds of stories.
Q. Y a-t-il eu un moment dans votre vie où vous avez senti que vous étiez capable de surmonter ce traumatisme et de faire un changement positif pour vous-même?
R. Oh oui, cela s'est certainement produit.
Q. Vous êtes marié maintenant?
A. I’ve been married for thirty years; yes. My wife and I have a very stable relationship.
Q. Comment avez-vous pu faire cette transition?
A. Well, in the seventies, in the 1970’s I had an opportunity to listen to Elders. In their teachings they were teaching about the importance of family. They were talking about grandmas and grandpas teachings and their way of life and the way that we should be living as Indian people. They were teaching that. At the same time my grandfather was talking to me. My grandfather on my mother’s side had maintained his traditions. He kept talking to me about the different types of ceremonies that existed.
Donc, petit à petit, je me suis intéressé, vous savez. L'une des choses qu'ils nous disaient, c'est que dans notre recherche de notre identité, nous devons essayer d'être déterminés. Nous avons besoin de détermination et nous devons être capables de devenir autosuffisants. C'est ce dont ils parlaient. L'une des choses qu'ils nous disaient, c'est que vous devez réaliser votre rêve d'enfance. À cette époque, à l'âge de six ans, mon père m'a intéressé aux avions, alors je suis finalement devenu pilote et j'ai passé dix ans à piloter en tant que pilote de brousse.
But during that time I was also in search of my identity. What increased my search was the loss of my father to cancer. I started looking and I started searching even deeper. I found that the teachings in our traditional ways were very positive. I started learning these teachings reflected every stage of our life from the time we’re born until the time we pass on into the spirit world. I began learning that the Great Spirit designs this for us and the way that we live is the way that he designed it. So we started maintaining this and things started becoming positive. We started learning that our whole traditional way of life is based on family. It’s a family way of life from a way back, from our ancestors, from as far back as we can go believed in this way of life. It was family oriented. It was very much unlike the Catholic belief. It was not male oriented. There were no vows to remain celibate and things like that. There was a teaching of respect, respecting the holy union of man and woman, and consequently Indian people were able to develop that respect for themselves.
It reflects in their ceremonial way of life. Taking the clan system, for example, our clan system, a lot of people nowadays are looking for their clan, or their spirit name and things like that. The reason why our people had the clan system was to ensure that our blood remained pure, you know. One of the laws that they followed was that clans shouldn’t marry within the same clan. So that way the blood remained strong and as a result children were born healthy.
Nowadays it’s not like that because people marry just because of beauty and they don’t marry because of the way the person is from within. A long time ago our ancestors were able to tell us who you were going to marry. That was because they recognized compatibility in individuals. They weren’t doing it because one or the other looked beautiful. They were doing it because that individual looked beautiful inside.
We never got this from the Catholic Church. We were told we were sinners. We were told we were pagans and heathens. We were told to worship objects that were man made. We did the way of the cross, we prayed with —
Everything was man made. And we did ask that question: Who made this? And they said, “Man.” So we said: “Why are you condemning us for praying to this stone?”, or using this stone as our object, just like the stone that you gave me. We asked that question: Who made this? And they had no choice but to say it was made by God. So it angers them. It angered them. They singled us out. We became the bad person among the group because we weren’t going along with them.
So it gave us that feeling of isolation as well. They isolated us from the rest because they didn’t allow us to mingle with everybody else because of the way that we were thinking.
Vous aviez une question?
Q. Yeah. I was just thinking about how you talked about reconnecting with your traditional values and now you have a wife and you’ve had a wonderful marriage for thirty years. I want to know if you have children.
R. Oui, je le fais.
Q. Combien?
A. I’ve got a really large family.
Q. Oh.
A. I’ve got two daughters and one son. And I have grandchildren. I also have great grandchildren. I’ve got other children from a previous marriage and some of them have children.
De plus, de manière traditionnelle, j'ai une grande famille adoptive. J'ai d'autres fils qui sont adoptés et j'ai beaucoup de nièces et de neveux et de nombreux enfants, petits-enfants, mères, pères, tantes et oncles partout, partout sur l'île de la Tortue, vous savez.
Q. Hum-hmm.
A. So in the traditional ways the family concept grows, not only with the biological family, but it expands to include everybody else that treats you like family. So that’s our traditional way. That’s the way it is. We’re not centered on one family nucleus.
But one of the things we must remember is these teachings were included in my pre-school days when the evangelist or Pentecostal-ist taught us about family and how this was related to Jesus’ life. Those stories were positive. I’ve always liked them. Even when he broke bread and was able to feed multitudes. I see similar things happening among this huge family that I’m talking about. Sometimes there are gatherings and there’s representations from families from almost everywhere.
What our ancestors were trying to teach us in the seventies is very true and it was very effective in changing our lives, understanding where we’re truly coming from.
Q. Our tape is about to run out. We’ve got about two minutes left. Did you want to answer one more question?
A. Bien sûr.
Q. Qu'est-ce qui vous a donné envie de venir partager votre histoire aujourd'hui?
A. Well, I thought that people should get the message that family is very important. We work with many families. My wife and I are both counselors. I’m a Medicine Man and a traditional healer. I’m certified. I feel that it is very important that this message about family comes out because in our work with people there are always misconceptions about our traditional ways. We’re always being taught that there’s someone out there inflicting something on us, you know, and basically all we need to do is look within ourselves and deal with our inner child in order to —
Q. I think our tape just ran out but that’s really important.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It’s okay. It’s still on.
Q. Oh bien.
A. That’s important.
Q. I think it’s important, too. I was going to say that it’s a very important point.
A. That’s why I wanted to do this.
Q. Je l'apprécie. J'ai beaucoup appris en vous écoutant aujourd'hui, alors merci beaucoup.
Un merci.
Q. Habitez-vous maintenant à Winnipeg?
R. Oui, oui.
Q. I was hoping you didn’t come all the way down from Norway House because it’s quite a trek!
A. Um-hmm.
Q. Nous avons vécu un certain temps là-bas il y a quelques années.
A. I’ve lived in Winnipeg since 1965.
Q. Wow.
A. I’ve been back to Norway House on occasion, you know. I ran a business up there, a flying service, for six years.
Q. Wow. Volez-vous plus?
R. Non, j'ai pris ma retraite.
Q. Mon frère est dans l'armée de l'air. Il obtiendra son diplôme le mois prochain en tant que pilote d'hélicoptère.
A. Oh oui.
Q. Avant de rejoindre l'armée, il a pensé à faire du vol de brousse.
A. It’s interesting. I started off in the aviation industry as a flying instructor. I spent about two or three years doing that. Some of my former students still fly. Some of them are in the commercial airlines. They are all old. They’re bald!
Q. They’re rich, too.
R. Ils me demandent comment je me garde jeune quand je les rencontre. Le stress et la pression impliqués dans ce domaine pèsent sur leur vie et les vieillissent.
Q. I was going to ask what your secret is, too, because you are thirty years married and all those grandchildren, I don’t even believe it! (Laughter)
A. Well, we had lots of family and maintaining a positive mind. Many of our people can’t do that.
— End of Interview