L'INTERVIEWEUR: D'accord, pouvez-vous nous dire votre nom et l'épeler pour nous, s'il vous plaît.
BLANCHE HILL-EASTON: Je m'appelle Blanche Hill-Easton;
Blanche HillEaston.
Q. Et d'où venez-vous?
A. I’m from Six Nations.
Q. Quelle école avez-vous fréquentée?
A. Institut Mohawk.
Q. Quelles années y êtes-vous?
A. It would be part of 1943 to 1945 or ’46. I can’t remember because they were in between.
Q. D'accord. Quel âge aviez-vous lorsque vous y êtes allé?
R. J'avais dix ans.
Q. Dix?
A. Um-hmm.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous de votre premier jour?
A. I remember walking up the steps with my mother taking me and going inside and seeing the hallway. There were rooms on either side. After my mother left I really don’t remember too much of that day. I was just kind of in awe of everything, you know, wondering what was going to happen. Specifically that’s the only part I remember.
I remember walking up the steps. The girls’ side was on one side. Where we were going up it would be on the right hand side, and the boys were on the left hand side. But you didn’t see the boys. The girls’ playground was right there so they were all kind of standing back behind in the playground. I was a shy person.
Q. Y aviez-vous des frères ou des sœurs?
R. Non, j'avais une sœur qui est venue plus tard, une autre année elle est venue.
Q. Saviez-vous à quoi vous attendre en partant?
A. No, none whatsoever. All I know is they said it was the Mohawk Institute and that it was the school for us. That’s all I knew so I just figured that’s where we had to go to school.
Q. Aviez-vous été à l'école avant?
A. Yes, I had. I had lived on the Reserve with my grandmother and my mother worked in Simcoe, which is where I’m still living now, only because there was no work on the Reserve. After my grandmother died my mother didn’t live down there because all the work was in Simcoe. So when I came out of the Mohawk Institute I went to live with her. I never did go back to the Reserve because at that time my uncle lived in our house and unfortunately he sold it, so we didn’t have a home to go back to.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous de la vie avant les pensionnats indiens? Avez-vous vécu un style de vie traditionnel?
A. Yes, I did. I lived with my grandmother and we were very traditional. Actually, my mother and my grandmother had the house built. They got the place on what would now be Seneca Road. They didn’t have names for the road at that time. For the first year of my life that we lived there we didn’t have a house. We lived in a tent for the whole winter. Then when they started building the house, we lived in a log house. They built a log house the next spring, as soon as everything melted, the snow and everything and they put up a house. I remember a little wee bit of being in this tent because I was quite young and I was crying and I think there was sort of a high chair that I was in. That’s as far as I can remember back at that point.
Q. Parliez-vous votre langue?
A. Yes. I couldn’t speak English. I didn’t learn how to speak English until after I was 4 years old, before I learned a little bit. Then I went to school. There were 3 schools. We came out and one was this way and one was that way, and they were each a Concession past, and we were back closer to the start of this other Concession. So I was told that I could have my choice, whichever school I wanted to go to. So we would go out and I started off at the one at sixty-nine corners. Then because I was given a choice, I thought I would try the other one. Then I went to the other one until we had a house down there and this boy lived there, and I loved going to No. 3 School which was on the left side, but this boy would always come out and try to beat me up, so I got scared of him and I couldn’t do anything because he was quite strong. So I went back to the other school.
Q. C'étaient des externats?
R. Oui, c'étaient des externats.
Q. Alors, qu'est-il arrivé que votre grand-mère ait décidé de vous envoyer au Mohawk Boarding School?
R. Ma grand-mère est décédée. Elle est décédée juste avant mes 9 ans. Alors j'ai dû partir et aller vivre avec ma mère à Simcoe. Je suis allé à l'école là-bas à la South School pendant un an, mais ce fut vraiment un choc pour moi d'être hors de la réserve.
Q. Votre mère est-elle également allée au pensionnat?
A. No, no she didn’t.
Q. Pouvez-vous nous parler d'une journée typique au pensionnat, à quelle heure vous vous réveilleriez, ce que vous mangeriez, la scolarité que vous recevriez, en quelque sorte, nous passions une journée.
A. À l'Institut Mohawk?
Q. Oui.
A. Ouais. Eh bien, nous devions toujours faire la queue.
We went to bed. We had a dormitory that was 2 storeys. The top dormitory was not used the first year I was there. There probably weren’t enough girls there. We all got up by a bell, or whatever, or maybe the monitors I think maybe got us up. We got up. We always had to make our beds and everything. Then we came down.
Then we would have to get washed. So we dressed as we got up with our clothes there. We lined up for breakfast and went out to the kitchen. From there we were assigned jobs that we had to do. I don’t remember whether I went to school the first 3 hours or whether I went to school after. I don’t know. But we had jobs to do.
One of my jobs when I was there we had to go in the boys’ dormitory and scrub the floors and change the sheets. A lot of the boys had wet the bed and it was very smelly over there. It wasn’t like our side! And we had to do all the cleaning and scrub the floors.
I don’t remember but it seemed to me every day we had to scrub the floor. I don’t understand that, now that I’m thinking about it, why did we have to scrub the floor every day, but that’s what we had to do. And then when we finished that it would be noon hour and we would go for our dinner.
I don’t remember very much, but the only time I remember us getting any meat was on Sunday. We got 2 slices of bologna. That was the meat that we had, and it was cold. We used to take it into a pipe —
Nous le cacherions à l'intérieur ici (en indiquant) parce que nous avions une robe avec une blouse par-dessus et une ceinture. Donc, nous cacherions la Bologne ici parce qu'il y avait une pipe dans l'autre partie sur laquelle nous pouvions poser cette Bologne et la chauffer. C'était bon. J'aime toujours ça.
What we got for breakfast? We had oatmeal. They called it mush. I can understand that but I don’t know how they made it in the morning or made it the night before, but when you put your spoon in there it had strings coming down. I don’t like that to this day. When I cook my oatmeal it has to be with boiling water and it has to not be mushy like that. I still like oatmeal, but I can’t eat it if it has gone funny like that, you know.
Ensuite, nous avons eu 2 tranches de pain et il y avait du miel mis dessus la nuit précédente et il restait là. C'était notre petit déjeuner avec du lait, du lait dilué.
Une fois, nous avons eu du lait et c'était dans ces grands pichets posés sur la table. J'avais versé le lait dans ma bouillie et je pense que nous avions aussi un verre dans lequel nous pourrions le verser, ou des tasses ou quelque chose comme ça. Je pense que c'étaient peut-être ces tasses blanches, ces tasses en granit, ou quelque chose du genre dans lequel tu l'as versé. Ça avait l'air terriblement bleu, plus bleu que d'habitude avec l'eau mise dans le lait, ça vire en quelque sorte de couleur bleuâtre.
Q. Était-ce du lait écrémé en poudre?
A. No. They didn’t have such things at that time. So anyway I went to drink it and it kind of smelled funny. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but there was another pitcher sitting there too. But what this pitcher was was something that they were scrubbing around the edges and they had poison in it, maybe for the bugs or something, and we just about ate that with our cereal and everything. That I remember very clearly about that. But that’s all we had for breakfast, and that’s all we ever had.
Q. Tous les jours?
R. Tous les jours.
Q. Et pour le déjeuner?
R. Pour le déjeuner, ils faisaient cuire les pommes de terre et ensuite ils les jetaient sur cette table qui avait du métal dessus, ils videraient ces gros seaux de pommes de terre là-bas et nous devions les éplucher . Donc, au moment où nous l'avons eu et quand nous sommes allés manger, toute notre nourriture était froide. Les pommes de terre étaient froides.
Ils avaient de petites pommes de terre comme celle-ci (indiquant). Pour le souper, je suppose que c'était encore la même chose.
Q. Et jamais assez?
R. Non, jamais assez.
Q. Vous aviez toujours faim.
A. Yeah. I was a chubby little kid, but I wasn’t chubby when I was in there. In fact, I wouldn’t mind being that way now. But no, we never had enough.
Q. Et votre éducation. N'es-tu donc allé à l'école qu'une demi-journée?
A. We went to school 3 hours a day; either it would be in the morning or in the afternoon. They would change around every so often. They would change around. I don’t know whether they changed around once a month with what our chores was.
I used to like to sew, even when I was really little. I asked to be in the Sewing Room. That was the place I liked the best. I didn’t get that privilege until the second year I was in there. Then I had the privilege of working in the Sewing Room most of the time.
Q. Que coudriez-vous? Ont-ils vendu quelque chose sur lequel vous travailliez?
A. No. What we had to do was mend the clothing that we had and mend the boys’ clothing and do things like that. A lot of it was mostly mending. I don’t remember making, unless it was the older ones that were making the uniforms that we wore. We would have that.
Q. Le Mohawk Institute était-il une école catholique ou anglicane?
A. Anglicane.
Q. I couldn’t remember that.
Alors, comment décririez-vous votre expérience au pensionnat? Y a-t-il des choses dont vous pouvez parler aujourd'hui et qui vous sont arrivées là-bas?
R. Oui, je peux parler de tous.
I was never really a person that rebelled against anything, so I was quite surprised and quite devastated when this Sewing Room teacher I got to really know her and she was from Simcoe, so I kind of felt like we had something in common because that’s where I was from. She seemed to be very nice. But I don’t think she had any children. My mother didn’t come to see me and I was very lonesome because I didn’t have any brothers and sisters in there. So I guess we all kind of get lonesome, so one day I don’t know whether I wasn’t feeling well and I started crying when I was in the Sewing Room and she asked me what was wrong. I didn’t know how to tell her what was wrong. I didn’t know. I had no idea that maybe I was crying because I was lonesome, I didn’t know. I just started to cry. Finally she got very upset with me and she tried to pull me out of there. She grabbed a hold of me and the harder she tried to pull me and tried to make me tell her what was the matter I couldn’t tell her. I didn’t know myself what was the matter.
Q. Vous n'étiez qu'un enfant.
A. Yeah. Then she got very upset and she got her strap out and started to strap me with it, and then I cried louder. Then it just upset her more and she started hitting me with the strap and shoved me in the closet and pulled my hair. So she made me stay in the closet for the rest of the day until the session was over with. I don’t know.
I don’t know what happened to her and I just didn’t have that feeling for her any more. I thought all she needed to do was put her arms around me and say, “Don’t feel bad”, but they didn’t do those things.
Q. Aucun câlin jamais?
R. Jamais, jamais. En fait, ils savaient vous dire quoi faire mais il n'y a jamais eu de gentillesse. La seule personne qui était un peu gentille était mon professeur de l'autre côté, et son nom était Mme Fry (sp?), Mais elle était tout de même assez stricte aussi. Mais c'était une personne un peu plus douce, tu sais. Je l'ai aimée. Elle était gentille.
Même si quand j'étais à l'école là-bas, quand je suis sorti, je n'étais qu'en 4e année.
Q. Quel âge aviez-vous lorsque vous êtes sorti?
R. J'avais quatorze ans.
Q. You didn’t get a good education there then?
R. Non, je n'ai pas reçu une bonne éducation, non.
I used to love to draw and I still draw and paint and everything. This Mrs. Fry had accused me of tracing what I had drew and I felt so bad, but there was no way I could convince her that I had drew it, you know. So they take their own, I guess. They don’t look at the people. Some of us had gifts that could have been developed.
Q. Ils ne l'ont jamais reconnu?
R. Non, nous n'avons jamais rien eu. Nous sommes allés à l'école et nous avons appris tout ce qu'il y avait à apprendre.
A typical day when we went to school we started off we were all given some kind of oil —
Q. Huile de foie de morue?
A. Cod liver oil, yeah. But we all had it off the same spoon. But we didn’t know any difference. Now when I think about it —
And we had a nurse when we were sick, but she didn’t pay attention. I know I was very sick at one time. I used to come, before we came back from the school room and before we had to go for lunch I would lay down in this one room that wasn’t used and I put my coat down and I had such a headache and a fever, and everything, but when I went to the nurse she wouldn’t pay no attention. She was more concerned that the girls didn’t whistle. She said it wasn’t ladylike to whistle.
Mais nous avons tous essayé de siffler.
Q. It’s part of growing up.
A. Ouais.
Q. So there wasn’t good medical care either?
A. No, there was no medical care. We never had tooth brushes. We never had anything to brush our teeth with. We had a bath maybe —
I guess we had a bath once a week, or something. We didn’t have anything like that. When my sister came the second year that I was there, we had monitors that were supposed to look after them because she was only 6 years old. They were supposed to help them bathe and stuff like that. Well, what she had was underneath her arms her skin had started to grow together and I couldn’t figure out what it was because I started looking after her after that and managed to keep scrubbing and scrubbing, but I don’t know what it is, like when your skin grows together like that because you haven’t been bathed or something.
Q. Wow. Alors tu t'occupais d'elle?
A. I looked after her after that because there wasn’t anybody looking after her.
Q. I’ve heard a lot about children looking after children in schools, trying to survive.
A. Um-hmm. And that’s just how it was. We didn’t have anything, we didn’t have anything else like that.
Q. Y a-t-il d'autres expériences dont vous pouvez vous souvenir et partager avec nous?
A. Just when I was very very sick that time and I just laid on the floor. The first year that I was there they took us, Mr. Snell (sp?) was the principal for the first year, and it was his last year. They loaded 4 of us up in a station wagon and took us to Oshwegan to the hospital and we had our tonsils out. I don’t know whether we needed to or whether it was just certain people that had it done and who determined it, I don’t know, because there was never a doctor there. There was only this Mrs. Smith that was the nurse.
Q. Aviez-vous mal à la gorge ou quoi que ce soit?
A. I don’t know. I don’t know, maybe I did. But anyway, after it was over with they loaded us all back up in there and we just laid in there. I don’t remember the rest after that, whether we were so sick, I don’t know. I know they put us up in that second dormitory where there wasn’t anybody there and it was kind of scary because we were just there by ourselves and we weren’t among the rest of them, so I don’t know how long we were there.
Q. Donc, aucun médecin n'est jamais venu là-bas pour dire que vous aviez besoin de vos amygdales?
R. Non. Il n'y a jamais eu de médecin là-bas, à moins que lorsqu'ils nous ont emmenés, peut-être que le médecin a déterminé si nous l'avions. Mais il n'est jamais venu à l'école.
Q. Il a fini par emmener les 4 enfants; droite?
A. Ouais. Nous n'avons jamais rien eu de tel.
And we never had our playground —
On that side, it had a fence around it, except coming up this way (indicating) and it had steps going up because we would have to come that way —
We went to the Junior part which was on the boys’ side to go to school. But we had a fence going all the way around. We had one swing that was on the tree next to the fence, and right over the fence was still the Mohawk Institute property and Mr. Burkett (sp?) grew apples. He was the farm person who looked after everything. They grew apples there but we never once got an apple. You don’t dare go across there. If you went across and got an apple out of there you got beaten quite bad.
Q. Cela vous est-il déjà arrivé?
A. No, because I didn’t go.
Q. Mais vous vous souvenez que d'autres étudiants vont chercher une pomme?
A. Yes. And they were beautiful apples and we never got one, not even at Christmas time. I think someone said oranges and maybe some candy, someone had sent it in for us, and that’s all we had. I never went home at Christmas time either. I stayed there the whole year.
Q. Alors, qu'ont-ils fait pour Noël?
R. Ils ont mis une petite pièce de théâtre dans la salle à manger dans un coin. Ils avaient en quelque sorte une petite plate-forme qui a été un peu construite. Nous mettons une pièce de théâtre sur Jésus et Marie et des trucs comme ça.
Q. Avez-vous reçu des cadeaux à Noël?
R. Non.
Q. Est-ce que cela vous a rendu triste?
A. I don’t think I knew too much about what presents were, except with my grandmother we never had much money and we used to go to the hall and we’d sing and they would have little presents that they would give out. We were always very poor so we never really had too much anyway. So I didn’t really know much difference about things like that.
Q. Qu'en est-il de parler votre langue à l'école? Avez-vous été autorisé à faire cela?
R. Non, nous n'avons pas été autorisés à le faire.
Q. Avez-vous déjà essayé?
A. I didn’t even know any of the girls who knew how to speak the language, so I didn’t do it.
Q. Pouvez-vous encore parler votre langue aujourd'hui?
A. Yes, I went back and retrieved it. So I speak and I write to some point now. That was my daughter’s doing because my daughter wanted me to teach her Mohawk. So I started and I found out I couldn’t. I could understand it, I never lost that part. But to do it, to say it and everything, but I can now. I brought it all back again.
Q. Êtes-vous rentré chez vous l'été?
R. Oui, oui.
Q. Et comment était-ce de rentrer à la maison et de voir votre mère après ne pas l'avoir vue pendant si longtemps?
A. It was kind of awkward, but that’s the way it was. My mother worked and my step dad worked and I had to look after my sister. Then I would clean the house and do the cleaning. Of course I did that at the school so I always did that anyway. I remember I had to clean the linoleum and I scrubbed it so hard with everything trying to get it clean that I washed the pattern off of it.
J'aurais de l'argent pour aller au spectacle, donc ma sœur et moi allions au spectacle.
Q. A-t-il été difficile de retourner à l'école à l'automne après votre retour à la maison?
A. Not really, no. I don’t know. I just never —
It was just something we had to do so I guess I didn’t think too much about it.
But some of the kids when I went to live there, because we were living in Simcoe, some of the kids were very mean with us. They knew we were Native and they were very —
They used to gang up on us and I would have to lock the door and I would be afraid to go downstairs because we lived in the upstairs part and I would be afraid to go out. So really maybe it was kind of a relief to go back, I don’t know.
Q. Lorsque vous étiez là-bas et que vous vous sentiez seul, avez-vous déjà essayé de vous enfuir?
A. No, but a lot of them did. There were a lot of them that ran away. No, I never thought about running away because some of them got brought back and they got beaten so bad. Some of them I never saw them again, so I don’t know where they went.
Q. Avez-vous jamais vu quelqu'un battre à l'école?
A. Ouais.
Q. Pouvez-vous en parler un peu?
A. Yeah. Maybe not as much as —
Mais je sais que dans le couloir là-bas, il y avait un couloir et les escaliers montaient et les escaliers descendaient, puis ils sont allés dans la salle Senior, puis dans l'autre pièce où vivait le professeur de la salle de couture, et dans le couloir principal était l'endroit où vivaient les autres professeurs. Et puis l'étage au-dessus était l'endroit où vivaient le directeur et sa famille. Une grande partie de cela est l'endroit où nous devions nettoyer et tout. Ces planchers dans cette partie étaient magnifiques.
But I never saw the boys being beaten, just the girls, you know. It was either in that room. But if they were just beaten, they would start off with a strapping and if they pulled their hand away they got it worse than that. But to really be beaten up, I don’t know. They took them to a different room for that sort of thing.
We had one girl there who was an epileptic, which I never knew what epilepsy was or anything, and she had an attack at the table. It frightened all of us but nobody told us what this was all about, so we were kind of afraid of her after that. I don’t know whether someone did something to her or what happened, anyway, but I know she got a beating over it. But we didn’t know any different. I didn’t know. I had no idea what this was, so we —
Now I think it was so bad because everybody shunned her and everything, you know. I had asked what happened and they didn’t even have a word for it, so I don’t know. They just said there was something funny about her.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous l'avoir vue après avoir été battue? Avez-vous vu des bleus?
A. No. But I had bruises on me. But we couldn’t see. Well, we had mirrors up, but we never had mirrors where we could see ourselves or anything like that. And we were always pretty well covered up.
When anything happened like that they didn’t talk about it. Nobody talked about it. It was just something you kind of turned away and hoped that something like that didn’t happen to you. No one talked about it.
Q. Quel est votre pire souvenir?
We’re almost out of tape but we can put another one in if you want to take a minute.
— A Short Pause
— End of Part 1
Q. We’ll just start again. Can you tell me about your number?
A. My number was ten, and we got a change of clothes once a week. I have no idea —
Je pense que nous portions les mêmes sous-vêtements, tout était juste une fois.
Q. Qu'en est-il des problèmes avec les insectes ou les souris ou quelque chose comme ça dans les dortoirs?
R. Non, pas que je sache de toute façon.
Q. Eh bien, vous les nettoyiez tous les jours!
A. No. What I remember so vividly was that we were not allowed to have anything to drink after a certain time. A lot of us really were thirsty. We used to have to try to get water out of the toilet, otherwise especially in the summer time when it was so hot and everything. I know it’s gross now when you think about it, but that’s what we did. We didn’t have a choice.
Q. Vous a-t-on jamais permis de parler aux garçons?
A. Those who had brothers that were there, they were allowed to talk to them. Other than that we didn’t, unless we went over to play baseball or something like that. I think some of the Senior girls maybe snuck their time out in the back talking to the boys. You could see them when they were coming from the field taking the cows and everything, if you went up close. But I never had any real reason to.
If you see the boys —
We all went to school together, but we came in a different way and they went out a different way. And the same way at lunch time or eating time, they had a certain door they went out of and we went out into another part. So we didn’t really get to know any of the boys. We knew who they were, yeah. Some of them we admired or if somebody had something different, or something that way, but never really to be able to talk to them or to be in a group with them outside of school hours.
Q. So what’s your worst memory of Residential School?
R. Je suppose que peut-être juste au moment où j'ai été battu comme ça. Et quand j'étais si malade que je devais m'allonger par terre et que nous devions encore faire notre travail. Nous devions encore aller à l'école.
I had a boil on my knee at one time and it was really really bad, but we still had to continue whatever you were doing. We walked to church, which I don’t know how far that was, but it was over a mile anyway, I think, and we always had to kneel in church, and it was very very hard to kneel when my knee as so bad.
Je pense que nous avons toujours eu froid.
We had the one swing and we had a teeter-totter. I think they’ve got a different name for them now. That’s all we had. That was what our plaything was.
And then this group, Girl Guide group came from Brantford and they came and we got uniforms. I was in Brownies at first and then I was in Guides the next year. It was the nicest time we ever had because they took us on walks and they would come once a week and it was really nice. We would go down Burkitt’s Lane and there were stones around there and we would have a campfire and we’d sing songs. That’s the first time we ever had anything like that.
Je pense qu'une fois par an, nous allions au spectacle. Nous avons tous dû marcher à partir de là et entrer dans le spectacle. C'était une fois par an que nous faisions cela.
And then when it was VJ Day, or VE Day that came, we all marched to the Armories and I guess we were celebrating that the war was over with. But then the next one was VJ Day, which must have been the Japanese, or something, but we didn’t really —
We were so young. I don’t know. I just know they said that the war was over with and we would get to go down and march through town and stuff like that. But other than that, we never had anything.
We had a radio in the Senior room, and that’s all we had. The older girls kind of monitored that and we would listen to these stories like the Squeaking Door and stuff like that. And then they would tell stories on the radio. So that was our entertainment. We had no entertainment.
Q. Qu'en est-il du temps de jeu? Vous ont-ils donné du temps de jeu?
R. Le temps de jeu, oui, nous avons eu la récréation et nous avons eu cela. Nous avons eu du temps de jeu.
I would like to tell you about our living conditions. We were in the basement. We had no chairs, no chairs to sit on. There was a bench across the one side which held some of your clothes and we had lockers. It was a basement. The door was on this side (indicating), going to the east side and it was like a big barn door. It had great big cracks in it. The snow would come in. And if the window got broken the water and the snow came in there, so whatever heat there was —
Parfois, la mouille entrait tout sur le sol, vous savez, quand elle passait la porte.
Q. C'est là que vous avez dormi?
R. Non, c'est la salle de jeux. C'est là que nous avons vécu. Et nous n'avions pas le droit d'aller dans notre dortoir sauf la nuit lorsque nous nous couchions. C'est là que nous avons joué sur un sol en ciment et tout. Nous n'avons eu aucun autre divertissement, à moins que vous ne montiez dans la salle senior et que vous puissiez y aller et écouter la radio un peu. Mais tout le monde n'était pas autorisé là-bas. Les filles âgées l'étaient probablement.
Il y avait un piano là-bas et une des filles savait jouer du piano, donc de temps en temps elle jouait du piano pour nous divertir. Nous n'avions rien d'autre. C'était ça. C'était juste ça. Aller à l'école, faire vos tâches ménagères et faire le ménage et tout.
Q. Et la solitude?
A. Ouais. J'ai travaillé dans la buanderie et j'ai travaillé dans la cuisine après avoir obtenu mon diplôme de récurer les sols et faire cela, mais nous devions quand même tourner et prendre notre temps avec tout. La plupart attendaient le personnel et le directeur, sa femme et leur famille.
The next year when Mr. Zimmerman was there, they had 2 children, or 1 or 2, I don’t know. I know they had 1, but I think they had a second one, too. So they had to babysit and cater to them and change them and stuff like that. But I wasn’t quite old enough to do all that stuff.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous si l'état-major a mieux mangé que vous?
A. I’m sure they did because they had a great big Dining Room table and they had all kinds of good china and stuff like that. But I didn’t work in that part. They had the Senior girls doing their cooking and stuff like that. They didn’t take the food from the kitchen that we had.
Q. Ont-ils jamais parlé de ce que le personnel mangeait?
R. Non, je n'ai jamais entendu.
Q. Vous n'en avez jamais entendu parler?
R. Et je n'ai jamais demandé.
Q. Pensez-vous que vos expériences au pensionnat ont affecté toute votre vie?
A. I don’t know. I think it has later because I lost what I had. My grandmother was very traditional and my learning that I got from my grandmother was really different. My grandmother was very loving and we always did things together.
Q. Did your experience at Residential School —
Avez-vous déjà senti que ce que votre grand-mère vous avait enseigné auparavant, ce que vous saviez, ces traditions, lorsque vous étiez là-bas, avez-vous jamais senti que c'était faux. Avez-vous commencé à avoir des sentiments contradictoires?
A. I think they had that but I think I just kept everything inside and I never —
I just thought this was a new experience and I don’t have no choice for it. I felt that way.
Q. Pourriez-vous garder l'esprit vivant en vous?
R. Oui, je l'ai fait. Cet esprit était toujours en moi parce que ce que j'avais avec ma grand-mère était juste la chose la plus merveilleuse.
We used to work and pick strawberries because it was nothing to work. We used to work at all these different places. There were always groups around because we lived in shanties off of these places like apple orchards, or pick strawberries at different places around in Simcoe. They had shanties for us, but we were always working and I was little with my grandmother. They always had in the evenings songs and different things so we always had this. We had this thing. And then sometimes my grandmother and I would sleep outside and she would tell me about the stars and all the different things. So I always had this part. So really when I was in the school it was such a contrast, but to me that was still here. And when I came out I always had —
I didn’t dwell on the experiences that we had. My mother never came to see us and I guess she was under the impression that was the school for us and that’s what it was there for. And because she had to work all the time, so she just figured that was the place for me.
But my experiences at home were not that great, either, because I never got along very good with my mother. So it was just as well that I was there, I guess. I don’t know. You do what you have to do. I was always this way that, except with my grandmother, with my mother I was always brought up or just like the teachers say, you pay attention and listen but you don’t talk back.
That was one of the hardest things for me to be able to open up and speak up about anything. Usually I just held it in. I still have that tendency today. I have to think about it before I can speak up and wondering whether I’m speaking out of turn, you know, or whether I’m speaking right or not. I think that part has really affected me.
It has affected me that way because in there you weren’t yourself. You couldn’t be yourself. The experience of just crying and then being beaten, and not being able to express yourself. I think that really stifles you.
Q. Vous avez dit plus tôt que vous aviez fait un beau dessin et votre professeur vous a accusé de tracer. Êtes-vous toujours un artiste aujourd'hui?
A. Yes, to some extent. But I haven’t picked it up for a long time.
Actually, I’m a designer and a sewing teacher as well. Now that I’ve retired —
With my education I have really had to go back and get it. When I came out of school and being only in Grade 4, I had to fudge my way. I told them I was in Grade 5 because I was so much older than the rest of them, so when I came out to go to school —
I got one year of high school. It was hard to go back. Now in this day and age people can go back to school. You couldn’t at that time, or it wasn’t heard of or anything. I felt so out of place that I ended up quitting and just working in a restaurant and everything.
Mais à mesure que le temps passait, je jonglais encore avec la couture et tout, en faisant d'autres choses et en prenant la lessive pour d'autres personnes qui venaient des camps pendant l'été. Puis j'étais assez jeune quand j'ai eu mon premier enfant. En fait, je n'avais que seize ans. C'était donc une sorte de lutte après ça. J'ai travaillé dans une usine.
Q. Combien d'enfants avez-vous?
R. J'en ai 9.
Q. Wow. Pouvez-vous leur parler de vos expériences au pensionnat?
A. No. I never talk to them about it, and they never ask me. So I’ve kind of kept it. It’s just been recent that I’ve talked about it. In fact they never knew anything. I just kind of kept it to myself. People used to ask me when I went to school, “where was I?” I said that I was in boarding school because it was so —
I don’t know. It was kind of degrading to tell them where I was. At least it was to me. I didn’t want to say where I was.
Q. Et la guérison maintenant? Comment votre parcours de guérison fonctionne-t-il pour vous?
A. I think just thinking about everything that happened and I’ve been to a lot of Jan’s classes and Geronimo’s classes and stuff like that, but I’ve never really had a support person to talk to. So I’ve always figured I was strong enough to try to overcome all those different things.
But there are still times that people really —
You know, as I get older I guess because you struggle by yourself all the time and I struggled with my children. My first marriage was a disaster. It was a very abusive relationship. But then it wasn’t any different than what I seen all the time with the drinking and everything, you know, so I guess I just didn’t know how bad it was until I couldn’t take it any more and I just thought there’s got to be something better in life than this.
So I raised my children on my own. I never got any help. I remarried the second time and my husband now is a very good supporter and he adopted the children into his name and he has claimed the children. But he’s not Native. But I don’t have an abusive relationship. He thinks the world of me and he supports me with everything I do.
I’ve really had to come a long way and you sort of do it. Because I think I’m a very proud person, I don’t run to anybody and cry on their shoulders or anything. I never accepted Welfare and I worked 3 jobs, struggling with my children to make a hundred dollars a week to be able to support them.
Donc, quand j'ai rencontré mon mari et qu'il a établi mon impôt pour l'année, j'avais accumulé quinze mois de temps pour entrer parce que j'avais travaillé 3 emplois différents en essayant de tout faire.
I refused to take any Welfare and I know there were people on Mothers’ Allowance, but I didn’t know what they were because my grandmother always said “we’re not welfare people.” She didn’t bring us up that way. The children that I had, it’s not a nice thing to say, but if I had known there was contraceptives not to have so many children, but at my time they didn’t have that.
Mais ma grand-mère m'a toujours élevé et ma mère a fait aussi que nous ne donnions jamais nos enfants. Nous les élevons nous-mêmes et tout. Donc je ne donnerais jamais mes enfants.
I remember one time going and asking if I could have some help and this man told me, “Well, why don’t you just give your younger children up?” I was so shocked that he would say this, you know. Then he wanted to know why. And I told him about the abusive relationship we had. And he says, “Well, you outta be glad that someone married you”, looking at me as a Native person, like I should be glad that someone married me. So I just got up and I walked out of there. I never asked for help again.
Q. Est-ce que l'un de vos enfants a dû aller au pensionnat?
R. Non.
Q. Qu'avez-vous pensé de cela, de ne pas avoir à les envoyer?
R. Je ne les enverrais jamais de toute façon. Non.
Q. Do they ask you any questions now? I know you said you haven’t really had a chance to talk about it.
A. No. They don’t ask me questions and I don’t like to force myself onto them about things because they don’t seem to be interested. I don’t know. How do you go about telling them this is what happened? I don’t know. I can’t do that. I don’t know whether I’m right or wrong. I don’t know. I can’t bring them up. All I can tell them is the nice things I had with my grandmother and how my grandmother brought me up, up to the point of the things I learned.
But I think because we live on the outside that they’re not interested, not all of them.
But I can tell you that I have grand children that are very interested. But they still don’t ask everything, and my youngest daughter who is very much Native. But the rest of them seem to have their own life and leading their own life and they don’t, even with all the things that are going on today, they kind of stay away from it and they don’t want to get involved.
So how can I push things on them? I talk to my grandchildren. I talk to them about different things and about all the things that are happening. And they know I’m not pleased with the way the world is treating us at this point, you know.
I tried to show them all the history of our People right from the beginning and everything. But you can only teach them what they want to know or if they are interested to keep their attention to that. I don’t know how to do any more than what I’m doing.
Q. You’re doing great; everything you should.
A. But I’ve always told them to be proud of who they are because that is something I’m always very proud of who I am.
Q. That’s great.
A. That’s something nobody can take away from me.
Q. I’m glad your grandmother gave you that in those years before. You have been able to hold onto it and never let it go.
A. She did. I think that was one of the reasons why I could cope with what happened, and I could cope later in life when I came out. And it wasn’t very nice.
And the men that you met, they think a Native girl is only for one thing and I had to really fight for who I am and fight that. What I am, I’ll give when I want to, not because you want it, you know.
I’ve tried to teach my children that, too. I says, “if you haven’t learned anything else that your body and you are you.” You don’t give it to anybody unless this is what you want to do. So I said just because people might drag you down and think that they can take advantage of us, that’s not what it’s all about.
Q. Merci beaucoup d'être venu aujourd'hui et de partager avec nous.
Nous apprécions vraiment cela.
A. Well, I wish they had more because as I say, I became a woman, I guess is what you say when I was there, and I had no teachings. They didn’t have anything. It was devastating.
Q. Saviez-vous ce qui se passait?
R. Non.
Q. Donc, vous aviez simplement peur?
A. I was just afraid and I didn’t know how to use any of these things that they had. When the teacher came down she just said, “Okay.” She opened up this door and she said that these are rags that you use. I had to go to one of the Senior girls to ask them what it was. How do I do this or how do I do that, or anything, you know.
Q. They didn’t prepare you in any way?
A. No. There was none of that. Nothing like that was ever done. They never told us how. It should have been the nurse’s place to do that. And it wasn’t even a nurse that came and gave me this. It was the teacher that was on our side, this Mrs. Fry that was there. She was the one that came out and did that.
Our clothes were terrible. My feet now bother me and we had shoes that never fit, or anything like that. We had no toothbrushes. They would go through our hair but I don’t remember anybody having lice or anything. They would go through our hair when we first came in because we never had it afterwards.
Nous avons même eu des empreintes digitales à un moment donné.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous pourquoi?
A. I don’t know why. But these officials came in and we had to be finger printed. They asked us all kinds of questions and everything. They wanted to know —
It was funny. They wanted to know who I am. But because I had curly hair I remembered when I was younger they would always say to mother, which is not very good to say, they said, “Oh, was there a nigger in the woodpile?” So they would say that. And you know what it’s like when kids are asking and they’re asking you and they say who you are, I says, “Well, I think I’m part nigger!” That’s terrible, you know. When I told my mother that she says, “Oh gee, what did you say that for?” I says, “Well, I thought that’s what we were because I had curly hair.” Then she explained to me that people just made that comment. I didn’t know.
It’s just like my daughter. She used to always think she was Canadian Tire because of that. People get that. They are talking about Canadian Tire so she said she was Canadian Tire. So you can tell how these things happened.
Q. Thank you very much for coming today. It was an honour to meet you, and for speaking out. But I know it’s hard for you. But it’s good for you to come.
Qu'avez-vous ressenti?
A. Well, it’s nice to be able to say what has happened because otherwise nobody knows. No one knows. And I never really —
People sort of lose interest. And the outside people in our surroundings and where I live, they don’t really want to know. There might be the odd one.
I just talked to the incoming mayors now and asked them what do they know about Native people and how do they feel about it since they’re going to be right close to us on Six Nations and everything. They don’t know anything. They don’t know anything about our history.
I’m trying to talk to them. And when I said something about our language, they said, “Well, everybody doesn’t speak the language any more.” But I said, “It wasn’t taken away from you.” You had the choice.
They don’t understand us.
Q. And that’s what these interviews are important for because they are for everybody to learn. There’s lots of people who don’t even know about Residential Schools.
A. No, they don’t.
Q. They don’t know what it is. I mention it to people and they say, “What’s that?”
A. Ouais.
Q. So it’s so important for people like you to come out and share your experiences so that people can know what happened and that people will understand and this won’t happen again. It’s to protect the young ones; right?
A. Yeah. I think there were an awful lot of things that went on in there. I know some girls —
I know one girl in there, her father was Mr. Snell (sp?), and she was a friend of my mothers, her mother was a friend. So I knew these things happened. I knew when I went in there that that was her father. I knew it. I knew some of the girls that got pregnant while I was there and left the school. So I can’t prove it but I know for a fact that this one girl, that he’s her father. That is proof there. They knew that.
There were a lot of things. I guess I’m just thankful that didn’t happen to me. There must have been other people to choose from, that it didn’t happen. I didn’t have that part of it.
I have a daughter who is deaf. She had to go to the school in Belleville, and then when they built the school in Milton, she went to school there. Do you know they got compensated for being in school and probably I doubt if they ever went through anything like we went through because I’ve talked to my daughter, and just because they were being cross with them at times, they had that. But they were never sexually assaulted, at least not the girls. I’ve asked my daughter and she said, “No, they hadn’t.” But they were compensated. I think they got $40,000 from the Belleville School, and those who went to the Milton School they got another $40,000. They were compensated just because they didn’t treat them quite as well as they should have, but nothing compared to what we were treated like.
Q. Yeah, and how many thousands. It’s unbelievable.
So I think we’re really done. So thank you again.
One thing I want to share with you. My mom had the same experience that you first mentioned. She’s an artist and she drew a beautiful picture when she was about 6 years old and her teacher just yelled at her and said, “You traced it.” It was the same thing.
R. Est-ce exact? Oh mon.
Q. But she is to this day a beautiful artist, a sculptor, and still working as a sculptor and doing really well. So hopefully you’ll start to draw again and paint, because it’s in here. Right?
A. Ouais. Je sais que je devrais.
Q. Comme vous l'avez dit, ne pas trouver vos cadeaux à l'école. Ils n'ont jamais célébré les cadeaux dans les pensionnats indiens.
A. No, never. They didn’t find any of those things. Even I tell you the one girl who could play the piano. She could have taught if they would have been just a little more —
She could have taught somebody else to be able to do those things. And to just even have a choir. We didn’t have that. We didn’t have anything. I don’t know whether they had those things afterwards. I never went back until they had a reunion, which was about fifteen years ago when I went back. Then they had another one, but this one was about 3 years ago, they had —
I don’t know whether you would call that one a reunion, just kind of a visitation because they didn’t show us all the rooms at that time.
Q. Et Mohawk est toujours debout. Est-ce difficile de passer par là? Si jamais vous conduisez, est-ce difficile?
R. Non, pas vraiment. Non.
Q. Je sais que pour certaines personnes, il est difficile de passer en voiture et même de regarder dans cette direction.
A. No. I’ve never been that kind of a person, I don’t think, anyway. I’ve sort of accepted what life gives you and you try to make the best of it and you move through it.
Q. Okay. Thanks. We’re done. You did great.
— End of Interview