L'INTERVIEWEUR: Pouvez-vous nous dire et épeler votre nom?
AGGIE GEORGE: Aggie George; Aggie George.
Q. Et d'où venez-vous?
A. I’m from Notley, from the Notley Reserve.
Q. Comment épelez-vous cela?
A. Nautley; Nautley.
— Transcriber’s Note : I’m not sure of the spelling.
Q. Dans quelle école êtes-vous allé?
A. L'école Lejac.
Q. Où était Lejac?
A. Entre Fort Fraser et le lac Fraser.
Q. Quelles années y êtes-vous?
A. Well, I went there when I was 5 years old. That’s 1943 to 1954.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous de votre premier jour d'école et pouvez-vous en parler?
A. I was pretty little. I don’t know. I can’t remember.
Q. D'accord. Tu te souviens même d'autres années? Est-ce que tes parents t'emmèneraient à l'école ou est-ce que les gens viendraient te chercher pour t'y emmener?
A. Oh oui.
Q. Des gens sont venus vous chercher?
A. I don’t know. The first few years I was too little to remember anything. The first year I remember, or a couple of years that I went there, the first time all we did was play outside. We never do anything because we were too little, 5 or 6 years old.
Q. So they weren’t teaching you when you were really little?
R. Non. Tout ce que nous faisions, c'était jouer à l'extérieur ou dans la salle de jeux.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous d'une journée typique, comme à quelle heure vous vous êtes réveillé, même plus tard, pas quand vous étiez vraiment petit, mais à quelle heure vous vous êtes réveillé, les corvées que vous deviez faire et des trucs comme ça?
A. I think they used to wake us up at 6 o’clock in the morning. We used to get washed up, dressed up and go to church. That’s the first thing we did every day.
Q. Et votre culture? Avez-vous pu parler votre propre langue?
A. We weren’t allowed to talk our language. We never get taught our culture. We don’t even know how to set nets or anything like that.
But I do a lot of beadwork. My mom taught me how when I was about 6 or 7 years old. That’s all I know how to do.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous de la vie avant d'aller au pensionnat, quand vous viviez à la maison?
R. Non.
Q. It’s a long time ago. So how would you describe your experience at Residential School?
A. I’ll tell you one thing, I don’t like to think about it. You get punished for even looking at them a different way. They used to make you stretch out your arms (indicating) and kneel on the concrete floor for hours. Sometimes you get blamed for nothing at all and you get punished for that and they never tried to really find out who did what or why.
I did that a lot of times. Maybe because I was fair, I figured, they picked on me quite a bit, I’ll tell you, because I looked like a little White girl, eh. I think that’s why they picked on me so much. Not only me, there were about 6 of us that really were fair.
Q. Était-ce une école catholique ou anglicane?
A. catholique; Catholique.
Q. Et vous deviez aller à l'église tous les jours?
R. Tous les matins, puis parfois la nuit.
Q. Qu'en avez-vous pensé?
A. Oh, I didn’t like it at the time. But now maybe I’m glad I did.
Q. Pourquoi?
A. I see a lot of people sleep til twelve, or 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I’m used to getting up at 6 o’clock, and now I get up at 4.
Je pense que j'ai appris pas mal de choses. Mais ils étaient méchants.
Q. La plupart de vos souvenirs sont donc de mauvais souvenirs de l'école?
A. Oh oui.
Q. Pouvez-vous parler un peu de la méchanceté?
A. If they ask you a question or something like that and you didn’t know the answer, they would hit you on the back with those yardsticks. They’re about that wide (indicating) and they didn’t use it this way (indicating), they used it that way (indicating), the end way. I got that a lot of times.
Une fois, je me suis enfui. Je me suis attaché sur les fesses nues avec une sangle à peu près aussi large (indiquant) et à peu près aussi épaisse (indiquant).
Q. That’s when you got caught?
A. Ouais.
Q. Pouvez-vous parler de la fuite, par exemple pourquoi vous vous êtes enfui et jusqu'où vous êtes?
A. We didn’t get very far, not even half-way to Fort Fraser, I don’t think. We just couldn’t take all that. We were feeling lonely and missing our parents. We were not supposed to be taken away at all.
But the reason why my mother and the whole Reserve let us go is that they kept threatening them they would take away our allowance, which was $6. They didn’t know how else to make money, eh. So we had to go.
Q. So your community didn’t want to send the children, they were forced to.
A. Not really. I guess they were just as lonesome for us as we were for them, too. But they were threatened. They would take that $6 a month away if we didn’t go.
Q. Comment était-ce de rentrer à la maison en été et de voir votre famille?
R. Oh, c'était joyeux.
Q. Que feriez-vous? Avez-vous pu pratiquer certaines traditions et une partie de votre culture en été?
A. I don’t know. I guess some of us did. But like me, my mom used to teach me how to do beadwork. That’s how I learned. She’s still after me to do beadwork. If I didn’t do it right —
Q. Votre mère est-elle toujours en vie?
A. Oh yeah. She’s eighty-seven years old and she still does beadwork and moose hide.
Q. Wow. Est-elle également allée au pensionnat?
A. No. She never. She’s never been to school. She doesn’t know how to write or read.
Q. Comment était la nourriture à l'école? comme le petit déjeuner et le déjeuner?
A. Have you ever ate rice and macaroni together, with a little bit of meat, like what you would give to a pig. I promised somebody that I would make one for them and they told me “no thank you”.
Q. Et les corvées? Aviez-vous beaucoup de corvées à faire, comme le nettoyage et tout? Avez-vous dû faire beaucoup de ménage à l'école, laver les planchers, nettoyer les salles de bain et ce genre de choses?
A. Oh oui.
Q. Pouvez-vous parler de cela, des tâches que vous faisiez?
R. Eh bien, nous avons dû nettoyer les bureaux, les classes, les salles de jeux et les salles de bain. Nous prenions chacun un tour à tout. Nous avons tourné les tâches, hein. Ce n'etait pas mal.
Q. It was more the punishments —
You were saying they hit you because you didn’t get a question right in the classroom, that sort of thing. Was that the worst part of it?
A. No, it wasn’t bad, for me, anyway. If we had to do it, we had to do it. That’s all there was to it.
Q. Y a-t-il d'autres choses que vous souhaitez partager aujourd'hui?
R. Pas vraiment. Pourquoi parlons-nous toujours de cela? Pourquoi parler, parler, parler? Nous voulons voir une action.
What I think is that the government are waiting for some more people to pass away then they’ll just have a little revenue to pay out, that’s what I figure.
Q. Do you feel the process right now, what they’re doing, isn’t working?
A. We’ve been talking about this for how many years now? And a lot of people I am so sorry they have missed out on this.
Q. How are things for you now? Like you said when you came in you don’t even like to think about Lejac. It still hurts today?
A. Oh yeah. They called us dumb Indians. You’re good for nothing. You’re lazy. But most of the time we didn’t know, eh. We didn’t know the answer.
There was something else I was going to say. I forgot now. I can’t remember. I can’t remember very good.
Q. Si cela vous concerne, dites-le simplement.
A. I haven’t talked about this ever since I left Lejac. I starting drinking about a year after I left Lejac, just a little at first, eh. But then it got heavier and heavier and heavier. But I quit about ten years ago.
Q. That’s good.
A. And I blocked all that Lejac just right off. And my sister said she noticed a lot of things about me that I don’t even know I’m doing, eh. Like she says if people get too close to me, I start getting mad and then I push them away. I tell her, “why is that?” And she tells me, “Because of this Residential School, that’s why.” She noticed that a lot about me. I never noticed!
Q. Avez-vous déjà parlé à votre mère ou à vos sœurs des pensionnats indiens?
A. No. I never talk at all, period. I just don’t like to talk about it or even think about it. Sometimes when I’m by myself, doing beadwork or something, I stop all of a sudden and tears just start coming down. Then I go have a nap. After I feel a little better, eh.
Q. Is this the first time you’ve talked about it openly like this?
R. Oui.
Q. Cela doit donc être difficile.
A. Um-hmm. Toutes ces choses dont je me souviens.
Q. So you find that it helps not to just think about it at all. For healing, to make you feel better, you find it’s best to just not think about it?
A. I don’t think so. I don’t think it will heal up. Maybe prayers might. But I’m still going to church and I still pray. I’ve been taught that way all my life.
Q. Est-ce que venir à quelque chose comme ça aide, entendre les gens parler et être avec d'autres personnes qui ont vécu la même expérience, ça aide?
A. Yeah. I would like to see the video. I got the video. I might remember something and maybe I’ll write about it if a whole bunch of us get together and write about it, maybe, you know.
Q. That’s a good idea. I know other people who have done that, where the community all got together and wrote their stories and they made a book.
A. And when we’re sick —
I remember I’m pretty sure I had pneumonia one time and I tried to tell the Sister. All they did was make me dress up and go to church and to school. My sides were just hurting. They won’t believe you. They figure we’re faking it, eh.
I remember this one boy, I don’t know what happened to him, but he got sick. Maybe they just give him an aspirin or something, and he died that night. They never tried to really find out what is the matter. They never did.
Q. Ont-ils eu des funérailles pour lui à l'école?
A. Um-hmm. Je me souviens que. J'étais juste une petite fille.
If we tell them we have a headache or an earache or something, “Oh, you’re just putting it on.” “You don’t want to go to this place and you don’t want to go to class”, or something like that. “You’re not sick.” That’s what they would tell us.
Parfois, pour punir, ils nous faisaient aller au lit sans manger, ou sans le film. Ils avaient un film une fois par semaine, je pense que c'était, oui, une fois par semaine.
Q. Y a-t-il une dernière chose que vous aimeriez dire?
A. No, that’s okay.
Q. Merci beaucoup d'être venus aujourd'hui. Je sais qu'il faut beaucoup de courage pour s'asseoir et en parler, alors merci beaucoup.
Ah oui. Merci.
Q. You’re welcome.
— End of Interview