THE INTERVIEWER: We’ll start with getting you to say your name and then spelling it so we can have it on video.
RITA WATCHESTON: Je m'appelle Rita Watcheston.
Q. Pouvez-vous épeler cela, s'il vous plaît?
A. Watcheston.
Q. D'où venez-vous, Rita?
A. I’m from Ochapaways (ph.) Reserve, north of Whitewood.
Q. That’s in Saskatchewan?
A. Ouais.
Q. Quel pensionnat avez-vous fréquenté?
R. Je suis allé au pensionnat de Lebret.
Q. Combien d'années y êtes-vous?
R. J'y étais de 1949 à 1959.
Q. Dix ans!
Quel âge aviez-vous la première fois que vous êtes entré?
A. I must have been about 6, I guess, maybe 5 going on 6. I don’t really remember. But I was very young.
Q. Vous rappelez-vous pourquoi vous avez dû aller au pensionnat?
A. Well, my father was looking after us. My mother passed away around that time. They said that she died in 1949, so it must have been right after that. I really don’t know. I never did want to ask my dad about it.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous de votre premier jour?
A. My first day? Well, I’ll tell you how it started.
We were very poor. We never had clothes or anything. Then that one morning my dad picked us up and we went shopping. We all got a new set of clothes. My brother, me, and my sister Shirley. She’s dead now. She passed away.
We got home and early the next morning he woke us up and we had to take a bath and we had to put on these new clothes. We didn’t know what was happening. All of a sudden a big black car pulled up and they told us to get in the back seat. We had no luggage; nothing. I remember we put my little sister in the middle and me and my brother sat on each side. There were 2 Oblate Fathers there with black cassocks, those black robes. I don’t know what they call them. We said goodbye. I don’t even remember if my dad kissed us goodbye or anything, and away we went.
We pulled up to this big building. It was big to me at that time. They took my brother away and I never saw my brother for a while after that. Me and my little sister went to the girls’ side. My sister was very young. I think she was only about 3 years old. So for years we stayed there. My little sister was the baby of the school. She never had to go to school because she was just a little baby girl. She was the Nun’s —
Elle était le bébé de l'école.
Of course they bathed us and they put a bunch of coal oil in our hair and then some white powder. Then they cut our hair. And that’s where we stayed. We went to school there. We hardly ever went home because I guess we had no mother. That’s where I stayed for ten years.
— Speaker overcome with emotion
I learned how to sew at a very early age. I must have been about eleven years old when I learned how to sew. Today I’m a sewer, I’m a seamstress. I can sew anything. Just name it and I can sew it. I mostly make star blankets.
So I stayed there and I never heard from my father. I never knew where he was. Once in a while he would send us a dollar and we would each have a quarter, me and my sister, and my brother would get fifty cents. That’s how we stayed. It was a really lonely life.
I used to sit by the window and look at the gate and watch for my dad to come and he never ever came. I would watch for him. Finally I gave up and I grew up to be a very wicked person. I thought to myself, “Wait until I get big, boy, I’m going to beat up my dad.”
This all happened. I went to school and finally I got out of school in 1960 and right away I got married. I had a girl in 1961. I was a very wicked person, drinking and drinking. I drank for a lot of years. I was really abusive to my kids. But I’ve been sober now for thirty years.
Q. Quand avez-vous commencé votre parcours de guérison? Quand les choses ont-elles changé pour vous?
A. After I sobered up in 1979, or ’78, but during all those times I lost a sister to cancer. I lost my husband. He committed suicide and I was left with 7 kids to raise.
Q. Qu'en est-il de votre relation avec votre père après le pensionnat?
R. Après avoir quitté le pensionnat, je suis rentré à la maison pendant un petit moment et je me suis marié tout de suite.
I still had 2 sisters. When we went to school in Lebret I had a little sister. She was a baby. Her name was Irene. So my grandmother raised her. I remember coming home maybe a few times, 2 or 3, and we ended up at my grandmother’s place. She kind of looked after us for maybe a weekend or on a Saturday night and then we had to go back to school on a Sunday.
J'ai fini par battre mon père.
Je devais avoir environ 6 enfants et je buvais et j'étais un ivrogne très méchant.
J'ai fini par battre mon père. Mon père est mort maintenant. Il s'est de nouveau marié. J'ai des demi-sœurs et des demi-frères.
Q. À quoi ressemblait une journée typique au pensionnat?
A. In Lebret it was like this: Get up, brush your teeth —
C'était comme un exercice. Ils m'ont foré cela pendant dix ans. J'ai fait la même chose, les mêmes choses. Se lever le matin. Laver. Descendre. Manger. Faites votre corvée. Va à l'école. Dîner.
Et nous avons dû rendre notre lit parfait. La religieuse se tiendrait là. Tout devait toujours être si parfait.
After I got married I tried to do that to my children. I tried to instill in them that everything had to be perfect. So that’s why I was a real angry and mean mother.
— Speaker overcome with emotion
A. It hurts me to talk about this. I don’t know when I’ll ever be healed. I’m getting old and I have diabetes. I don’t know how long I’ll be living. It’s really hard on me to talk about these things. I know it has to come out. I know that’s the only way I’m going to be really a survivor, I guess.
Q. Avez-vous partagé votre histoire avec vos enfants?
R. Oui, plusieurs fois. Ma fille est allée à l'Université de Regina. Elle a pris le travail social et elle m'a interviewé, mais cela semblait être plus facile avec ma fille. Elle m'a interviewé. Elle m'a enregistré et elle l'a noté. Elle est allée devant sa classe et a parlé à 350 élèves. Elle leur a parlé pendant une heure de mon histoire.
After she finished she got a standing ovation. There wasn’t a dry eye in all the students that she talked to. So every day I try —
I don’t see my grandchildren that often. I have eighteen grandchildren. I talk to them whenever we are driving in the car, or something and I tell them about how lucky they are. Those kids have everything in their homes. I always tell them I never even had a doll. I just had a piece of wood for a doll and that’s what we would wrap up and carry around.
Mes petits-enfants ont tout. Je leur dis toujours chaque jour à quel point ils ont de la chance. Nous avons des triplés dans notre famille et ces petits garçons fous ont chacun une cellule. Bon sang.
Q. Things are different, that’s for sure.
Why do you think it’s important for you to share your story with your family and other people?
R. Parce qu'ils doivent le savoir. Ils doivent réaliser ce que nous avons vécu et comment je pense que leur vie est peut-être facile aujourd'hui comparée à la façon dont j'ai grandi avec la peur, la peur de ces religieuses et la stricte.
For years after I got married I made my bed every morning perfectly because it was drilled in me, right. Now for the past 6 years I haven’t even been making my bed. I always look at it and I think, “No, I can’t make my bed today!” So some of that is still drilled in me. I noticed it myself. It just comes automatically sometimes.
Q. Vous avez pu en laisser partir une partie?
A. I’ve been able to let some of it go. I have been going to different Workshops and different Residential School conferences.
Q. Était-ce une école catholique?
R. C'était une école catholique.
Q. Aujourd'hui, pratiquez-vous le catholicisme?
A. No, I don’t. I just stick to my Indian culture and I try to teach my children about that, too. They all seem to know. I take them each in turn to a Rain Dance or to a Sun Dance and they know what it is to go to a feast.
Q. Votre relation avec eux maintenant, est-elle meilleure qu'elle ne l'était?
A. Yeah, with the grand kids. With my children sometimes it’s good and most of the time it’s not good. I think they blame me for the way I was a mother when they were growing up. But I get along real good with my grandchildren.
Q. Y a-t-il des souvenirs qui ressortent vraiment de votre esprit que vous voudriez peut-être partager au sujet de votre séjour au pensionnat?
A. Every evening after supper we would all go for walks, or on a Saturday we would go for a walk. There were about ten of us. We usually walked in two’s or three’s, eh. We were walking down the tracks and we kept walking and walking. Finally we looked back, “Hey, there’s nobody coming behind us.” So finally we all went walking back real fast back to the school. When we got there Sister met us right at the gate. “Right upstairs”, she told us. She whipped us with a big strap about this long (indicating), about 2 feet long and about an inch thick and about 3 inches wide. We all had to lie with our pants pulled down and our dress pulled up and she gave us each ten straps. That’s about the only one that stands out.
I got different lickings before for little things. Maybe speaking —
I remember one time we were all teasing each other and we were all saying tansee (ph.), eh, and we all had to go up and get strapped. Just little things like that. I don’t think we were that bad.
Q. Parler votre langue était faux?
A. Ouais. Surtout la langue.
Q. Donc, vous avez dit que vous aviez une sœur cadette avec vous. Droite?
A. Ouais.
Q. Vous avez pu rester ensemble?
R. Non, non. Elle était dans les petites filles et j'étais dans les filles moyennes, et au moment où elle est arrivée aux filles moyennes, j'étais dans les grandes filles.
En attendant, mon autre petite sœur était majeure et elle est venue à l'école. Son nom est Irene. Elle vit à Calgary. Shirley est décédée en 1995.
Q. Quelle est votre relation avec vos frères et sœurs?
A. Good. I sort of thought I had to look after them after we got out of school. So maybe that’s why I got married so young. I was seventeen or eighteen when I got married.
Q. Votre mari est-il allé au pensionnat?
R. Non.
Q. Est-ce que votre père ou votre mère?
A. My mother did. I’m sure my mother did, but I don’t know if my dad did. I never bothered to ask.
Q. Y a-t-il autre chose que vous souhaitez partager?
A. No, that’s about it. Just that I learned to be clean. It wasn’t all bad. There were some good parts in it. I learned to sew anyway, and that’s what I do now, besides my pension.
Q. En êtes-vous déjà retourné?
A. Vers où?
Q. À l'école. Avez-vous déjà visité par la suite?
R. Oui, je suis retourné. Un de mes enfants était à l'école là-bas. Je me suis juste promené en regardant et cela semblait si petit, une petite école par rapport à quand j'étais là-bas. Il semblait que c'était un si grand endroit.
That’s about it. I just went back to visit once or twice.
Q. Vous avez dit que votre fille était là?
A. My daughter Cheryl was there but she didn’t stay long. I think she only stayed about a month.
Q. Très bien. Y a-t-il autre chose?
A. No, that’s about it. It was just ordinary. Every day the same thing. Get up. Eat. Go to class. Go to church. Kneel down. I never try to kneel down any more. I had enough of kneeling down for ten years.
Q. Alors aujourd'hui, où vous en êtes dans votre vie en ce moment, en pensant à votre chemin de guérison, que pensez-vous de votre situation actuelle dans votre vie?
A. I feel like it’s never going to end. I feel like when is it going to end, maybe only when I die, you know. I don’t know. It’s hard to even talk about it.
Q. Mais vous devez espérer?
A. I don’t know how much years I have left because my kidneys are failing from my diabetes.
Q. Je vous souhaite le meilleur. Merci pour votre temps.
Ah oui. Merci.
J'étais vraiment nerveux de venir ici.
Q. Vous avez très bien fait.
— End of Interview