L'INTERVIEWEUR: D'accord. Pouvez-vous nous dire votre nom et l'épeler pour nous, s'il vous plaît.
DENNIS GEORGE GREENE: My name is Dennis George Greene. I have since added an “E” to Greene. It’s G-r-e-e-n-e.
Q. Et d'où venez-vous?
A. I’m from the Samson Cree Nation in Alberta.
Q. So you don’t live in BC right now?
A. No. I’m just passing through.
Q. Oh good. We haven’t had anyone from Alberta here today.
Quelle école avez-vous fréquentée?
R. J'ai fréquenté le pensionnat Ermineskin.
Q. Ermineskin?
A. Ouais. Ermineskin.
Q. Où était-ce?
A. At the same location, in Hobbema, but it’s the neighbouring Reserve. There are 4 Reserves.
Q. D'accord. Et à peu près quelles années y étiez-vous?
R. Probablement dans les années 60, oui, entre les années 60 et le début des années 70.
Q. Quel âge aviez-vous lorsque vous avez commencé?
R. J'avais 7 ans lorsque j'ai fréquenté le pensionnat pour la première fois.
Q. Dans quelle année êtes-vous allé?
R. J'étais en 2e année, je pense. Je commençais la deuxième année.
Q. Êtes-vous allé à l'école ailleurs pour la maternelle et la première année?
A. No. It was the same place. There were day scholars, as they called them, the ones that came during the day. But we all attended the same school, the Ermineskin School. But in the evenings the Residential School students went back to the dorms. One side was the girls’ side and the other side was the boys’ side.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous de votre premier jour?
A. Ouais.
Q. Pouvez-vous nous en parler un peu?
A. It was in the fall. I kind of came in late because my father and my mother and my family used to —
My father actually brought me. It was in late fall because my parents, my family used to work off Reserve, and my dad was a farm labourer. But he would take the family every summer and work all over central Alberta. I kinda came in late that year because we were out. It was in the evening when I got dropped off. It was already dark. My mom didn’t come in, but my dad walked me in.
We were met by a Nun. It was scary because I didn’t know these people. I found it hard the first night I was there because I got assigned to the little boys’ dorm, they used to call it. I got moved to one of those dorms. So that was hard for me the first night I was there. I was scared. Actually, I was terrified.
I had to deal with that abandonment issue regarding my first day, but I’ve done that.
Q. Avez-vous pu dormir la première nuit?
A. No. I remember being scared because it was new. I wasn’t used to all these kids sleeping on these beds. I didn’t even know who was there. I was scared. I think I cried all night. That was my first day.
Q. Avez-vous eu du mal à quitter votre père?
A. Yeah, because I wasn’t used to that. I was so used to being around my family.
Q. Pouvez-vous décrire une journée type, à quelle heure vous auriez pour vous réveiller?
A. It depended if you had to go to church. I don’t really remember the routines for my first —
J'avais l'habitude de me lever vers 8 heures peut-être, et vous deviez vous lever. Vous deviez vous habiller et aller vous laver, vous brosser les dents et vous deviez faire votre lit. Ensuite, tu descendais et faisais la queue pour le petit déjeuner avec les plus jeunes garçons.
Like I started with the little boys, they called them. We were still being paraded around like soldiers. We went down, standing in line, not in the Kitchen but outside. There was another big room where all the lockers were around on all sides of the walls. We would line up. I think the little boys used to eat first. And then you would line up. It’s like the Army where you line up, and everything, and like jail. They do that, too. All the food is in place and you get a tray and you get whatever you have to eat that day.
Q. Comme la prison ou l'armée?
A. Ouais. Nous passions par la cuisine et obtenions ce qu'ils servaient. Ensuite, vous iriez vous asseoir à l'une des tables de la salle à manger.
Q. Y avait-il beaucoup d'enfants dans cette école?
R. Oui, il y en avait beaucoup. Il y avait des plus jeunes et des adolescents et les garçons plus âgés, des garçons plus grands.
Q. À quelle note est-il allé jusqu'à?
R. À ce moment-là, je pense qu'il est passé en 12e année.
Q. Étiez-vous là en 12e année?
R. Non. À la fin, ils n'avaient que la 9e année et je devais aller à l'école dans les villes voisines. Je suis allé à Ponoka et finalement je suis allé à Edmonton pour y terminer mes études secondaires.
Q. Et les corvées?
A. We were assigned different chores. I can’t remember if they were changed weekly, I think, but I used to do kitchen detail sometimes. You were assigned a row of tables. You had to clean them off, wash them off, sweep the floor, wash the floor in that area. Sometimes you were assigned bathroom detail or dormitories. You would have to sweep them out. There were bathrooms up there, too.
Dans les mois d'hiver, plus tard, vous deviez faire les trottoirs. Ils ont toujours trouvé quelque chose à faire pour vous.
Q. Qu'en est-il de l'éducation là-bas? Avez-vous l'impression d'avoir reçu une bonne éducation?
A. I guess so. But because I was forced I think after a while you got scared of being punished. You got so conditioned into doing things. It was part —
Dans les premières années, les moniales et les prêtres faisaient aussi l'enseignement.
Q. C'était une école catholique?
A. Yeah, but it was mixed. We had some teachers. I remember some of my teachers were Nuns. I’m not too sure, but the Priests ran the school at one time. They were principals. But it was a strict school. You got strapped. We got hit with wooden rulers with the metal sticking on the edges. I got hit on the head once and they cut my head.
Q. C'est là que se trouve la cicatrice?
R. Non. Il y en a un à côté, un plus petit. Ouais. J'ai été frappé avec la règle. Dans les premières années, c'était vraiment strict. Je me suis habitué à faire ce qu'on me demandait de faire, parce que j'ai subi beaucoup de punitions. Parfois, j'aurais des ennuis. Au bout d'un moment, toutes les sangles que j'ai reçues, au bout d'un moment, je m'y suis habitué, étant puni.
Q. C'était une mauvaise expérience alors?
A. Ouais.
Q. Pouvez-vous parler de moments précis et de souvenirs que vous avez de choses qui se sont produites?
R. Juste quelques-uns des professeurs que je détestais, parce qu'ils étaient méchants. Vous avez dû endurer cela pendant un an. Les combats. J'ai eu beaucoup de bagarres, non seulement avec les gens du pensionnat, mais avec les autres enfants qui entraient. C'était un peu comme si nous étions deux groupes distincts.
I’ve never been in jail but I understand. I had the same experience. Every day was about survival. Only the toughest survive. So at one point I became a protection racket because when I was younger I used to be under somebody else’s protection, so I in turn became one.
Q. À l'école?
R. Oui, dans le pensionnat.
Q. Pouvez-vous en parler un peu, comment cela fonctionnait?
A. How that worked was if you couldn’t fight —
Je pense qu'ils font toujours ça en prison, selon les gens à qui je parle.
It’s about being tough. Only the tough survive. If you didn’t, your food or anything was taken away. If you couldn’t fight for it, chances are you couldn’t —
If you can’t defend yourself, you know, you’re going to get bullied and pushed around. I took that for the longest time until one day I just started fighting back. And when I won my first fight I just kept going. One day I climbed up the hierarchy and I ran my own protection racket. I protected kids younger than me for guys that couldn’t fight. It was just that my mother taught me to protect people that can’t fight for themselves.
So eventually parents started paying me to protect their kids. That’s the way it was. I had to fight a lot of times protecting my cousins and my relations like my nephews, so I got good at it.
Q. Y avait-il plus d'une personne impliquée? Certains d'entre vous ont-ils protégé les autres enfants?
R. Beaucoup d'entre nous.
Q. Les protégeriez-vous un jour contre les enseignants, ou était-ce vraiment juste d'autres élèves?
A. D'autres élèves du pensionnat, ou même les boursiers de jour qu'ils avaient l'habitude de les appeler. C'étaient les enfants qui devaient rentrer à la maison tous les jours.
Q. Certains enfants ont donc pu rentrer à la maison tous les jours?
A. Yeah. But we were a mixture during the day in the school. It was the only —
Eh bien, il y avait d'autres petites écoles, mais Ermineskin était probablement la plus grande école à ce moment-là avec la 12e année. Les autres étaient ces écoles à une seule pièce.
Q. Que feraient les enseignants des combats? Ont-ils déjà essayé de l'arrêter ou de s'impliquer d'une manière ou d'une autre?
A. Parfois. J'ai vu des étudiants se faire jeter quand ils se battaient ou se faire frapper par des règles et des critères. Plus tard, j'ai vu des étudiants se faire frapper avec des bâtons de hockey. C'était une question de survie, pas seulement des étudiants, des enfants qui venaient pendant la journée, même des enseignants. Certains d'entre eux combattaient les enseignants.
C'était un monde de violence. J'ai vu beaucoup de violence, beaucoup de colère, beaucoup de rage. Les professeurs s'en prendraient à nous.
Q. Et votre culture? Avez-vous l'impression qu'ils vous enlèvent cela également?
A. I think I lost my culture the day I walked in. I’m just starting to reclaim it now. Actually, I just did it over the weekend. But other than that I didn’t really have a belief system after I got out. I really didn’t like Christianity, but I recently made peace with the church because I realized it wasn’t the teachings of Christ that did all the abuse. It was the people that used that.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous de votre vie avant d'aller à l'école? Y avait-il certaines choses culturelles comme la spiritualité impliquées?
A. Yeah. I remember going to a give-away in the winter months with my dad. My dad was a singer and later on I found out he was given the Sun Dance Lodge and the Give-Away Lodge. He knew the clan songs, the ceremonies and the rituals. But my dad was at boarding school, too, so he never really handed anything down. So I’m probably second generation. So for us that part of our life was cut. But I attended Sun Dances with my family, my grandparents and my mother. We always used to move to the Sun Dance grounds.
Avant le pensionnat, il y avait un lien familial fort, non seulement avec ma famille, mais avec la famille élargie. Mais au pensionnat, j'étais isolé de tout ça. Finalement, je me suis éloigné de tout le monde, pas seulement de ma famille, mais de tout le monde.
Again, I’m just starting to make those connections.
Q. That’s good. Was it hard to go home in the summer?
R. Non, j'avais hâte d'y aller.
Q. Avez-vous déjà pu parler à vos parents de ce que vous ressentiez à propos des pensionnats indiens?
A. No. I guess one of the things you learned was it was best not to say things. I lost my voice. I shut down emotionally. I couldn’t talk about these things. It has been hard. I just started doing that and learning to communicate and express my feelings. That is new to me.
Even this, besides the Discoveries I went to, this is probably the second time I’m going to talk about my Residential School experience. But other than that, nobody has heard my story, not even my family.
Q. Do you think you’ll be ready soon to talk to your family?
A. I don’t know. It’s going to take a while. Because you are dealing with so many issues. Right? It’s not just these people took everything. You were just stripped. You have to relearn a lot of things, even to be able to connect with other people, you know. So most of my life I’ve been probably what you call a loner. I have friends, but it’s not like I talk to them. I don’t talk about stuff like this. I didn’t, anyway. So I think I’ll have a lot of stories to be telling.
I don’t even talk to my wife.
Q. Est-elle allée au pensionnat?
A. No. Actually, my relationships haven’t really been too good either because I’m unable to express feelings or to be affectionate because that’s something I didn’t learn. Like I said before, most of my life I’ve learned to —
J'imagine que j'avais toujours cette mentalité où il valait mieux ne rien dire, parce que dans les pensionnats indiens, si vous montriez de l'émotion, c'était un signe de faiblesse. Pour survivre, vous avez dû fermer.
Q. Même si vous pleuriez, ou quelque chose du genre?
A. People ridiculed you, even if you laughed. Even laughter. So for the longest time I wasn’t able to do that. But now I’m going through a healing process and I’m able to show those emotions.
Q. Y a-t-il des expériences particulières que vous avez vécues au pensionnat et que vous aimeriez partager aujourd'hui?
A. Des expériences?
Q. Certains événements?
A. Probably the violence. For me my life has been violent, not that I —
My thinking was always with my fellows. Like these guys here, before I would probably size them up and see if I can take them out, eh. That’s the way I looked at them. One look and I knew if they were tough guys or I could just walk all over them. That’s the way I looked at my fellow men.
Like I said, that was in the past. I just got back from the House of Healing so I dealt with a lot of issues. Being there, it was kind of like they rewrote my history in Residential School, what it was supposed to have been, with Elders and teachers teaching you life skills, with Elders telling you the teachings and everybody was showing friendship and showing they cared. We were even allowed to hug other men. I’m able to do that.
Even today, I feel comfortable because in there I was always tense. I was already in survival mode. In the morning when I get up and all day until I went to bed it was the same thing every day. So later on when I grew up that’s the way I lived in my community. I was always in survival mode, being uncomfortable around others.
La plupart de ma vie, je me suis entraîné pour être un meilleur combat. J'ai combattu presque toute ma vie. J'ai été poignardé, abattu, entassé, mais j'ai survécu. J'ai vécu dans ce monde de violence. Je me suis entraîné dans différents arts martiaux, la boxe et j'ai un premier diplôme en Tai-Kwan-do, mais il s'agissait toujours de prendre le pouvoir de mes adversaires. Je me suis habitué à cela, à prendre le pouvoir de mes semblables.
Q. That’s how you knew to survive.
A. Ouais.
Q. Did that last a long time? Is it only recently that you —
A. ’96 I went to my first healing program and I realized that there were others. I didn’t know that there were other forms of strength and courage. I seen men crying. I seen them talking about it. So I realized there were other forms of strength and courage, even coming from the program I was in. I really honour those men that talk about everything, whether it’s relationships, their addictions, their anger and their rage.
It helped me to understand the Nuns and the Priests. A lot of them were forced into looking after our People in the Residential Schools. A lot of them were forced. I think a lot of them didn’t go there willingly. Like what the Elder told us over there, she said that they weren’t ready for us. A lot of it, I seen the anger in those people at times when they blew up with rage. I understand my anger and the rage. It was all about rage.
A lot of times I was a walking time bomb and I would explode once in a while when I couldn’t hold it any more. I understand now about colonization. I’ve learned to forgive these people.
Q. Si vous pouviez les voir aujourd'hui, que leur diriez-vous?
A. What would I say to them? I would probably tell them I forgive them, but it’s up to the Creator. I can’t judge them. I don’t know. Like our saying, “You have to walk a mile in their moccasins.” But even to be able to forgive, I’ve been working on that.
Because of the teachings of the Elders and reclaiming my identity, my belief system, I’m able to understand. I can’t live in the past. I can’t undo what was done. Those things helped me survive. So I can’t really say they were all bad. In an environment like that you have to survive. All the rest that didn’t make it, they either died from suicide or alcohol. They just died off, most of the people I knew at school.
Q. Vraiment?
A. Yeah. I guess honouring yourself that you survive to this point in your life, but to be able to go on a healing journey is another thing. A lot of our People aren’t ready for that. They are still out there drinking and doing drugs, living in denial. But that’s why I’m doing this to show them that we can go beyond this experience.
Q. Y a-t-il d'autres expériences dont vous aimeriez parler? Même juste après le pensionnat, qu'avez-vous fait lorsque vous avez terminé le pensionnat? Avez-vous travaillé?
A. I took off. I was only fourteen. When I moved home I didn’t have a family to move to. My parents were separated. My younger brothers were taken in by our older sisters. I wound up with the eldest sister in my family. She raised me from when I was fourteen, when I was in Grade 9, to when I was sixteen. I had to move to town and the nearest school was Ponoka. I went to Ponoka for high school.
Mais j'ai beaucoup bu. J'ai commencé à boire. J'ai quand même essayé de rester à l'école parce que mes parents m'ont dit que c'était la seule issue. À cette époque, il n'y avait vraiment rien dans la communauté; juste la pauvreté et le chômage. J'ai essayé de suivre. J'ai essayé d'écouter ce que mes parents disaient pour que je finisse l'école et que je sorte.
J'ai beaucoup bu et la drogue a commencé à arriver. J'ai expérimenté. À un moment donné, l'alcool a commencé à descendre, alors j'ai essayé de me suicider à plusieurs reprises. Eh bien, peut-être plus d'une ou deux fois. Je vivais dans la douleur. J'étais auto-médicamenteuse.
There were a lot of things I seen, a lot of things I’m not able to talk about at this point because I didn’t get there yet. There are other things that still bother me, but I’m not ready to talk about them. But I did suffer abuse, sexual abuse, but I’m not ready to go into that yet. I didn’t deal with that.
Q. So the healing started —
— End of Part 1
R. J'ai fait un programme de dix jours. Nous avons parlé de l'expérience de l'internat. C'était surtout une question de colère et de rage.
Q. Était-ce tous des survivants résidentiels?
A. No, no. Some of it was their parents. Either they know somebody, their uncles or their parents were in Residential School. But I think it helps them because we’ve lost so much. As a people we need to go back to our teachings. Our kids are dying off now. We’re losing so many of the young people because they have lost their language and their identity. They suffer abuse at home.
I work with young people. That’s why I know.
Q. Quel est votre travail avec les jeunes?
A. I’m a Student Counselor. It’s called Iniksipa (ph.) Academy. It’s for kids who need extra help. They pull them out of the main school system to help them try to catch up and help them change their attitude and behaviour and hopefully send them back. It’s through them that I’ve learned to see the world they live in. They take you in and they show you, “This is where I live.” “This is the way I live every day.”
In our community there are gangs and crack cocaine. So many of our kids are in foster homes because our community is so dysfunctional. There is so much pain. People are self-medicating with prescription drugs. We have the highest suicide rate. Some of those statistics are my kids. I’ve lost 2 kids to suicide. My stepson got killed last fall in October. He got shot by gangs.
C'est ma communauté. C'est tellement dysfonctionnel. Mais les gens sont dans le déni.
Q. Voyez-vous quelque chose qui offre de l'espoir dans votre communauté, des choses qui fonctionnent ou qui aident?
R. Avant de descendre de cette façon, j'en avais tellement marre de ma communauté, et je travaille avec ces enfants, j'étais malade de ce que j'avais appris à travers leurs yeux, à travers leurs expériences, je voulais m'évader. Je voulais m'éloigner de là.
I have always tried to help the community with whatever issues, even suicide, even when it affected my own kids. In the gangs I took the risk. I could have got shot, but I had a confrontation with one of the leaders because they were beating on my kids to try to make them join up. I went to his place. I tried to protect these kids. I just confronted him. I didn’t care if they were going to shoot me or stab me. But he learned.
Bref, j'ai tourné ce que j'ai appris, j'ai appris à l'appliquer et même aujourd'hui il était tellement habitué à prendre son pouvoir, alors je suis allé prendre son pouvoir pour une bonne cause.
I don’t really know. I think Aboriginal Peoples had it in the past. I seen that coming to the healing program. We are able, as Aboriginal People, to develop our own healing. I think we depend on the outside world too much. All the programs they bring in haven’t helped. In the past hundred years, what has helped? Nothing. So I think we need to go back. The teachings are there. It’s from the Elders I’ve learned to heal and accept things.
Q. Quelles sont les choses qui fonctionnent le plus pour vous?
A. Going to this program here, because there was an integration of approaches. Right? It helped me. I was able to understand what we had gone through as a People throughout our history. Understanding colonialism and understanding rage and having the Elders heal you, I did some awesome healing through our way from these people, dealing with rage and anger and grief. I have covered so many issues in ten days I think I’m a better person.
Q. What’s the name of that place again? The Healing House?
A. The House of Healing. I can’t pronounce the name. They are sitting outside by the front door. There’s a package.
For me, this woman who came to do it, she’s a Pueblo or part Mexican I think, and she’s using traditional teachings and some methods integrating approaches. So for me because I’ve gone to school I’m able to absorb all the information. I realized I needed to heal because I was tired of my life. I was tired of the way I thought, felt and behaved every day. It wasn’t taking me anywhere and my wife was going to leave me. So I had to do something.
I got scared. I didn’t want to go through this, even coming here talking to you. But it helps to talk about it instead of keeping it inside. We need to tell our stories. That’s part of the healing. I think our People need to do that.
Q. Cela nous rend malade à l'intérieur si nous le gardons là-bas.
A. Ouais.
Q. Y a-t-il une dernière chose que vous aimeriez ajouter aujourd'hui?
A. No. I think we need to talk about this part of our history. A lot of communities are not willing or they are unable, but we need to have that courage and start talking about it. We need to go through the healing process, because the way we’re going now the young people are dying off. We’re losing so many of our kids, our People. The pain is being passed on generationally.
My father was in pain. He medicated himself with alcohol. I picked that up. I learned to deal with everything in anger and rage, with my fists and my violence. It is only when I understood why we were put in the boarding schools, why the government, what their intentions were, genocide, not just to the People but to the culture and the language, and they’re still doing that.
That healing fund, if you look at the proposed healing fund money, that’s nothing. No money has been given to preserve our language or to bring back our language. A lot of these tribes lost their language. Even in my community the threat is there that it’s not going to survive the way it’s going.
If we don’t do something we will die off. We will assimilate. Some of our People have already assimilated. Someday if we don’t do anything, there will be no Aboriginal Peoples, just a label of who we were.
Q. Thank you very much. You said some really beautiful important things. That’s good.
Ah oui.
Q. Merci. Comment vous sentez-vous?
A. Comment est-ce que je me sens?
— End of Interview