L'INTERVIEWEUR: Pouvez-vous me dire et épeler votre prénom et votre nom de famille.
DILLAN STONECHILD: Dillan Stonechild; Dillan
Stonechild.
Q. De quelle réserve êtes-vous?
A. Pikases (ph.)
Q. Dans quelle école êtes-vous allé?
A. QISR; Qu’Appelle Indian School Residence.
Q. Quel âge aviez-vous lorsque vous êtes entré pour la première fois?
A. I don’t know. I was in Grade 5. I don’t know how old I was. I don’t know what age you’re supposed to be.
Q. Vous aviez probablement dix ans?
A. I never failed no Grades so that’s the age I was when I went to school.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous de votre première journée là-bas?
A. No, I don’t remember. I just remember the events leading up to why I had to go there. There were events leading up to it.
My first day was loneliness. I was alone. Loneliness. You could see it in the other students that were there. Some were crying. They had big red eyes and you knew they were crying. You knew they were lonely so you kind of bonded. I remember my one friend there, we bonded and became friends. We’re still friends to this day. He’s still living, which is rare amongst a lot of the boarding school people my age to be still living.
Q. Beaucoup de gens sont décédés à partir de là?
R. Oui. Beaucoup de gens sont décédés du pensionnat.
Q. Vous avez dit que vous aviez encore un ami et qu'il était votre principal ami. Restez-vous toujours en contact avec lui?
A. Whenever I see him. He lives in Standing Buffalo so I see him downtown or in the Fort so I always say “hi” to him. We always talk. We’re friends. We were good friends in there and we’re still friends to this day.
Q. That’s nice. Between the two of you, do you ever discuss what happened there?
R. Non, nous n'en avons jamais discuté. Il sait et je sais certaines des choses que nous avons vécues.
It was the same my first day of school. I remember going there. Like I say, I can’t really remember going there. I was young. I got beat up by a teacher in the White school in Balcarres and then the Indian Education Supervisor or counselor, his name as Dave Zelnik (ph.) at the time, and they took me —
No, it wasn’t then. I don’t know why I got beat up by the teacher. I got beat up by the teacher and then I went to school there. My mom pulled me out of school and we charged the teacher but nothing came of that. The teacher beat the charge so I went out of school. There were other Indians in the room and they seen the teacher banging me around. We were outside playing, playing King-of-the-Hill and I threw down this one White boy. Then the teacher seen me and he started banging me around so I got beat up. I had a big lump on the back of my head.
The next thing I know I got taken out of Balcarres school. My mom took me out of Balcarres school. So I went there. I don’t know what time of the year it was, maybe in winter time or in the spring time I went there. Like I say, there were lots of lonely kids. I think this was the last year Fathers were there. I remember Father Sharon (ph.). I don’t remember any of the Nuns. I just remember Father Sharon. He was the only one I remember.
Then they took us to —
How long we were there —
Then we got clothes, we got shoes, we got whatever else, little outfits, like our little —
We were all dressed the same. Maybe some of them were different colours and then we went and got a haircut. I got a haircut. That wasn’t good. I didn’t like that. So I didn’t like that. And then we just fit into the whole situation like that and we started going.
It wasn’t that good there. It wasn’t that good at first when those guys were there and then it wasn’t too good after that.
Q. What do you mean that it wasn’t too good after that?
A. Well, like, you see, you could say the monitoring of the children wasn’t the way it should have been. Today, say, if you have a group of children you should have an adult supervising them, staying awake watching them all night. Because then you could say there was abuse happening from older students at the school with younger ones. That happened to me. I was abused. And my friend he knows about it. There were other older guys who tried to do that to him and I don’t know whether they did or not, but whatever happened, it happened to me. Like we were such a young vulnerable age that we didn’t know these guys weren’t supposed to be doing this to us, but they come and did that anyways.
Q. Étaient-ils d'autres étudiants?
R. D'autres étudiants, oui, mais plus âgés. Nous étions dans les moyennes. Ils étaient dans les plus hauts.
Q. Comme senior?
A. Yeah. I was in Seniors all the time but it was different Dorms for the younger group; maybe Grades 5 and 6 and then over here Grades 7, 8, 9 and 10, or whatever like that. Over in the residence, whatever Grades, they were over there. And it wasn’t good.
Then you rebelled like that and you start to build up rebellious and you weren’t like that but maybe it grew over time of the wrongs that happened to some of the male students there because of the lack of monitoring of the individuals there.
So as years went by and there’s been lots of guys like that, lots of men, lots of younger guys in boarding school that have been abused that have not lived, that have not reached the age I have, because they continue to drink and do drugs and lead an unhealthy lifestyle.
Q. Avez-vous arrêté de faire cela?
R. Oui. J'ai arrêté de boire et de me droguer pendant quatorze ans ma dernière fois.
It’s because to say why I quit, I don’t know, it’s hard to say why I quit, but like boarding school —
Q. Vous venez de quitter comme ça?
A. Ouais. Je viens de quitter. Mais ensuite, j'aime dire à propos de l'internat, tout au long des années, c'était bon.
There were fights at times. I was a fighter. I always ended up getting in fights because I started rebelling. I ran away three times. I beat up a White kid downtown, and from that time I got sent to Boys’ School. But before that I was rebelling and I ran away. I got a big strap from one of the child care workers that were there. He had a nice big strap. And it hurt. It hurt. But that was the thing, you weren’t supposed to cry because they had all the other boys around watching you. So you just went with the flow. You had to go with the flow to survive in there.
Maybe other people that were a little bigger and stronger, maybe they survived better, but I fought a lot. I was probably one of the students that fought the most in the school. And like I say after that I got sent to Boys’ School and beat up a kid downtown, I got sent to Boys’ School. I ran away that night after I beat up that kid.
And then boarding school was done. After it was done, there was no more boarding school. Maybe I did go back to boarding school. I don’t know. I went to Boys’ School, to the Ranchero (ph.) Society, and from there —
It was all right there at the Boys’ School, but all those events leading up from all the dysfunctional-ism that happened at the boarding school, all that led up to dysfunctional-ism that happened in my life.
My life is no different than a thousand of others my age, young individuals that things happened to them, but they didn’t get to live as long as some of us fortunate ones have, like I quit drinking and doing drugs.
From then, from that time after I quit drinking and doing drugs I got out of jail. I was out of jail. I got picked up that morning at the bus depot by my uncle. He took me to a medicine man up north. From there that medicine man, I went into his sweat lodge with him. He told me, he said, “You drink? There’s something down the road for you. If you drink or you do drugs there’s something down the road for you.” He said, “It’s hot. If you step on it you’ll still be living but it won’t be too good.”
I knew that was a warning. Prior to that he gave me other warnings. One time he told me just like I see you hanging on the edge of the fireplace just like you’re going to fall in and I had no idea what that meant. I had no idea what he was telling me.
So then I went out drinking and I was drinking and I stole a truck and I rolled that truck. It had spilled a bit of gas on the back and I was looking for my beer with my lighter, like that (indicating) down like that, and that gas blew up. It blew up, as big as this room, a big flame and I went running out of the fire. “Oh, I swore, fuck, and I was on fire.” I caught on fire, my shoes were on fire and I had to take them off.
Then I thought, I never thought, and then I thought oh, that’s what he meant and the warning kind of kicked in. After that I would understand whenever he told me something. After that then I understand the things that he told me.
Q. Vous pouviez le comprendre alors?
A. Yeah. Like he would be able —
We would be at the ceremony and he would point at me. “This one over here”, he says, “I can tell him anything and he won’t get mad because his words, the way he learned, the way he taught, the one who taught him was (something)”, so I had that much. I knew that much about him that I would never be angry with him or anything like that.
Q. Alors vous attribuez vos méthodes traditionnelles de guérison?
R. Oui.
Q. Pensez-vous qu'une grande partie des problèmes que vous avez rencontrés était due à ce qui s'est passé dans les pensionnats indiens?
A. Yes. Because after I got out of Residential School, after I got out of Boys’ School I went to jail. And there’s my friends! There’s my friends! Holy jeez. Just like that.
Q. C'étaient tous des garçons de l'école?
A. Ouais. Eh bien, pas tous. Quelques-uns de mes bons amis étaient là aussi. Oh ouais, on s'intègre. Le pensionnat vient de me préparer à la prison.
Après cela, il n'y avait plus rien à penser d'aller voler un véhicule et finir par se faire prendre. Aller au tribunal, plaider coupable, aller en prison tout de suite. Ce n'était rien.
Q. Normal?
A. Yeah. It was just everyday life. That’s the way all the guys that were my friends did. And some of them right now they must have had so much bad things happen to them in boarding school that they’ve taken out some of their negative emotions on members of the opposite sex and now they’re doing life. They’re doing life.
Q. Ils sont allés et sortis de prison?
A. They are habitual criminals or dangerous offenders. They will never be out. That’s the sad part of it.
The sad part of it when you take a child, you have a child, I take that child away from you. That child is not going to grow up knowing the love you would give it, say the love that I would get. At ten years old that’s kind of an important time in a child’s life to be around his parents. But a lot of people will say they were glad they were away from home because my mom and my dad drink all the time. But then you can’t understand until you do understand. Your parents, their parents were taken away from their children and they lost that love. And then drinking alcohol was there and they drank —
Q. Vos parents sont-ils allés au pensionnat?
A. Ouais.
Q. So you know that’s where they learned it from. Right?
A. Ouais. Mon grand-père, mon Musha, ses parents sont morts quand il était jeune; quatre ou cinq ans. Il a grandi en internat.
Q. Donc, votre grand-père et vos parents?
A. Yeah. My grandfather and my mom and dad, my Musha and Kukum went, my other Musha and Kukum on my mom’s side. So it was all —
And then you just lose love. I mean, like you could grow up —
I could say I never remember being hugged when I was growing up. I don’t remember that from my mom or my dad. I never ever remember anything like that. You grow up and you start growing up —
Now I can say we’re kind of turning it around because we are relearning our traditional ways of where this is important to nurture our children so that they don’t have to face the same hardships that we faced.
I say there wasn’t much wrong with boarding school if they would have monitored the situation better.
Q. S'ils avaient prêté attention aux étudiants?
A. Yes. But then when you have students that are in the school there, they are locking up. They are not going to tell. Now they’re ashamed. They’re not going to go tell and say, hey, that guy did whatever with me. They’re not going to tell nobody that. That’s the way it was. They just clam up and then you start rebelling against society. Like I say, fourteen years I spent in and out of jail just rebelling against society.
Q. À cause de cela?
A. Yes. And you get caught up in alcoholism and you’re controlled. You live for that alcohol. That controls you. Drugs and everything like that. I mean, I did so many drugs, not to say to forget. I just became so caught up in that lifestyle and that’s how a lot of my friends from boarding school —
I had one friend who was in Gordon’s. His name was Roger (something) and I met him in jail, the late Roger (something). He hung himself. He was a really good guy. He was one of my good friends in jail, too. Five or six or seven or ten years later he hung himself and that was when Mr. Star over there was doing those things to those young fellas, taking them boxing. He was a boxer. It all kicked in to me after. That must have been what happened to poor Roger. Poor Roger ended up being abused by that Mr. Star over there in Gordon’s.
It’s devastating when you realize some of the things that are never going to come out of it. No matter all I tell you, all anybody else tells you, there’s how many other people my age that aren’t going to say nothing about it, that are stuck in the city, that are stuck on the streets, that are stuck drinking and doing drugs. We used to do drugs so much. There’s all the barbiturates. We would do drugs. We would shoot ‘em up right until we pass out, we would shoot ‘em up and shoot ‘em up and then just pass out.
Q. Juste pour oublier?
A. Yeah. And then you would wake up later with a needle in your arm. You’re just caught up in that life all because of the neglect at the boarding school. It was all because of that. You could say that if we had a healthy lifestyle and things were good there —
Sure I had some good times at boarding school. I had a lot of good times. But then maybe down the road what haunts you in your spirit brings you down more and you don’t realize it. You just don’t realize it. It’s just like a big ball of mud rolling down the hill getting bigger and bigger until finally it crashes at the bottom and you have to go back up and try and make things better for yourself.
At the end of my journey down at the bottom of the hill when I crashed, now I have to go back up that hill now and make things better for myself because I know now that there is a boss up there and I have to answer for the wrongs that I did. If I don’t answer for them and try and make things right down here, I’ll have to answer for them up there. And up there, it’s different up there from the teachings that I’ve learned through the years, through the traditional men.
The only two traditional men I’ve ever listened to, and only those two teachings that I follow: my dad and that other late man up north.
Q. What do you want people to know about you, Dillan, and about your survival and your healing? What is it you want people to know about you that’s really important?
A. I would say the most important thing for anybody to leave is as long as you quit drinking and doing drugs and then open up your heart and try to address those issues within you. To say, to address them, if you can address them, don’t maybe you become —
As you say, I haven’t addressed them. They are there, but I’ve forgotten. I tried to forget about them. I try my best to forget them. I try to make my life good so my children will try to be good as they grow up. They learn by example. I know when I grew up I know my mom and dad drank and drank and drank. Eventually they quit. It comes a time in a person’s life when he gets direction from the Great Spirit, gets a call, gets his call for him to straighten out his life down the road eventually like that.
So I just wish that if there’s people out there that need help to somehow try and get the help. It’s so hard to ask for help if you don’t have resources around you and the right kind of people to show you the road that you must follow.
En tant que membre des Premières Nations, je connais mon chemin. Ma route monte à Kishimanitoo (ph.), Donc je sais tout cela. Je sais tout ça. À l'époque, avec toutes les choses négatives qui vous sont arrivées et toutes les choses que vous essayez de faire pour oublier des choses, adopter un mode de vie autodestructeur qui ne mène qu'à la mort et à la prison et maintenant pour essayer de mener une vie positive qui mène au Grand Esprit comme ça.
Q. I like what you said earlier. I don’t think a lot of people hear that enough that Residential School/Boarding School prepared you for jail. I never heard anyone say that before.
A. Yes. I’ve told a lot of people that. A lot of my friends have agreed with me that were in boarding school. Because maybe the ones that were successful in boarding school that came out of boarding school that graduated from boarding school, maybe nothing happened to those ones. But when you get the younger ones in with older guys it was no fault of their own. It was probably no fault of theirs. Maybe that happened to them somewhere down the road and they were just acting out in that whole vicious circle that happens. It’s a bad spirit. You get a bad spirit in you, that bad spirit is going to make you act and do negative things and then it’s going to have a whole bowling ball effect on all those around.
Q. Y a-t-il autre chose que vous aimeriez ajouter avant de nous arrêter?
A. Oh, faites une pause.
Q. Ayez de l'eau.
Ah oui.
Q. Combien de temps avez-vous été en prison?
A. I was in large jail for fourteen years. I was in Boys’ School for one year so you can say eight years I was in boarding school, one year in Boys’ School and fourteen years in jail. So fifteen years you could actually say I lost; the eight years in boarding school they were the bad times, but there was a lot of good times.
Il y avait du sport. Les sports étaient bons. Nous avions la course, le basket-ball, le volleyball et le hockey. Tous les sports étaient bons. Mais je dis que le seul problème avec l'internat était de ne pas surveiller les enfants dans les dortoirs.
If you had —
Q. Par de bonnes personnes?
A. Yes. By good people, people that cared for the children that wanted to see good things happening. But when you have those old people, those other cultures there working who don’t even care about the children, that are just there for their pay cheque —
That’s probably the way a lot of those cultures were because probably, who knows, maybe the same things may have happened to them somewhere out there. They may have been chronic alcoholics that needed help that were thinking they could look after children and were in such a situation, a volatile situation. You could say it’s a volatile situation because of all the wrong things that happened in the boarding school.
Q. Avez-vous déjà parlé à vos parents de leur expérience?
A. No, I never ever talked to my parents and I never ever talked to them about any of my experiences. One year I won the Athlete of the Year, though, at the boarding school for cross-country running. Like I say, not everything was bad. I slowly —
It takes a long time to come out of things. If you don’t have the right person, the right Elder —
Q. It’s funny because people remember you for the bad things you did but they don’t remember the one time that you did really well in cross-country?
A. Oh yeah. I was bad. As I say, I was really bad, really really bad. I and my brother we would go stoning semis at the highway, just rebelling. My brother went to boarding school. He didn’t go too long. He was more of a mama’s pet. But me, I stayed there. I just ended up staying there. I don’t know. I just accepted it because I couldn’t go back to Balcarres because of the teacher there so that’s why I stayed at boarding school.
Q. Vos parents vivent-ils toujours?
R. Mon père est décédé il y a deux semaines, il y a trois semaines.
Q. I’m sorry.
R. Ou il y a un mois, le 9 mars, le 9 février.
Q. Votre mère habite ici?
R. Ma mère vit dans la réserve. Deux de mes sœurs, un de mes frères sont décédés et j'ai deux sœurs en vie.
Q. Ils sont tous allés au pensionnat?
A. All except —
Ils sont tous partis, ouais. Tous sauf mes deux jeunes sœurs. Mes deux jeunes sœurs sont celles qui sont mortes. Mon frère cadet est mort.
Yeah. I don’t know if any of the stories that people hear that I have to say, that anybody else has to say, will help any of the people heal in their way. There’s only one way you can heal and you have to go up. You have to actually look up and ask him for to help you.
When I got out of jail my first plan was to go, whenever I started my healing journey, was to go to the city and go buy drugs. That’s what I was going to do. I had my plan and I had my money. I had my drugs all lined up. But my uncle showed up and picked me up and there was a whole spirit that come and took me away from there. That’s the way the medicine man said when he left me. And he did that. After that I stayed there for a week and then I caught the bus and left.
During that week he said, “Come here. You know, there’s somebody down the road, two of your friends down the road. They are going to come to you like that. They are going to come with you like that.” And he said, “They’re going to tempt you, or whatever that way for drugs or alcohol. They are going to come and you are going to have those two tests.”
He said, “I don’t think you can quit, though.” “But”, he said, “up here we don’t care if you do or you don’t.” Because like that —
I can understand why he said that because if you were to care about everybody that came into your circle to try to help them and you couldn’t help them, down the road you are sure going to feel sad for all those people. They would just bring you right down. So he told me that.
So when he told me that, “I don’t think you can do it”, and then so when those tests came, those were the first words that came to mind. My first friend, he had a drink. “C’mon bro, c’mon bro, have a drink.” For a whole half an hour. I was getting mad at him. I was about to hit him but we were good friends all the time.
So I left. I just left. That was the first words I heard. “I don’t think you can do it.” That gave me the strength to say “No”. The next friend, the same thing. “I don’t think he could do it.” And that first friend, he would go like that (indicating). I don’t think he could do it.
I said, “No, I’m not going to do it.” I just hopped out of the vehicle and hitch-hiked home like that.
Q. You’re pretty strong.
A. Now I am, yes. But that’s the way.
And then once I got —
If people can find our father’s ways they can heal over time. It doesn’t happen —
The first seven years when I quit drinking, seven years I just dedicated my life to the sweat lodge, nothing else, to the sweat lodge and the ceremonies to make sure that I was healed inside. You could say nowadays what I say about the boarding schools, about the assaults, the sexual assaults and whatever happened in there like that, that don’t bother me. I could leave it back there. But I just don’t think about it. It’s just there. It’s back there to stay away from me. I have my own life and to keep on with positive thinking and keep my life strong.
Q. Tant mieux pour vous.
Avez-vous déjà parlé à vos frères et sœurs, à vos frères et sœurs, de commencer leur chemin de guérison?
A. No, I don’t talk to them. I don’t talk to them about it. They know we have a sweat lodge. My late dad, my father, had a sweat lodge. He passed it on to me. So now they know all the things to try to make your life better. They know where the door is. They have to come there.
The more you tell a person, the more I drink —
If you were to drink, the more I tell you not to drink, the more you’re going to drink, the more you’re not going to be my friend. So we don’t tell them nothing. I don’t tell my children. If they go drinking I don’t tell them not to drink. I just tell them the experiences of my life and hopefully it will open their eyes so they can see this is not a healthy lifestyle. It’s going to lead to not good things.
That’s about all I have to say.
Q. That’s great. You did a really good job.
Un merci.
Q. That was a really good interview. You’ve got a lot of information out. That’s really important that you gave out a lot of valuable things to share with people about your journey and about what happened to you in Residential School and in jail.
But also your bravery. That’s really powerful. I think you’re a really good role model for people. You should start talking to some of the young people. I think that would be really good for you. Because we were all captivated. You’re a really good story teller. I’m really proud of you.
Un merci.
— End of Interview