THE INTERVIEWER: Can you say and spell your name for us?
AGGIE GEORGE: Aggie George; A-g-g-i-e G-e-o-r-g-e.
Q. And where are you from?
A. I’m from Notley, from the Notley Reserve.
Q. How do you spell that?
A. Nautley; N-a-u-t-l-e-y.
— Transcriber’s Note : I’m not sure of the spelling.
Q. What school did you go to?
A. Lejac School.
Q. Where was Lejac?
A. Between Fort Fraser and Fraser Lake.
Q. What years were you there?
A. Well, I went there when I was 5 years old. That’s 1943 to 1954.
Q. Do you remember your first day of school, and can you talk about that?
A. I was pretty little. I don’t know. I can’t remember.
Q. Okay. Do you remember even other years? Would your parents take you to school, or would people come and get you to take you there?
A. Oh yeah.
Q. People came and picked you up?
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?
A. No. All we did was play outside, or in the Playroom.
Q. Do you remember a typical day, like what time you woke up, even later, not when you were really little, but what time you woke up, the chores you had to do and stuff like that?
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. What about your culture? Were you able to speak your own language?
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. Do you remember life before you went to Residential School at all, when you were living at home?
A. No.
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. Was it a Catholic school, or Anglican?
A. Catholic; Roman Catholic.
Q. And you had to go to church every day?
A. Every morning, and then sometimes at night.
Q. What did you think of that?
A. Oh, I didn’t like it at the time. But now maybe I’m glad I did.
Q. Why?
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.
I think I learned quite a bit of things. But they were mean.
Q. So most of your memories are bad memories from the school?
A. Oh yeah.
Q. Can you talk a little bit about the meanness?
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.
One time I ran away. I got strapped on bare bum with a strap about that wide (indicating) and about that thick (indicating).
Q. That’s when you got caught?
A. Yeah.
Q. Can you talk about running away, like why you ran away and how far you got?
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. What was it like going home in the summer and seeing your family?
A. Oh, it was joyful.
Q. What would you do? Were you able to practice some traditions and some of your culture in the summer?
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. Is your mom still alive?
A. Oh yeah. She’s eighty-seven years old and she still does beadwork and moose hide.
Q. Wow. Did she go to Residential School as well?
A. No. She never. She’s never been to school. She doesn’t know how to write or read.
Q. What was the food like at school; like breakfast and lunch?
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. What about chores? Did you have a lot of chores to do, like cleaning and stuff? Did you have to do a lot of cleaning at the school, washing floors, cleaning the bathrooms and that sort of thing?
A. Oh yeah.
Q. Can you talk about that, the chores you did?
A. Well, we had to clean the offices, the classes, the playrooms, and the bathrooms. We would each take a turn at everything. We rotated the chores, eh. It was not bad.
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. Are there any other things you want to share today?
A. Not really. Why are we always talking about this? Why talk, talk, talk? We want to see some 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. If it comes to you, just say it.
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. Have you ever talked to your mom or your sisters about Residential School?
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?
A. Yes.
Q. So this must be hard.
A. Um-hmm. All those things I remember.
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. Does coming to something like this help, hearing people talk and being with other people that went through the same experience, does that help?
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. Did they have a funeral for him at the school?
A. Um-hmm. I remember that. I was just a little girl.
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.
Sometimes to punish they would make us go to bed without eating, or without the movie. They had a movie once a week, I think it was, yeah, once a week.
Q. Are there any final things you would like to say?
A. No, that’s okay.
Q. Thank you very much for coming today. I know it takes a lot of courage to sit there and talk about it, so thank you very much.
A. Okay. Thank you.
Q. You’re welcome.
— End of Interview