Dennis George Greene
Lower Post Residential School
THE INTERVIEWER: Okay. Can you tell us your name and spell it for us, please.
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. And where are you from?
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.
What school did you attend?
A. I attended Ermineskin Residential School.
Q. Ermineskin?
A. Yeah. Ermineskin.
Q. Where was that?
A. At the same location, in Hobbema, but it’s the neighbouring Reserve. There are 4 Reserves.
Q. Okay. And just roughly what years were you there?
A. Probably in the sixties, yeah, sixties to early seventies.
Q. How old were you when you started?
A. I was 7 years old when I first attended Residential School.
Q. What Grade did you go into?
A. I was in Grade 2, I think. I was starting Grade 2.
Q. Did you go to school somewhere else for kindergarten and Grade 1?
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. Do you remember your first day?
A. Yeah.
Q. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
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. Were you able to sleep that first night?
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. Was it hard to leave your dad?
A. Yeah, because I wasn’t used to that. I was so used to being around my family.
Q. Can you describe a typical day, what time you would have to wake up?
A. It depended if you had to go to church. I don’t really remember the routines for my first —
I used to get up around 8 maybe, and you would have to get up. You had to get dressed and go wash up, brush your teeth, and you had to make your bed. Then you would go downstairs and line up for breakfast with the younger boys.
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. Like prison or the Army?
A. Yeah. We would go through the Kitchen and get whatever they were serving. Then you would go sit down at one of the tables in the Dining area.
Q. Were there a lot of children in that school?
A. Yeah, there were a lot. There were younger ones and teenagers and the older boys, bigger boys.
Q. What Grade did it go up to?
A. At that time I think it went up to Grade 12.
Q. Were you there right to Grade 12?
A. No. By the time I was done they only had Grade 9 and I had to go to school in the neighbouring towns. I went to Ponoka and eventually I went to Edmonton to finish my high school there.
Q. What about chores?
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.
In the winter months, later on, you had to do the sidewalks. They always found something for you to do.
Q. What about the education there? Did you feel like you received a good education?
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 —
In the early years the Nuns and the Priests did the teaching, too.
Q. It was a Catholic school?
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. Is that where the scar is?
A. No. There is one beside it, a smaller one. Yeah. I got hit with the ruler. In the early years it was really strict. I got used to doing what I was asked to do, because I took a lot of punishment. Sometimes I would get in trouble. After a while, all the straps I got, after a while I got used to it, being punished.
Q. It was a bad experience then?
A. Yeah.
Q. Can you talk about any specific times and memories you have of things that happened?
A. Just some of the teachers I hated, because they were mean. You had to endure that for one year. The fights. I got into a lot of fights, not only with the people in the Residential School, but the other kids coming in. It was kind of like we were 2 separate groups.
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. In the school?
A. Yeah, in the Residential School.
Q. Can you talk about that a little bit, how that worked?
A. How that worked was if you couldn’t fight —
I think they still do that in jail, according to people that I talk to.
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. Was there more than one person involved? Did a few of you protect the other children?
A. A lot of us.
Q. Would you ever protect them against the teachers, or was it really just other students?
A. Other students within the Residential School, or even the day scholars they used to call them. They were the kids that got to go home every day.
Q. So some kids were able to go home every day?
A. Yeah. But we were a mixture during the day in the school. It was the only —
Well, there were other little schools but Ermineskin was probably the biggest school at that time with Grade 12. The rest were those one-room schoolhouses.
Q. What would the teachers do about the fighting? Did they ever try to stop it or get involved in any way?
A. Sometimes. I seen students getting thrown around when they were fighting, or getting hit with rulers and yardsticks. Later on I seen students getting hit with hockey sticks. It was about survival, not just from the students, the kids coming in during the day, even the teachers. Some of them used to fight the teachers.
It was a world of violence. I seen a lot of violence, a lot of anger, a lot of rage. The teachers would take it out on us.
Q. What about your culture? Did you feel they were taking that away from you as well?
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. Do you remember what your life was like before you went to school? Were there certain cultural things like spirituality involved?
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.
Prior to Residential School there was a strong family connection, not just with my family but with the extended family. But in boarding school I was isolated from all that. Eventually I kind of distanced myself from everybody, not just my family, but everybody.
Again, I’m just starting to make those connections.
Q. That’s good. Was it hard to go home in the summer?
A. No. I looked forward to going.
Q. Were you ever able to talk to your parents about what you felt about Residential School?
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. Did she go to Residential School?
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 —
I guess I still had that mentality where it was better not to say anything, because in Residential School if you showed emotion it was a sign of weakness. In order to survive you had to shut down.
Q. So even if you cried, or something?
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. Are there any specific experiences that you underwent in Residential School that you would like to share today?
A. Any experiences?
Q. Any certain events?
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.
Most of my life I trained to be a better fight. I have fought most of my life. I have been stabbed, shot at, piled up on, but I survived. I lived in that world of violence. I trained in different martial arts, boxing and I have a First Degree in Tai-Kwan-do, but it was always about taking power from my opponents. I got used to that, to take power from my fellow men.
Q. That’s how you knew to survive.
A. Yeah.
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. If you could see them today, what would you say to them?
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. Really?
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. Are there any other experiences that you would like to talk about? Even right after Residential School, what did you do when you were done Residential School? Did you work?
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.
But I drank a lot. I started drinking. I still tried to stay in school because my parents told me it was the only way out. At that time there was really nothing in the community; just poverty and unemployment. I tried to follow. I tried to listen to what my parents were saying for me to finish school and get out.
I drank a lot and drugs started coming in. I experimented. At one point the alcohol started coming down so I tried to commit suicide a couple of times. Well, maybe more than a couple of times. I was living in pain. I was self-medicating.
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
A. I did a ten-day program. We talked about the boarding school experience. It was mostly about anger and rage.
Q. Was that all Residential survivors?
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. What is your work with young people?
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.
This is my community. It is so dysfunctional. But people are in denial.
Q. Do you see anything offering hope in your community, things that are working or helping?
A. Before I came down this way I was so sick of my community, and I work with these kids, I was sick from what I learned through their eyes, through their experiences, I wanted to get away. I wanted to get away from there.
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.
Anyways, I turned what I learned, I learned to apply it and even today he was so used to taking his power, so I went to take his power for a good 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. What are the things that work the most for you?
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. It makes us sick inside if we keep it there.
A. Yeah.
Q. Are there any final things you would like to add today?
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.
A. Okay.
Q. Thanks. How do you feel?
A. How do I feel?
— End of Interview
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