Melvin Jack
Lower Post Residential School
THE INTERVIEWER: Could you please say and spell your name for us?
MELVIN JACK: My name is Melvin Jack; M-e-l-v-i-n J-a-c-k.
Q. What Residential School did you go to?
A. I went to Lower Post.
Q. What years were you there?
A. I believe I was there from —
It was so long ago.
Q. How old were you when you started?
A. I started when I was 5, so it must have been in 1954-55, maybe earlier.
Q. You started when you were 5?
A. Yeah.
Q. How many years were you there?
A. I think I was there until I was thirteen or fourteen years old; 7 or 8 years.
Q. Do you remember what life was like before you went to Residential School?
A. That is a good place to start because I do remember my life when I was a child. My mother’s name was Gloria and my father’s name was Henry. At the age of 5 years my parents took care of me in a way that a child should be taken care of. It’s not only my parents who took care of me, but it was also the whole Village of Atlin.
I remember going on trips across the lake where all the kids went, you know, and everybody took care of everybody else’s kids. We used to sit down and have a big picnic. One lady I speak about – she’s gone now – her name was Rena. When it was time to eat I used to sit by her and wait for fresh bannock to come off the frying pan, put butter on it that would be melting because it was so hot. It was a good time I remember.
There was no fighting among our people. They were getting along, enjoying each other’s company, you know, and they were together. That’s as far as I recall before I went to school.
Q. Do you remember that first day of school and how you got there?
A. I think the first day of school I recall —
My older brother and sister went, and then I was going, so I was excited because I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I was getting away from Atlin. Before I went my mother Gloria used to sit on the hill in August and she was crying. We thought it was funny at the time. She used to say, “August moon”, and I realize now that she was crying because all her children were being taken away. I didn’t realize that until I was an adult.
But when I got to the school it was night and day. There wasn’t the loving respect we got from all our First Nations. When we got there we were lined up. We were de-loused. We had hair cuts. And when I tried to ask questions I was told to shut up and stay in line. I was blown away so I had to keep quiet.
Q. Did you speak English when you went?
A. Yes, I spoke English and I spoke a little bit T’lingit, but not fully. I understood T’lingit. My father used to take me over to a place across from our house there, Johnny Anderson’s place. Johnny Anderson I believe was Wolf. I’m Wolf. I follow my mother’s side. My father was Crow. My father was Kokotan (ph.). My mother was Yenyedi (ph.) He used to take me over and I used to sit by John Anderson. My dad would say “sit by him”, and I would sit right on the floor by him. It’s not punishment. At the time I thought they were harsh, but it wasn’t punishment. It was to teach us. I could hear them talking in T’lingit and I sat there so much I began to understand what they were saying. And then I mentioned something and they were all surprised. They looked at me.
When I was getting restless and stuff, the old man used to tell me to sit still. There was no physical punishment, punching, or anything like that.
Q. It was a good educational system?
A. Yes, it was, out of respect, not out of fear.
Q. What was a typical day like at school? What time did you wake up? Do you remember that?
A. I don’t recall the time. But the first thing when we got out of bed, we were on our knees praying. We had to pray before we went downstairs, and then we went to the Play Room downstairs, and then we had to pray before we went to breakfast, pray before we had breakfast, pray after breakfast, pray before we went to school, pray at recess, pray before we went to dinner, pray before we ate dinner, pray after dinner, pray before we went to school, pray at recess again, pray before we left school, pray before we went to supper, pray before supper, after supper, and before we went to bed.
So they taught us well about their higher power.
Q. What about the food?
A. I think the food —
I don’t know how nutritious it was. They feed you mush in the morning, slimy mush. I don’t know how they cooked it. It didn’t taste too good. I believe it wasn’t fresh milk. They gave us powdered milk. Some of the students couldn’t eat the mush. They were getting sick and I remember the Nuns used to come and beat them up. They would say, “Other people are starving, you eat it.” They forced them to eat it.
We used to get hamburger, big round hamburgers, and you would open it up and it’s just a shell and there’s grease in there.
At Easter time —
I recall when we were in Lower Post we were too far away from home to go home for lunch. They used to have Lent, that’s what they called it, and they used to fast. All we ate was just a slice of bread and milk and broth, like OXO, you know, you mix it in water. That’s what they gave us.
Unfortunately the Staff there were eating a lot better than us because they had their own room and as we were walking by we could see drumsticks sticking out from under the washcloth, and everybody would say, “Look, chicken, chicken.” So they treated themselves differently than us. They were preaching to us to fast because of their higher power. Whatever happened?
Q. What about chores? Did you have to do chores?
A. Yeah, we were forced to do chores, washing floors and cleaning toilets, whatever, to keep the place clean.
I think one of the things I had difficulty with as a young child is I used to pee the bed and I used to get punished for that. I remember one of the punishments was going on the playground and being told to pick up a hundred and twenty-five buckets of rocks. The pails were quite big. They were like this (indicating) and about that (indicating) high. I think they were two-gallon or three-gallon pails.
To this day I can’t imagine such a young child, 4, 5 or 6 years old, lugging the rocks across the playground and being beaten by the supervisor because I wasn’t fast enough. I could barely lift the bucket up, never mind carry it. I had to pick up a hundred and twenty-five buckets of rocks while the other kids played.
Q. Are there other experiences, things that happened to you that really stand out that you can share today?
A. Yes. I was abused by the supervisor. I believe I was 6 or 7 years old at the time. I didn’t know what was going on. His reward to me was a chocolate bar. Unfortunately I talked about it after. I talked to one of the boys and it got back to him. We were in the Dormitory and he gathered everybody up and he called me up. He didn’t speak. He didn’t explain to anybody why he was punishing me. He just told me I shouldn’t have talked about it. He laid me over a desk and he had a fibreglass fishing rod and started to whip me, to the point where I lost control of my bladder and I was screaming. Every time I screamed he told me to shut up. That sealed my lips for it seemed like an eternity.
Also I was questioned by the principal, Father Levac (sp?). He brought me up there —
— Speaker overcome with emotion
Did Mazinsky (ph.) —
We called him Mr. George because we couldn’t pronounce Mazinsky.
Did Mr. George —
I don’t know the exact words, but you know, “Did he abuse you?” Did you want to, you know? And how was I supposed to answer?
So I don’t recall what the answer is today. But after that, when I was questioned, he was removed from the school for a short period of time. He was assigned to Senior Boys. He called me to the edge of the playground. It was near the edge of the river there, and I still remember it to this day where he was crouching down. I was so small. He said, “The Senior Boys are going to beat the shit out of you for what you said.”
I could see the river running by and at that time I felt like running down to the river and throwing myself in. It wasn’t anger. I don’t know if it was fear, or what.
But that little boy is back. He was away for a long time.
Q. Did you ever try to run away from school?
A. Yes, I did try a couple of times, but it was fear that kept me there, fear of seeing other boys who had the courage to run away, they were brought in front of all the boys and their heads were shaved. All their hair was cut off. They were stripped down and they were whipped with the fibreglass rod to the point at one time one of the boys was bleeding. That individual who was whipping him, I don’t know whether he was getting his jollies out of it, because the more he screamed the harder he hit. The sad part of it is when the boys were being punished, you might call it capital punishment or whatever you might call it, it was used to strike fear into us Junior Boys.
One of my buddies did something wrong. I don’t know what it was. But one of the supervisors, Brother Guy they called him, brought him up in front and explained what he was being punished for. He was going to spank him, or whatever, and he tried to get away. He grabbed him, and he grabbed him by the arm and he was on the ground. He was pulling his arms up so much you could see it coming up behind his shoulder. He was screaming.
So a lot of the boys started crying out of fear. I don’t know if it was fear or compassion. Brother Guy would go there and he would dish it out and tell them to shut up with their crying. I used to call it cry hiccups, you know, when you are trying to hold it down. At the time he was beating up this individual, he went down, so he started kicking him, kicking him. And his shoes flew off. So one of the boys started laughing. Brother Guy went over and tried to grab him. He pulled away so he grabbed him by the hair and dragged him up there and started clubbing him down with his shoes. It wasn’t a very nice place.
Q. Were you able to go home in the summer?
A. Yes, we were able to go home in the summer. But the change when I came back was like night and day. Like I said, my mom used to cry on the hill there, you know.
And First Nations weren’t allowed to drink then. I look back now, the first week in August, second week in August, they started putting up home brew, I think to drown their sorrows, to drown their pain and stuff, you know.
I don’t recall after I came back from the Residential School that my mother said “I love you”, because I believe today that she couldn’t love me because she couldn’t hold me. I was gone ten months out of the year.
Q. Did you ever get a chance to talk to her about your experiences?
A. I’ve talked to her about my experiences, but she didn’t believe me because the abuser at the time portrayed such a dignified —
I don’t know what you would call it.
— what a good supervisor he was and how much he cared for the kids. I was just told to shut up. “That never happened.” I shut up. I never talked about it.
Q. Did you hold that in for many years?
A. I held it in I believe for fifty years.
Q. When did you first start talking about it?
A. I started talking about it when I was forty years old, give or take. And I didn’t realize at the time I was talking to a counsellor, a female counsellor, that’s the only kind of counsellor I’m comfortable with is a female counsellor, and she said “I wish you could see your body language when you were talking about it.” “You are always tensing up and shaking and trying to fight it to keep the secret down, for whatever.”
I shut if off. I never talked about it for years. I got married and I was married at the time. My wife told me I needed some counselling. I used to get mad. I said, “No, I don’t.” I realize now today that maybe we would still be together if I had listened to her.
Q. What made you first seek counselling?
A. After the separation from my wife I realized there was something wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. So I needed to trust somebody to try and find out what it was. I used to be scared of my anger. I remember beating up people bigger than me and I just blacked out. When I came to, they were on the ground and I’m just pounding, you know. I was scared of that.
Q. So Residential School impacted the rest of your life?
A. Yes, it sure did. I drank a lot. I hardly did any drugs in my early years, but I drank a lot. I was drinking myself to death. I lived from pay cheque to pay cheque, you know.
Q. Do you have children?
A. I have 3 boys.
Q. Have you ever talked to them about your experiences?
A. I talked very little with them about the experience, and I think they understand. I think I’m going to find the right time to talk to them about it.
At one time when I went to where I’m part of the Trailblazers and we went to court. We’re down in Terrace and we lost some people in Carcross, and I was working as the spokesperson at the time so I had to come North to sort of represent the Band. A very close friend of mine phoned me from Terrace, one of the support workers, Joanne Filion (sp?). She said, “The verdict came down.” “Twenty-nine charges against this guy.” And she said, “Would you like to hear it?” I said, “Yes.”
— Speaker overcome with emotion
Q. Do you want us to pause for a moment?
A. No, I’m okay. I just need to take a breath.
Q. Take your time. Take a sip of your juice and take a moment.
— A Short Pause
A. Being a single parent I was always trying to be strong for my boys.
I said, “Go ahead.” She starts, “Guilty.” “Guilty.” I just broke down. I started crying. I never ever, ever cried in front of my boys before.
My throat is hurting now because I know every time I wanted to cry I forced it down. We were never ever allowed to cry at school. We were never ever allowed to show any kind of emotions; happiness or sadness. I think we were taught to be zombies.
And when I started crying 2 of my boys just took off to the bedroom. My oldest one, Kyelone (ph.) held me as I was crying. He was calling down the church, that he was going to kill this man. I told him it’s not the church.
But it was a difficult journey for me. It’s getting a lot easier.
I taught my boys. I guess I should practice what I preach because I would tell them it’s okay to cry. And then when I feel the need to cry, I push it down.
Then I went to treatment, to Tsow Tun Le Lun. I never realized that —
I want to explain something about when I was talking about that little guy. Every time I looked at him he was hunched over crying, and I didn’t want to go near him. When I went down to Tsow Tun Le Lun, I went into a medicine lodge and a very strange thing happened to me down there. I was sitting. We were helping the Elders out. We were going to have a “Honouring the Elders” down there. I was sitting down, and somebody said, “Hello Melvin”. I looked around and I thought somebody was fooling me so I didn’t pay attention. Then I had to go to the front. I was going to have a doctor’s appointment and there were only 2 Elders there. Then he said, “Hello Melvin”. So I went to see the counsellor and talked. So I went in the room there and prayed. Then I went to see him in the sweat lodge and I talked to him and he said, “Were you close to any woman?” And I said, “my mother, but she’s passed away.” So he said, “Get a dark cloth and we’re going to bring it back.”
I didn’t realize at the time my mother was part of my healing, and even if she was passed away, she came back to assist me.
And when I was in the medicine lodge I got a stick and hit back all that shit that guy gave me, you know. I don’t fuckin want it. Take it. Take it.
I could see that little guy sitting there. I was really angry. I was screaming and hollering and everything, and beating the ground. I could visualize him, you know. I could see him kind of in a semi-dark room. I started hollering to him. Go away! Go on!
— Speaker overcome with emotion
I could see him running toward me. I brought him back.
Right now I don’t know if I feel anger, but I know I need to talk about it some more. I think we need to find a way to educate our politicians on the pain they inflicted on our people.
My mother was a good teacher. She was always kind. She treated people good. Also the Elder taught me to be good to people. Be careful of the words you say. Once they come out of your mouth you can’t take it back. Sometimes I get so angry I just want to hurt people and try to make them understand how they are hurting other people. But I know I can’t go there.
I’m trying to teach my boys the good life. I remember one time I had to spank one of my boys, Jonathon. I was strapping him. And as I was going to my bedroom I seen Gerry, my oldest one, holding him as he cried. He said, “What the hell are you doing?” You are doing the same thing that was done to you in the school. So I changed.
We’re staying at the end of the village where there’s no people. So it’s going to be “talk about ourselves” night. So Kyelone (ph.) went downstairs and shut the power off. I said, “Okay, Joey”, my youngest one was 5 years old, “talk about your life.” “Don’t be scared.” “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Joey talked about himself. He said, “When you scream at me you scare me.” So I said, “Tell me when I do that.” “When you start screaming dad, you scare me.” So I cut it out.
Another time my son Gerry, you know, I said, “Did you ever say you love yourself?” And he said, “No.” Well, say it. “I love you Gerry”, he said. I said, “I can’t hear you?” “I love you Gerry”. I said, “I can’t hear you?” And he started screaming. He started crying, “I love you Gerry.” So I took him to the sink and I picked up a cup. I filled it with water. And as I poured the water I said, “Look Gerry, I love you dad, I love you mom”, but there’s nothing left in the cup for you. You gotta learn to love yourself.
And I think that’s what I’m getting them to do, I hope. But there was so much pain in there.
I bumped into a buddy I haven’t seen for thirty years. The last time I seen him was thirty years ago, or more, and part of me wanted to cry, you know.
Q. Did you see somebody you went to school with?
A. Yes. I went to school with —
Q. Would you like to go on to another tape, or do you —
A. I think I’m fine. I think it’s okay.
Q. Do you want to finish now?
A. Yeah, sure, I can finish.
Q. Do you have many things you would like to talk about?
A. No. I can talk all day. But I think most of what I need to say, I’ve said it, you know.
Q. Are there any final things you would like to share?
A. I think the final thing I need to say is we need to educate the government on the impact on First Nations. They are ignoring it, you know. They refuse to understand what the put First Nations through, and they think just a few dollars will shut us up. No, it won’t.
It’s like the little Dutch boy and the leaking dike. He’s got all his toes, and his nose and everything, and it’s still leaking. That dike is ready to break.
Q. Thank you very much for sharing your story with us.
A. Thanks.
Q. You’re done. You got through it. You did a good job. I know that’s hard to do.
A. I didn’t realize.
Q. It is harder than you think.
— End of Interview
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