Former residential school child-care workers say they wish the school had never existed

on this dark chapter of canadian history and the residential school system in canada we have connected with nancy dyson rubenstein and dan rubenstein and they're in ompa ontario that's about an hour west of ottawa now back in 1970 they worked with children at a former residential school on vancouver island called st michaels they were fired after speaking up about the poor conditions there they have subsequently released a book last year describing what they saw it's called st michael's residential school lament and legacy nancy and dan thank you so much for joining us thank you thank you for having us so nancy and dan in the last several weeks there's been a very painful con conversation happening in this country about residential school systems and you guys have a very unique connection to that history what what have the past few weeks been like for you our book was released just as the first announcement came in came out about the unmarked graves and kamloops we were saddened a visceral visceral reaction to it but we were not surprised the conditions were there for children to disappear and we had heard rumors to that effect when we were at st michaels okay guys so let's talk about that let's go back to 1970. you're a young married couple from the united states you're looking at canada as this sweet wonderful nation i mean i read some of your op-eds you had such wonderful ideas about what canada represented and so you wanted to come here and work and then you started working at the residential school tell me about what you saw the very first day we saw four children delivered to the school was they were led into a sub basement the matron took the children and cut their hair and cut their clothing and took all of that and threw it into the firebox of the boiler and the children were terrified and then she pushed them into a shower and washed them with a very strong soap and we said is this necessary and she answered lice they come in with lice she didn't see the bigger picture she didn't see these little children who had been forcibly taken away from their family and their community and what was your understanding dan of what you'd be doing at that school why did you want to work there well we needed a job to become landed immigrants and i thought it would be something like a school i mean that i had done substitute teaching before i expected it would be a school but it wasn't anything like a school it was really more a warehouse to keep these children there were no records there we we never saw a class list of the children i was to take care of care of i don't think it existed something that had their names the communities where they were from their next of kin this wasn't like anything that that people back then or today can imagine and so you're seeing this so nancy you described the first day how long did you all work there i worked with teenage girls and i very quickly realized i was totally overwhelmed unprepared and i just felt i wasn't effective so i asked the administrator if he would find a replacement so i could quit and volunteer with the 25 little boys dan was looking after they were little boys from five to eight they were missing their baby teeth right the front teeth had fallen out they were just these sweet little boys and i think they were a little bit more open and um easier to connect with the older children were very wary with good reason and then all together we worked there for um what dan worked on we were there four months and what what is amazing to me in those four months when we went through the four thousand pages of trc reports with the exception of witnessing sexual abuse we saw it all the kinds of experiences that are documented in the wonderful book the survivors speak we realized horrifically that our experience was representative of what happened in 130 schools across canada for those who have not read the trc report or are not familiar with it what did you witness that was confirmed by that report it was harsh discipline for things like speaking their own language there was suppression of indian or indigenous culture and traditions there was very poor nutrition there was a lack of care lack of respect lack of love the children had very little privacy they slept in large dormitories with 25 30 cots to a room the staffing was inadequate the facility had very few play opportunities or sports opportunities the children were poorly integrated into the public school medical care dental care and there were no records i found out one of the teenage girls had recently been released from the sanatorium but i didn't know that until uh months after i'd started working with there the other sorry the other major thing is that all all the children have been forcibly 150 000 children have been forcibly separated from their parents that's what we saw that's what nancy just described so when you were there guys what so you thought you were going to be teachers and this was a regular school you quickly realized that's not what it is what did the administration tell you what was their objective because there is this understanding it was to beat the indian out of the child that's what our understanding is what did they tell you when we started the uh it was in the fall of 1970 so the federal government was in charge officially the churches still had a very powerful influence many of the staff the administrator the headmaster the matron had been with the school uh when it was an anglican institution they still had a lot of powerful influence and the children the children were going to the local public schools so we were caregivers in the morning after school evenings weekends and we would look after the children but there wasn't much structure there really wasn't a very clear job description so dan forgive me just for one second if you are witnessing abuse you're witnessing terrible treatment of human beings very vulnerable young children did you all speak out did you try to love these children did you try to care for them what did you do to make sure this abuse stopped we we tried to care for the children and and i have to say there were other caregivers there who were thoroughly decent people that tried to do the best in a bad situation we tried to bear with the children be kind some of the children we got to know and after we had left the school they came over to visit us on a nearby island we tried to maintain a relationship as chief robert joseph who became our spiritual kind of advisor and elder on this journey he said dan the only way you're going to live with yourself is you have to believe that one or two of these children you touch them with your kindness and in their darkest hours maybe they'll keep going he threw me a lifeline we did reach out to the indigenous community to ask them to help us understand how did this school develop and why were the children from alert bay the local community in the school it wasn't for children from remote areas some children were but the majority of children were from the island small island and um there was a minister a local minister who was working with the indigenous community and and they started a petition and we went around because we were working inside the school and we could say this is what we're seeing this is what we're experiencing so we're very excited when this petition was circulated was sent off to ottawa the department of indian affairs and in december three men from ottawa did come to visit the school or the residents and we were very excited the first day um the administrator uh spent time with the men and the second day they asked to speak to staff without the administrator being present they first you know introduced themselves and then they said um do any of you have any concerns about the operation of this facility the other staff were silent but dan pulled a paper out of his pocket and it was a list of concerns that had been drawn up with the indigenous community and others like the minister and he started reading off you know harsh discipline lack of affection inadequate staffing on and on and one of the other staff was furious and he said dan and nancy shouldn't be allowed to speak they're not canadian they're not christians and they've only been here four months dan said we've been here four months but that was long enough to see what's going on and it's called cultural genocide and the next day the administrator called us to his office he was not harsh he was kind um to us he said it's always been a bad fit you need to leave and we certainly agree with that and we were rather relieved there's so much more i want to ask you but we are running out of time folks so let me say this to you this is a painful painful story for so many people in this country and i i wonder some will be asking why didn't you speak up sooner why didn't you say something why weren't you sounding the alarm years ago even after you left the school and and you see all the pain now how how do you interpret those critiques it's a good question and we regret that we didn't part of it was we knew that the federal government was dismantling residential schools and uh the particular residence we were at st michaels closed in 1974. we thought you know the trauma is ending and we didn't really realize the lasting tragic legacy and the intergenerational impact the other thing we didn't realize is the scale of what was going on we knew what happened at one school it wasn't until 2015 with the trc reports we realized that what we had witnessed had gone on for 150 years in 130 different schools the other thing is that frankly in the in the 70s in the 80s they're just in the 60s probably there just wasn't a conversation like we were living in a remote area we had no internet we didn't have a phone we were newcomers who do you tell it was obvious that the federal government didn't want to hear it it was obvious that the churches didn't want to hear it the press wasn't talking about it cbc and the other journalists were not on the story [Music] very quickly guys if you could be in some way reunited with those those young kids that you worked with back in 1970 for those four months and we've been showing images of you nancy with some of those children what would you say to them today and i've thought about this and that's why we i reached out to chief joseph because he's from the he went to the school and he would know the children what i want to say is i am so sorry that that school ever existed and that any child ever set foot in that school throughout its hall history i am so sorry for the existence of that school and that you were in that school and likewise i would say i'm sorry and um we did try to reach out to children and sadly many of the children we worked with were dead at a young age and so when the unmarked graves were announced we realized that there were many other children who survived physically the experience of being the residential school but their little souls were destroyed and they died very young this is a very painful conversation for so many it's clearly deeply painful for the two of you and i think it takes it takes a lot of guts to come out and talk about this stuff and it's stuff that needs to be heard so thank you so much for making time for us tonight thank you thank you so much nancy dyson rubenstein and dan rubenstein worked at a residential school on vancouver island in 1970. and just a reminder folks that the national indian residential school crisis line is available to you at any time if you need some help and some support the number is on your screen right now it's staffed 24 hours a day

Channel: CBC News

Views: 130,016

Keywords: Residential schools, St. Michaels, Indigenous, Vancouver Island

Id: W7m00CFp1no

Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 05 2021