Residential school survivors on the scars of abuse

My name is Clifford Quah i am from the  Sts’ailes First Nation I'm also an   elder and a residential school survivor. And I  attended the Lejac Indian Residential School located 200 kilometres west of Prince George. My name is Cora Voyageur. I'm a survivor of the Holy Angels Residential School in Fort  Chipewan Alberta. My name is Rose Grace Miller I am survivor of the Kamloops Indian Residential school in Kamloops. I was five years old when that I was forcibly taken. I was nine years old when i  was taken. I was only eight years old at the time. We were loaded onto a cattle truck in 1949  and brought to the residential school. My two brothers and myself. I was in residential school  with my two younger sisters Lillian and Dorothy. At this school I experienced emotional,  physical, mental and sexual abuse   and the trauma was so great that I  blanked most of my school days at Lejac. The violence that we experienced at the  hands of the nuns was quite random so it was like   you were walking on eggshells and didn't really  know you know what was going to happen next.  And it was horrible to be there, they told us  if we didn't pray the devil would take us to hell   and burn us. They said if we didn't pray the romans  would come and they would rape us and they'd burn   our eyes and burn our hands and poke out our eyes. Eight years old you believe whatever you're told. So we pray all the harder. When I was in residential school there was one instance that I experienced where my sister was being beaten by  a nun on the other side of a door And my sister was screaming and crying and I was on the other side of the door trying to get in and trying to   to basically rescue her from a nun who seemed  to be quite out of control. It was terrifying to have someone that you love being being beaten and really not being able to do anything about it. Many times we got knocked to the floor  by the nuns and they would call us a   whore we don't even know what a whore is.  I was raped there at Indian school for me   It had followed me through my life. The anger,  the fear, the shame. I was so mad and angry and everything all my life was a big negative  negativity all my positive attitudes are buried. My reaction to the news out of Kamloops  from last week was of course great sadness and   sympathy for the families of those of those  children who never did come back from residential   school, but I wasn't surprised by it. I don't  for a minute believe that this is the only one   in Canada. I survivor expected this, but what  really shocked me was I thought it'd be 10 or 20. But when it said 215, you'd expect  to find that somewhere else but in Canada that was mind-boggling. We knew that there was missing children, we knew there was children that were buried on the hillside there And probably on the school. We knew there was people burned in an incinerator just below our rec room. It could have very easily have been me or one of my sisters. It could have been my brothers, it could have been me. When I ran away I could have drowned in the river. I was only eight years old. I want non-Indigenous people to know that  there is a very dark history in Canada.   And that people have to be understanding and they  have to be compassionate. I want the non-Indigenous people to know that how painful it was and how the colonization hurt us so badly. How still hurting us with the racism. I want non-Indigenous people  to understand they must know they must   learn more about the schools and that's really one of  the reasons why I'm doing this to educate the   public about what happened in residential schools. And how I went through about 20 years of my life to where I am today. They need to understand and stand beside us it's not their fault. I'm not bringing this up to  blame anybody, but I want the history be known.

Channel: CBC News: The National

Views: 67,869

Keywords: Residential school, Indigenous, Kamloops, First Nations, residential school deaths, residential schools abuse, residential school, survivors, truth and reconciliation, bc residential school, bc residential school remains kamloops residential school, residential school remains, CBC, The National, kamloops indian residential school, residential schools, residential school survivors, residential school survivors stories, residential school stories, canada residential schools

Id: 6OuTuTG5liQ

Length: 5min 32sec (332 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021