31/05/2021
This is a photo of my late father at the Erminskin residential school in Maskwacis, Alberta Canada in the mid 1940s.
I wanted to share his story with you to help educate others and bring awareness to a part of our history that was swept under the rug by the Canadian government for well over a century. He told me that he had never told anyone about his residential school experience and that this was the only time he would tell his story because he never wanted to relive the horror's he experienced as a child.. As he was recounting his more traumatic experiences he couldn't stop crying and sometimes he would get so angry he would yell out cursing those priest's and nuns for what they did, so we had to take regular breaks and most of the time as he was telling his story his hands would shake uncontrollably.
Here goes:
At the age of four he was taken from his family home in Maskwacis at gun point by the rcmp. They came with govt papers telling them that all "Indian" children had to attend the residential school. He said the whole trip there he cried along side a whole wagon full of native children from his community. (some were in childrens handcuffs) He spent 10years of his childhood from the age of 4 to 14 being sexually abused by both priests & nuns (children would go to sleep at night crying themselves to sleep because they would be plucked out of bed ever night to be sexually & physically abused), they had their hair cut off & would be physically abused if they spoke the Cree language. Some kids left & were never heard from again. (Roughly 6000 native children died in residential schools from disease, beatings, firing squads, malnutrition, electrocution, newborns born of r**e by the priests ra**ng the little native girls who were thrown into the furnace and those who either froze to death or died of starvation while attempting to run home to their loved one's.
It left him sexually confused and mentally scarred with identity crisis, shame, self hatred, loss of language & culture, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, anger issues and basically all of the isms in the dictionary that led him to doing time in jail when he would try stand up for himself or others against injustices like racism, inequality, oppression, etc. (It literally ruined his life and so many other native survivor's who suffered simular abuses and in doing so extended negative cycles of abuse, disfunction and traumas throughout our communities that will affect us for generations to come.)
The residential schools took the children from the land to disconnect people from their culture in order to take the land from the children. The genocide is ongoing, we still see the constant removal of indigenous children from their ancestral lineages. One of the worst and most powerful things on this earth is the look in a mother's eyes and the pain she experiences when she has that which she loves most in this world taken away from her. It leaves mental scars/trauma we can never forget, it destroys lives, it destroys families, it is a form of cultural genocide and it happens WAY TOO MUCH in our communities.. We need to recognize this as a form of oppression and as a calculated effort by our colonizers to create dysfunction within our communities to maintain control of the land and exploitation of natural resources.
If anyone thinks that native people are marginalized today, 60-70 years ago white folks treated natives infinitely worse and strong native men like my late father had to stand up against such injustices, yet they would be blamed for something white folks initiated, instigated and perpetuated.
Our ancestors have endured so much injustice (from invasion, genocide, attempted extermination, racism, colonialism, forced assimulation, abuses of all kinds, hatred, made outcasts on our own lands, looked down upon by people of other races, etc) since 1492 at the hands of our invaders & WE ARE STILL HERE!
He used to tell me a lot of the negative things he went thru in his life but he never let them beat him & he made sure his children were not exposed to such things. Thank you dad wherever you are for all that you did & for being strong for so long. The harm done to survivors, their children, families, communities, and future generations is IMMEASURABLE.
I pray for him & all survivors of these residential schools so they may find comfort, justice, healing & those 6000+ children who perished in the residential school system are in a better place.
- Maskwasis Boysis
