It’s a lot more heartbreaking, heartaching and completely dumbfounding when you’ve grown up with all the stories and first hand accounts of people in your own family about this stuff and then meet someone who does not want to believe it.

I won’t say where I’m from or where my parents went to residential school … we’re from northern Ontario and my family tree stretches from Chapleau all the way up to Hudson Bay. We’re a mix of Ojibway / Cree and OjiCree … we live in that part of the country where two distantly related language groups meet each other. We’re neither fully Cree or fully Ojibway, we’re in between, which confuses many people.

Mom went to a school in the southern part of our territory and she had a few bad things happen to her but she more or less had good experiences, people took care of her and she had a decent education. Dad on the other hand was completely traumatized, literally tortured, basically kidnapped at the age of eight … we have family genealogists and researchers who found documents listening his name and year he was picked up which made him eight years of age, along with four others who would have been seven and eight at the time.

My parents often told us about where they went to school when we were growing … but they never talked about the terrible things that happened to them. They did mention that people were mean and unkind to them … but we just assumed that they were like the mean and stern teachers we all saw at school. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I started hearing stories of what happened. I never got the stories from my parents, I heard them from other survivors … it’s weird, each survivor never wanted to talk about what happened to them, but they were able to talk about what happened to others around them. My uncles told me what happened to dad years later through bits and pieces and fragments of stories they shared over many years. One of my dad’s older brothers was taken in when he was older at about the age of 12 or 14 and he was a bull headed and strong individual who was known to literally start fist fighting with priests, nuns and school people. They kept him only for a couple of years and he was not forced to return. He was the one who told me that dad was one of the weaker kids and that he couldn’t protect him or his other younger brothers.

Dad had one brother who was a year older that he stuck with during those years.

There’s one sad story I learned from all that. At one point, this older brother watched out for dad during their first years together. They were constantly together to the point where the older brother would do things like tie his younger brother’s shoes and help him dress in the morning. That little bit of help and caring was frowned upon and the older brother was constantly beaten and punished for showing any affection.

After the first few years, the brothers drifted apart and they helped each other less and less and the more they spent time away from one another, the worse their experiences became.

No one ever came out with detailed stories of what happened to dad … all they know is that it was bad. Dad never mentioned any of it until he was in the last ten years of his life. He saw the payouts that were happening and he said at the time that he would share some stories just so his kids and grandkids could have the money. He didn’t care about any kind of reconciliation because the damage had been done and that he would never heal from any of it. I helped him write out some of those documents and recounted some tame stories of being beaten, being tortured and being absolutely terrified at supposed monsters and demons he saw as child … I can only imagine that the demons and monsters he saw were just childhood memories of something truly terrible that happened to him.

God I hate this day because it makes me think about and talk about these things.

I am happy that this day exists to remind everyone of what it is and what happened.

But at the same time, it fills me with anger, hidden rage and anxiety knowing what happened to my parents and that in many circles it is still debated and discussed by those who have no connection at any to these things.

I’m happy we’re here talking about it and that I can share at least this much of my story with you … it alleviates some of the burden knowing that I told someone else and it makes it that much better for me knowing that it is being heard by someone who cares.

Chi-Meegwetch, thanks very much.