Sarah Sinclair: English 385.2

My own experience of T&R is something that I enjoy sharing, that I believe I need to share. I’ve heard hundreds of stories about the life of people at IRSs and seeing the pain that holding those stories in has taught me that part of dealing with these stories means sharing them. One person can’t be responsible for stories, they have to be spread out because in truth, they belong to humanity as a whole.

Here’s a story about my experience of the T&R Commission.

I interviewed a young man, in his early 30s. He attended the last residential school in Saskatchewan called Gordon’s Residential. He had a lot of positive things to say about his school experience: he was encouraged to play hockey and excelled at it. He received a normal education. He was generally treated well by the staff. This experience was unusual for me to hear because i only talk to people who were abused at residential schools; “where’s the abuse” I wondered, and that thought sickened me a little.

Well, there was abuse, he was so reluctant to tell me about it. And he has some pretty severe problems because of it. He repeated to me over and over that he doesn’t want to blame the system for his problems, that he has responsibilities for his actions. It was an amazing attitude to witness from a survivor of residential school, a rare one, but I think it may have been partly denial. This man’s problems had been street living and indigency in the past, and currently he’s trying to quit smoking crack.

Every time I see some skinny lady on the street, walking a crack-walk, I remember this fellow and try not to judge her. Every time I see any First Nations person on the street older than say, 40, I remember that they may have gone to residential, or a church-run day school. Or their parents went, or their grandparents. The issues stemming from the residential school policies of the government last longer than 3 generations and I consider myself very lucky that the schools my family members attended weren’t among the worst.