Decades after the closure of Canada’s residential schools, the long-term effects of abuse have become a concern for Nuu-chah-nulth-aht on the west side of Vancouver Island, where a century of forced institutionalization continues to affect communities.
To assist in the recovery process the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council’s Teechchuktl/Quu’asa team is hosting the Teechuktl Intergenerational Healing Gathering Nov. 7-9 at Maht Mahs in Port Alberni. The three-day event is being organized by the NTC to provide residential school survivors and their loved ones a chance to strengthen family connections as well as find comfort and empowerment through culturally-based healing. The Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council applied to the 2017/18 Group Independent Assessment Process Call for Proposals to host an intergeneration healing event and was successful. Sixteen Nuu-chah-nulth Group IAP claimants provided their names for the application, and along with their families, continue on their journey towards healing to strengthen family connections lost due to residential school.
Alice George is a residential school survivor whose experience is helping to inform planning for the gathering. She shared her story with the Ha-Shilth-Sa to hopefully empower other Nuu-chah-nulth-aht in their healing.
“I want our people to work on the core of their lives,” said George.
At the age of 63, George looks back on a childhood when abuse was everywhere. Over the last five years she has found strength in praying to the Creator and her ancestors, a connection that has helped George in her healing.
“It’s powerful, I got that gift from them and I’m not doing this on my own,” she said. “I pray for my children and my grandchildren, the people that I love I pray for.”
As a child George was quiet and fearful. But as she works to break a cycle of pain she is now telling the story of her past. George grew up in the Tla-o-qui-aht reserve of Opisaht, a time that left her with dark memories, including witnessing sexual assault.
“I didn`t know what it was, I was scared and I didn’t know what to do. I`d just stand there in shock,” she recalled. “I was taught to shut up, don’t tell, don’t stand up for yourself, don’t cry, don’t feel. I was controlled not to have feelings.”
A lack of parental guidance worsened her vulnerability, said George. As an adult she sees a legacy of pain that was worsened by her parents’ time at the Christie Indian Residential School. George’s father Ned was at the institution for five years, while her mother Marie spent nine years there as a child. Run by the Catholic Church on Meares Island near Tofino, Christie was the last residential school in B.C. to close in 1983.
“My parents were brought up in residential school and didn’t know anything else,” said George. “Our parents were not parents. They didn’t know how to be parents, so therefore we didn’t know how to be parents. It just passed on from generation to generation.”
The abuse she saw on the reserve was also present in the Opisaht day school George attended. Lining up students to be hit before the class was a regular part of the morning’s activities, said George, and children were frequently molested at the hands of faculty.
After a confrontation with her mother George was sent to the Alberni Indian Residential School at the age of 15. For two years she lived at the institution, which is known to have housed some of the worst cases of residential school abuse in Canada’s western provinces. In the 1990s ex-staff members were criminally convicted, including former supervisor Arthur Henry Plint, who was sentenced to 11 years in 1995 after 36 sexual assault charges surfaced.
Evidence from the Alberni school led BC Supreme Court Justice Douglas Hogarth to declare in his ruling that “the Indian residential school system was nothing more than institutionalized pedophilia.”
“I felt that there was lots of bad in that school when I first walked in,” reflected George.
She attended the Alberni school in the late 1960s, and recalls students taking LSD while they were there.
“I got introduced to it by one of the young girls that I knew there. She said it cost only $2,” said George.
The fourth time she took LSD George temporarily lost consciousness, then had difficulty moving.
“I was crawling up the stairs trying to go to my room because I wasn’t feeling good,” she said. “You remember what happens when you’re on that acid, but this time I only remember trying to crawl up and boom, then I was in the supervisor’s room all night.”
George recalled a woman and three men being in that room, where she was sexually assaulted.
“I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak,” she said.
George attended the Alberni Indian Residential School during the final years of its near century of operation on the Somass River. With approximately 300 students in 1969, the school’s management was transferred from the United Church of Canada to the Department of Indian Affairs. Enrollment sharply declined until the school was shut down in 1973.
The multi-generational effects of the Indian residential school system have left a black mark on Canada’s history, as former students, communities and the country as a whole struggles to come to terms with over a century of the forced institutionalization of Indigenous peoples. In the 21st century this led to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as settlements to residential school survivors through Common Experience Payments to all eligible former students and the Independent Assessment Process for victims of physical or sexual abuse.
For Alice George the healing has required far more than what the federal government or courts can offer. She has had to thoroughly reassess her childhood experiences, with a focus on not blaming herself for what happened.
“I always hated me and blamed me. I’ve worked real hard on that, it’s not that easy,” she said. “I want to learn to like myself and love myself. I want it for my kids and grandchildren.”
George has also ceased to blame her parents, who are both deceased. With love, she even speaks to them sometimes, and can now see that they didn’t have a choice but to be the way they were.
“I forgive my dad…I forgive my mom because I want to heal and I don’t want to live with it anymore, that’s what keeps me down,” she said. “A kind, loving person, that’s the real me. You just have no choice, the way we were brought up. We weren’t taught the good ways.”
As she reflects on the environment of her upbringing, George still sees the prevalence of abuse in west coast communities.
“The chauvinistic is still out there, because our people haven’t healed,” she said. “I believe that we’re controlled, we’re still controlled by the government. I’m going to put it out there because it’s the truth. I’m scared but I’m going to say what I need to say, I don’t care what anyone says. It’s the truth and I’m not going to let myself be in denial anymore.”
For more information about the Nuu-chah-nulth Intergenerational Healing Gathering, contact Quu’asa staff at 250-724-3939 or toll free at 1-888-624-3939.
