Warning: this article contains details regarding Canada's Residential School System which may be distressing to some readers.
With more and more unmarked graves being found at former residential schools across Canada, some survivors of the schools are sharing their stories in the hopes to help educate others.
Candace Billy is of Saulteaux and Michif descent and is originally from the Keeseekoose First Nation. She now lives in Moose Jaw. Billy started attending the Qu'Appelle Indian Residential School (QIRS) about an hour east of Regina in 1977 when she was in Grade 2. She left the school when she was 16 as soon as she was legally able to do so. As a fourth-generation residential school survivor, Billy says the trauma inflicted by the schools on her mother was the very same reason she was forced to attend.
"Our parents being raised in the residential schools weren't taught the fundamentals of family life," explains Billy. "We were all stripped of that. They didn't know how to properly parent and love a child because of the things that they were taught about themselves."
As a young parent of four children, Billy's mother was in a difficult position and was told by Child Family Services (CFS) that she would not have been a good mother and that it would be best for her children to attend QIRS.
"I remember sitting in the meetings with the CFS workers and hearing them tell my mom that, 'you're not a good parent and your children are just going to grow up to be criminals.'"
Billy says her mother tried her best to keep her children from going through the same system that she went through but was ultimately told by CFS that if she did not send them to the residential school, that they would take her to court and make Billy and her siblings wards of the government.
"To see my mom look like that, I just said, 'Okay, I'll go. I want to go to residential school.' Plus, my younger brother and sister needed somebody to look out for them."
By the time that Billy attended QIRS in the '70s, the federal government had phased out the Catholic Church's involvement in the residential schools, but the system was still grossly underfunded. Billy says although the teachers no longer wore the habit, the same policies, rules, and punishments were continued. One night, a group of Billy's friends was caught staying awake in bed and she was forced to kneel on the floor with them for hours while being verbally abused by one of the workers.
"All of a sudden I was yanked out of bed by my arm and the child care worker said, 'You're kneeling with your friends!' We had to kneel there and hold our arms out while she told us how awful we were and how we weren't going to amount to a pile of dung. She said our parents were good-for-nothings and that we were worthless and would always be worthless."
When she couldn't give the correct answer to questions about what she was learning in Sunday school, Billy would be slapped. She also recounts a time when she was caught staying up late and forced to scrub the entire school on her hands and knees with a toothbrush. The other students were instructed to mock and embarrass her while they passed. Billy says that the lack of empathy from the workers infected some of her fellow students as well.
"I called them brainwashed. I understand now that it was just their way to survive. In their minds, they were probably like, 'Please just like me so that I don't have to go through anything more.' So they would just agree to anything."
The mind games didn't stop there either. Billy says she would occasionally be allowed to leave the school to visit her grandparents who lived nearby. As a residential school survivor herself, Billy's grandmother had never learned how to show love or affection, something which "comes with the territory," as Billy explains. After a particularly harrowing week, Billy asked her grandmother why she had to go back to school.
"'It is so bad there,' I said. 'Do you even know what is happening to us there?' Then Grandma said, 'Girl? You think you've got it tough? One time they beat my sister at breakfast because she had put a hole in her stocking. I tried to shield her and they poured hot porridge all over us and we were burnt. Do you go through stuff like that there?' And I said, 'no.' So she said, 'Well then don't think you have it bad, you actually have it better.'"
Billy says that this kind of gaslighting and shame is common for residential school survivors who struggle to make sense of the trauma they have experienced as mere children.
"Across the lake from my school, there was the seminary. I used to wonder when I was a little girl why the seminary students would boat across the lake at night and come to our school. But now I know why. They could come and do their ghastly things to us kids and still be good with the Lord because natives aren't humans. That was the reasoning."
Billy says it was normal to hear stories of fellow students getting sick or running away and never being heard from again.
"This was before my time, but there was a story about a 12-year-old girl who got impregnated by one of [the seminary students]. And she was beaten to death at the head of the classroom by the nun because she was dirty, she got pregnant. We still don't know where they buried her. People say that it's just a story but with all these unmarked graves we are finding, we need to check it out."
During Billy's own tenure at the school, one of her classmates ran away from the school but wasn't reported missing by the school for three months.
"Her mom didn't even know that she was missing, she thought that her daughter was at school. They didn't even tell her mom."
At the time, Billy says that the abuse and missing children simply seemed normal. It was only later as she entered adulthood that she learned just how big of a dehumanizing impact that it had had on her life.
"They start to break down your Indigenous identity and then change you to what they want you to be. They tried to turn you white. The goal was to make us more acceptable. I was so confused as a kid. I just wanted to know, 'why do you want me to be this way? That's not who I am.'"
Billy says that attending the residential school destroyed the bonds between her family. While she and her two younger siblings were forced to attend QIRS, her youngest brother, who was half-Caucasian, was allowed to stay with their mother.
"It broke us up. My baby brother didn't even know that I was his sister when I came home to visit. My two brothers don't talk at all. They're strangers and they don't have that bond."
Her youngest brother saw the way Indigenous people were treated and for many years, refused to even acknowledge his native ancestry.
"I just wish that all that didn't happen."
Not only did the school try to strip Billy of her Indigenous family and culture, but it also impeded her ability to get further education.
"I loved to learn and school came easy to me. It wasn't out of fear and I genuinely wanted to learn. But I couldn't take it anymore and I had to quit in Grade 10. I could have gone on to university, but my road went another way because of the residential school. I had my five babies before I was 23 because I didn't want to go back."
But in the end, Billy says it was the love and support of her mother that helped her start to heal. As a child, Billy thought her mother didn't want her because of how little she was allowed to go home. It was only when she left the school and was able to spend more time with her mother, that she learned just how loved she was.
"She taught me what was right, and what was wrong. She knew what we were going through, but what other way was there for us to survive? But she put it in our heads that you need to love. Love, love, love."
Billy later put herself back in school on her own terms, with Indigenous teachers. She says her residential school experience helped her to become wise and strong but that it's difficult to be thankful for such a thing.
"It's so conflicting. The life of a residential school survivor is full of conflict. But we have that strength and wisdom now."
She says she wants to see Canada heal but that it never will until everyone acknowledges that our nation was built upon policies of genocide and extermination, either through violence, or assimilation and degradation.
"People will say, 'Just get over, it's in the past, you can't hang me for what my ancestors did.' However, you're still benefiting from what your ancestors did. The first step of healing is acknowledgment. We're not even getting that. People still refuse to believe us. That's all we're asking...You guys wake up, we're humans. I wish people would just get that."
Billy hopes that every Canadian will do better and work towards the healing of the country.
"This is a great country and it really could be. But we have this past that we have to deal with. Canada is not a great country if this is how we are going to continue to be."
Efforts are ongoing at the sites of former residential schools across Canada. It is more than likely that hundreds if not thousands of unmarked graves will be found.
"We have to mourn through this pain. Those kids...those are the ones who are speaking. Those are the bravest ones. They gave their lives for this. We didn't survive for nothing, and they didn't die for nothing."
The Indian Residential School Survivors support line is 1-800-721-0066. For 24-hour crisis support, call 1-866-925-4419.
You can listen to the full interview with Candace Billy here:
Thu, Apr 25, 1:00 PM
Agriculture, Entry-Level, Full-time
Featured
