Old Sun Classroom

One of the teachers too, was so cruel, was so cruel, and same thing. When we are sitting like this and if we happen to look at someone, if we move our heads, they would accuse us of cheating and say we are copying their work. And, of course they strap on your, they would strap our hands. I became strong because of those straps, I am kidding [laughs].

So, for me those are some of the… some of the experience that I went through in residential school and I’m kind of… my mind is starting to block. It usually happens, I think sometimes when I get to the point I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Then it comes back, “oh I should have said this” and, “I made the mistake of saying this and that” [laughs].

So, I often wonder why Old Sun was still standing but you have to look at the good side of. It is so nice that room you brought us into [Siksika Studies Boardroom]. So, in this building you are try, not trying, but you are helping different people to come back and face what they are going through and to deal with it because they have to move on.

One of the things I just thought to myself when I was starting to heal was that I am not going to hold on to the negative because it pulls you down. They are not going to beat me in that way, and are not going to take advantage of me in that way. They are not going to beat me because if I, if I break down every time I talk about these things, I get emotional cause its there and it’s there especially when we are hurt by it. But if I start and talk about it and always be negative, its like they won over us cause they are still hurting me.

And I thought, you are not going to hurt me like that anymore. Anyone, residential school, the teachers, the students, and the minister, the supervisor, the cooks you are not going to hurt me like that anymore. It’s in you, that’s yours. That’s you, you deal with it. Me, I’m healing myself but I will never be treated like that anymore. So, I try to remember the good out of this. I learned a lot. I learned how to speak English because we always had to speak English to get ahead in life. We had to learn work ethics or whatever, in order to get ahead in life. We… we learned from the pain, the suffering we that went through because its going to make us strong because we, us, we are the next… we are going to be the older ones.

Our Chief Crowfoot was a very compassionate person, I am from his clan. He was so kind and encouraged us to be kind to people and so this is what we have to keep teaching our people.

Yes, deal with the past the pain and all that, but ..ah.. to get ahead we have to get on that positive. Let’s say there are two horses, one is a bad horse and will only lead you to destruction. Yes that’s it, and if we get on the positive horse, that horse will follow all of our cultural teaching, our traditional teachings, prayer, kindness. The Blackfoot prayer has all these things that we are supposed to follow and that’s what we need to do. To accept this place as it is, yes there’s a lot of bad, you know, bad that went on, but let’s keep trying and keep doing the best to bring the positiveness and [Old Sun] it’s going to be a good place for people to come and see. And it kind of is already, I should say, it is already. It now is a place of learning, so it is teaching people to have good lives. In that way all that ugliness will not win, the evil the was there. The goodness is taking over the whole place.

– Isitsimani, Eileen Black

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Notes:

Oral interview with Eileen Black. Conducted, translated, and transcribed by Angeline Ayoungman. Old Sun Community College, June 29, 2022.