Margaret Cardinal- I Was So Scared
I come from a traditional family, and I know, I know I paid dearly when I got, when I went back to boarding school.
I spent a lot of time with my nose on the wall or in the corners, with books on my hands until I fainted. I couldn’t, I refused to lose my Cree because I have a disabled brother. If I lost my Cree, I wouldn’t be able to communicate with him, I couldn’t communicate, communicate with my grandparents. And so I was stubborn, and I know that they can hurt me physically, but in my mind they didn’t.
So when I, every time I spent my nose on the wall, I would be singing to myself in Cree or I would repeat all the stories my grandfather told me. When I was in grade five I did, I wrote small comic books about the stories my grandfather told me, and those were taken away by the nuns. I often wonder whether or not they burned them or they kept them.
The most awful time in classes was my grade three, I had a teacher from hell. In grade three, it was really hard for me to go to the classroom. I would be almost throwing up, getting sick because I was so scared of the teacher. I and this other boy, who’s now passed away, we’re always picked on by the teacher. We always had welts, either on our hands, or on our shoulders, on the back of our heads.
Because we couldn’t read, if she gave us books, I just… it was so hard to open the book. I couldn’t even read the word “the.” Just three letters, I couldn’t say “t”, because every time I look at the book, I would be shaking and I would have butterflies, I just needed to go to the bathroom. And I was just so scared because I knew she was behind me.
And she’d get so mad that she would hit us, to the point where we couldn’t even read, it was so hard. For a long time I couldn’t read in front of anybody because I was always afraid.
– Margaret Cardinal
Notes:
Margaret Cardinal Testimony. SP118_part16. Shared at Slave Lake Hearing Sharing Panel. June 18, 2013. National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation holds copyright. https://archives.nctr.ca/SP118_part16
