Eileen Black- I was so Sick
I used to hate it when we went to eat. One of the things I used to think about, I went into the girl’s room and it’s not the first, it’s the second time I have gone in there. I don’t have good feelings, you know? I went in there last week that, that bottom and, yea, that’s the playroom. This is the playroom and the bathrooms are here and here [points to 3D model of the school]. So I got sick and don’t recall who the supervisor was. I got sick and I was very sick, I could hardly move around. When I went to the supervisor, she would get mad at me and I hated it, she would even slap my head and say “you are slow. You are supposed to be in here and lined up.” We would have to sit up straight.
I was so sick and, I don’t recall how my parents found out. I think that I was so sick and they had to call my parents. Because I remember the dorm, that dorm, they came in and me I was in there. Then they took me out and I was brought to the hospital, the Blackfoot Indian hospital and here I had, it was, it was a kidney infection. I almost died from it, I was in the hospital, that Blackfoot Indian hospital, for three months before I got better. And I did not return to school until I fully recovered. I don’t recall the month, but I remember how ill I was and how that supervisor, when she hits us not only in the head… when it hurts that much, it just hurts all the way down to your toes. The pain, yes.
– Isitsimani, Eileen Black
Notes:
Oral interview with Eileen Black. Conducted, translated, and transcribed by Angeline Ayoungman. Old Sun Community College, June 29, 2022.
