Rita Jane Many Guns- What I Don’t Want My Kids to Go Through
These are the things when I got older and I thought when I start having kids, “I am going to make sure my kids speak English. I did not want my kids to go through what I went through not knowing a word of English when I went to school.” That’s where I made a mistake, it’s just the opposite, my kids speak English and they don’t speak Blackfoot. It just seems they lost their language but because I wanted them to speak English when they went to school. I didn’t want them to experience what I experienced [speaker very emotional].
And not only that, I’ve seen my friends that were abused in school. I get, I get so scared. One time my friend, I don’t what she did. The supervisor, he was a man, I think his name was Mr. Hamilton, he just grabbed her by the hair and he dragged her down the stairs. I was so scared and my friend was screaming, no one helped her.
Those kind things, I think back on, what we went through school. And the other thing what I find very humiliating, I guess, degrading. When we bath, we all have to shower in front of everybody in the bathroom or where there’s about six of us at the same time we bath. I hated to go take a bath. And everyday we are given vitamins, those olive oil. We stand, line up, the supervisor just walks along and squirts them in our mouths. I hated them I just about throw up and if you get caught, you’ll get into trouble, even those vitamins if you get caught not swallowing them, you’ll get punished for it.
Now I feel good that my kids didn’t have to go to residential school to experience all this what I experienced.
– Monoot’taki, Rita Jane Many Guns
Notes:
Oral interview with Monoot’taki, Rita Jane Many Guns. Conducted, translated, and transcribed by Gwendora Bear Chief. Old Sun Community College, May 6, 2022.
