Mandel Old Woman- It’s Worse than Being in Jail
And another time, I ran away, this was during a blizzard that was the same time, it was a blizzard. I was the only one running away, hey. And I decided to run away. The same thing, very lonely, and the things that I go through, and all the things that like, like it was very… its worse than being in jail, this residential school. And its not, its I say its… You can’t, you can’t… you have to be follow their rules, and you know every little thing you do. Like you can’t even speak your own language. You get hit every so often. You get hit or you get strapped or get pulled by the ear or get knocked on the head. So, and…
Like we go to bed about, about, I say about 5, 5 o’clock in the evening and these things we were only about four or five years old so these things you know, it was very, you know I can’t… very, miserable out there. Some things that went through there… and at the age of four, I was, at the age of four I was doing cleaning. You know doing, doing the cleaning up at the age of four, you know. Like using, using a toothbrush to wipe the steps and gee there was a lot of, you know. At my age of 4 years old, what are you doing using the grooves to, you know, scrub the floors and you know and that was, for a four year old… for a four year old doing that, and mopping and scrubbing the floors and polishing the floors with a machine. You know at four years you’re not supposed be doing that.
And you eat the same old food, out there, you know, you get tired of. And you wear the same clothes, the same clothes over and over. And yeah, it was very miserable out there. And you can’t speak your own language, you lost your language and that’s how I don’t know my language to this day. Umm not my language, my culture I should say yeah. I lost my culture. I don’t even know my culture to this day. I’m at the age of 63 years old now. I just know, just know a few things about my culture now, and now I have to relearn to speak English.
And it was very hard and when we were in the chapel we, umm, when we were, when we go chapel it goes on for hours and hours. I don’t know how long, how long it goes on and we’re sitting there praying we have to get on, on our and our knees for about I say about… I don’t know, an hour two hours and our knees would be… I don’t know, be gee be very, umm, its very sore our knees. And we do fall asleep, and we get slapped on the head. And you know, so we have to keep, keep awake and you know and by the time we’re tired so… I don’t know we get, we get umm.. we get how do we say… We get like, umm like, we get we get punished for that you know. You know so that was one of the things too.
-Mandel Old Woman
Notes:
Oral interview with Mandel Old Woman. Conducted, translated, and transcribed by Gwendora Bear Chief. Old Sun Community College, May 5, 2022.
