Jerry Wood- When It Was My Turn
My early childhood was one of the greatest times I had, ya know. Living on a reserve and that was the only world that I knew.
You know, I didn’t know anything about the outside world. So, I was very happy with my family and all my relatives and especially with my connection to my grandfather. He was a veteran of the Riel rebellion, he was Métis. With him and his five brothers, they were all involved that night. So it was a happy time of my life.
And my dad passed away. I was you know, and I was very young. So, my mother raised me and all my other siblings, went to residential, gone to our residential school and when it was my turn, I was very excited because I was going to a new place. I remember after uh I was raised a Catholic, one day after mass, I guess a farm truck, you know, came out there and picked us up and they’re all these little guys you know in this box you know, looking over.
That time my mother had prepared me a little flour bag of bannock and rubber car, still remember, Bluto. I had my bannock, we were all excited, and when we got to Blue Quills, where I spent 10 years in residential school and one year at Ermineskin residential school for a total of 11 years. And oh, my, my excitement dissipated in a heck of a hurry.
I mean, we got there then they separated us from the boys and the girls and when… they had my new clothes taken away, my bannock, my Bluto was taken away, and I never saw them again. We were issued coveralls and army tight boots, and woollen socks, cotton shorts, and that’s the way we dressed and we were given numbers.
My first language is Cree, that’s all I spoke then, you know. I probably knew “hello,” “good night,” and “goodbye,” that was the extent of my English at the time. We weren’t encouraged. We were forbidden to speak our language, so it was very hard. And also you know, we weren’t allowed to contact or talk to our siblings from the, from the opposite sex. Because there was a sin to do that, you know. We couldn’t even look at them.
So it was it was a total different way of the life I just left, you know of caring. We were given numbers, we were known as numbers, and, and on our first day, we all got a haircut. I had braids, then, you know, and my braids came off. They gave me a haircut right to the skin, put some kerosene on my head to kill the so-called lice that I have.
– Jerry Wood
Notes:
Jerry Wood Testimony. SC143_part02. Shared at Alberta National Event (ABNE) Sharing Circle. March 29, 2014. National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation holds copyright. https://archives.nctr.ca/SC143_part02
