Irwin Big Old Man- On Our Knees for Half a Night
My name is Irwin Big Old Man, I was stationed… not stationed, I was locked up in Old Sun Residential School, and I stayed in the boy’s room. But now the junior boy’s room is a good room. It is a science room where they are teaching Health. And anyways there when I first came, my bed was right beside the supervisor’s room and I was a brat and I was always getting yelled at. I was always on my knees beside my bed.
The following years they took me away from the supervisor’s room, close to her bedroom. They put me by the emergency exit, which was a lot better and quieter so. I never really seen or experienced anything bad in there. One night we all had a big pillow fight, everybody in there. We all got caught and the supervisor, do we go with names or no? Anyways the lady, Miss Bolton, she made us stand on our, I mean kneel down, on our knees for a good half of the night. The guys were passing out and a lot of us guys the next day couldn’t even walk because of the cement floor and being on the knees and what not.
For that the Junior boy’s room was never really see anything. But the bad part was downstairs in the rec room the junior boy’s rec room downstairs, down, I don’t know what’s in there but that’s the shower room, bathroom and everything by the dining room. That’s where everything we see, like the older guys would encourage, made, the little guys to beat each other up. The supervisors they never did nothing. They just sit back and watched and they actually cheered us on.
-Irwin Big Old Man
Notes:
Oral interview with Irwin Big Old Man. Conducted, translated, and transcribed by Angeline Ayoungman. Old Sun Community College, March 28, 2022.
