When we got to Blue Quills, we were herded into this cave, I’d never seen such a huge cave, I didn’t know at the time that it was a gym. It had big windows on the top but none that you could look out, it was very scary.
We were not allowed to speak our language. If we were… if some staff member overheard us, they would report us, and we would go to court or whatever he [likely referring to the principal] called it, because we were not allowed to speak our language. We were supposed to lose our language,
But anyway, my first experience really was loneliness, because I was taken away from a place where I was loved. All of us, all my siblings were loved very much by our parents and to me they were model parents. But anyway, I missed all that.
Indigenous people are still being controlled by the government, policy, legislation, court decisions. They’re members of churches, congregation. Beliefs are a form of that continuing control, indoctrination and other processes that are involved that had their origins in the Indian policy of assimilation and integration. These were actual policies.
So I can’t really remember too many happy times out there. It was all of the things that I went through. You know, the physical abuse, you know, the sexual abuse, mental abuse, spiritual abuse, cultural abuse.
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… 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.
I became, I’m a famous artist today, because of that school, because I didn’t want to learn everything. I became good at doing artwork, and I begin to express the deep hidden inside, the side that Alex wanted to express, but I could only do it to the art.
And so they got us ready. Just had the clothes we had on. Get on a train. Took us a whole day, 23 hours to get here. My brother was nine years old and I was eleven. Like I said, we didn’t know where we’re going…
This one teacher would grab the back our necks and twist the skin, she hurt us so much. Or the ruler, she would hit us on the fingers. These are the bad ones who treated us bad, white men, white ladies… how badly they abused us when we lived here at the school.
Mr. Cole caught me. He just grabbed me, lifted me up and carried me to the dormitory even though I was bawling and kicking my feet.