 He's always taken me away, making me let go of my father's hand, to show him that I have to be brave to go learn to be a white man. Shirley Chichu is an actress, a writer, and artist. In the summer and autumn of 1991, she presented her one woman show, Path of No Moccasins, based on her experiences as a child in the residential school system. It is a subject now finding its place in the themes of many other native artists. These schools were the principal means by the government to enforce a policy of assimilation on native people, whom federal authorities believed to be barbaric and pagan. In fact, the inferior quality of the schools run by the churches was a means of depriving native children of culture, language, custom, and eventually identity. Shirley's play presented her life story in four parts. Her experience in the schools, as a young woman after she got out, searching for healing, and life now. She took the show on tour in Ontario and also to the San Francisco Indian Film Festival. After the performance of the play, people were invited to gather and talk about their residential school experiences. For many, Path of No Moccasins affirmed the idea that artists can heal themselves and others by relating their stories and bringing to light dark and painful memories. The circles of discussion became part of another kind of healing. When I was a young kid, all I wore was moccasins, until I went away to residential school. When I got to residential school, everything was taken away from me. My sexuality, my culture, my language, my family. It's like being put in a box and you can't move. The lines of boats docked and moved me. All the children sad and mothers crying, wailing over the sound of the train whistle. My father holds my hand and I pretend to be strong so he'd be proud of me. He gives me twenty dollars and puts me on the train. He smiles and kisses me, but his eyes tell me he's sad. I ran to get a window seat so I could wave goodbye as the train slowly pulls away. My sister's at the window looking out at my mom and my other sisters at the station and she was just crying. I don't want to go, I don't want to go and there was nobody to take us to the boarding school. I was nine and Jeannie was seven. I remember that God-awful hurt. And you know that hurt and that loneliness was to stay with me all my life. The Mounties came and got us. We were playing in the tent. I remember that and he just put us in the car and off we went. The next time I knew I was in Spanish in a restaurant. From there we got on a horse buggy and then down to the residential school. That's when I started screaming my head off, I guess. They separated us, he was holding on to Stella, she was older. They separated us, they were just screaming. So from on there I lived there for eight years straight. I remember the residential school as being cold and black and white. It was, the nuns were in their habit and everything seemed sterile. It was a sterile environment. I can remember kids coming in from Moose Factory and way up north, the Aclavic, little children. And they couldn't speak a word of English and as soon as they went to speak their language they got weapons and strappings. You know, they take away everything from you in there. They deprogram you. They try to turn you right into a white person. I'll just put some Javex on this cloth. It should make my skin real white like my underwear does when I wash them in Javex. It burns my skin. I'm all covered in rash. I sure am a red Indian now. They take away your culture, your heritage. You're not allowed to talk about any of those things. If you do, it's in private, providing you're not overheard. Everybody the same, nobody, all the same. When we had numbers, I was five. My sister was eight. We called each other hardly by names, just by numbers. I had natural curly hair. And you take me to the laundry room. Every morning there was three girls, three of us. That cold oil and that picture, the same thing. More hair with cold oil. Make it straight, but my hair would curl again next morning, same thing again. That's how I lost my hair. Well, I didn't lose it. It got chopped off by the supervisor. Chop, chop, chop. Just a bunch standing on top of my head straight up. The supervisor put a chair in the middle of the door and told me to sit in it. And she told the rest of the girls to sit at the end of their bunk beds. Everyone giggled. I fell sick to my stomach and the pain kept shooting up and down my back, sitting there with my brush cut hair. I shouldn't scream, but I didn't. Supervisor said, Shirley number 37 has a new name. She will now be called Woody Woodpecker. Woody Woodpecker. Woody Woodpecker. And no one is to call her Shirley from now on. Residential schools were a fact of native life for almost a century throughout Canada. They began as a network of federal day schools which were imposed on native communities in the late 19th century and became mandatory in 1920 with amendments to the Indian Act. By the 1940s, about half of the Indian student population were enrolled in 76 schools across the country. Abuses of power by the people who ran the schools were common as authorities felt absolute control over every aspect of the children's lives was necessary to civilize them. These abuses included strict and often excessive regiments of work, school, and prayer, punishment for the smallest infraction, and sometimes sexual molestation. But the cruelest blow the school struck was to the bond between parent and child. Children were often removed from their homes at the age of four, not to return until they turned 16. And was here. He wouldn't let them lock me up like this. But he's in another residential school. I don't even know where. Theatre is only one form native artists have worked with to begin transforming the residential school legacy. Jim Logan's series of paintings, A Requiem for Our Children, tells stories which painfully depict the loneliness and abuse of native children in the schools. Jim was born in British Columbia and in the early 80s worked as a lay missionary in the Yukon. In his work on the reserves there he encountered many problems all of which he says pointed back to childhoods spent in residential schools. His paintings have emerged from the images within the stories he heard, images he says stayed in his heart. The alienation between parents and children is probably one of the most destructive incidences that occurred through the school system. The bonding that parents and children are supposed to have was severed in the school. And I think that was probably the most destructive thing. The separation was the thing that really hurt most kids and scarred them emotionally for their lives. The showing of Jim's paintings at Confederation College sparked discussion and more memories. I used to wait in bed for my mother to show up but she was never there. She was a couple of hundred miles away. I couldn't realize the distance that I had traveled by train. I thought my mother was just where the truck picked us up. That was always my impression on those first three years that I was at the boarding school. I thought my mother was just where we got off the train. I remember my brother when we were in residential schools I couldn't see him. And I used to know at a certain time, a certain day of the week that I would pass him in the hallway. So what I did was on Sunday we'd have cookies and something sweet so we'd get a special treat on Sunday. So I'd save these things for him and when I pass him in the hallway I'd give him the cookies. That's the only way I could communicate with him. I happened to be playing by the big wall. I used to call it a fence where nobody was supposed to go. I happened to be playing close by there and I happened to see my sisters playing in the playground. So I started jumping up and down. I called their names and trying to get their attention to shake their heads. And confusion started to set in because I was wondering why are they ignoring me. I realized after my sister got a hold of me in the hallway during one of our meal breaks and she says we're not supposed to talk to each other. We're not supposed to communicate with each other. And we're not even supposed to be talking our language. She says you're supposed to try and speak the English language. Who on the moon come into this room? I want to know what my mother's doing. Is she having another baby that's going to end up like me? Did she get that letter I told them to mail to her? Dear Mrs. Lillian Chichu in the bush Ontario. I am writing this letter to prove that I can write now. You can come and get me now mom. I can even speak English like the older kids. I really miss you and I miss helping you get wood. I'm really big and I can watch you know when you're working hard. So you're going to come? Your friend, Shirley Chichu. All letters in mail were censored. Usually letters were maybe three sentences. How are you, hope you're fine, please write. And that was it. And the letters that came back from parents they were sometimes also thrown away because they didn't want parents coming up to visit the kids. The communication was kept at a minimum. When they sent your kids from your home to go to school there's nothing there for you. It's just like you're empty after they go. And you're always thinking, I wonder what's going to happen to my kids next time when I hear from them. And those emptiness, crime, it's really hard. From the parents' perspective the stories that I heard have been ones of extreme guilt. They wished they could have done something but it was against the law for them to withhold their children from school. And they were faced with the possibility of a jail sentence. And the kids be taken anyways. They're faced with, if they're on relief or a welfare of being cut from such services. The parents really had no authority over the situation. Ines May's mother, Francis Peters, was born in 1919 in the small reserve of Lac de Villac. In the early fall of 1924 she was taken from her home to a residential school. Ines's grandfather was on the trap line at the time and couldn't prevent this from happening. His first attempt to see a stolen child was at Christmas but by that time the little girl didn't remember her father anymore. She only recognized him when he began to speak to her in their tongue. Her father, once he got there he asked her how she liked it, where she was. And my mother recalls starting to cry and telling him, you know, besides having her hair cut which was quite a traumatic thing for her. She had belt belts all over her body. She was never allowed to speak in her own language. And my grandfather, he was very appalled at what his daughter was telling him. He wanted to take all his kids out of the system right then and there. But of course the priest came and threatened my grandfather with the RCMP which I guess the people at that time were pretty afraid of the RCMP because they were the law back then. My grandfather left and he was never allowed to go back and visit his children again. But before he left he told my mother that some way he would get her out of there. For the next day, so I can be free from today but the more I wait for tomorrow the longer I wait the more in jailed I feel I don't want to be mean. And away, I saw her cross the first line of fence she went down the lane crossed the second line the devil's line the curse on the other side she touched it. All the girls hanging over the windows yelling, Goal in the goal! Pushing her. She moved slowly the curse hanging over her head she turned around everyone yelled, Check it! She still kept coming back and when she got into the yard she yelled, I don't want... It was a common belief among the children fostered by the residential school authorities that if they ran away their parents would be cursed but the children still tried to run away. So my mother wanted to run away but she was scared because many of her friends had run away and they were all caught and of course they were beaten and my mother wanted to run and one day she eventually did but of course she was caught and she was beaten so badly she could not walk so they made her crawl and they doubled they doubled her chores she had survived and one thing that kept her going was she remembered my grandfather telling her that she would be taken away from there and she also thought every day was a dream and somebody would soon come and wake her up. In the face of repression by the schools the children banded together in close knit solidarity There was one time one of the students from Fort Severin ran away he was gone for a few days and we stuck together we were worried about him but we didn't talk about him it was during lunchtime after he was gone a few days and at lunchtime we were properly eating away everything had to be just so when the supervisor came and made an announcement that David was home and would be joining us for lunch the supervisor opened the door and David entered it's a memory I will never forget for as long as I live hair was shaved off and he was dressed in pajamas total humiliation we all stopped eating and there was total silence and all you heard was people putting down their cutlery and just not eating anymore everything was quiet and again we couldn't talk about anything until we were informed that David would be living on bread and water for a few days bread and water is what he got for food for two weeks those were Christian civilized people at least they call themselves Christian and civilized one of the terrible things about that was that those young Mohawk people would come up from Ghanuwagi and Oka and those places and they never saw their families again for 10 years the most powerful unspoken message that was there constantly would just be like us and everything will be okay this summer was here traveling across Moose River in a boat water splashing my face smoked fish hanging in rows the water singing as it hits the shore the loons crawls out in the middle of the lake I remember snaring rabbits and catching weasels, squirrels things like that in the bush I remember my father he used to leave early in the morning a parent here to go and look at their traps all day with snowshoes and I remember them as kids we used to run out to the lake where our cabin was situated towards evening waiting for my grandfather and father to come back from trapping my parents and my grandfather especially my grandmother and mother they used to take me with them to pick what today they call Indian medicine and they used to be very close to the animals and to the plants and of course they used to speak the language as well the Anishinaabic language but when I was in the school system these types of teachings were not given to us we decided sometimes we just lived and slept outside amongst the stars I guess and it was so beautiful like you felt at home if you can call it my grandmother's territory in terms of teaching our young children her institution was the land her university in that sense her spirituality may call it our cathedral we really didn't mind the book learning or the funny language she had to learn what she really couldn't understand was why they were not teaching her about the earth about how the ceremonies that were taught to her when she was living with her mother she couldn't understand when they were going to teach her these things that she had to know to survive because she knew that all this stuff that she was learning in the system would be of no use to her once she returned to the bush my mother once she was released from the school she figured she was functioning at a grade four or five level she knew nothing of survival in the bush she was taken in by her older brother and his wife and they had to reteacher how to live in harmony with the earth as she had known before she was removed forget about trapping and hunting too education at school all I remember is the full days and cold nights from the trap line my father he loved it there he always smiled once finished with their schooling many children came home to families who could not relate and who could not relate to them neither native nor white they were lost in a twilight world that had no place for them one summer I came home from Poplar Hill I was maybe 14 and I was so excited to be home and as soon as I saw my parents I knew that it was a disconnection I came home and I heard the baby crying I asked my mom what the baby was and she said that's your sister Margaret she was born six months ago so we lost so much but I guess I was hungry in more ways than the physical hunger hunger the hunger for love for the family you know no amount of the teachers can make up for a mother and especially when you're growing up your teenage years are spent in that residential school they can't take the place of your family and I searched for that and I searched for that after I got out of the boarding school when I was 17 my turtle mass on the back has a difficult time getting back on his feet and these boys when they left the school they had a difficult time getting back on their feet and trying to find their heritage again because they didn't fit in neither the white man world I didn't know my parents I never seen my mother I don't remember her when I came home I was 13 I think came home on the bus and this sister on the bus said that's your mother I didn't believe her I've never seen her before I was poor and I forgot how she looked like anything while the immediate legacy of residential schools expressed itself in alcoholism, suicide and relationship breakdown the long term effects were also devastating children raised in these institutional settings had never been parented themselves and therefore could not know how to nurture their own children there was a lot of abuse done by the other children to the younger children and I think that's because of that boarding school system and as a result of that when we get out of those schools we practically do the same things to our children to our own siblings I did the same thing in the boarding school to one of my younger sisters taking out that venting that hurt that hate, that anger my parents and grandparents they all went to boarding school so I grew up with people who was the product of this residential school system and it's going to take a long time to heal the people who are children of these people because the boarding school system really destroyed a lot of our culture destroyed our dances, songs and language and this is going to take a long time to fix so I myself in that way since my parents went I'm a product of one could say a broken home and a broken culture all the while Shirley was in residential school she kept hope for the day when she could finally come home for good but when she finally did get to leave she came with twin burdens of shame and anger and she was not the only one who had changed so had her family and her community there was a lot of shame in there to know what I was going through especially my parents especially my dad my dad was the key to my life I don't know if they knew exactly what was happening but I think they had some idea of what was going on because like my mom went to residential school you know maybe they hoped that there was a change and we never told we never told because you never had the trust to tell if you lived with somebody for six weeks every year would you tell them anything you know especially as a child the floor waiting for Uncle Martha to come home for supper he came home drunk and he got into an argument and he started beating on her I ran home and walked into the surprise of my life there sat my father also drunk because the kids had left they left a real gap in what had developed over the first five or six years of having that child at home and to fill that gap often with it being compounded with guilt alcoholism became a factor in their lives and many of the kids remember coming back after their first year in school after ten months there and seeing the change in their parents they said jeepers I never knew my parents were drunks and at the same time the school was telling them well you know your parents don't don't know how to raise you and that's why you're here being a product of those boarding schools I led a real rough life after I wanted to get even with society with the white men and every time they called me a drunken Indian it just festered that much more you drunken squaw you're no good Indian and I'd hear them talking about our people on the street those Indians are no good they're lazy dirty Indians so I had that growing up right out of the boarding school I drink you to forget but you won't let me so you keep punching me with memories so I'd drink more and more until I don't remember anything at all once you strip the language away you lose your culture and as a result of that what you take away is the people's identity and when that happens you don't really know who you are you're lost and people become totally delusion I guess delusioned and they have no hope they have no ambition and people get into all kinds of problems like they get into drinking and you see that being also affecting our children and all kinds of drugs and sniffing happening now that's the destruction of a nation of people because of the impact of the residents of the school system because they stripped away the identity and the pride of our people because we were taught that you weren't any good, you were a heathen and all those things that we did as people weren't any good I looked at them as being flowers in a certain type of restricted garden and just like flowers, some kids they bloomed, they really did well in school, they got an education and managed to make it through the system others became dormant like some flowers do and these kids they just built balls around themselves and didn't grow initially or educationally and at the same time just like flowers, others had died some died just outright from homesickness, melancholy others contracted diseases such as TB and died in the school system I was also hoping that there was going to be some kind of a healing going on along with the play where people would be able to share their own experiences about any kind of abuse that they've gone through and how other people had healed themselves from their dramatic experiences When I was writing it, I was feeling everything all over again I started to see everything all over again, started to see images visions and that's I mean my play is about a lot of images and visions and dreams and all kinds of things that, you know, we tend to keep hidden inside us because we don't want anybody else to know about them At nights I go home cry just cry from the experience that I'd gone through all day because it was very difficult for me to to be able to move through it and I had to cry because if I didn't cry I would hold it inside again and my story would be told from the neck up it would all still be hidden down here so I had to open my whole body up to be able to tell my story I was very shocked when I read some of my play to my brother that he had to get up and leave and then to find out later he was also abused you know and he's 33 years old and I never knew he he'd gone through the same thing I did you know we never talked about it Water spirits of the Black Rocks I've come again show me a sign that you are listening you cleanse my mind my body and you broke my silence as I allowed you to dance with my spirit now I'm aching I'm tired and I don't want to be a wandering spirit walking with holes in my moccasins with no place to go mend them Howard Lee became principal of a residential school in Manitoba in 1958 the same one from which Elijah Harper graduated but he soon found himself caught up in an ethical dilemma that struck to the heart of his own family how could he justify his position at the school when he knew he would never allow his own children to be plucked out of their home and sent away when I saw the dormitories of our school I thought my Charles Dickens would be very much in the home here well commissioned to study the residential schools of Saskatchewan to study them in depth by social workers and psychologists and when this report was published in about 1965 or so on then soon after an hour was one of the first in 1967 our residential school was closed and others followed very quickly afterwards the elders have said that the seventh generation since contact with white culture would be those to begin the process of healing and change that generation has reached adulthood now the prophecy is coming true what we need to do start teaching our young people our own history in terms of our values and our traditions and that's one thing that needs to be done to take place in some areas already happening so we begin to teach our young people and you see the young people begin to regain their pride and their language and their culture that we're not any different than anyone else who are equal to anyone in the world in this country of ours which we call Canada we are beginning that empowering process it's a a decolonization a period for all of the aboriginal people and a school like children of the earth is one part that plays in the self determining process I'm really glad that I came to this school because learning about culture and everything has given me more reason to come to school like I want to come to school now and I don't want to stay home because I like being here because in the school you can feel a closeness like once you step into the school you feel a closeness with the students and teachers and everyone else the children of the earth school believes in the dignity and the pride of each and every individual student that comes through this school for some people healing does not come politically or with solutions from institutions it is a personal journey sleeping Indian children we are put to sleep the day we were taken away from our parents brainwashed into all kinds of things I never really woke up until now I have seven friends seven women sitting in a circle all different in color the beauties of the sister moon my sisters from a different time protecting me so I can walk into the light and tell my story with no fear with no sadness no judgment leaving behind my old self today my needs don't kneel for anybody today I'm proud of who I am it took a long time to find the real charlotte it took me a long time to really get into the hang of my language at first but it was a gift to me that everything came back to me today I don't tolerate any form of abuse from anybody I spoke to my mother about her feelings surrounding the residential school she really has no bad feelings for these people in the schools and she also has forgiven them so very easily because she figures this is what they were told to do she has no hate for them she has many scars from the residential school that I can't look at without breaking down but she forgives these people some people began the difficult task of reconnecting with their families by letting their parents know that they didn't blame them for sending them to residential school for surely healing came in realizing that she was continuing the maltreatment of the residential schools by abusing herself with drugs and alcohol she honored this realization by quitting her parents followed her into recovery she also attributes a great deal of her transformation to the birth of her son my mother was pleased very pleased with the play she said it was very honest and I know she recognized a lot of the stories that I mentioned and a lot of them were probably a big shock to her because she'd never known about them when Shirley tells her story I feel mine will come out too she was telling her story and I was thinking I wish mine will come out too maybe I'll feel good after because I keep it there too long I want to go forward every time I let go of something in my past things seem clear the answers are coming from here this is my body no one is allowed to touch it unless I love I have the choice to dance to dance the dance of life medicine is profoundly simple and it's called L-O-B-E it's like mother Teresa said you know she said that this world is so sick rich and poor alike and all it needs is love that's the healing power that we have to use when I look at it today people that are trying to help native people they should understand that native people have always had an innate beautiful understanding of the relationship with their god and with their mother earth that's the one that has to be nourished today in order for the native people to recover from the destructions that seem to be so apparent all over it has happened that way with me and it's happening that way with the young people that are taking up this way and I know from experience because I work with a lot of young people and I try to teach them what the elders are teaching me and once they grab a hold of the you know the philosophy and the daily use of native spirituality they seem to get better in coping with the modern world what I think I think we should make this biggest star blanket me, you, no matter what color you are we'll put our mark on it a star blanket full of healing colors made by us with no judgment of the past and we'll cover our world with it with us underneath to be healed as one if they can find a healing in whichever path they choose then you know, just love them the way they plan to heal themselves let them go you know, we'll probably all meet at a corner somewhere and say, oh, it all led to the same place seeing Shirley's show Path of the Moccasins brought home to me the fact that there's still a lot of work for us to do in order to be free from the burdens that the ancestors have gone through which was the experiences through the residential schools and the best way we can pay homage to this fact, I guess is through our day-to-day activities in working towards being healthy and free again what we have was still the onslaught of Christianity and civilization and we're still here Hallelujah and it was an onslaught human nature is pretty strong so human nature is pretty strong, too, right? Yeah, right and what Indian is you see, I became ashamed of being Indian I wanted to be white because I thought it was the white person that was like gods and they had it all I wanted to even dye my hair and I put on the whitest kind of makeup and everything else but today, you know, I accept who I am I accept that I'm Indian I can walk down the street and feel proud I'm Indian in fact, that's my greatest asset I have so sleeping Indian children taking a path with no moccasins awake I am one of them