Agnes Grant - Finding My Talk: How Fourteen Canadian Native Women Reclaimed their Lives after Residential School

About the Author

Dr. Agnes Grant worked with the Native Teacher Training programs at Brandon University, Manitoba, for thirty years. She travelled extensively in remote and isolated communities, both as an administrator and as a professor. As she listened to the students and community members, she learned of the tremendous effect residential schools have had on members of First Nations and Canadian society in general. Her painstaking research and interview methods ensure that it is the womens voices we hear in FindingMy Talk. These women are not merely presented as history but as contemporary members of todays global society.

Dr. Grant is the author of No End of Grief: Indian Residential Schoolsin Canada and three other books. She lives in Winnipeg.

Finding My Talk

How Fourteen Native Women Reclaimed Their Lives after Residential School

Agnes Grant

Copyright 2004 Agnes Grant
EPub edition copyright June 2011 Agnes Grant

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Cover and interior design by Kathy Aldous-Schleindl
Front cover artwork: Pow Wow Dream by Joane Cardinal-Schubert
Edited/copyedited by Meaghan Craven
Proofread by Lesley Reynolds

Fifth House Ltd. acknowledges with thanks The Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Grant, Agnes, 1933 Finding my talk : how fourteen Native women reclaimed their lives after residential school/Agnes Grant
ISBN: 1-894856-57-0
eISBN: 978-1-927083-99-4
1. Native women--Canada--Biography. 2. Native women--Education--Canada History. 3. Native peoples-Canada--Residential schools. 4. Native children--Abuse of--Canada. I. Title.

E96.5.G718 2004 371.82997071 C2004-904870-8

First published in the United States in 2005 by
Fitzhenry & Whiteside
311 Washington Street,
Brighton, MA 02135

Published by
Fifth House Ltd.
A Fitzhenry & Whiteside Company
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Markham, ON L3R 4T8

18003879776
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To all the children
of residential school survivors,
may your lives be filled with
understanding,
forgiveness,
healing,
peace, and love.

Contents

, Cree, Saskatchewan

, Cree/Saulteaux, Saskatchewan

, Mikmaq, Nova Scotia

, Inuit, Northwest Territories

, Mikmaq, Nova Scotia

, Nlakapmux, British Columbia

, Mikmaq, Nova Scotia

, Dakota, Manitoba

, Mixed Blood, Alberta

, Nuu-chah-nulth, British Columbia

, Mtis, Alberta

, Cree, Manitoba

, Ojibway, Ontario

We survive,
and we do more than survive.
We bond, we care, we fight, we teach,
we nurse, we bear, we feed, we earn, we laugh,
we love, we hang in there, no matter what.

The words of Paula Gunn Allen, a Laguna Pueblo/Lakota poet, writer, scholar, and professor of English succinctly describe the essence of the women who are featured in this book. The resistance and resilience displayed by these women is awe-inspiring, as are their achievements and phenomenal successes in their chosen careers. There are many women who did not survive the residential schools, women who still lead lives of quiet despair, and many have suffered premature deaths. They are a continuing shadow on our souls, but we must remind ourselves there also are those who have survived, the ones who are examples and an inspiration to us all. The stories in this book attest to the fact that there is life after residential school, and that life can be good.

I am an Ojibway from Sandy Bay First Nation in Manitoba. My formal schooling began in Sandy Bay Residential School in 1963. I did my time for seven years, and there were four significant lessons I learned in that institution. I learned how to be silent and how to be obedient to authority. I learned that being Indian is to be inferior. I also learned how to read and write.

During those years I witnessed many incidents of humiliating punishments for minor sins. In her biography Shirley Sterling points out that we were punished, not for being bad, but for being children. Running away and insubordination were mortal sins punished in secret. Otherwise, every punishment was formally displayed in front of all students. Public humiliation was always a part of the punishment.

My memories of life in residential school are sporadic, as are my memories of my life as a child in general. I remember two incidents of severe child abuse; one in which I experienced physical abuse, the other in which a classmate was the victim. She was an adolescent girl who was humiliated in the worst possible fashion. Sister Theresa, a formidable woman, forced her to stand in full view of the rest of us girls for hours with her blood-stained panties over her head. While she stood there, we treated her as if she were invisible. We saw it as a way of maintaining the dignity of the victim, whereas in truth we were validating the unjust treatment by simply accepting it. We were well trained to ignore it and remain silent. I would dearly love to have memories of abuse blotted from my mind, but they remain there, firmly etched. Today I view these memories as validation of claims that abuse occurred in this particular school. I saw it and I felt it.

I shelved the manuscript for this book for many days before I summoned the courage to start reading it. I had to prepare myself; actually, I felt I had to armour myself so that I would not succumb to depression while I read these biographies involving residential school experiences. I was afraid my old scars, which I have struggled so long and hard to overcome, would be excoriated by these testimonies.

I did experience myriad reactions, but none that evoked any personal emotional turmoil. I did feel compassion and empathy, but neither anger nor anguish. Perhaps that is a testimonial to the progress of my personal journey of healing, but, more accurately, I believe my response shows that this book is not just another book about abuse in residential schools. It is a triumph over the emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual abuses experienced by so many, a book that demonstrates success in spite of adversity. This is what makes this book unique. It offers hope to those who endured abuse in residential schools because evidence of healing is found in the lives of these remarkable women.