The Case of the Missing Auntie

by Michael Hutchinson

  “Okay. That’s good to hear.” Meher smiled. “So…as the permanent home for all the statements, documents, and other materials gathered by the Commission, the Centre acts as a storehouse so those of us here can educate everyone in Canada about this terrible tragedy. But education means different things to different audiences. For many Canadians, who are at a beginner level when it comes to learning about residential schools, we produce materials and hold classes that tell people of this wrong committed against Indigenous families and nations. Of course, there are people with a higher level of knowledge, but they still want to learn more. We have those old files from the government, churches, and the schools themselves to study and research that level of detailed learning. And many First Nations people come here, like you, to learn more about their families.”

  “Seems like a pretty important subject for people to know about,” Samuel said, crossing his arms and trying to sound grown up.

  Meher nodded. “It’s important for all Canadians to remember that it is wrong for any government to take children away from their families so that they can be forcefully assimilated. If we don’t remember our history, there is always the chance we will repeat it. Now, let’s find the Chokecherry Pass files.”

  Her fingers clicked against the keyboard. The computer thought for a moment and then spit out a list of documents, dates, and data.

  “We have a lot of documents on Chokecherry Pass. What you want to look for is the enrollment lists, which will be catalogued by years. See this?” Meher pointed at the screen and made sure she had Chickadee’s attention. “This is a scan of an enrollment list, but this example is the wrong year. See that number? Okay. You want to find one that matches the years your great-aunt went to Chokecherry. Think you can do that?”

  Chickadee nodded enthusiastically. She had wanted to get in the driver’s seat since she first saw the computer and heard the word database. Meher smiled, stepped back, and gestured for Chickadee to take over.

  Chickadee pulled over a nearby office chair and sat down in front of the computer. She studied the list of information in front of her. Samuel also grabbed a chair and sat down beside her.

  Meher watched them for a moment and then returned to her desk. Atim and Otter followed the young woman. In the area where she worked, dozens of wooden tiles, about half the size of a cracker, had been applied to the walls. Each one had a painted picture, design, or message. The wall was covered in tiny works of art by hundreds of different people. From faces to flowers to fishes to figures, a multitude of different ideas and feelings spoke from the collection of tiny tiles.

  “These are cool!” Atim poked at one of the tiles and smiled at Meher.

  “Please don’t touch that,” she chided. Atim pulled his paw back quickly. His face was a mixture of horror and embarrassment.

  Otter snickered.

  Meher’s chuckle tinkled. “I mean, they’re only glued on, we have kids picking them off all the time. You don’t look like a kid.”

  Atim beamed, but then he quickly put on his serious face. “I never thought of that. Of course, kids would pick them off. But they’re wonderful expressions of color and…uh…art.” He pushed on the tile he had been picking at to make sure it was stuck to the wall. “So…” he seemed desperate to keep the conversation going, “…what do you like most about your work?”

  Meher turned her attention back to her computer. “The learning, I suppose. Listening to the teachings of the Elders is wonderful. Listening to the survivors can be hard. There are so many sad stories, but there are good stories too. My education is in research and history. I like…understanding the past and how people thought in the past.”

  “I could listen to Elders all day…sometimes.” Atim moved, so he had a better view of Meher’s face as she worked. He leaned against a doorframe. Otter picked up a pamphlet and started reading.

  “See this?” Meher pointed to a logo on a poster pasted above her desk. Atim took the opportunity to move closer. He leaned over her desk and studied the logo closely. The symbol was a circle, split into four crescents, that surrounded two intertwined flames. Atim blinked, like an optical illusion the logo seemed to change, the two flames were now stylized birds in flight.

  “The seven tongues of flame represent the Seven Sacred Teachings. We try to include Indigenous perspectives and values in all that we do. It’s not just what you do, it’s how you do it, so we try to include Indigenous ways of doing things in how we do things too.” Meher continued to look at her screen as she spoke.

  “Like the smudging?” Otter waved at the air and sniffed. The smell of smoldering sweetgrass hung lightly in the air.

  “Like the smudging, but it’s much more than that. Indigenous people had ways of collecting, storing, and transmitting information. There are strong traditions of storytelling, organizing their people, and healing. We try to incorporate these ideas in our work.” Meher smiled proudly.

  “A lot of healing….” Otter winced a little as he thought back to the stories he’d been told about the older generations of his family.

  “Yes, we had a residential school Survivor here the other day. She told us about how, as a child, she once went to help a girl in the schoolyard. The girl was fresh from her community and had been injured playing. In her pain, the new girl spoke Cree. The lady who visited us wanted to help the new girl and spoke Cree back to her. Seems natural, right?”

  Atim and Otter nodded.

  Meher shook her head. “Well, they both got the strap for speaking their language.”

  The boys looked at her, wide-eyed.

  “That’s terrible….” Atim scowled and shook his head.

  “That was just the assimilation part of it. As I said, it’s not only what you do, it’s how you do it. The government took the kids away, but then they didn’t fund the schools well or push for good education standards. They didn’t make sure the kids were safe in their care either. They made a bad system even worse by how they carried it out.”

  Meher looked at Otter sadly. “A lot of times, uncaring people were hired. They looked down at the kids and their parents. Sometimes bad people who hurt the kids were hired. And these were residential schools, which means the students lived there. Every school has its bullies, but imagine if you lived with the bullies in your school 24-7, and some of them were your teachers! Proper supervision for all the children was needed, but that wasn’t carried out either.”

  “What a mess!” Atim smacked his forehead and wiped his hand down his face.

  “It was a mess, and it is a difficult topic. We also have many residential school Survivors tell us about good things that happened at the schools. There were many people who worked at the schools who really cared about the students. Many of the schools had hockey teams and other activities that the students may not have been able to access back home.”

  “But it was the purpose of the schools that was really wrong, wasn’t it?” Otter frowned at Meher.

  “Yes, any good that may have happened could never overcome the intent of the system. Nor could the people working at the schools overcome the wrong way the system was carried out—the underfunding and lack of supervision in ‘taking care of’ thousands of children and teenagers, in many different landscapes, across the second-largest country in the world.”

  Atim and Otter were lost in their own thoughts about all that they had just heard.

  Meher smiled and stood up. “Let’s check on what the others have found, shall we?” She led them back to their cousins.

  Chapter 16

  A Face from the Past

  Chickadee and Samuel were intently and happily looking through documents on the database. Chickadee had hoped to be able to save the research they found to show Grandpa. She plugged the memory stick she brought with her into the computer tower. A collage of tabs was splattered across the screen.

  “Find anything interesting?”
Meher smiled at the intensity of the Muskrats’ study.

  “Oh, yes!” Chickadee tapped the corner of the screen and beamed at Meher. “There is so much stuff here!”

  Samuel straightened the screen and took over control of the mouse. “We wanted to ask you about some stuff.” He brought up a scan of a yellowed paper. “What is this?”

  Meher studied the contents of the document. “Oh, okay. This was during the implementation of the Indian Agent system. Agents were appointed by the government to enforce their rules and control First Nations. So, what happened here was, a First Nations farmer had some hay to sell. The principal of Chokecherry wanted to buy the hay, but this letter is the principal telling the First Nations farmer that he had to get permission from his Indian Agent first.”

  “He had to get permission to sell his own hay?” Atim’s lip curled.

  “Correct,” Meher said. “That was the law for First Nations under the Indian Agent system, from about 1876 to 1976. You didn’t want to get the agent angry because he controlled your community and its resources.”

  “We figured it was something like that. We couldn’t believe it!” Samuel shook his head. “What about this one?” He brought up another tab with an old letter.

  Meher bent to look at the screen again. “All right, this is…this is, well, basically, a threat letter.” Meher kept reading.

  “I knew it!” Samuel smacked his hand on his cheek in disbelief.

  “What?!” Atim moved beside Meher to read the screen. Once he was there, he couldn’t read, he just thought about how close he was to the attractive woman.

  “It’s a letter that was given to us by a parent of children within Chokecherry Pass. They got it from their Indian Agent. It’s basically saying, if the parent left the First Nations lands to go hunting that fall, their children would not be allowed to come home from residential school for Christmas.”

  Atim stopped pretending to read the screen and stood up straight.

  Meher straightened too and looked around at all the Muskrats. “This actually touches on what I’m doing my book on for my doctorate; how the children in residential schools were used against their parents back on the First Nations.”

  “Like when they refer to real people as pawns in a game of chess?” Samuel pinched his lower lip.

  “Exactly,” Meher said. “The Canadian government was trying to take control of First Nations without having to spend a lot of resources. Access to their children was often used as both a carrot and a stick against their families. The government in Ottawa, and the local Indian Agents in each area, used the children in residential schools when they wanted to control the parents. Would you listen to someone, if they had your kids far away in a government building?”

  “You’d have to.” Samuel lifted his palms skyward, and the other Muskrats nodded.

  Meher put her hands on her hips and addressed Chickadee. “What else have you found?”

  “Well, we found scans of student lists that have Auntie Charlotte’s name, but some of them have three girls with the same name. Some of them have dates of birth, but which one is hers?”

  “Hmm. Your Auntie’s name wasn’t uncommon at the time.” Meher looked closer at the screen. Chickadee clicked through the other lists at Meher’s request.

  “Yes,” Meher said thoughtfully. “You’re going to have to keep looking for something that will give you another clue. This is the way research is sometimes. You use the who, what, where, when, and why of what you’re looking for to find a direction. But then you need to go deeper into the details to get clarification of that one bit of information you need.”

  The researcher left the Muskrats to keep digging into the mountain of information on the screen. They all gathered around Chickadee.

  “So…now what?” Chickadee looked around her at her cousins.

  “What would Grandpa say?” Samuel asked, searching through the list on the screen.

  “Know what you’re hunting. Know the land you’re hunting on.” Otter smiled as he said it in his Grandpa’s gruff voice. Atim laughed and slapped him on the back.

  “Okay.” Sam said. “The landscape is the database. It’s full of written documents and pictures. We’re looking for Auntie Charlotte. We want her date of birth, but…” There was a long pause as he stared off into space.

  “You know, she’s not just numbers. She has a face too, right?” Chickadee suddenly turned her attention back to the search engine and began to refine her search.

  “Of course!” Sam followed Chickadee’s actions on the screen. Atim and Otter gathered around the computer and quietly watched. Chickadee searched the Chokecherry Pass files for class pictures. A bunch came up.

  “Too much!” Chickadee’s fingers attacked the keyboard again, narrowing the query to the years and grades when Auntie Charlotte was in the school. A handful of links were offered.

  “That’s better.” She clicked on the first link, and a black-and-white class picture from long ago sprang up on the screen. About thirty children stood on some steps leading up to a large door. They were all dressed in the same bland clothing and were flanked by two nuns and a priest. It seemed nobody had said “Say cheese!” before the picture was taken. The Muskrats looked deeply into the photo, studying the faces.

  “Enlarge it.” Samuel flicked Chickadee on the shoulder. She clicked the mouse a few times and the students’ heads grew from raisins to plums. It was much easier to make out their features now, but it was still difficult in the grainy, black-and-white photo.

  After they had a look, and agreed there was no one that resembled family, they moved on to the next picture. It was the same scene, different children. They all leaned in and began studying the faces of students from long ago.

  “There!” Otter pointed to a girl standing in the second row. She looked like a young Grandpa with long hair. The Muskrats were silent as they all studied the girl.

  Chickadee suddenly remembered her dream from a few nights before. This was the girl she had connected to in her dream. This was the girl who had stepped out of the fog.

  “She is standing so straight, so serious,” Atim whispered.

  “Just like Grandpa in his pictures,” Otter suggested. “It looks like she’s saying, ‘I want to go home.’”

  “They all are.” Chickadee pointed to a few of the faces.

  “Auntie Charlotte would have already been at the school for over a year on the date this photo was taken. At eight or nine, she was away from her mom and her family.” Chickadee stared at the image. She imagined what it was like to be that girl, standing on those steps, being taken care of by strangers, having your brothers and sisters so close but being forbidden to speak with them, and not knowing if you’d ever see your mom again.

  “Look here, this photo is one of two.” Samuel pointed to the screen. “Try the next in the set, maybe it will have a list of students. We have to confirm that it’s her.”

  Chickadee hated to leave the face on the screen, but she clicked on the link to the next picture. It was a scan of the back of the class photo. Someone had handwritten the children’s names on the reverse in a messy script.

  “Look at that.” Chickadee pointed to a “W” and “L”trapped in brackets beside Auntie Charlotte’s name.

  “Windy Lake.” Atim stood and smiled.

  “We found her,” Chickadee whispered. She looked up at her cousins. The boys gathered around her, and the Mighty Muskrats shared a hug.

  “Well, now we know what she looked like.” Samuel slapped Atim on the back.

  “Grandpa will want to see his little sister. Can we get a copy?” Otter stared at the little girl that was from his family so long ago.

  “That would be so cool. We’ll ask if we can get a hard copy.” Chickadee hugged Otter again and then sat back down at the computer. “I want to go back and see the enrollment scans again. Now that we
have a year and a class, it may help me find a list with her info on it.”

  “Good idea,” Samuel said as he also reclaimed his seat. Atim and Otter chuckled at their highly-focused peers, they put an arm over each other’s shoulders and leaned in to see what new clues might be found.

  Back at the search engine, Chickadee focused her query once again using the information from the photo about Auntie Charlotte’s year and class. In a few moments, she found one of the student lists with more information on their great-aunt. Under the column “D.O.B.”, there was no month or day, but “Spring 1951” was listed beside Auntie Charlotte’s name.

  The male Muskrats high fived each other. Chickadee allowed herself a tight smile as she celebrated the find. At the same time, she wondered if it would be enough.

  The celebration caught the attention of Meher who came to see what it was all about. “Did you find what you were looking for?” She moved closer to look at the screen.

  “We found Auntie Charlotte’s face! Picture, I mean.” Atim pointed at the computer.

  “That’s great! How about her date of birth?” Meher look at Chickadee.

  “We found the years she was in Chokecherry and the year of her birth,” Chickadee said proudly.

  “That’s a wonderful start.” Meher nodded her approval. “Let me see.”

  She took control of the mouse and with the new information refined the search again. She clicked on a link and another scanned letter popped up. After reading a moment, she stepped back. “Look at this, it’s a letter to the principal along with his response.”

  Chickadee and Samuel leaned in.

  “It says,” Meher continued, “that there was a request for a ‘pleasant, hard-working young girl who could cook, clean, and do yard chores to be adopted. Your auntie Charlotte was suggested. It seems…she was sent to a difference province. But there’s nothing else on her after that. Once she was adopted, she was out of the residential school system.” Meher’s wavy, dark hair bounced as she shook her head.