Indian School Road

by Chris Benjamin

Several people who went through Shubenacadie have also reported memory loss or blackout—knowing they went to the school but not realizing they were there for several years. One survival technique, common among abuse victims, was for residents to visualize another place, to imagine they weren’t there experiencing a personal hell. It’s possible this technique contributed to lost years. One survivor testified at the TRC that she had an emotional breakdown every decade—always on the anniversary of her admittance to the school.

  Drugs

  Alcohol, and sometimes other drugs, is perhaps the most commonly cited escape from residential school memories. Even survivors who had never been exposed to alcohol before residential school have talked of struggling with alcoholism. For some it was a self-induced blackout, driving the experience out of mind, numbing the pain and anger. Many have overdosed or ended up in detox. Sometimes the children and grandchildren of residential school survivors inherited the addiction. Already vulnerable families were driven further apart. But many also kicked their habit, and apologized to their loved ones for what they had done, for the affliction they’d given their children, adding profound guilt to their list of ghosts.

  Domestic Problems

  About 80 percent of survivors who testified at the TRC spoke of hurting their own families, taking their guilt and shame out on them. Shubenacadie denied its residents the chance to learn how to parent—something usually passed down from parents or guardians. Instead, children at Shubenacadie did hard labour and learned a certain world view: that success in life could only be attained through cold, hard discipline, a strict schedule, and punishments for noncompliance. They were not hugged, cuddled, or mentored. Nor did they learn about dating or falling in love. For the most part, those lessons were repressed. They were not allowed to interact with the opposite sex. “I became a willing partner in what I thought were expressions of love,” Rita Joe wrote in her autobiography of her years immediately after Shubenacadie. But she was yet to learn what love really was. Her experience was not unique. Many fell quickly into family situations—often with many children, in the Catholic way—but had only learned how to cook, clean, and sew, not how to be in a loving partnership with a spouse or raise a family. Some went through multiple marriages like this. What they had learned, as children in residential schools across the country had learned, was how to discipline with violence. Many more survivors lost their children, who were either taken away by child protection or estranged.

  Sparked by the residential school experience, but extending beyond just survivors and into the general community, physical and sexual abuse reached crisis levels in Aboriginal communities across Canada from the 1980s onward. For example, researchers of one 1989 study sponsored by the Native Women’s Association of the Northwest Territories found that eight of every ten girls and five of every ten boys under eight were sexually assaulted in Aboriginal communities. Survivors often pass their pain—what they call “Shubie rage”—on to their children. For children of survivors, part of that rage is the result of trying fruitlessly to figure out why their parents are so angry. Some survivors took their anger out on their children until Children’s Aid took them away, only to then be denied access to their grandchildren.

  Suicide

  It is difficult to know how many people have committed suicide in order to end their struggles with Shubenacadie demons. Survivors have testified that many former residents have died at their own hands. But many more have driven themselves to slower deaths by abusing alcohol and other drugs. “Most of the people who came out of that school had real problems and are dead today from suicide and alcoholism,” one survivor said.

  Many survivors testified at the TRC that they have struggled for years with suicidal thoughts. Some had thought of it every day since leaving the school. And one woman explicitly linked high suicide rates on her reserve with the residential school experience. “I had no life,” another man said. There seemed to be no point to surviving any longer. Those who considered or attempted suicide had been lucky enough to find the support they needed—people who understood them, loved them, and could help them during their most vulnerable moments. Many had come through years or decades of struggle. They had kicked their addictions, learned to love again, reconciled with their families, or found work. The journey back was the hardest road imaginable. But most often, the cure was simply the opposite of the cause. The cause was an attempt at cultural genocide. The cure was reconnecting with that culture.

  Reconciliation

  Survivor Stories

  The more than two thousand survivors of the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School—about seven hundred of whom are believed to be still living—have proven that the way mainstream society, the government, and church saw Mi’kmaw culture was wrong. Even the name, Mi’kmaq, or MicMac back then, was rarely used. Settler Canadians called them “Indians” and saw them as part of a massive homogenous, and backwards, culture. In reality, the Mi’kmaq were of course distinct from other First Nations. And amongst themselves, they were diverse. Therefore, their reactions to the school were diverse. Some lived recklessly within the school, thumbing their noses at authority, consequences be damned. Most went into some sort of survival mode, but the tactics varied a great deal. Some stayed quiet as mice, hoping not to be noticed. Others became “pets,” cozying to the teachers so punishment would fall on others. Some were bullies, making themselves powerful in an otherwise powerless situation. Others tried to escape. Some, when they got big enough, fought back against the Sisters and principal, and they usually ended up in juvenile detention or an orphanage.

  The experiences of survivors have been equally diverse. At the Maritime TRC events, the theme of “getting revenge” by living a good life—proving the Sisters had been wrong when they said the children would amount to nothing—was prevalent. But many went through hell to get to the good stuff. And others are still going through hell. Of those who became parents, many survivors reproduced the violence they had learned in school on their own children. Too many became addicted to alcohol or other drugs. Some ended up in jail. As was written in the TRC interim report, “The prospect of going to jail had been of little consequence to them because they had already been through hard times at residential school and were familiar with the feeling of being locked up and isolated.” One of the legacies of residential schools is that nearly a quarter of all Canadian prisoners are Aboriginal, compared with only 4.3 percent of Canadians.

  Many survivors resented the Catholic Church after Shubenacadie, and never set foot in any church again. Some became immersed in Mi’kmaw spiritual traditions and found healing there. But many have remained devout Catholics, blaming individual priests and nuns rather than the institution as a whole. As one survivor sang at a TRC event, “God was just a victim as well as I was. He was used to take me there. And to brutally treat me.” Some have gone on to preach the “Micmac religion [as practiced] before it was sullied by Christian missionaries’ narrow view,” as the Micmac News put it in 1978. But some, a small number, became nuns.

  Several survivors took whatever they had managed to learn from the experience and went on to high school and university. Some have written about their experiences. Many have become activists, warriors for Mi’kmaw language and culture. Others have ended up working in education, with a Mi’kmaw lens.

  Child of Change

  Wayne Nicholas of Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick arrived at the Shubenacadie residential school in 1955 and lived there until 1962. Despite the improvements, it was no picnic. Like most kids at the school, Nicholas’s family was poor. His mother had contracted tuberculosis and his father, brother, and sister had to move to find work. The first thing he remembers is being called a “dirty Indian” and hit with a strap and a metal ladle, having his cheeks pinched and ears yanked. “The nuns had hands like vice grips,” he recalls. Contrary to Father Paddy Collins’s letters, Nicholas remembers being punished for “talking Indian.” If he behaved well, the S
isters gave him candy.

  In his first few years Nicholas spent much of his time doing chores, from cleaning toilets to shovelling manure. But that all changed during the 1958–59 school year, when the barn was converted to a gym and the cows and pigs were slaughtered or sold. It was a relief to no longer labour so hard, but class time wasn’t exactly a thrill. Forbidden from speaking his own living language, Nicholas had to learn Latin instead. Even the teacher had trouble staying awake. Collins had hired Mr. Hugh MacLean, from New Glasgow, to teach Grades 5 and 6. He was one of the few teachers who wasn’t a Sister—a hire made possible by the recently increased teacher salaries at Shubenacadie—but the quality of instruction wasn’t an improvement. “He slept almost every afternoon,” Nicholas recalls.

  He remembers the nuns as people he avoided. “There was Sister Mary Raven, Sister Gilberta, Sister Ursula—but I never established any kind of relationship with them.” Nicholas remembers them trying to comfort the children at times. He cried a lot, being far from home. He couldn’t wave to his sister on the girls’ side. But he did find some comfort from the other boys; at first, an older one took care of him and helped him speak English. He did the same for the young ones when he got older.

  They couldn’t drink water after suppertime, so they designated a toilet they would all drink from. And Nicholas remembers nonstop prayers. “We had morning prayer, wash-up, pray in the breakfast line, grace, line up for school and pray, pray in class, benediction, mass, rosary, night prayers. I decided I would never say another goddamn prayer when I got out.” The routine, the prayer, the punishments, and the boredom hit Nicholas hard as he recovered in a Truro hospital after breaking his collarbone while skating at the pond. The hospital, for Nicholas, “was like heaven.” He got three solid meals a day. Despite improvements over the years in the quality of food at Shubenacadie, many residents still found it inferior to what they ate at home. Nicholas felt like the nurses actually cared about him. He so dreaded going back to school he faked a high fever on the day he was to leave the hospital. That bought him three more days. Back at the school, Nicholas lost it. Overcome with rage, he hurled a chair at the wall and threw tables over until a priest wrestled him to the ground and threatened to send him to a mental institution. “After being so well cared for at the hospital, I had to accept going back,” he says.

  Things improved in the years he was there. The praying became less frequent in his last three years, and he remembers two young men, Boy Scouts named Gerry and Carl, who spent time with the boys. “They were a real blessing,” he says. “If we misbehaved, they talked to us sternly instead of hitting us.” After Shubenacadie, Nicholas tried going to public school but found himself too far behind. He quit high school, and it was many years before he experienced enough healing to finish his diploma. He’s now part of the Tobique Band Council, and helps other survivors find healing.

  Survivors Fight Back

  In 1995 hundreds of Shubenacadie survivors formed the Association for the Survivors of the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School. It had started with Nora Bernard. In 1945 an Indian Agent came to Millbrook, Nova Scotia, and gave Bernard’s mother, Mary, an impossible choice: send her nine-year-old daughter to residential school or into protective custody. And so Nora ended up at Shubenacadie for the next five years. In the late 1980s, Nora Bernard put out the word that she was looking for other Shubenacadie survivors. The newspapers covered her story and soon she found a handful of people on the step of her little house. She travelled across the province—often paying her own expenses from pension money—giving talks to other survivors. Bernard, a Catholic, also contributed to the United Church of Canada’s reconciliation program and did counselling work for the Native Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselling Association.

  It took her several years, but Bernard eventually found more than nine hundred survivors—only about five hundred are alive today— to create an association. It was more than a support group. She wanted it to sue the government and Catholic Church. She contacted numerous lawyers, including Halifax-based John McKiggan, a personal injury lawyer. “Nora told me what she wanted to do was to bring forward a claim on behalf of every single residential school survivor who had ever attended the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School,” McKiggan told the TRC in Halifax. “She had this tremendous warmth and this tremendous smile but…this strength.” Bernard’s faith, which was both Catholic and traditional Mi’kmaw, was part of what made her strong.

  And it was the strength that pulled Nora Bernard and other survivors through. And it pushed McKiggan into action. The Association for the Survivors of the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School filed a lawsuit in 1997 against the federal government and Catholic Church for allowing children to suffer “physical, sexual and racial” abuse by priests and nuns. The lawsuit was unprecedented. The government and church fought hard, knowing millions if not billions of dollars were at stake. The charges could not be fully denied as they had been for so many years while the schools were still running. But despite its earlier apology at two Nova Scotia reserve parishes, the Halifax Diocese wanted to protect its image. “Even though we recognize that there are some people who seem to have had very negative experiences in the school system…and that is not to be ignored or pushed aside,” said John O’Donnell, the Diocese director of administration at the time, in an interview with the Halifax Mail-Star, “we’re very proud of the people who ministered on behalf of the church in the Shubenacadie school system, and…we want to protect their memory.”

  But the survivors’ case was strong. The Catholic Church was careful to point out that it had not acted alone, that it had simply enacted federal government policies. It wanted the public to know that the government was at least as responsible for the impacts of the schools—the loss of language, culture, and tradition, parenting skills, and cultural pride. O’Donnell stressed the historical context for the schools. “I don’t think there was the sensitivity back then that there is now of the innate dignity of the Mi’kmaq people,” he said, “and the fact they have a history and they have traditions and an identity that should have been recognized as being more valuable.”

  The suit snowballed as other survivors’ associations across the country filed their own suits. In time, the associations got together and turned their efforts into one massive lawsuit—fighting the loss of Aboriginal languages and cultures. And as the battle raged on in the courts, more and more survivors came forward with their stories, and more organizations were founded to help the healing. On Prince Edward Island, survivors founded Aboriginal Survivors for Healing in 2000. The organization hosts regular healing circles and provides counselling, safe spaces where survivors and their families support each other. Survivors like Wayne Nicholas have helped other survivors. Since 2005 he’s been deeply involved with the Aboriginal Healing Foundation’s work in New Brunswick.

  The federal government was overwhelmed by the lawsuits. It created a new department, Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada (IRSRC), in 2001 to handle the tens of thousands of claims. A year later, it created its National Resolution Framework to resolve the sexual and physical abuse claims using an Alternative Dispute Resolution process, whereby an adjudicator would hear claims and award compensation if abuse could be proven. But the survivors were critical of this process. It was another case of the government designing and imposing its systems on First Nations peoples without even consulting them. It focused only on abuse claims, without recognizing that forcing people to attend residential schools—and attempting to destroy their languages and cultures—was itself a horrific abuse. IRSRC pushed for a restorative justice model, focusing on the needs of survivors, abusers, and communities, instead of using rigid, individualized European-Canadian legal proof. The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) said that everybody who attended residential school, whether or not they were physically or sexually abused, deserved compensation. AFN also called for a national truth and reconciliation process, a chance to get the full t
ruth about the schools out to the public and for the Government of Canada to formally apologize.

  In 2005 a House of Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development (ANNO) recommended scrapping the Alternative Dispute Resolution process, which was satisfying no one. Instead, it recommended court-supervised negotiations to decide on fair compensation, and supported the call for a truth and reconciliation process. The following year, the government announced a $1.9 billion compensation package for seventy- to eighty-thousand survivors, approved by the churches, Aboriginal leadership, and the survivors’ lawyers. The agreement included a Common Experience Payment for anyone who could prove having attended an Indian residential school, as well as an Independent Assessment Process, whereby individuals would have to testify regarding any abuse they experienced. And there would be a truth and reconciliation process and healing programs for survivors.

  The courts approved the deal in 2007. The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history and the largest historical redress settlement in the world, would be Nora Bernard’s legacy. “She had a mission and she wasn’t going to stop until it was over,” McKiggan said. Bernard received some compensation—$14,000—two years later. But she died very soon after at the hands of her grandson, James Douglas Gloade, who had taken $500 worth of crack, Valium, and OxyContin, and come to Bernard for money. She was named to the Order of Nova Scotia posthumously, less than a year after her death.

  Churches Apologizing

  Even when Shubenacadie was still open, its former residents often led the way for the rights and well-being of the Mi’kmaq. Many found healing in reconnecting with traditional Mi’kmaw culture. And they could read and write in the dominant language. Some used that skill to advocate for their own children to stay home from the school. They could learn what they needed at day schools, but be protected from colonial ideology by staying within their communities.