THUNDER BAY – “You leave your home, you leave your language, you leave your tipi, you leave everything, you leave your drums, you leave everything, you go and live our way.”
Fort William First Nation Elder Elizabeth Peltier is a survivor of the Saint Joseph’s residential school.
She spoke about her experience at an Indigenous Survivors Day ceremony in the city on Monday.
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She believes she was voluntarily sent to school by her parents, not taken by the government like many others. “They thought they were doing a good thing, you know, that’s what the government wanted,” she said.
“I denied what happened to me. I’m 86. I just turned 86. I denied what happened to me in the residential school. I don’t know why. Was it guilt? Was it shame? I don’t know why. At one point in my life, I wanted to be white. Thank God that never happened,” Peltier said.
“I lived out what you call Squaw Bay. I left the residential school for grade 11. I believe it was, and I tried to go to school in the city here. It was horrible. It was so horrible in those days. The buses were packed with students going to Saint Patrick’s High School. We got called squaws.”
“I was with my cousin. It was horrible. It was just horrible. I had a very, very hard time. I quit. I couldn’t take it. My cousin was a little stronger than me. My parents want me to go back to school because it’s an education, you know, education, which is good for us, and I tried it again and again it was hard. I quit again. I just couldn’t take it. Sometimes I wanted to think if I would have stayed at the school, I would have graduated.
“I did finish school years later. I even went to university for a very short time, so I did get everything,” she said.
Several people spoke at the event about the importance of having spaces for healing in the city, like the survivor’s flag at Hillcrest Park where the ceremony was held: a gathering place for people to come to reflect and share stories.
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Biinjitiwaabik Zaaging Anishinaabek (formerly known as Rocky Bay First Nation) Chief Melvin Hardy said that his grandparents used to live on Lake Nipigon. They would travel on the lake, especially in the winter, to avoid Indian Agents tasked with the removal of children from their homes.
“Eventually, some of my family members ended up going to residential school,” Hardy said.
“As a young child and growing up. I did learn these traditions of our people, and one of the things we talked about, we look around the people, we see all the beautiful colours and even the colour orange, we see all these colours. For the longest time, when I joined the army and I got out of the army, I was lost. I couldn’t find my way. But it’s those colours, it’s my Indian name. It’s my colour and actually my nation, where I came from.”
“I had to learn that stuff to understand who I was, and then I learned that that was my identity. No matter wherever I went in the world, no matter where I went. They could never ever take that away from me, my identity.”
Hardy highlighted how the isolation experience in the pandemic has drawn attention to the mental health struggles of many individuals.
“A lot of our people are traumatized and terrorized by that. So, one of the things we always have to remember is your identity and who you are. Remember where you came from and remember where you’re going. I remember all day that every year you’ll come back and we’ll acknowledge this day, our survivors. We learn lots from their stories and their storytelling. I’ve heard a lot of stories from our survivors,” Hardy said.
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He noted that he would like to see an Indigenous cultural centre, much in the same vein as the Italian hall, where people can gather, share knowledge and “be remembered, and be treated in a way where you feel welcome.”
David Wilkinson-Simard, a Lac Seul First Nation member, sits on the city’s Indigenous Advisory Council. He spoke about the importance of having dedicated spaces in the city where people can find a place to belong.
“I think one of the most difficult things for any people that are coming to this community is that they need to find a place where they belong, and that we don’t always have that, and we haven’t always had that,” Wilkinson-Simard told Newswatch.
“It’s only recently that we’re starting to create our own space and a space for not only ourselves but our children and grandchildren, and also for other community members that are coming here from wherever they come from, that they have a place where they can. They can conduct a ceremony. They can talk freely to one another, and they can feel safe in this community.”
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