Residential school radio documentary speaks to lack of awareness in Southern Alberta

Ignorance of residential school history is still prevalent in southern Alberta, a University of Lethbridge student’s audio documentary contends.

Produced by 19-year-old University of Lethbridge social work student, Lauren Crazybull, the audio documentary True Contact: Resonating Reconciliation in Southern Alberta focuses on Treaty 7 Blackfoot territory and examines the relation between Indian residential schools and how Aboriginals are perceived in Lethbridge and surrounding communities today.

Crazybull says she was originally interested in producing the audio documentary after observing “a disconnect” between Aboriginal people and the broader community.

“The separation and lack of understanding of First Nations is extremely visible here,” she said.

Baring witness to some of these issues, Crazybull says she was moved to scrutinize what she believes may be the crux to some of the problems.

“I started speaking to many people at the university and I was shocked at how little people knew about residential schools,” she said. “People do not realize how recently Aboriginals were kept in residential schools and the lasting effects they’ve had on people living today.”

True Contact is a collection of numerous interviews and includes compelling testimonial from an anonymous residential school survivor while he sat inside the Red Crow Community College — formerly the residential school known as St. Mary’s, which is located 30-kilometres south of Cardston.

 It also features comments from Ingrid Hess, a southern Alberta defense lawyer, who, in the last three years, has been working with First Nations who have made claims against the Canadian government for the abuse they received while attending residential schools. She says that many Aboriginals who become involved in the justice system are not criminally inclined but mask their trauma with chronic substance abuse, among other social problems.

“From the information I’ve been able to gleam from clients and other sources, many of those people (in the justice system) went to residential schools themselves or are children of residential school survivors and their lives have been very much impacted,” Hess said.

This is something which Crazybull has personal experience. Her grandmother, a residential school survivor, suffered from substance abuse and Crazybull believes this also contributed to her own biological mother’s substance abuse problems.

 “The way people learn to parent is by their own parents so we can see that trauma is being past down generation-to-generation,” she said.

While the lack of understanding of residential schools, and subsequent issues, revealed in True Contact is something that Crazybull says can be partially attributed to inadequate education in school systems, she also concedes that it is rarely spoken about by the Aboriginal community.

“There is a lot of shame that comes from being a resident of a residential school and there are still people being greatly affected by the things they’ve experienced so it’s very hard to speak about for obvious reasons,” she said.

Yet, Crazybull hopes the broader community will gain more understanding and empathy towards Aboriginal people through projects like True Contact.

“I think it is good for the community to be informed because residential schools have ultimately affected our community,” she said. “People should be properly educated and gain awareness about these issues.”

True Contact opened Nov. 8 at the Potemkin Art Gallery in Lethbridge and it was also aired on CKXU 88.3 FM. Crazybull received a grant from the National Campus and Community Radio Association, which is a program of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. True Contact: Resonating Reconciliation in Southern Alberta can be heard by visiting, www.ncra.ca/resonating.