Survivors still hurting, but welcomed home

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On May 26, a 22-kilometre walk was held in honor of the children from the seven First Nations and the surrounding Metis settlements around the St.Paul area who attended residential school.

The Kiwetan-"Let's Go Home" commemorative walk was the beginning of a healing journey for close to 60 individuals who had experienced the painful trauma of the residential school system.

The National Day of Healing and Reconciliation for all cultures was also observed on May 26, as it has been since 2001. This day was established as a means of creating awareness about the school system throughout Canada.

"People need to be aware of the things that the survivors went through and learned," said Floyd Steinhauer, an Elder with the Saddle Lake United Church. "I'm walking for my mother who attended Blue Quills and my late wife because of what they suffered."

The Social Work Action Team, Saddle Lake First Nations, Saddle Lake Health Care, Saddle Lake Boys and Girls Club and Blue Quills First Nation College, collaborated to initiate th historic walk.

The Kiwetan committee invited Elders, adults, teenagers and children as young as 10 to join them in the commemorative walk and activities surrounding the event called "Welcoming our Children Home."

The walk commenced at 9:30 a.m. at Blue Quills First Nations College (formerly Blue Quills Indian Residential School) and everyone made their way to Saddle Lake Eagle Healing Lodge.

There were three major rest stops along the way, one at the Auction Mart (five kilometre into the walk), at St. Brides Hall (12 kilometre into the walk) where water and lunches were distributed and the last rest stop was halfway between St. Brides and the Eagle Healing Lodge.

Shuttle vehicles were made available at one-mile intervals between Blue Quills College and Saddle Lake. All of the walkers were embraced and wrapped in blankets by youth as they walked through the lodge gate as a celebration of their homecoming.

"This was done to let them know that coming home is celebrated, because back then they weren't embraced by their family or the community," said Norma Gambler, Kiwetan committee member.

When Gambler first heard about the walk, she said the spirit of it really hit her, and it impacted her to participate and she wanted to bring the spirit of it home. She also said she did this because of her mother and grandfather who went to a residential school. They never spoke of it when Gambler asked about what happened.

"It must have been really traumatizing for them if they didn't want to speak about it," Gambler said. "Once this is done, I hope it brings a little bit of peace to them and to their memory."

Most people said they were walking for the children who never made it home, for those who had run away from the schools but were caught and brought back, for the many who suffered sexual and physical abuse and for the ones who did make it home but were not celebrated and embraced by their families.

"It's a day of just being together and supporting each other," said Judy Pasquyak, co-ordinator for the walk. "It's just believing in the vision and that there is hope that things will be better for everyone."

In early January of this year, Pasquyak was asked to translate in Cree the experiences of a residential school survivor. Pasquyak translated for an adjudicator the "awful" details of what the 72-year-old survivor suffered as a young boy in the school.

"It got to the point where it was a little too much and I was crying listening to this person's story," Pasquyak said. "Hearing this person's story impacted me. I told myself that I'm going to walk for that young child and that's how this commemorative walk started."

Pasquyak said that this kind of commemoration has never been done anywhere else in Canada. The vision for this walk is clear; it's to walk together and remember the ones that we lost.

"This is a message for everyone to say, we are proud of who we are, we've srvived all kinds of ordeals and we're still here, we're walking," Pasquyak said.

Tianna Cardinal may have been too young to attend a residential school, but she still understood the purpose for the walk and why she was doing it.

"I'm walking for my grandmother," said Cardinal, a 12-year-old resident of Saddle Lake First Nation. "I hope to gain courage, be strong and to show that I'm proud of who I am."

Most participants were walking for a family member who had suffered or is still suffering the painful experience of the schools.

"I came today to walk for my mom and to give back to the people what they lost through the residential school," said Angela Chief, 18, of GoodFish.

Stewart Cardinal, 43, a resident of Saddle Lake, said the healing needs to start somewhere and there is no better place than at Blue Quills College.

Cardinal was walking for his dad, brothers, sisters and for himself.

"We are still hurting and we need to heal and that's why I'm here, to heal," said Cardinal. "I'll be thinking of my dad while I'm walking because he ran away from Blue Quills but was brought right back, so there's a lot of meaning to this walk."

The tragic legacy of residential schools began in the late 19th century with children being ripped away from the only people that could truly love them, their families.

These schools were located in every province and territory, except New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. It's estimated that approximately 100,000 children attended these schools. The government operated nearly every school in partnership with various religious organizations until April 1, 1969, when the government assumed full responsibility for the school system. Most residential schools ceased to operate by the mid-1970s, with only seven remaining open through the 1980s. The last federally-run residential school in Canada closed in Saskatchewan in 1996.

In 1970, the Blue Quills Residential school was the first of the residential schools to ome under the control of First Nations.

Aboriginal peoples across the country are remembering and starting to tell their stories of their experiences from residential schools and, for some families, including the James family, it has greatly impacted their lives.

"It impacts us all," said Isabel James, a Blue Quills College student. "I didn't go to a residential school but it still affects me through generation."

James' grandparents attended former Blue Quills Residential School and she says her participation in this walk is for them, especially for her grandfather because he died not ever expressing his experiences. James said the residential schools had a huge impact on her family.

She lost her aunt and uncle to alcohol. They too attended residential schools.

"It is believed that a high population of residential school survivors mask the pain and suffering of their experiences through alcohol or drugs," said Dolly Creighton, former vice-president and now interim co-ordinator for the West for the National Residential School Survivors' Society (NRSSS).

The society's role is to promote healing and reconciliation and to be a voice for survivors and their descendants across Canada. Barely a year old, the NRSSS strives to provide a national non-political voice for survivors' concerns and interests.

Creighton understands the unresolved grief and suffering from attending a residential school because she herself had gone to a residential school for 10 years.

Creighton spoke during a day-long workshop held at the Saddle Lake Eagles Healing Lodge on May 27. Her talk included information about some of the effects the residential schools had on people, and ways to deal with unresolved grief. The workshop was hosted by the National Residential School Survivors' Society, and was sponsored by the healthy sexuality program from the Boys and Girls Club.

The purpose of the workshop was to tell survivors about the NRSSS, and to inform them about their optins for seeking compensation for abuses suffered in residential schools. Most importantly it was to tell participants about their options for healing.

Creighton explained to the survivors that the first step to healing is to grieve and to tell their stories, tell what happened because people need to know what was lost.

Self-esteem, identity, language, childhood and nurturing from their parents are among what survivors lost. "The list is endless," Creighton said.

"When people experience a loss they need to grieve and to me people never really had an opportunity to grieve, so they are walking around with that unresolved grief," said Creighton.

Creighton said the greatest effect of the schools was that children were not allowed to express their emotions, and as a result, those children grew up with their emotions held inside.

"They couldn't cry or talk about it, their emotions didn't exist. They became very stoic. It's like a contagious disease. It's been past on from generation to generation and that cycle needs to end," said Creighton.

Creighton stressed that telling the public what really happened to the children of residential schools is important. It will help foster the healing of the survivors and it will educate the public about the children who were violated in those days.

"This is our history of all of Canada and we need to say to them that this really happened," said Creighton. "We learn about other people's history except for this. We need to talk about it. Healing is an important thing and we need to end this vicious cycle."

Learning about the residential school history and talking about it is what will help everyone in the healing process.

According to Ted Quewezance, president of NRSSS, everyone has been affected one way or another, whether they were survivors, priests, ministers and nuns.

"A walk like this doesn't bring full closure, but it brings partial closure to what happened in the history of residential schools," said