Threatened, blackmailed and coerced

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"A big blanket of silence hid the atrocities that went on behind the walls of the residential schools," according to Aboriginal therapist Dennis Windego. "And some of us are still stuck in the memories, still helpless, still victims, still brainwashed."

Windego, founder of the Aboriginal Peoples Training Programs in Timmins, Ont., was a principal speaker at a Sudbury wellness workshop held in January. In his address to addictions counsellors, mental health workers and health care professionals, he outlined what he referred to as "brainwashing techniques" reportedly employed by supervisors in residential schools.

A former residential school student himself, Windego now shares his recovery practices in seminars across the country. He serves as a co-ordinator on faculty with the Focusing Institute of New York and as a trainer with the Prairie Region Centre for Focusing in Winnipeg.

Survivors of the government-sanctioned system, which operated from 1880 until the 1960s, have testified that isolation and humiliation were used to enforce compliance.

In role play demonstrations, Windego showed workshop participants how those in power "threatened, blackmailed and coerced" First Nations students into "disloyalty to one another." In the residential school setting a "traumatic bonding" occurred as the Native children developed a victim mentality that Windego compares to "battered wife syndrome."

"You can leave the school physically, but the abuser is still in your psyche," Windego explained. "In the schools you latched on to someone to feel safe and secure, but later you found out they were not to be trusted. Eventually you started to take on the offender's beliefs and values," he said.

The brainwashing methods employed in the residential schools, which confined up to 10,000 Aboriginal children by the 1960s, included exposure to sub-zero temperatures, electric shocks, starvation, beatings and public humiliation.

"The schools went horribly wrong," Windego told the audience at the Shkagamik-Kwe Health Centre-sponsored event. "They wanted to destroy and assimilate Aboriginal people. The intent was to get rid of the Native population altogether," he said.

"We didn't have the power or the political voice then," he concluded. "But today we have a choice. It's a very long road, but ultimately healing comes from within. We need to work through layer upon layer to find our own truth. We can learn to put a stop to our own pain. We must find the power within to get unstuck, to rise above the past."

Joining Windego in analysing the history and impact of residential schools on First Nations people, Mary Elliott supported many of her colleague's observations.

"We are all tremendously affected by the residential school experience," she acknowledged. "What our ancestors have gone through is all very hurtful. We have taken on the behaviors that came from way back then. The schools changed our attitudes towards life."

Elliott, a Whitefish Lake First Nation grandmother and wellness worker, noted that similar workshops are taking place across Canada as communities focus on healing strategies.

"We are all affected-parents, children, grandparents," she said. "Multi-generational trauma is the negative legacy of the residential schools. The officials set out to civilize the Indians and remove the savagery from them. But we're not savages; we never were that; we will never ever be that."

As a mother and grandmother she works to change the patterns that she feels were passed down to her, "to change the behaviors that made us ashamed of who we are." Looking back Elliott describes the experience as "very sad and very hard" for the children who were subjected to European standards and deprived of their heritage.

"We were weakened by the experience," she said. "Why would they want to take away our beautiful uniqueness as Anishinabe? The system made us all strangers to one another. Because of the abuse in the schools, many people today fel unworthy," she said. "Many people suffer from alcoholism, depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts."

In her travels Elliott has encountered many requests for parenting assistance.

"Family is the back bone of life," she stressed. "Part of the healing process is to work on parenting skills. It's a lot of work and an awesome responsibility, but we have to guide, protect and take care of the precious children. We have to be good role models and be sure we leave darn good moccasin tracks."

Like Windego, Elliot emphasized that "change doesn't happen over-night." She called upon First Nations people to "renew our traditions" and to seek strength from traditional ceremonies.

"We must start within ourselves and make the changes," she urged. "The wheel moves and everyone is affected; but when you create an awareness, it will come around again. You can overcome the issues of the past. You can get back the power that was taken from you."

This optimism is shared by Lillian Pitawanakwat, an Elder from the Whitefish River First Nation at Birch Island. Characterizing herself as "a by-product of the residential school system," she works in her community to alleviate the inter-generational impact of the system.

"We are all social beings and we can't do the healing alone," she said before conducting the closing ceremony. "I need to listen to other people's words on how to heal and when to heal. Then I can see I have choices; I can let myself out of the prison of self through talking to others."

Nancy Cada, originally from Sheshegwaning on western Manitoulin Island, agrees.

"It's important to participate in these gatherings. We have to deal with the past before we can move ahead. Some people think they are unaffected, but they are carrying it (the impact of the schools) around today and don't recognize it."

"We need to learn from history and to understand what we've done to people historically in order to try and right some of the wrongs that have happened," added LindaMansfield, a non-Native social worker at the conference. "If we don't understand our past we can't progress into the future with healthy vision. I've learned that if we really listen to one another's experiences and stories, we can become a stronger community and a stronger nation."