Society launches new book about residential school

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On June 8, the Secwepemc Cultural Education Society, launched its latest endeavor, Behind Closed Doors-Stories from the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Elders, staff, and countless interested parties gathered to meet and listen to those who, in offering their talents, contributed to the book's unique creation.

Jenna John of the Adams Lake Band spent six months last year listening to and transcribing taped interviews. The experience was daunting at times.

"Although I never attended the residential school, I found working on the stories was difficult. Some of them were okay but other, I had to type them as fast as possible in order to separate myself emotionally. They really brought a lot of insight for me, as to what people had experienced. How could they [school staff] do such things? They [the students] were just kids. Some stories made me laugh, while others brought tears to my eyes. I lost a lot of sleep and there were times when I just wanted to call it quits, but somehow I found the strength to keep going."

Eddy Jules of the Skeetchestn Indian Band is one of 32 contributors to the book. Initially Jules was very reluctant to tell his story.

"You talk to people about it, especially the priests and nuns, and you try to tell them what's going on and they don't believe you. You go through eight or nine years of that and you don't tell your story to anybody. So you hold it inside because that's one thing you learned, you have no feelings. You can't have feelings because if you've got feelings you wont survive; so the people who came out of this school, and there are thousands of us, have no feelings. They don't know how to live their life, don't know how to parent. We know none of that because we were never taught that.

"The thing we learned here was how to steal. We were always hungry so we stole food from the kitchen. The only reason for stealing was to survive. All the stuff you learned as you were growing up you never learned it in this institution, like how to bring up a child, how to show love and how to show affection."

The reliving proved to free Jules from his demons.

"I felt totally ashamed that I went through that, but I also felt my feelings opening up during the telling of my story. The book is a great tool to teach our children what we went through. If you don't know how to give affection, it will just keep going on. I think this book is a beginning in breaking the cycle. Look at me, it broke my cycle."