Book to record residential school experiences

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Committee members at Pasqua First Nations hopes to shed some light on a dark period of their community's history with the publication of a new book.

The Holistic Healing Committee is gathering information for Honor and History, a new book that will detail the emotional and physical pain felt by many of those who endured the residential school system, said one of the project co-ordinators, Constance Dubois.

"Honor and History is to record the experiences that our Elders and people went through while they attended the residential schools," she said. "We're hoping to have a good response from Pasqua First Nation members."

The book will contain testimony from many of the reserve's Elders. They will tell of their experiences in the residential schools, which operated in Saskatchewan from the late 1880s to the early 1960s.

"It will also capture some of the intergenerational damage done to our people," she added.

Children who experienced mental, physical and sexual abuse while attending the residential schools often became the abusers when they became adults and had children of their own.

For more than three generations, children from the Pasqua reserve were separated from their families and sent to residential schools in Lebret, Gordon's reserve, File Hills, and St. Philips.

The residential school system has been blamed for many of the problems currently afflicting First Nation societies. However, the book aims to give a true and honest picture of the schools, and some who passed through those corridors of learning didn't find the experience to be that bad, she said.

"For the book we're not trying to focus only on the negative. There is some good that came out of the system. Some people never had any bad experiences but unfortunately a lot of people did.

"What we're trying to deal with now is some of the trauma which arose from what happened in the school, and the healing that has to take place."

Remembering what was done to First Nations people is one way to make sure that something such as this never happens again, said Dubois.

"We want to make sure history doesn't repeat itself."

Money for the project comes from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, a federal grant made available to First Nations after the federal government created it in 1998.

Pasqua is one of the first First Nations to get funding for such a project, Dubois said.

"For the Honor and History project, most bands are just getting approval for that process."

The band hopes that the edition will be ready for distribution by Christmas.

In addition, money from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation will be used to pay for the construction of a statue for the new Pasqua school, she added. The statue will commemorate the suffering of band members at the hands of staff during the time of the residential school system.

A third grant from the foundation will be used to pay for recording Elders' testimony concerning the schools.

"We're looking to start a video library of our Elders. Each Elder will be interviewed."