Gathering helps students move beyond

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More than 500 people took part in a national residential school gathering held Aug. 3 to 5 on the Gordon First Nation, hoping to find help and support in dealing with the trauma they may have suffered as a result of the residential school experience and to learn more about the options available to them in the courts.

The "Moving Beyond" gathering was hosted by the First Nation and the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations. The Gordon school was one of the last residential schools running in the country when it was shut down in 1996. In the 1970s and 80s, it was where William Starr, one of the worst pedophiles in Canadian history, was employed.

"As a First Nation this school was in our community and it devastated our culture and our traditions because it was so close to home. We are now learning our traditions and I believe that our language was really devastated," said Eddie Bitternose, a councillor with the Gordon First Nation band who helped to organize the event and is himself a residential school survivor.

Topics covered during the gathering included dealing with the effect of the residential schools on youth, living in both a Western and Native world, and legal tips and support for people who are seeking compensation.

Bitternose said that two of the most important things people can do when they are going to court are to find support from friends or family and be to prepared mentally to revisit that pain. Bitternose hasn't gone to court because he feels "in a sense, sometimes it's very scary.

"It's reliving all that pain you've had. Survivors, no matter how well, or what road of wellness you're on, you have to go through that pain you felt as either a sexual abuse victim or a victim of confinement. That feeling of loneliness from being taken away from your family," said Bitternose.

"They must prepare themselves. Not only in the sense of preparing themselves in terms of the litigation way, with all the questions the lawyers are going to ask them, but prepare themselves in our way. Maybe go to a First Nation pipe keeper, find a support person."

The gathering also helped people to learn more about what happens after the legal process. Compensation may seem "like a gravy train at the end of the rainbow, but in some of our cases here within Gordon First Nation it created more hardships." Bitternose said.

"In terms of total dollars in Gordon, the government says they've settled in terms of $26.8 million, just to Gordon First Nation members. That works out to $92,000 per individual. However, a lot of people didn't spend their money in the right way. With some of our people, they got their money but they couldn't get rid of it quick enough," Eddie Bitternose said.

Rev. Dale Gillman is an Anglican priest who hopes the gathering also helped people to understand the position of the Anglican church, which ran the residential school in its earlier years. Gillman said that they also wanted to honour the survivors of the residential school.

"We did an honour ceremony for all the survivors of residential school. welcoming the survivors back to the community. And that was a first for Gordon First Nation and many who attended residential school," said Gillman.

"The reason we did that was because many of these children went back to communities after being separated for years and nobody ever said 'Oh, it's good to have you back.' So there was a lot of healing. A lot of people went away feeling informed and knowing more about the residential school impact," she said.

"In our community, even though we were severely impacted, a lot of people, any age from young to old, don't fully understand how residential schools impacted us in a negative or a positive way," said Gillman. "They don't realize that a lot of the issues we're dealing with in First Nations communities, one of the causes was residential schools. It's not the only cause, but because it took away so much from the communities and i forever changed an entire people group across Canada we'll never know what we could have been like."