Residential Schools Quotes

“There is no concept of justice in Cree culture. The nearest word is kintohpatatin, which loosely translates to "you've been listened to." But kintohpatatin is richer than justice - really it means you've been listened to by someone compassionate and fair, and your needs will be taken seriously.”
― Edmund Metatawabin, Up Ghost River: A Chief's Journey Through the Turbulent Waters of Native History

“My English teacher told me in high school I would never amount to anything. At least I would never go to university. Just to be spiteful I graduated from U.BC. with a B.G.S. degree in 1992.”
― Robert Kakakaway, Thou Shalt Not Be An Indian

“When I left residential school, I became confused and saw life from a different perspective. I was not aware of society. I was now living in the world, seeing people other than priests and nuns. I was ashamed of who I was. After nine years of having negative messages drilled into my head at residential school, my mind was tattered by the time I was released. I had been taught that to be Native meant I had no value: that I was not human. I felt defective and did not know how to change this. I was overflowing with shame. When my relatives staggered down the streets, I would pretend I did not know them. I felt embarrassed seeing them drunk. When people saw them staggering down the street, they were not just calling them down, they were also including me. I took this so personally. I often wondered why they were like this. I did not realize they had the same pain I had, maybe more, and that was their way of coping.”
― Karen Chaboyer, They Called Me 33: Reclaiming Ingo-Waabigwan

“The bureaucrats were accountable to their political masters, not accountable to the people whom they were overseeing. And putting it as bluntly as possible, no government ever won votes by spending money on Indians.”
― Charlie Angus, Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada's Lost Promise and One Girl's Dream

“I do not think I was capable of understanding, as I was only six. My mother became distant and shut her feelings as she left me. How could she explain to me—a six-year-old—what was going to happen to me? This was a hopeless situation for both of us. A mother giving up her child to strangers is one of the hardest things to do, and I would soon know what alone meant.”
― Karen Chaboyer, They Called Me 33: Reclaiming Ingo-Waabigwan

“I had a lot of resentment against my brothers for what they did to me. I carried this anger around with me, and it was actually making me sick. There is a saying in AA that if you have resentments it keeps you away from the joy of sobriety, and this was true. I was carrying a load on my shoulders. One day we talked about the abuse in counselling, and my counsellor asked me if it was happening today. I said, “No.” She suggested living for today and leaving yesterday in the past. I did not know what she meant until I got thinking about it. If I dwelled on the past it would rob me of today. That made a lot of sense. I was stuck in the past. To get past it, I had to accept that yes I was a victim of sexual abuse and yes, I was a victim of residential school, but that was in the past. This is very hard to do because the result of these events changed my views on everything I do today. I have to learn how to keep myself in the present, instead of the past. It is a continuous battle within me. It is like I have dual personalities, and one wants to overtake the other. One still wants to be Karen the victim, who wants the attention and pity. The other, Karen the Survivor, wants to be independent and strong and wants to help others.”
― Karen Chaboyer, They Called Me 33: Reclaiming Ingo-Waabigwan

“I never set foot inside Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Haskell, Tomah, Kamloops, or Brandon—not as a student and not even as a visitor. But I’ve been fighting the demons they unleashed my whole life. We all have.”
― Anton Treuer, Where Wolves Don't Die

“... the government had spent more than four times the amount on lawyers [fighting a First Nations family's request for medical treatment] than would have been required to actually do the surgery.”
― Charlie Angus, Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada's Lost Promise and One Girl's Dream

“It was further revealed that the government sometimes refuses to pay for certain medications even after a pediatrician has declared their necessity.”
― Charlie Angus, Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada's Lost Promise and One Girl's Dream

“[The federal government memo documents] imply a feeling of bureaucratic effrontery as though this child, who hovered between life and death, was some kind of chiseller to the taxpayer.”
― Charlie Angus, Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada's Lost Promise and One Girl's Dream

“But far too many innocent youngsters have been needlessly ground up in a bureaucratic meat grinder. There isn't anything accidental about such a waste of potential and life.”
― Charlie Angus, Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada's Lost Promise and One Girl's Dream

“In the fight among politicians, the children lost again.”
― Charlie Angus, Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada's Lost Promise and One Girl's Dream

“Right-wing pundits continually framed First Nations issues as a drain on taxpayers when, in fact, Indigenous communities were presenting a major growth opportunity.”
― Charlie Angus, Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada's Lost Promise and One Girl's Dream

“Those stolen girls are dead now. One killed herself a few years after coming home. The other girl, your maternal grandmother, had Maggie. When you hear the words 'historical trauma' or 'generational trauma,' it's because of places like this. And people in power today who still won't acknowledge the things that happened there.”
― Angeline Boulley, Sisters in the Wind