From the Shores of the Ottawa River

My Legacy of Residential School 2022

Pope Francis came to Canada to apologize for the Roman Catholic Church’s involvement in residential schools in summer of 2022. His visit stirred up many emotions, and opened wounds.   I submit that it’s these stories being told and retold that give rise to our suffering.   150,000 children entered residential schools; and some never made it home. The legacy of residential schools has impacted many generations.  We talk of the trauma, the hurt, the disempowerment, but how often do you hear stories of the resilience, and the strengths despite the horror?

I am a residential school survivor; I was in Holy Angels residential school for 8 years.  

I want my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren to know I was resilient.  As a child I was curious, and loved learning, reading any book I would get my hands on. In the early days it was always Christianity books about martyrs.  In my teenage years I enjoyed mysticism and witchcraft.

I have a weird quirk in my brain, called aphantasia   it is the inability to create images in my brain.  I wrote about it when I first discovered I had it.

“I tasted it, and that was all I got. A one-time deal. I can’t taste it again in my imagination.” – Brian Leibold.  It was discovered in 1880, and coined in 2015 by cognitive and behavioral neurology scientist, Adam Zeman in the UK.  

What this means for me, is that I don’t see images in my head.  Crazy!  And it means that I have a condition that only 1 to 3% of the world’s population has. It never occurred to me even to investigate this phenomenon. I never knew that people have a superpower of generating pictures just using their mind! Who would have thought?

 Incidentally during a conversation with my daughter, I discovered I could not visualize what she was saying. Whenever I shut my eyes all I get is darkness I can’t picture anything in my head at all. I also don’t hear sounds in my head, like music either.

It was an aha! moment for me, when I discovered it, I suddenly understood why I am geographically challenged. I cannot envision lakes, rivers or roads on a map. And further it now made perfect sense that when I was talking to designers who were designing either my layout of the kitchen, bathroom, or landscaping I could not envision what they were creating until it was completed, and I could see in in a drawing or in 3D.  

Until then I always thought that when people said they saw images in their mind it was more like a metaphor … or like remembering.  It is interesting to find out because I never knew what it meant to imagine something visually. I always thought that it was an intellectual process and not a situation of conjuring up a visual image with the mind. This knowledge does not change anything, although it does help me understand to some extent how my brain works.

For me, I connect through my feelings. My memory works by connecting events that have taken place directly to how I felt about it. When I tried to remember somebody, I don’t get an image of them in my head; instead, I get a feeling of them. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and author, wrote a book titled  The Man who mistook his wife for a hat. 

It is difficult to explain.  I think it is like all the data is stored in my brain on a hard drive and can be reassembled when needed. But it is not stored as a picture.

That is freaky because if – like most people – you can see in pictures it must be hard to believe that others can’t do what seems so natural to you.  

Later in life, I read health books, neurology, philosophy, nonfiction, and biographies.  

I strive to push my boundaries past my fears. I studied at the University of Warsaw in my early 20s, I went snorkeling in the great barrier reef in my thirties, even though I am afraid of the sea.  I went sailing in Fiji.  I love traveling. I began studying Buddhism and picked up meditation again which I first learned while at university, to help me study. I don’t know what fears I will face in my 60s and 70s, 80s and 90s, all I know is I will continue to push through my fears.   

As a youth I made choices in my life and took specific a path away from chaos and dysfunction.  I was one of 16 children, I had ten brothers and five sisters.  I was the youngest girl.

I can’t think of the specific moment when I decided I would not drink alcohol. I am very stubborn, and not susceptible to peer pressure.    

Maybe it was when I saw an older brothers tied to a chair because as a drunk he was violent, or maybe when an older sister who was hungover and moody after coming back from a binge drinking, or maybe it was my mom yelling at drunks to go home who came to the house to buy alcohol, or maybe it was seeing a yellow room with blood stains splattered on the walls and or seeing an older sister with a broken arm because her husband  beat her when he drank.  The point is, there is no shortage of the negative impact of drinking in my childhood and I had no use for it in my life. 

I made a choice to make a different life for myself.  I remember working the night shift as a summer student at a youth detention center in Edmonton (YDC), one of our charges was acting out and I witness the social workers put her in one of the lock cells, screaming and kicking. It was traumatizing to watch.  I wondered what pain she was going through to act out so violently.it was the first time I connected trauma with emotional outbursts. I worked on a closed unit for more violent youth. It was here I developed compassion for youth; I could see the goodness in them, no matter what they were in for.

 Back to the resilience I spoke about earlier, I bet if we thought about it, we could come up with many stories of resilience.  The first time I stood up to a nun who slapped me, I silently stared at her and did not shed a tear after the slap that echoed in the room.  I remember that moment poignantly, I remember thinking it hurt!  The nun said I couldn’t see the movie that evening as punishment, but I knew I would anyway.  And I did.

When the movie began, I silently crept down the stairs from the fourth-floor dormitory and sat on the last step, when the movie ended and I heard the students clapping, and I ran back upstairs to bed.

If you are a former residential student, I invite you to look at examples of your resilience and share that story. These are the stories we should be sharing, stories of triumph, determination, courage, and strength.  In addition to Sunday night moves, we played bingo, and had weekend trips to the lake and ran wild on the hills.

I developed creative problem solving in residential school, and the knowledge that we are not alone in our suffering. We make a choice, what stories we decide to tell. Will it be about pain and victimhood, or will it be about our resilience, strength, and courage?  It is your story to tell, make it one that gives you strength, and pass that strength to the next generation. In my Podcast Empathic Witness, I search for stories of resilience, bravery, and tenacity.  I understand that the horrors must not be forgotten, at the same time frame your story in a way that frees you from being a victim, like the story above where the nun slapped me, I decided to embrace my power, I didn’t allow her to punish me, and listened to the movie on the steps by myself.  it’s a brief story of my resilience as an eight-year-old girl. When I tell the story I feel brave.

I am Desuline, Dene, supporting  the creation of a land-based Cultural Healing camp on my family’s traditional lands, In Northern Saskatchewan along Lake Athabasca. 

In  the late sixties my family,  under threat of jail, moved us into the small hamlet of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, because  that is where the Indian residential school was.

In 1974, Chief Fred Marcel, who was then the Chief of our First Nation, now known as Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, helped my Dad, Isidore Deranger ((Djeskelni) to take some of his children back to our traditional lands to reconnect with our traditions.  The Catholic church had already implemented a policy to “kill the Indian in the child” and was succeeding in largely preventing us from using our Dene language and culture. Instead of allowing us to be be proud of our heritage as Indigenous people they instilled shame in us for being Indigenous. I emphasize that we were children. One of my brothers entered residential school when he was only five years old and this experience impacted his entire life because of the trauma he experienced.

Our experience on the land  saved our lives.  My Dad was a visionary. He knew that the land was an integral part of our culture. The water is alive; the sand dunes are magnificent.  We were fortunate that our dad was able to take his family back to our traditional hunting  territory. Every person with my Dad was transformed by the land and that connection stayed with them all their life.

We began burying family members who have recently passed on the land.  The summer of 2021, the family took our late brother Patrick’s ashes to be scattered on that same traditional territory to honour his final request. This act reviliaized  a renewed  interest in the land and its healing powers. 

The Vision for the the cultural camp,  once established, will be a traditional Dene cultural camp and available to all First Nations across Canada.

We rely on your donation to assist us with provisions, building supplies, tools and transportation for five shelters. The call of the land is strong within the group who accompanied my dad in 1974, AND nothing will deter them from exercising their sovereignty over our traditional hunting lands.  

This camp will positively impact youth who experience being on the land, listening to the drum, foraging for food, hunting, and fishing. They will learn related skills to Mother Earth as our ancestors did for thousands of years.

It will be a life-changing experience. It will be a turning point in their lives, as it was for members of my family in 1974 who went to the land with my Dad, Isadore Deranger (Djeskelni).

Support and donations can be made here https://www.gofundme.com/manage/yxqfzc-the-next-generation

shelter while building a log cabin 2022

Access to the traditional territory is either by boat or plane with floats.

Social media blew up with the images of Will Smith, a slap, and comedian Chris Rock! The Métis delegation in the Vatican City, seeking an apology from Pope Francis didn’t get nearly as many clicks. Society has different views to what is important. Children abused at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church has my interest, not celebrities behaving as children.

I’ve been blogging since 2008. Writing about what I think of an apology from Pope Francis is the most challenging blog I have written.

When I began to draft this blog, I had many emotions. My mind was scattered, upset, and angry. I also had feelings of hopelessness. I attended Holy Angels Residential School in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta for six years. Some of my sisters and my brothers are also former residential school students. I can’t describe my brothers as residential school survivors because they didn’t completely survive that experience. Which is why this is challenging for me to write about. I was not abused emotionally or physically. But I can’t say that my brothers escaped abuse.

I am using my voice because my brothers who attended residential school no longer can. Over the years, I have written several blogs on my experience at residential school. However, this is the first time I write about how my brothers were impacted by residential schools.

Christopher became an alcoholic. He died under suspicious circumstances. Billy suffered from headaches all his adult life. He had no respect for authority. He died alone and his body was not discovered immediately. My youngest brother Max never felt he deserved to be loved; he never married and he too died alone. Patrick never felt he measure up to the white man, and this made his life difficult. Samuel became an alcoholic and died alone.

As a former residential school student, I want to look Pope Francis in the eyes. I need to tell him about the impact of residential school on my family. This would be satisfying, but only for a moment. He would sit and nod empathetically while listening to me tell my brothers’ story. We need our story heard., which is why I write a tiny bit of my brother’s story.

But I can’t help to wonder if Pope Francis views Indigenous peoples as children. Is an audience with him considered a privilege? Even without any concrete reconciliation action plan, will we be distracted by the opulence and pageantry? Would it be enough just to be in his presence and have him listen to our stories? This reminds me of when Bishop Biché would visit Holy Angels. He would throw candy, rings, and trinkets in the air. We scrambled to pick them off the floor. It was a distraction, same as it is now. We delighted in it then, but when I think back. is demeaning, I don’t even do that to my dog, Chewy.

I view any apology as too late. It is too small an act for my brothers Christopher, Billy, Pat, Samuel, and Max. They suffered unmentionable pain.

For years we have known about the abuses in residential schools. Phil Fontaine, former AFN Grand Chief, championed the payout out settlement for residential students.

This week he was in in the Vatican once again to bring the conversation to a global audience. This trip is different. It is marked by the horrific discovery of 215 unmarked graves at a former residential school in Kamloops BC. There were also discoveries at additional former residential school sites. All eyes and hopes are on the Vatican. Will it be different this time?

When evidence resurfaces about residential schools’ horrific legacy it brings up the trauma for the survivors. My story is different. My experience in residential school was in the 70s, and by then attitudes were changing.

That said, there is no denying that the abuse committed on children happened. The continued emotional trauma affects the survivors. This trauma is transferred to their children and grandchildren. 

My brothers were wonderful human beings as brother, father, grandpas. I am the last generation to experience Catholic Church run residential schools.

While writing this, I thought about my late brothers. Christopher, Billy Samuel, Patrick, and Max needed something ten years ago. They needed something to help them move past the hurt and trauma and begin their healing journey.  I am certain a disingenuous apology sparked by a gruesome discovery would not do.

Even if monetary compensation for pain and suffering was offered that too is too late.   Money does not help. I assure you it made no difference to my brother Samuel. He received a payout from the class action a few years ago. He walked around knowing he had $170,000 in the bank and was beyond happy. He thought about all the items he could purchase with the payment he received. A restored 1963 Chevrolet Impala and a trip to NASCAR were on his list. By the time he received the payout, his life was a mess. He was never sober enough to buy that classic car. He could not go to NASCAR. He died penniless.

He was five years old on his first day at Holy Angels Residential school. His life was doomed the moment he stepped foot in Holy Angels.

The tragic story of my five brothers is just a small representation of what happened to many.   Traveling to the Vatican City creates a national conversation on residential schools, a sound bite When the news cycle ends so will the conversation. Phil Fontaine says there’s hope, and I hope he is right. when I completed the blog I didn’t get catharsis I thought I would. Most times writing helps me process, I guess this was too emotional to create space to healby writing, in the end I was left feeling dire hopeless.

Over the years I’ve been curious of how Holocaust survivors reconciled what happened to them. I read Man’s Search for Meaning, by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. He writes those who decided to show up for others, get purpose and empower others.

Pope Francis cannot do that for us. We have to stop seeing our self as victims, we need to empower ourselves, our children, and grandchildren by taking on a greater purpose for the whole.  Being accountable to the next generation, essentially breaking the cycle of dysfunction caused by trauma by taking on a life with purpose to help others. At the end of the day, I agree with Phil Fontaine that there is hope, but it is inside us, and not in the Pope.

A final thought about the Catholic Church. It is an institution that has amassed untold riches while directing Catholics how to live their lives. It is a very successful business and the Vatican is a nation state. Its power extended to Dene people in the far north of Canada where it conspired with the Canadian government to attempt to erase the peoples’ languages and cultures. Pope Francis refuses to acknowledge fully the harm his institution has caused while surrounded by riches and finery. We don’t need his apology to know the harm his Church has done.

You may know or not know that our family earns our livelihood working for First Nations across Canada in the area of land claims and Treaty and Aboriginal Rights. I am committed to giving back in some way to First Nations. This foundation is key to giving back, in large part because I owe the quality of life we enjoy to Indigenous peoples.

GIFT is incredibly grateful for a partnership with renown physician, author and, addictions expert, Dr. Gabor Maté, our donors, and volunteer Directors, who are committed to the vision of wellness in indigenous communities across Canada.

Being Denesuline is at the core of who I am. I am proud to be Dene. Fortunately, residential school did not diminish this pride.  

The Denesuline ancient spiritual energy is many generations old, and it is incredibly resilient.  Intergenerational knowledge and resilience flows through my nervous system and throughout my body. My ancestors, Denesuline from Northern Saskatchewan’s traditional knowledge is in my blood and is activated in the expression of my genes and in my Dene language.  When I hear the drums I hear the inherent intention of my ancestors. It is what gives purpose and resilience to my life, the songs of my people are in my heart.

GIFT was created on indigenous philosophy of seven generations, an indigenous traditional knowledge belief system that lives on in each new generation.  You are part of that vision.

GIFT acknowledges; Geoffrey Murie, Creative Director, at Creative Branch,J. J.W. Shuler, Joe Alkhouri, Cooperators company and personal donation, Steve Buchko, Jeannie Carriere, Paul Wortman, Laird Hunter McGee, Richard Toogood LLP, Alan Pratt Law Firm, Marion Cumming, Dennis Calliho,QC, Dr. A. Joshi, St Laurent Dental, and anonymous donors which unfortunately I am unable to thank. If you are an anonymous donor, please email me. I wish to acknowledge you and include your name in the acknowledgement on the website. While I understand you didn’t donate to get recognition, I’d like to do this as a token of our appreciation for your support.  

Finally, your initial donations in 2021 is being put to good use in developing an extraordinary curriculum which will set a gold standard by which other organisations will want to emulate.

The question the curriculum writers asked is: “What does not currently exist in delivering Indigenous curriculum on addiction?” By asking the question they are creating a curriculum that not only meets the needs of indigenous communities but will exceed it.

Angelina Pratt, Founder, Seventh Generation Indigenous Foundation and Training (GIFT)   senenthgift.ca