A New Path, A New Way of Being

A New Path, a New Way of Being

Dear Reader,

Justice Murray Sinclair presented the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final report on June 02, 2015.  This historic moment brings us to a new day, a new path, a new way of being.  This  moment in history sets Canadians on a journey where we  build new relationships between aboriginal and non-aboriginals. It  will  mean un-learning ingrained perceptions and demand rigorous and focused efforts that set the record straight. 


In all, the TRC unveiled 94 recommendations to show us the way. 
I am a Euro-Canadian settler who taught in our education system for thirty five years. Thank you ,Justice Sinclair for your belief that education and educators can lead and shift our entire country toward a new way of being Canadian.  Your wisdom and courage  made me weep with joy. Recommending mandatory  lessons on the residential schools and accurate aboriginal history; in all public schools-in every grade will finally make a difference. Closing the achievement gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal students will be addressed. The creation of an Aboriginal Languages Act to preserve and revitalize indigenous languages recognizes that traditional languages are cultural treasures that cannot be lost. 

For more than a century, the education system provided the vehicle for horrific practices against 150,000 Aboriginal, Metis and Inuit students. My education career was based on the belief that our contemporary education system must be the vehicle to address the sins of the past. Education shapes our society. 

Every year I taught, I believed  the school system was capable of  achieving this monumental, task.   I want to tell you that I tried, but I failed.  My efforts proved perfunctory. I seemed to always be teaching in a sea of apathy. My school system, at the local and provincial level, was only minimally committed to implementing quality First Nations curriculum that was available to all educators. Excellent resources, quality courses and traditional language programs were hardly accessed by the mainstream student body.  

As an educator, I promoted strategies that celebrated our First Nations and Metis history and their contemporary achievements.  I gathered Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children together for cultural activities, and invited Elders into my classroom. I worked to have the stories of our territory act a as focus texts for integrated units of study.  I tried promoting professional learning communities where inquiry would drive new ways of thinking and work to finally shift our district’s abysmal record of education for First Nations, Metis and Inuit children and youth.

 I tried to support all my Aboriginal friends and co-workers in their efforts to reach their full potential in the school system.  On reflection, my efforts were perfunctory and failed. Nothing really changed. I was unable to construct a single strategy that that made a real difference. 

 Despite good intentions, my thirty years in education  left me with  tears of shame and despair. 

 Until June 02, 2015.  Now, for the first time, I have hope!

Justice Murray Sinclair endured witnessing heart-wrenching 7000 life stories of institutional abuse and racism.  He chronicled  government-led cultural genocide.  Yet, in his final report, he articulates his belief that every Canadian will take on the hard work ahead. His words filled me with hope and energy. The depth and sincerity of his work will lead the way!

“We have described for you a mountain.  We have shown you a path to the top.  We call on you to do the climbing” Justice Minister Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

I believe in this new way of being!  My colleagues in education are capable and ready to meet the challenge. I raise my hand in thanks to all the brave individuals who contributed to this historical document and this historical moment in Canadian history.

Respectfully submitted

Donna Klockars

Qwasuntunaut

 

Notes from the Field 1977-2012

I first heard the term residential school in the late seventies when Vera Kirkness addressed  a small group of nurses, social workers and educators about her experiences and knowledge of residential schools .  She gave us the facts.  She spelled out what it meant to be stolen. To have land, language, culture, identity, washed out and away.   She was clear about the profound impact of residential schools on her and her community. She gave it to us straight. 

The audience that filled the dingy old Tally-Ho Motel banquet room was quiet and after her presentation. They seemed unable to form a question. I was in that audience and I too was quiet.    I was a young speech pathologist, pregnant with my second child.  I could not speak. I was over-whelmed with emotion and tears.   My head was spinning with thoughts about how terrifying these experiences must have been.  I imagined how devastated I would be if I lost my children and all that was dear to me through government-driven –police enforced, cultural genocide .  I was shaking.  I left the conference.  I went home.  I went to bed...I was so ashamed-I considered shaving my head. There was no one to talk to. Every one was indifferent!

Later, in my new role as a teacher, I invited Mary, a respected Elder,  to demonstrate her cedar bark weaving skills to my primary students.   She spoke quietly.  The children listened.   While she wrapped cedar bark in expert tight folds that resulted in a small but intricate basket, she shared a life story.  She said that one day in September, when she was five years old; she hid in the bow of an old motor boat with her three siblings. 

They were hiding from the RCMP who had suddenly arrived to round up the children and take them away to residential school.  She told us that their hiding place was revealed when the baby started crying for Mum and she could not comfort the baby.   They didn’t even get to say goodbye.  Even though this experience in my teaching career happened twenty-five years ago and I remember every detail. I was unable to say anything through my tears.  Mary continued to weave.  My students continued to watch. Sadness covered over all of us.

For many years, a respected Elder from Cowichan territory helped guide me in my efforts to run our inner-city school’s Aboriginal Program.  He taught me correct protocols, demonstrated dances, told his precious stories and told traditional stories.  He was a Hul’quimi’num language teacher and a cultural leader in the Big House.  I had learned so much from him, but was unprepared for his words about residential school.  He started telling the elementary students about a fateful truck ride to Kamloops when he was a child.  He was   five year old.    He was in the back of a very large truck. He said he thought it was as big as a dump truck.   He was with his cousins and many Nuu Chah Nulth kids.

 He described the wood that made up the sides of the truck.  He said that he could see through some of the slats.  They soon went on the ferry.  He had never been on the ferry or been away from his family.  He had no idea where they were going.  He ended up in Kamloops.  There was a very fast river in front of the huge school.  Many of his relatives jumped into the river to escape.  Some did not survive. 

The audience was silent.  Tears prevented me from speaking. Another teacher wrapped up the session and sent the kids back to their classrooms. 

It bothered me that Aboriginal, Metis and Inuit students were not represented in the typical curriculum.   I decided to work on creating teacher resources.  My thinking was that my efforts might help bring aboriginal ways of being and knowing into the classroom so that all the children would learn the true history of our land.  I said things like “Every student must know and acknowledge the traditional land where they learn, study and live their lives. “

 In my particular area, the ancestral language is Hul’quimi’num.  I worked with Elders and respected community members to generate curriculum materials.  The students seemed to like the stories and they were proud to read about Auntie Pearl, who was now an important leader in the province.  However, it was while interviewing a respected Elder about his life-story that I once again, was reminded that I was unprepared, naïve, and simply “over-faced” with the responsibility and importance of his words.

I was teaching at a high school on reserve.  Elder in Residence, Edward Seymour, asked if I would listen to his story and put the story into a book so that he could share some of his knowledge with young people. 

His story was complex and wrapped in two equally ugly strands of abuse.  He survived residential school but soon found himself in an Indian Hospital for five years.  Tuberculosis almost took his life.  But as I said, he was a survivor

Here are a few of his words: 

One day the mission boat came to our  Stz’uminus Bay, and all of us kids were put on to that boat.  I wasn’t too worried, because my older brother tried to comfort me by telling me that we were just going to town. Something was wrong though because he had tears in his eyes.   He was my idol so I believed everything he told me.    I soon learned what those tears were about. We didn’t go to town. Pretty soon all us kids in that mission boat were crying, even the older boys.

The very first morning I slept in that huge brick building, I was awakened by the familiar put-put sound of an engine.  I got dressed right away.  My parents had come to get me!  They were bringing the boat to pick me up. I couldn’t see out the window, so I got a chair and tried to wave to them.  I tried as hard as I could to find them.  None of my brothers or sisters were in the big sleeping room with me so I couldn’t get them to help me.

 I wasn’t able to spot our little motor boat with its put-put engine, even though I could hear it. I stayed by that window for hours.  I tried to call out from the window but the building was so huge and the big room I slept in was so high up from the ground that they couldn’t hear me.  

Every morning the same sound woke me up and I rushed to the window sure, that this would be the day that my Dad and Mom would pick me up and take me home.

I don’t remember exactly how I finally figured out the “put-put” noise was just an engine noise, and that it was not coming from my parents’ old boat. I figured out that the noise came from an engine that they called a generator that was right below my window. 

That was when I remember feeling really alone and scared. I still think of that time as a time when I was always in the dark… it just felt like I was in a black room and couldn’t find my way out!

We spent countless hours working together.  Every session left me speechless. I tried not to let him see my tears, as they fell and stained the paper.


Donna