I was six years old when they took me through a residential school I remember the day walking toward that school with my mother and it was a silent walk and I was so afraid twenty or thirty little kids herded into the showers and then their body being painted in white liquid of some kind your hair crop and then doused in kerosene and that was pretty traumatizing the school held the roughly 220 people half boys have girls and we were segregated if I was caught waving at my sister that would be a punishment for it and
so as a result of that segregation I never really learned any social skills that then people should be learning as they grow up from a religious and spiritual perspective of course the churches lobbied hard to convert indigenous people Aboriginal people they said that we were heathen and pagan the targeted language in those things we have learned through all of millennia to know where we came from to know who we were as something that had to be eliminated before that time I lived in a place called classrooms they call it Guildford Island now we harvested from
the forest all of the animals that we needed to provide a sustenance and from the ocean in front of us as well all of the species of whales and mink and fish and I had a connection to the environment around us and so after having spent years in those schools by the time we were ready to leave most of us were pretty broken many of us including myself descended into addictions alcoholism violence and it was pretty pretty difficult though school lasted for over a hundred years there were over a hundred and fifty thousand little children
now my last school clothes day in Canada was in 1996 in Saskatchewan there was a history on this land had been absolutely ignored nobody knew about the residential school legacy nobody knew about the intent of the Indian Act the chronic challenges now facing aboriginals and we're starting to accept the idea that we have the shared history for which we all are responsible for when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report was submitted I was in the room when gestures Maurice in theory the chair of the Commission denounced Canada he had just recited a litany of intensive
harms against Aboriginal people and and when he said Canada you have committed cultural genocide there was just a silence in that room and then all of a sudden that erupted in euphoria he said survivors want an apology from the prime minister in the House of Commons and I was there and I heard the words I'm sorry and then I couldn't see because my eyes were just flowing with tears I was so happy that somebody had said I'm sorry Canada by the way is the only Western country that has had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission so
we're trying to look through a new lens we and Canadians we as an Aboriginal we celebrate each other everybody sharing each other up as we toward a more equal prosperous future for all of us my main is chief robert joseph and i believe that truth and reconciliation is Canada [Music]
