'We cannot forget our past': Survivor returns to Sask. residential school
Julius Manitopyes and Grade 6 students revisit history at the abandoned Muskowekwan First Nation residential school
A light wind blew what was left of the snow as a group of kids walked around the parking lot outside a giant brick building on the Muskowekwan First Nation, reminding Julius Manitopyes of spring days from his childhood.
Manitopyes was leading a group of Grade 6 students from nearby Kawacatoose First Nation Asiniw-Kisik Education Campus around the Muskowekwan First Nation residential school where he lived when he was their age.
"To have them look at the residential school, it's a scary place, the stories are scary, but they are real," Manitopyes said, barely holding in tears.
"It's the past but we have to ... acknowledge it so that we can carry the word forward so this doesn't happen again."
The Muskowekwan residential school has cast a shadow on the First Nation, about 140 km northeast of Regina, for 85 years. It has been abandoned since 2007 and due to the disrepair and safety concerns the children were not allowed inside the building.
Manitopyes was leading a group of Grade 6 students from nearby Kawacatoose First Nation Asiniw-Kisik Education Campus around the Muskowekwan First Nation residential school where he lived when he was their age.
"To have them look at the residential school, it's a scary place, the stories are scary, but they are real," Manitopyes said, barely holding in tears.
"It's the past but we have to ... acknowledge it so that we can carry the word forward so this doesn't happen again."
The Muskowekwan residential school has cast a shadow on the First Nation, about 140 km northeast of Regina, for 85 years. It has been abandoned since 2007 and due to the disrepair and safety concerns the children were not allowed inside the building.
Manitopyes, other survivors, elders, and lawyers from Sunchild Law entered the building to revisit the memories which continue to eclipse the lives of First Nations people in the area.
"It is a bad place, there's a lot of negative stuff that happened in this place," Manitopyes said.
"Children taken away from their loved ones, never hugged, never told that you are wonderful, always told that you are a heathen. You know, 'We are going to beat this language out of you'... Residential school straight into foster care, that was 17 years of my life that I can't get back."
Stepping over broken glass, roof tiles, and cracked furniture, Manitopyes explained how he was taken from his family in 1966 when he was only six years old to the school, which at the time was run by priests and nuns. He spent around seven years inside the school's walls before being put in foster care. He explains that his family was so damaged from the system that he was unable to return.
Beside a cracked window, which allowed the winter's snow to collect on the ground, Manitopyes points to one side of the building and then the other.
"This was the boys' playroom, that was the girls' ... The TV was up in that corner. I always remember that," he said, pointing to the walls of fading color.
"You couldn't mingle, even if the person across the road was your cousin, sister, you couldn't make that contact. You couldn't talk ... Anytime you were caught talking your own language, punishment. Anytime you didn't eat all your food, punishment. Always punishment."
Now a grandfather, those memories of punishment from his childhood still come back to Manitopyes when he closes his eyes to sleep, as does the guilt of taking those lessons and using them on his own siblings when he went home during holidays. Manitopyes walked into another room and pointed to a dark corner.
"I (knelt) in that corner on a bunch of peas, hard peas. I don't know how long I was there, I forget," he said.
"If you get told you are worthless long enough, some people would start to believe that."
A thoughtful glance out a broken window to an overgrown field brought Manitopyes into another memory from his childhood, hockey and baseball.
"When I was an athlete, for them few hours that we were participating, I wasn't there, I was somewhere else. Then reality hits and all of a sudden it's like I'm back again," he said.
"I really kind of focused more on education and sports, not what was going on around me because what was going on around me was wrong. Kids shouldn't be treated like that, shouldn't have been treated like that."
After closing the doors as a student and foster child, Manitopyes came into adulthood angry and afraid. He traveled the country "making a lot of money and spending it quickly" on alcohol and drugs. It wasn't until he had his oldest son that he went to treatment in order to be the father he was unable to have.
"I always say, keep your kids close, know where they are. I'm a grandfather now and I'm so proud of that. I have to make sure that my grandchildren are not in the same situation and I wanted to make sure my sons were not in the same situation I was," he said, proudly holding up a picture of his granddaughter, the first little girl in his family.
"In order for me to take care of anyone else I had to take care of myself, my own little campfire. It starts with me then goes to my sons. "
The school eventually transitioned out of a church-run institution. Manitopyes himself returned as a night watchman in 1999 and stayed on as an employee when it became the home to 4 Directions Child and Family Services until 2007. While working at the school, he was forced to face his memories and start a path to healing.
"It is a bad place, there's a lot of negative stuff that happened in this place," Manitopyes said.
"Children taken away from their loved ones, never hugged, never told that you are wonderful, always told that you are a heathen. You know, 'We are going to beat this language out of you'... Residential school straight into foster care, that was 17 years of my life that I can't get back."
Stepping over broken glass, roof tiles, and cracked furniture, Manitopyes explained how he was taken from his family in 1966 when he was only six years old to the school, which at the time was run by priests and nuns. He spent around seven years inside the school's walls before being put in foster care. He explains that his family was so damaged from the system that he was unable to return.
Beside a cracked window, which allowed the winter's snow to collect on the ground, Manitopyes points to one side of the building and then the other.
"This was the boys' playroom, that was the girls' ... The TV was up in that corner. I always remember that," he said, pointing to the walls of fading color.
"You couldn't mingle, even if the person across the road was your cousin, sister, you couldn't make that contact. You couldn't talk ... Anytime you were caught talking your own language, punishment. Anytime you didn't eat all your food, punishment. Always punishment."
Now a grandfather, those memories of punishment from his childhood still come back to Manitopyes when he closes his eyes to sleep, as does the guilt of taking those lessons and using them on his own siblings when he went home during holidays. Manitopyes walked into another room and pointed to a dark corner.
"I (knelt) in that corner on a bunch of peas, hard peas. I don't know how long I was there, I forget," he said.
"If you get told you are worthless long enough, some people would start to believe that."
A thoughtful glance out a broken window to an overgrown field brought Manitopyes into another memory from his childhood, hockey and baseball.
"When I was an athlete, for them few hours that we were participating, I wasn't there, I was somewhere else. Then reality hits and all of a sudden it's like I'm back again," he said.
"I really kind of focused more on education and sports, not what was going on around me because what was going on around me was wrong. Kids shouldn't be treated like that, shouldn't have been treated like that."
After closing the doors as a student and foster child, Manitopyes came into adulthood angry and afraid. He traveled the country "making a lot of money and spending it quickly" on alcohol and drugs. It wasn't until he had his oldest son that he went to treatment in order to be the father he was unable to have.
"I always say, keep your kids close, know where they are. I'm a grandfather now and I'm so proud of that. I have to make sure that my grandchildren are not in the same situation and I wanted to make sure my sons were not in the same situation I was," he said, proudly holding up a picture of his granddaughter, the first little girl in his family.
"In order for me to take care of anyone else I had to take care of myself, my own little campfire. It starts with me then goes to my sons. "
The school eventually transitioned out of a church-run institution. Manitopyes himself returned as a night watchman in 1999 and stayed on as an employee when it became the home to 4 Directions Child and Family Services until 2007. While working at the school, he was forced to face his memories and start a path to healing.
"In order for us to move forward in life we cannot forget our past. We don't have to embrace it but we have to be aware that it's there and we have to make change," he said.
"We just can't pile this under some rock somewhere and say the government made a mistake, yeah okay they did but still there is so much loss, so much negativity, so much unfairness ... with the kids that grew up through that time, that were involved with the residential school and the sixties scoop."
In order to make sure the atrocities of his generation were not forgotten, Manitopyes braved walking past the empty beer cases and broken chapel piano to revisit his past. He wanted the children to know why and how their families were impacted by residential school.
"We always pass that school but I never really got a close look at it," Grade 6 student Laniece Asapace said.
"It felt happy and it felt sad too because a lot of people never came home from the school ... I'm really proud of myself because I came there to represent First Nation people."
The students did a lot of research in the weeks leading up to their tour of the abandoned school. They made traditional attire like ribbon shirts and skirts to wear on the day and watched movies including "We were Children". For Grade 6 student Madison Worme, and many of the other children, there was a personal connection.
"My grandma went there and she was telling me about it last night and my Moshum went there for Grade 1 to Grade 8," Worme said, adding her grandparents were torn about her visiting the school.
"They said it's both (good and bad) because if we weren't protected or we didn't smudge before we could have got bothered. I'm going to tell them it was a good experience but it was scary at the same time."
Guest speaker and Sunchild Law Firm lawyer Eleanor Sunchild said it's critical that children learn the true history of Canada "so that they can understand why our communities and our families are sometimes dysfunctional".
"There is a lot of racism that we as Indian people have to face in society, and knowing where that racism comes from is important in changing it so that there isn't a dominant culture anymore," Sunchild said.
"A lot of time, the students don't understand why their families are the way they are. Sometimes the former (residential school) students aren't able to parent their children effectively, sometimes they aren't able to hug them, or tell them I love you. When the next generations, the children, understand why they have certain ways of doing things it will help both of them heal."
The sense of "heaviness" from touring the old abandoned school, one of the last still standing in Saskatchewan, is something that would be good for all Canadians, Sunchild said, not just First Nations people.
"When you look at someone on the street, a homeless alcoholic, you ask yourself how they get there? If you don't know the history of residential school you are going to assume that's just how they are. That's not how we are as a people. If they understood the true history of what happened to the survivors of residential school, I think there would be less assumptions and more understanding," she said.
After the tour and a lunch of chili and bannock, the children were loaded onto their bus and made their way back to the Kawacatoose First Nation. As Manitopyes sat on the steps of the band hall and watched the kids go, he reflected on his own community.
"The parents have been so effected by the grandma, great grandma, grandpa, great grandpa, whoever has been in residential school and has come out. They haven't really dealt with anything. They just go through life drinking, drugging, or being quiet, being angry, not being positive, not being able to help their own children, that's sad," Manitopyes said, staring down the small dirt road.
"Change starts with me. If I can change, then that goes to my family, my sons. If they change it goes to their partners, their children and a lot more of the people... It's going to take generations to get this out of our system but I don't want it to be forgotten because it's part of our past. If we can all deal with it in a positive manner than lessons can be learned, we can live through this, and it won't happen again."
First Posted: Apr 10, 2015 News Talk Radio
"We just can't pile this under some rock somewhere and say the government made a mistake, yeah okay they did but still there is so much loss, so much negativity, so much unfairness ... with the kids that grew up through that time, that were involved with the residential school and the sixties scoop."
In order to make sure the atrocities of his generation were not forgotten, Manitopyes braved walking past the empty beer cases and broken chapel piano to revisit his past. He wanted the children to know why and how their families were impacted by residential school.
"We always pass that school but I never really got a close look at it," Grade 6 student Laniece Asapace said.
"It felt happy and it felt sad too because a lot of people never came home from the school ... I'm really proud of myself because I came there to represent First Nation people."
The students did a lot of research in the weeks leading up to their tour of the abandoned school. They made traditional attire like ribbon shirts and skirts to wear on the day and watched movies including "We were Children". For Grade 6 student Madison Worme, and many of the other children, there was a personal connection.
"My grandma went there and she was telling me about it last night and my Moshum went there for Grade 1 to Grade 8," Worme said, adding her grandparents were torn about her visiting the school.
"They said it's both (good and bad) because if we weren't protected or we didn't smudge before we could have got bothered. I'm going to tell them it was a good experience but it was scary at the same time."
Guest speaker and Sunchild Law Firm lawyer Eleanor Sunchild said it's critical that children learn the true history of Canada "so that they can understand why our communities and our families are sometimes dysfunctional".
"There is a lot of racism that we as Indian people have to face in society, and knowing where that racism comes from is important in changing it so that there isn't a dominant culture anymore," Sunchild said.
"A lot of time, the students don't understand why their families are the way they are. Sometimes the former (residential school) students aren't able to parent their children effectively, sometimes they aren't able to hug them, or tell them I love you. When the next generations, the children, understand why they have certain ways of doing things it will help both of them heal."
The sense of "heaviness" from touring the old abandoned school, one of the last still standing in Saskatchewan, is something that would be good for all Canadians, Sunchild said, not just First Nations people.
"When you look at someone on the street, a homeless alcoholic, you ask yourself how they get there? If you don't know the history of residential school you are going to assume that's just how they are. That's not how we are as a people. If they understood the true history of what happened to the survivors of residential school, I think there would be less assumptions and more understanding," she said.
After the tour and a lunch of chili and bannock, the children were loaded onto their bus and made their way back to the Kawacatoose First Nation. As Manitopyes sat on the steps of the band hall and watched the kids go, he reflected on his own community.
"The parents have been so effected by the grandma, great grandma, grandpa, great grandpa, whoever has been in residential school and has come out. They haven't really dealt with anything. They just go through life drinking, drugging, or being quiet, being angry, not being positive, not being able to help their own children, that's sad," Manitopyes said, staring down the small dirt road.
"Change starts with me. If I can change, then that goes to my family, my sons. If they change it goes to their partners, their children and a lot more of the people... It's going to take generations to get this out of our system but I don't want it to be forgotten because it's part of our past. If we can all deal with it in a positive manner than lessons can be learned, we can live through this, and it won't happen again."
First Posted: Apr 10, 2015 News Talk Radio
