I grew up in Manitoba, a province that has multiple First Nations branching off almost every main highway and extending far beyond the province's road network. I could name each of those communities today, but as a child these places were a mystery. It wasn't until I was in my thirties when I learned a building I had passed on every childhood road trip, was a residential school.
That life was something I couldn't comprehend. We didn't learn about this terrible history in school. It was my career in news that finally put me in a room with people who were able to teach me.
As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was beginning to take shape in the early 2000s, I was sent to interview a man who was a former student, a Survivor. He had called and wanted to share his story. In my mind, I can still see his face, but I can't remember his name. He was very elderly and hunched over in his chair. He was hard of hearing because of his cauliflower ears. "The nuns did that," he said. His ears "boxed" so hard and so often, they became malformed. He told me about his childhood, forced to live out of the reach of his family with no protection and he was forbidden from visiting his sister in the same school.
This was the first Truth shared with me, since then I've heard so many more. Ted Fontaine, an Elder, an author and a friend said Survivors had to find the strength to speak out or be silenced by history. “They completely ignored who we were as individuals." Ted once said. "The perception of who Indian people were. They were stupid. They were not real.” His words echoed beyond the residential school system, it was an ingrained racism that extended into everyday life in Winnipeg. Ted has since passed away, but his legacy lives on.
Today, there is change. I can feel it. I am seeing it. From Parliament Hill to The Vatican and beyond. A reckoning is happening, an awakening. My children are learning a history I didn’t. I see them heading off to school in their Orange Shirts and that is proof, the Truth, has spawned a national conversation. There is much more to come.
Reconciliation won't be for me or my children to define, but it starts with listening and learning. A man with boxed ears taught me that.
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