Where My Spirit Lives

~Originally written June 15, 2015. Finished September 26, 2021~

On October 29, 1989, I watched a movie about Indian Residential Schools. It probably wasn’t the first time I had heard of residential school, but it was the first time I can recall paying it any attention.

I remember my Grandmother and I were in our usual Sunday night spots in the living room. I was laying lazily on the couch, and she in her recliner rocking chair, busy sewing or knitting something–of which I cannot recall. But it was our Sunday night and we were patiently waiting for CBC’s Sunday Night movie to start.

The dining room light and kitchen lights were off, the living room only had one lamp that survived the 70’s but it gave the room a quiet, dim, peaceful feeling.

My Grandmother, or my Nanny as I called her, sat in her rocking chair, and what a beaten up old chair it was. But she made it comfortable with cushions and blankets. It was a black faux-leather chair and I think it had some kind of pattern under the quilt. The foot rest kicked out and you could relax in it, but I don’t think my Nan every used the foot rest.

As I sit and think about that scene, remembering it so clearly, it is one of the warmest and most comforting feelings ever. If anything, Sunday nights at our house were always the same. I don’t say that with disdain, at least not anymore, but it was something you could count on, just like the CBC Sunday night movie. 

A new movie, Where The Spirit Lives, was on that night. I was of course hoping for Anne of Green Gables to magically appear Sunday after Sunday because it was my favorite, but just like I sat through boring movies throughout my childhood, thanks to our cable-less TV, I sat and waited for this one to start.

I do remember my interest peaking when it came on because the movie was about Indians. We could say Indians back then without batting an eye. I still say Indian occasionally as a force of habit, but that’s a whole other story altogether. But at 12 years old I knew I was an Indian, an Indian girl in a sea of white faces.  

Although being raised in my childhood in an urban setting, I still knew where I came from. I visited quite often throughout the year with my Nan. Her and I getting up at 5:30 am to get ready to go on the hour long bus ride and five hour train ride. This didn’t include the boat taxi in the summer, or the taxi on the ice in the winter– to the dusty or cold roads of an island full of people who were like me, who shared my history, and my family roots.

The lack of indoor plumbing was a pretty big lowlight, as I was used to having a running toilet at my Nan’s house. The bugs were particularly bad in the summer but birthdays were always fun. My Nan would make a big slab cake and we would drop it off to family and they would always give me money. As a kid who grew up with little money, I always like that part.

The ‘drunkers’, as we called them, would come banging at your door or occasionally you could see one sleeping in the ditch. My Grandparent’s never drank so seeing someone drunk was a passing thought that I don’t remember paying much mind to, as I didn’t have to live in a house with drinking.

The centuries old tombstones, historical markers and the HBC site brought in droves of tourists visiting each summer. People sold their crafts to the tourists, including my Nan. The kids sold rocks and fossils. There were tours, busses and even a large boat. For years I would see it filled with tourists but it wasn’t until I got to be a teenager that I would get to ride on it at a family member’s wedding. Yes, tourism was big and booming.

I also knew how important Church was. With a Nan who went to residential school, Church was sacred in her eyes, and I can see that now. Looking back and the memory I have of that Sunday night, I can measure my understanding of the church before I watched this movie and the confusion and anger I felt after I watched it. This was my first real insight to residential school, my own people and a much larger shared history.

I asked my Nan if she went to a residential school, “What was it like? Was it like the movie?” She said it was ok and made some comments about horses in the wintertime but that was it. Years later she would say much more but from about 1989 to 1999, her lips stayed tightly sealed. She had to talk about it when the compensation started, but my aunt was the only person who was ever privy to very little of that information.

The years I spent in my Grandmothers lap, and remembering the times of her holding me or doing my hair, or putting me to sleep, or doing her best to comfort me, were nothing like how I imagined she was raised. She had told me that her mother also went to residential school but didn’t offer much in terms of specifics. Her mother and my Nan also could be very cold women at times. Fortunately, I never experienced that save a few times in my life with her. But any parenting after residential school would have been greatly difficult, maybe not always in terms of acting proper (which was a staple in my case as I grew up) but I can’t imagine being on the receiving end of that parenting.

A few years ago, I got a job as a Gladue Writer and it opened my eyes and heart in so many ways. I knew for years, prior to her passing, that my Nan endured and suffered a lot while attending that school. But the heartache of listening to children of survivors stories and some survivors stories, was gut wrenching. Is gut wrenching. And if you don’t know what a Gladue Writer is, please look it up.

Where my spirit lives now, is in a more content place. We are always striving for the best for our people whether it is through learning and living life in our own ways, the legal field, the arts, politics, social work, business or etcetera, and one day we will get there. Our story is not one of tragedy, although we have had much trauma inflicted in the last 500 years. It will take more years ahead to unpack and heal but we will get there. And with that unpacking, at times perpetuating, all that trauma, there are always daily battles. Battles in what? you might ask. Well that is for the people who hold the same roots as I do, for my family and friends who come from the same place that I do — to know.

And for those who don’t come directly from my history– to find out. The onus is on you to find out.