Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

The history • 125crossing a railway bridge. Partway across, Daniels became too frightened to continueand turned back. 573 Dora Necan ran away from the Fort Frances school with a friend.They made it to the United States and stayed there for three days before returningto the school. 574 Nellie Cournoyea was sheltered by Aboriginal families along herroute when she ran away from an Anglican hostel in the Northwest Territories aftera confrontation with a teacher. 575 When Lawrence Waquan ran away from the FortChipewyan school in 1965, there were no roads and no one along the way to supporthim. “I walked from Fort Chipewyan in northern Alberta to Fort Smith, 130 miles. Ittook me about five days. I was only about sixteen. And I just ate berries and drankwater to survive.” 576When Beverley Anne Machelle and her friends ran away from the Lytton, BritishColumbia, school, they had to contend with the school’s isolated and mountainouslocation.It was halfway down this big hill, and then from there you could see town. Andwe got halfway down there, and we were all feeling, like, woo-hoo, you know,and we got out of there, and, and we’re gonna go do something fun, and, andthen we got halfway down, and then we realized, well, we have no money, andwe have no place to go. There was no place to go. There was no safe place to go. 577The girls at the Sioux Lookout school rebelled in 1955 when they were all sent tobed early after a number of girls had been caught stealing. They barricaded themselvesin their dormitory and refused to allow any staff to enter. 578 There was a similarrevolt in Edmonton in the 1960s, when students blocked staff entry to the dormitoryat night, to protest the abuse of students. 579Collectively and individually, parents and students did resist the residential schoolattack on Aboriginal families and communities. On occasion, they won small victories:a child might be discharged; a day school might be built. However, as long asAboriginal people were excluded from positions of control over their children’s education,the root causes of the conflict remained unresolved.The staff: “My aim was to do something good.”For most of their history, residential schools were staffed by individuals who wererecruited by Christian missionary organizations. Generally, the churches appointeda priest or minister, as opposed to an educator, as the principal. The Roman Catholicschools could draw staff from a number of Catholic religious orders, whose membershad made explicit vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity. In the spirit of those vows,they would be obliged to go where they were sent, would not expect payment, andwould have no families to support. Indian Commissioner David Laird believed thatsince members of Roman Catholic religious orders received very little in exchange for