The Survivors Speak

94 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
food or not, but it didn’t really matter, my punishment was that I would never be able
to speak to him, my brother. 326
On her second day at the Kamloops school, Julianna Alexander went to speak to
her brother.
Did I ever get a good pounding and licking, get over there, you can’t go over there,
you can’t talk to him, you know. I said, “Yeah, but he’s my brother.” You know it’s not
any, anybody different, you know, you can’t talk to him, you can’t go over there, can’t
sit with him, you know, so this was the beginning of our, our daily routine, I guess,
you know, can’t talk, can’t see them, can’t anything. I knew he was there, I just, you
know, and he knew I was there, too. 327
In strange surroundings, contact with siblings was especially important. Of her time at
the Alberni school, Elizabeth Good recalled that “the only thing that was familiar to, to me
were my siblings, and my home was a world away. And so whenever I did get to see them,
it was, that was all that existed within the world was my siblings, I could see them, and I
ached for them.” 328
In some cases, family members were not told if their siblings were sick, even when they
were all enrolled in the same school. Joanne Morrison Methot recalled:
I remember one time my brother, he had an abscess or something here, and it busted.
They took him to the hospital. They didn’t even tell us that my brother almost
died. They didn’t tell us nothing. Then we find out after, we just found out he was
gone. I think it was to a hospital they brought him, and they didn’t tell us my brother
almost died. They didn’t tell us anything, you know, like, if something happened. 329
Beverley Anne Machelle said the separation from her siblings increased her sense of
loneliness at the Lytton, British Columbia, school.
I wasn’t even allowed to talk to my brothers, and I had three brothers there. Two of
those brothers committed suicide. Yeah, it really hurt not to be able to, and I couldn’t
even talk to my sister, and she was on the same side as me, but she was a, she was a
junior girl. And maybe if she was, you know, in intermediate, I would have had more
access to her. But it was, it was really lonely not having my mom, and not having my
brothers or my sister. 330