The Survivors Speak

106 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
wash. And my mother brought me an orange, and I kept the orange for the long time,
I never even ate it, I kept it because it came from my mother. This is something that I
now regret having thought that of my parents, that they smelled bad. 374
After six years at the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, Jennie Blackbird came to
see the English language as being superior to her family’s language.
When I returned home, I heard my grandparents
and my family around me, only speaking our language.
I was a very angry person when I heard them
speak the Anishinaabe, our language. I remember
telling my grandparents, don’t you dare talk to me
in that language, and feeling superior to them, as
they did not know how to make the English sounds.
This, I now regret having said that to my loved
ones. 375
When Vitaline Elsie Jenner went home for the
summer holidays from the Fort Chipewyan school in
Alberta, she was ashamed of her ancestry. “In the summers,
when I went home from the residential school, I
Jennie Blackbird.
did not want to know my parents anymore. I was so programmed that at one time I looked
down at my mom and dad, my family life, my culture, I looked down on it, ashamed, and
that’s how I felt.” [audible crying]
She tried to deny who she was.
I didn’t want to be an Aboriginal person. No way did I want to be an Aboriginal person.
I did everything. Dyed my hair and whatever else, you know, just so I wouldn’t
look like an Aboriginal person, denied my heritage, my culture, I denied it. I drank. I
worked as well. I worked and partied hard. When I had that opportunity on my days
off, I would party. 376
When he returned home after spending three years at the Anglican school in Aklavik,
Albert Elias no longer fit in with his family.
I was a different person, you know. I had, I kind of knew everything after being in
residential school. I couldn’t, I couldn’t, you know, get along and cope with life in
Tuktoyaktuk ’cause I was rebelling against my parents and didn’t listen to them and
I was changed. I, and I had lost my language, but, you know, I’m very lucky, in those
days everybody in Tuktoyaktuk still spoke Inuvialuktun, so it didn’t take me long to
learn my language back, so, and I know lots of people that are, don’t have that experience.
377
When Betsy Olson went home after three years at the Prince Albert school, she had
difficulty adjusting to reserve life.