The Survivors Speak

122 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
fear. And in doing so she seen what happened, and she said, “You filthy little boy. Get
upstairs and go to bed.” 422
Traumatized by her experiences at schools in Ontario and Québec, Mary Lou Iahtail
had difficulty learning. Her inability to speak in class led a teacher to single her out
for humiliation.
I was afraid I didn’t know that word, and the teacher thought I was, I was just doing
that, so she got mad at me, that I was just showing off. I really didn’t know the
word, and I was feeling so bad because so many people were staring at me. She, she
brought a big, big yardstick ruler, yardstick, and she came after me, and I was afraid of
her. I really was scared. She scared me so much, and I was afraid of the big stick. So,
what I did is I run out of the classroom, and she ran after me, and I ran to next, next
door, where our dorm is, our dorm was very close to the classroom. 423
Leona Agawa never felt comfortable in the classroom at the Spanish school. For much
of her time in school, she was frightened or intimidated.
I could hear [the teacher] say my name, but I couldn’t hear her what, what she was
asking me, and that happened all over. I, I just, I was just a person that couldn’t hear
anybody talking to me, or asking me questions. My mind would go blank. So, I never
did have any, really any schooling. I would hide behind a girl, or who’s ever behind,
in front, I’d hide. And somebody would say, “Leona.” I’d hear my name, but I never
got to answer. I stood up, never got to answer what they were saying when they sat
me down. And I’d get a good slap after, after you, you leave there for not being nice in
school. 424
Dorothy Ross recalled her time in the Sioux Lookout school classroom as being one of
fear and punishment.
I remember the, the classroom. It was kind of dark, dingy–looking place. And I sat
there, and holding a pencil, practise my name. She would write my name on a piece
of paper, and the abcs. It took me a while to understand those letters, the numbers.
Like, I didn’t, I guess some of them were hard for me. I couldn’t pronounce them
right, and I would, I would cry again if I do it again, make me do it all over again, over
and over, and she would hit me. This is my first time that I experience. She had a, she
had a, a stick, a ruler kind of, it was long, eh, a ruler stick. And if I didn’t, if I, if she
didn’t like my, the way I was supposed to write with the pencil the first time, and this
is where the first time ever being hit, right on my head. She would hit me three or four
times across, over here, with that ruler, and my head would go down, and I would try
to write at the same time, and she would hit me again. 425
Margaret Paulette recalled that at Shubenacadie, there was a boy who could not read
due to a stutter. Physical abuse and public humiliation did not help him. “The nuns put a
piece, a wedge about this big in his mouth and he hadn’t eaten all day and he was drooling
and all that and then later on in the day they took it out and told him to read, ‘Now you can