The Survivors Speak

164 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
doing the checks, couldn’t … couldn’t open the door. And this time they were really
furious. They got the bigger boys from the other areas to come help them try to break
down the door, but they couldn’t.
Eventually, he said, the police were called.
We threw our shoes and stuff out at them, and yelled … some guys knew how to
swear, I didn’t, they were swearing at everybody. We threw a list of demands down
to the principal; we wrote on there that we wanted better food, we wanted certain
staff people fired that we were suspicious of, and we wanted our clothes back that
we came with when we, we got to school. Because they confiscated all our clothes
and gave us government-issued clothes … we finally decided, well we better do, what
needs to be done.
When the protest ended, he was called into the principal’s office. “I went down to see
the principal, and to my surprise there was my grandfather, sitting there. And the principal
said, ‘Mr. Buffalo, your son is here … we can’t handle him, we’d appreciate it if you could
take him back, and good luck in raising him.’” 600