The Survivors Speak

66 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
face and their hands, that’s it, you didn’t see any, any of them dressed as an ordinary
street person. They always wore, wore those, those black clothes. 213
Vitaline Elsie Jenner recalled her first sight of the junior dormitory at the Fort Chipewyan,
Alberta, school.
And I looked up there, and, you know, and little rows of beds, you know, really not
very close, ’cause they had a little space in between, so they can walk through. They
walked through every night, you know, make sure that, make sure that your hands
are not playing with yourself, ’cause that’s all they ever thought of was gross things in
their minds, you know. It was just awful. 214
When checking students for health problems, the staff in some schools paid little attention
to the children’s dignity. Shirley Waskewitch felt humiliated by her experiences at the
Catholic school in Onion Lake, Saskatchewan.
I had scabs, I had developed scabs all over my body, and they were all over my body,
and they weren’t looked after. This one time in the high dormitory with the, where
the big girls slept, we’re all standing in line, washing in our basins. The girls were
standing in line with their basins just washing up, and, and this nun come and got
me, and stood me up in front of all the girls, and kind of turned me around, and I was
kind of bent over, and she must have took a ruler, I think it was a ruler, and she pulled
my bloomers down, and lifted my nightgown to expose me in front of everybody, to
expose the scabs I had on my bum. 215
For administrative reasons, Indian Affairs and the school administrators assigned each
residential school student a specific number. In many schools, these numbers were used
on a daily basis instead of names. Many students found the experience degrading and
dehumanizing. At Cross Lake, Lydia Ross said,
My name was Lydia, but in the school I was, I didn’t
have a name, I had numbers. I had number 51,
number 44, number 32, number 16, number 11,
and then finally number one when I was just about
coming to high school. So, I wasn’t, I didn’t have
a name, I had numbers. You were called 32, that’s
me, and all our clothes were, had 32 on them. All
our clothes and footwear, they all had number 32,
number 16, whatever number they gave me. 216
Marlene Kayseas never forgot the number she was
given at the Lestock, Saskatchewan, school. “I remember
when I first went, my number was 86. I was a little
small girl and I was in a small girls’ dorm. And you
Lydia Ross.
had to remember your number because if they called you, they wouldn’t call you by your
name, they’d call you by your number.” 217