Residential Residential

INGRID ARNAULT MACKAY
INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL,
DAUPHIN, MB 17
WHAT ABOUT YOUR FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL?
DO YOU REMEMBER THAT?
My first day, I remember getting off the bus and
I remember leaving here. I remember leaving
here and all lining up at the Indian Agent’s Office,
because we weren’t allowed off the Reserve yet.
Right. That didn’t happen until 1961. We weren’t
allowed off the Reserve but we were all taken
across the river and were lined up outside the
Indian Agent’s Office. I remember the little white
picket fence and the sterile environment of the
Indian Agent’s home and all of that. I’ll never
forget it.
And then travelling to Dauphin and my first day
there, getting off the bus I could see how institutional
everything was, this massive four-storey
building and there were already people there,
people who had gone there before me. But
when our bus pulled up I think some people
from The Pas were there. I think they might
have tried to make us comfortable. I don’t know.
I don’t have any recollection of that other than
seeing how big the institution was.
I guess they finally took me off the bed somehow.
I don’t know how they did that. I think I
was really, really, really sick because I wouldn’t
eat. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to go
to school. I didn’t want to do anything. I just died
on that bed. And the food. The food, eating macaroni
every day and they put maybe one or two
tomatoes in there to feed four hundred or five
hundred kids. We learned how to steal. We didn’t
know how to steal before but the government
taught us how to steal.
SO YOU COULD HAVE FOOD?
To eat. They taught us how to lie. They taught us
how to steal and they taught us how to be bad
people. Thanks to that I have to pray for forgiveness
now because I did that as a child, and to be
a part of life, I guess. I don’t know. To survive. I
don’t know. But I did. I stole. I stole from people
to be full, to have food in my stomach. [Speaker
overcome with emotion.]
It’s not who I am. It’s what they turned us into
be. Now the jails are full of our people because
the government taught us how to do all this
stuff.
Then I remember crying constantly. The bed
rails back then on the little tiny army cots were
thin, but my hands were small, eh. I hung onto
both of them. [Speaker overcome with emotion.]
I wouldn’t leave that bed. I didn’t want to go
anywhere for about a month. I just about starved
to death. They couldn’t pull me off the bed to go
and eat or do anything. I hated that place from
that day. I ran away from boarding school. I stole
the Minister’s car to get away from there. I hated
the food. I hated starving.
That’s the worst part, besides the second thing
of being there was not having your family, not
having anybody to hug you and tell you they
loved you. You come from a loving family to a
sterile environment. [Speaker overcome with
emotion.]
17
Our Stories … Our Strength. Legacy of Hope Foundation. 2006. DVD.
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