Empire: World History - 271. Canada’s Dark Secret: Stolen Children, Unmarked Graves, & Survival Stories (Ep 5)

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

What was life like for Indigenous children forced to attend Residential Schools in Canada in the 1800s and 1900s? When was the final residential school closed? Which grim discovery in 2021 forced non-Indigenous Canadians to grapple with this dark history? Listen as Anita and William are joined by Celia Haig-Brown, co-author of Tsqelmucwilc: The Kamloops Indian Residential School - Resistance And A Reckoning, to discuss the suffering and survival of Indigenous children at one residential school in British Columbia. ----------------- Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, our exclusive newsletter, and access to our members’ chatroom on Discord! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. ----------------- Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnamb. And me, William Durumple. Now, in our previous episode with the wonderful Maya Jasanoff, we were discussing how the American Revolution. birthed Canada. But today in the final episode of our Canadian mini-series, we're going to jump

forward 10 years to discuss, I have to say, a very controversial, very sensitive topic in Canadian history, that of the Indian Residential School. And we're going to look at the history through one particular school, Kamloops Indian Residential School. And I'm delighted that we are joined by Celia Haig Brown, co-author of, well, this wonderful book, Resistance and Renewal, surviving the Indian residential school. And you've just told me, look, there's an even better updated version. Celia, tell us about the brand new spanking one that I haven't got yet that I'm going to get straight away. What is the book we should all be reaching for now? So you could reach for either one, but really the one that you've just shown me, resistance and renewal, is embedded in this new

version called Chekelmukwil, Kamloops Indian residential school, resistance and a reckoning. So, I mean, that sort of gives you a sense of the kind of energy and motivation in writing this book. We sort of said, you know, this is a sensitive topic to discuss. And I should tell you, Celia, that we have a discord community here at Empire where people discuss things amongst themselves. And there is a huge amount of sensitivity and also disagreement about whether, you know, first of all, from the point of were these schools truly evil or a product of their time and doing the best that they could in their time and a time that was imperfect to these are out. and out sort of genocidal acts of wiping out of people and their culture. And then we also have people discussing the nuance of this. You know, what do you call these indigenous people? What is the right terminology? So let's start with the second bit first, because I feel that's an

easier one to address. In Canada, you know, there are all of these phrases that, you know, indigenous people, First Nation, Indians, what is the right nomenclature to have this conversation in? Well, this nomenclature is evolving rapidly, let me say. I'm I would say that Indian, of course, we kind of know where all that came from, the lost explorers thinking they knew where they were. That word, however, persists in Canada in the form of federal legislation called the Indian Act. So it's a bit inescapable because people, we sometimes have it referred to as our apartheid policy, people have specific laws that pertain to them if they are registered as Indians. And they have cards that show they're registered as Indians.

So that word, as I say, persists. It's also used in common parlance when people are talking to each other. Quite often, indigenous people talking to each other might use that word. It's not appropriate for a white person like me to be using it, though, in common parlance under most circumstances. So after Indian came native. And native was a word that was quite acceptable for quite some time, simply meaning born in this place. And then the next piece that kind of kicked in, I'd say, is First Nations, Méti and Inuit. And that comes out of the 1982 constitution, where Canada distinguished itself is separate from Britain.

And First Nations, Métis and Inuit is really seen as pretty much government terms. First Nations being, again, the registered nations with the federal government. Métis being a particular group of people, most originating out of the Red River area around the Louis Riel times. And people could trace their ancestry there. It's sometimes used by people to indicate people who have mixed hands. heritage. So they have one indigenous parent, one white parent, or one parent from somewhere other than indigenous. And then finally, we have indigenous. At this point in time, indigenous seems to be quite acceptable for a broad sweep. The same is true, I think,

in Australia, where there's been a similar progression through various terms, Aboriginal, for example. And indigenous now seems to be the term of choice. Absolutely, yes, I would agree. And there was a time when Australia, we seem to refer to Australians as aborigines, and we certainly don't do that anymore. And then finally, I would say for most indigenous nations, the preference is that you refer to that nation by the name they have chosen for themselves, which makes sense. So, for example, Kamloops that we're looking at, Camloops is a city in British Columbia based on the Seqlapm machine word to Kamloops, and now the first nation who is adjacent to the city of Kamloops, is to Kempeloupes to

Sakhutton. Right. You know, at the risk of mispronouncing, I'm going to leave it to you to pronounce something. I've never seen you hesitate before. No. I mean, I'm game to throw myself at a French word. I've been known to do a Gaelic word. But this one, you know, if I offend anybody, I'm already apologising from the beginning. So look, tell us about the people of Kamloops and where they are from and their history, because, you know, this is important to know why this school was as, some will say, destructive as it was to so many people. Well, indigenous people, like most people, live in places that make sense. Let me say that.

So Kamloops is actually an anglicization of a sequoam word, which means the meeting of the rivers. So this is a place where what are now called the North and South Thompson come together into the Thompson River, and it was a very important winter gathering place for indigenous people. It's also a very important salmon river, and salmon, as you may name, know, are integral to much life in the interior, whether it's we human beings or many of the other creatures who wander around. No wonder, the Scots felt so at home in Canada. So did my father, who came here to fly fish, but never mind.

So this was a natural gathering place. And when the Hudson Bay Company was moving around, they set up a fort here in this area. So that was sort of the beginning of occupation of the land, of settlement. Cidia, am I right thinking that this was originally, as far as the Europeans were concerned, a place for trading beaver and gathering pelts and so on? This is part of the fur trade. Yes, absolutely. And people coming west, sometimes British Columbia is referred to as the West Beyond the West by Gene Barman, one of my favorite historians from UBC. Because of the Rocky Mountains, it's quite separate, but explorers did eventually make their way around, mostly through the north, a little more north than the way we go now. and of course rivers were the most important way of falling trade. And see, is there a sense that you get also in the USA that the indigenous peoples are being herded slowly westwards

and that more and more peoples are being put into the west where they're then having to fight for their space? Is that not the case in Canada? No, and as I say, the West beyond the West, this is British Columbia. It's a very different terrain than so much of what comes before. So within British Columbia, there are 26 separate First Nations, and a number of them have very little in common in terms of language, culture, etc. So there is a sweep from the north of Athabascans that come right down through the middle of the province, and the Tzokotin are Athabaskan language group. This is a linguistic group. And that goes right down to the Navajo.

So interestingly, I have a sister-in-law who's Tzokotin, and she attended the world contours of indigenous people. in education, met some Navajos, and they could almost converse in the language with each other. There were, you know, probably a few words that were different. That being said, the sequap machine, entirely different from Tukotin, no shared. So rivers and mountains really kept people separate from one another. So there would be some back and forth and some trading and some this and that and some moving back and forth through territory, but overall there was quite a lot of distinction amongst the groups here. In some of the earlier episodes in this series, when we were talking to Majazanov, for example,

there was some sensation that the French in New France had a marginally more liberal attitude to the First Nations. Is that the case still in Canada by the early 19th century, or are the kind of racial attitudes which are prevalent everywhere else in the world, also making themselves felt in the west of Canada. I have done some work in northern Quebec. I've done some filmmaking there with an escapian, and I would say racism prevails across the country. Okay, so I mean, you know, the French may have thought they were being more collegiate, but actually it's a same old, same old. The issue with the French, and I hate to speak for Quebec, but the issue with Quebec is it's doing its very hard work to maintain its own nationalism and to keep its identity,

pushing back against this Anglo juggernaut all around it. And in doing that, the focus is really on French, Francophone, Quebec, particularly. And when indigenity comes in to challenge those understandings, those wishes, those goals, there's not always sympathy for that. Okay. Let's go right back to, you know, the 19th century and those early contacts. I mean, the story that we often get from the American side, which we've covered in detail in our American series, is that those first contacts inevitably brought waves of disease with them, you know, sort of smallpox-infested blankets, influenza, bugs that, you know, indigenous people just didn't have the wherewithal to fight in their bodies. Is that a similar experience in British Columbia, the people that

you've been looking at? Absolutely, it is, yes. Smallpox being a very big one, and nations were decimated literally and probably even more than decimated by those diseases, yes. But is the story of that early approach of people from Europe, is it on the back of the fur trade? Because we've covered beaver fur and the, you know, the attraction of the fair trade. Is that what brings these Europeans to Kamloops as well? And tell us a little bit about that story. Oh, yes, absolutely. The establishment of Kamloops is based around the fur trade.

There was a trading fort set up here. that was the first inroad into Camloops. And how soon after the traders do the missionaries come? In about 1862, the Oblates of Very Immaculate came north. They had been in Oregon, and things had not gone well for them there, and they decided to come north and try their luck with the Indians, sorry, Indians at that time they were calling them, in British Columbia. And they came and founded the St. Louis Mission here,

in Camelux. And what did that mission do way back then? At that time, they were working to Christianize and civilize the indigenous people, and that was their goal. As the Jesuits had been doing for 200 years earlier. Yeah, so civilized and Christianized. And of course, we do have this federal government who was working a way to ensure that these things were happening. Right. And at a similar time, you've got John McDonald or John A. McDonald or John A. I mean, I know many Canadians refer to him, just, you know, as if he were next door neighbor, John A, he is perceived to be the father of the nation Canada's first prime minister. Now, he is a figure of great complexity, and he's a key figure in Confederation, bringing together these disparate parts of Canada with different languages,

different religions, different politics, liberals and conservatives and bringing them into this coalition to basically say, goodbye, Britain, and also America, we're not you either. And so, you know, that is one of the things he's known for. Strangely enough, two weekends ago, I was staying with friends at the High Clear Estate, and it was pointed out to me over the valley where we were staying, that it was actually the place where the British North American Act and the documents and a lot of the negotiations that led to the Confederation of Canada took place. And there was actually a display which sort of commemorates John A as this guy who pulled

the different federal parts of Canada into a single hole. But today he is a much more controversial figure and one who's remembered really for his very negative views of the indigenous peoples and his attempts to, in verdi commas, Christianized, civilize, and bring them into line with the immigrant white population. Yeah, I think he was definitely a product of his times. I think he was a product of his foundational upbringing. And I think it's very interesting. He was writing, working on the British North America, act while he was sitting in Britain. It might have been much more appropriate to be tied to the land that he was writing about. And I think indigenous people would think that that would be very important to have the land informing what you're doing at every turn. Yes, he's controversial. He is the founding father, if we want to put it that way. But I do think that at that time,

general understandings of indigenous people from Europeans were that they were inferior and perhaps even less than human. Hence, the name. of the book we were flashing Chiquel Mujil, which actually translates to we become human again. And that is a pushback against current times, but it's a pushback against the whole history of the colonization of North America, we could say, but in this case, Canada. I think it's a little complicated to collapse the U.S. and Canada. I know it's partly me feeling distinct, despite the fact that I have an American mother, but really the histories are quite separate because we didn't have, we didn't have a

War of Independence. We had the British North America Act. Could you explain what that is, Celia, for those who don't understand it? Well, that is our founding document. And that was what guided the formation of Canada and remained in place as the document that represented who we were as a nation. And correct me if I'm wrong, but before this, you had separate federal colonies. Yeah, you had Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia. And then this is the document that pulls all of these together into some kind of united entity, which is distinct, distinct from Britain, distinct from America. It is a country, a country with these different parts that all have the same aim or pulling in the same direction. And that's sort of, we're talking 1867 here.

The other piece of legislation that you mentioned a little earlier when you said actually the terminology of Indian is problematic now, because it was used in legislation called the Indian Act. and that is dated 1876. So I think it's a good idea to explain what that actually was and what that actually said. So there were pieces of legislation pertaining to people called Indians at the time. And what you're referring to is the moment when those pieces of legislation were consolidated into the Indian Act. And I will say again, that Indian Act still exists today. It has various revisions along the way, one of the most important being,

Bill C-31, which addressed a sexist dimension of the Indian Act. That was Section 121B, which said that if an Indian man married a white woman or a woman who was not classified as Indian, that woman would become a registered Indian. However, if an Indian woman were to marry a non-Indigenous or non-Indian person, she would lose her status. She would no longer be an Indian. Now, that was addressed through a lot of work over many, many years, and finally, that revision to the Indian Act was done. But the Indian Act exists now. It's constantly being looked at and revised in the 1950s. It had major revision. That's one of the places when education was a serious concern, particularly around the residential schools. And although they didn't end at that time, that was part of the legislation that began the changes to the schools.

So you just mentioned the residential schools, and this is obviously something we'll be focusing in on now for the rest of this episode because this is an extremely controversial matter. But first of all, it has a very long history, doesn't it? I think you mentioned 1605 is the date of the very first one. Could you take us through this story? I'm taking this information from J.R. Miller's book, Xingwok's Vision, where he does a really thorough examination of the history of residential schools across Canada. And he points to 1605 or 08 or something, when he does a really thorough examination of the history of residential schools across Canada. And he points to 1605 or 05 or 08 or something, when the Reckolets were in New France, and they began by taking a few indigenous boys to France to be trained and Christianized and civilized. At some point, they were a Franciscan order. At some point, the Jesuits arrived. That didn't work very well, whatever they were trying to do. The Jesuits did the same thing, took some kids to France, but then they set up what they called a seminary, which was basically a boarding school. And they also tried to do the best way possible, to get the children to become good Christians.

One of the problems they were having is that as long as the kids were with their parents, the parents didn't have a very hard time amalgamating Native spirituality and Christianity, so it was always not the appropriate way that the Jesuits wanted to happen. So they made a big effort to have a little school and bring, I think, boys there to teach. And that also ended in failure. So they just gave up and stopped doing it. In my estimation, that failed experiment was completely ignored once the big push for residential schools got going. And the big push comes partly from John McDonald, who says, you know what, the residential schools is going to be part of this great united, you know, new land that we are making where everybody thinks the same, has the same culture, language even.

He starts talking about how this is almost a God-given purpose to create these schools to amalgamate and change. these people who are needing this kind of paternalistic guidance. So, I mean, talk about the actual sort of legislative part of this, and how do these schools suddenly get funding and suddenly start changing? You know, now it's not just, you know, Jesuit trying his luck with a number of parents. It becomes law to do this. Can you talk us through that? Yeah, I want to start a little bit before Confederation.

In 1847, with the province of Canada, there was a report done by Edgerton-Reyerson, And he was the one who suggested establishing schools to, quote, raise Indians to the level of whites. Now, he didn't say residential schools per se, but they quickly turned into residential schools. So then in 1867 was Confederation. And, you know, various provinces joined Canada along the way. So it wasn't always the 10 provinces and the territories when it got started. At that point, then there was a bigger push towards residential. schools. It was in 1876 that Nicholas Davin was sent to the U.S. to study their industrial schools.

And this is really the solid beginning of residential schools. Industrial schools in the U.S. had been set up with President Grant suggesting they were a major component of aggressive civilization. Aggressive civilization, in this case, being directed at the native peoples. Absolutely. And the idea was to create a blue-collar workforce? Is that sort of inherent in the idea that? They didn't say that right away, no. But when any examination of the schools is done now, they say there were three things that went on.

The first thing was to Christianise. The first lessons were religion. The second lessons were skills, menial skills, and then a very distant third were some academic skills, reading and writing. One of the reports that your man, Davin, produced for McDonald's to read, had a, well, This is going to be hard for people to hear, but the report on industrial scores for Indians and half-breeds was the title of it, which in itself is going to make some people go, that sounds wrong. But it's the report that John A. MacDonald gets, and it says, you know, little can be done with adults. Can't do anything for them. They are a lost cause. But for the children, as their tastes, and this is a quote, are fashioned at home, and his inherited aversion to toil is in no way combated. That's why adults are a washed-out case. If anything is to be done with the Indian, Indian, we must catch him very young, is a line from this report. And so that then becomes, you know, some may say in that kind of paternalistic Victorianish way of this is how we save you from yourselves, this almost industry of taking children from their parents, from that

malign influence, and just hot-housing them in religion. And again, I'm using air quotes here, civilisation. Yes, I couldn't agree more. That's exactly what that was. That was a vote. And there's parallels similar efforts at other parts of the British Empire. So you have similar legislation and similar schools being set up in Western Australia. You get similar stuff going on in Ireland and indeed in Western Scotland, dedicated at the Gales, trying to stop and speak Gaelic. And Wales. And Wales, yeah.

Yeah, I know this has echoes at this period across the world. So if you're listening to this in Wales or in Western Australia, you will hear much in what is to follow that will sound very familiar. We're going to take a break very shortly, but just before we get to the break, Victorian schools were inherently brutal. I mean, just pick up a dickens and you'll know what it was like to go to school here. Were they just as brutal as Victorian schools were brutal? Or was there something specific, dehumanising and violent about these residential schools?

I have often thought about boarding schools and how simple. or they might or might not be to residential schools. I actually have had a graduate student, a PhD student who focused a section of her dissertation on arguing about the distinction. But I have always claimed when children were sent to British boarding schools, they were having their culture reinforced. Spare the rod and spoil the child. This was not shocking to them.

A child should be seen and not heard. All of those kinds of things. when indigenous kids were taken and grabbed up and put into the boarding schools that may have had some similarities, it was antithetical to all of what their life experience had been to that point. In addition, when English kids went to English schools, their language was the language. When indigenous kids went, they couldn't speak. And if they did speak their language, they were punished. So the clash of cultures that residential schools in Canada brought is,

unfathomable. Let's take a break here. And then, you know, you've said a few things that I really do want to get into in more detail, you know, the scooping up of children. What did that look like and feel like? And some of the accounts that you've been gathering over the years of what it felt like to be in these schools, join us after the break. Welcome back. And I should say that some of you might find the next part of this Empire podcast a little bit upsetting because it does involve children and it involves brutality to children. So we're going to talk about Deputy Superintendent General Duncan Campbell Scott. Now, even when I say his name, you're chuckling, and it's not a happy chuckle, is it?

Because tell us why he elicits such emotion when you say his name in Canada now. Perhaps one of his statements that represents his line of thought is his idea that we will continue until there is no Indian, no Indian act, no Indians anywhere. They will be completely absorbed into the body politic. And he also used the rather dodgy phrasing, the final solution. for the Indian problem, didn't he? Well, I mean, we should say who he is, first world, because we haven't explained why he would even, what he says matters at all.

He's a career civil servant. He joins as Deputy Superintendent at the Department of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932. And as such, with that position and that power, he really does, you know, hold life and death in his hands for many of these indigenous people. So he has a very poor view. The children who are scooped up,

how are they scooped up and taken away? from their families. And it's by law. It's not by the choice of the parents sending them off for education. It was 1920 when compulsory attendance became law. In Camelops, there was literally

a cattle truck. And in Chiquille, there's a photograph of the children in the back of the cattle truck. The truck would drive up. The attendants would get out and the children would be ordered to get into the truck.

I have in both in resistance and renewal and in Chiquel McHill, there is the story of a woman talking about the day that the truck was coming, her father being aware that the truck was coming and him saying, I'm going now, you have to be here, you have to stay here, and you have to go to school, and clinging on to his leg as he's going out the doors, and no, no, don't go. And then the truck arrives and the children run in all directions to try and escape. They literally are grabbed and put into the truck. The picture that we see in the book, There's a mother who's holding a smaller child and walking away looking totally devastated,

and you see this cattle truck with this, you know, wooden sides and all these children crammed into the truck, driving off to Camlop's Indian residential school. That's from where this person comes from. It's about an hour and a half drive in the back of a truck. Can I use one of your own quotes, please? It's an account of Julie who describes, you know, her father crying and crying and she's sort of clinging to him. She doesn't want to go. And, you know, she runs away with other children.

The truck comes. When she sees the truck and the truck's already got children in it and they are bawling their eyes out, she just remembers crying, asking her mother, what did I ever do to you? Why are you mad at me? Why are you sending me away? And she just doesn't understand that actually her parents don't want this, but they feel like they have no choice because the law is the law. What happened to people who said no, who hid their children away? I mean, surely some people would have said, actually, I'm not doing this.

These are my children. I love them. So sometimes it was possible to hide children, not very often, but they would be charged. It was illegal. They would be charged with not sending their children to school. Whether they went to jail or not, they don't know. And what did they drive into? Painted as a picture, Celia, of what they first saw when they drove, I don't know, through the gates, through and is it remote? Is there anything near it? Just paint as a picture. Well, this is a huge building. The building still is there, so anybody who's interested can go and see it. It's not unattractive in the photographs. I mean, it's quite a substantial and grand looking building. Substantial and grand, and when you're a tiny child coming from far away and you don't quite understand what's happening, it is foreboding and scary. What is this gigantic place? I don't want to speak for the people in the book. I mean, I think people really need to see the words that the indigenous people themselves say. but it was Julie I was thinking about when I was giving a little rendition and you'll see in the book

children saying they came to this place and they had never seen anything like it before and then what was very scary for them after this ride was the people who came out the door and they were very strange people all dressed in black with everything covered except their faces

showing out through a little white place These are nuns and wimples these were nuns yes exactly I mean just again using the words that you've gathered from people who, you know, have recounted their feelings, Mildred, who was already afraid of white people, saw a nun in a black and white face approaching her. And she and her sister just began shaking and crying and backing up as such a visceral response. And she imagined the nun thinking, these little wild Indians, I've got to tame them,

is what she thought was coming her way. So the first thing that happens is these children are then lined up and they are checked for light. which again is a pretty dehumanizing kind of, almost like a vet check. And then they're given mandatory haircuts. Again, it's sort of a, you know, taking away of an identity and a separate look and, you know, an individuality. What were the institutional haircuts like? I mean, just again, paint us a picture, if you will. I think one of the really heart-rending things about the haircuts is that for many of those children coming,

They were aware that when someone had passed away, people cut their hair. It was a sign of respect and recognition of this person leaving. So when they arrived at school and had their haircut, one person in the book speaks very clearly about, I thought maybe my mother had died. But these haircuts were, for the little girls, they had braids straight across the front and then kind of a very short bob all around. And of course, these were children who were coming with long braids. The boys came also with long grades, hairs cut very, very short.

As a result of this, I mean, you have basically an identical army of kids who all look the same. Well, what were the clothes like that they were given? They were all wearing uniform. So, again, the clothes that they came in, and sometimes their parents dressed them up to go to school in lovely clothes. Those clothes are immediately taken away. They were given very austere, formal little uniforms. We talked about Smocks, the kind of Victorian little smock dress for the girls that were Smocks and the boys. in shirts and breeches.

Yes, that's right. Right, okay. And then they're divided up into age groups. And so, I mean, we're talking about teeny tiny children up to teens, aren't we? And what were the youngest children? What age were the youngest children who were taken? Some children were actually four years old when they came to the schools. And yes, they were divided according to age, which was really hard for children who had older

siblings. And they expected, you know, they would at least have the comfort of their older siblings. In addition, boys and girls were separated as well. And again, one of the people in the book talks about how shocked he was because he came from a very large family. This is Gary Godferson talking. And I should say Mildred is Mildred Godferson, the late Mildred Godferson. Julie is Julie Antoine. Julie Antoine is very much with us and speak with her very often.

Gary Godferson, Mildred's son, who attended Camelope's Indian residential school, was one of 13 children. and one of his older siblings was like his mother, he said, and when he got to the school, he could not be with his sister who had been basically his mother. So, again, not only ripped away from his family and his home, but then completely separated from someone he saw as a parent, really. The classic sort of horrors of English boarding schools are two things that always stands out. One is the hideous food, and the other is the terrible harsh discipline and corporal punishment.

Are both of these presumably present here? Oh, absolutely. The food, everybody talked about the food as being disgusting. Mosh for breakfast to burn porridge. The thing about this is that when I was talking to people, I was very interested in how did they survive? And one of the things they did is what children do, they found entertainment.

One of the biggest entertainments was somebody talked about taking their spoon, smacking the spoon up and down on the porridge, and you could see who could make the longest string of this glutinous muck. And that was one of their fun things. The other thing they talked about was the staff going and gathering, I think, spawned out salmon from the banks, putting them in barrels, bringing them back and cooking them into disgusting chowder. They didn't all die, so I guess they were recently on the banks. And discipline, caning, corporal punishment, head shaving, what's the sort of stuff that's going on here? All of those things.

Very often straps. They talk about straps. They didn't talk about canes as much. Describing the leather straps that were used to smack them. They were often had to take their drawers down to be smacked in front of other people. And if they ran away, they had their heads shaved when they came back to indicate that they were to be watched. The other thing that they talked about in terms of discipline that's quite horrendous is many of the boys wet their beds. Probably the girls did too.

They had never wet their beds before, but when they got there, they wet their beds and they were forced to get up and clean their sheets. at some point put their sheets over their heads and stand there with their wet sheets on their heads. I mean, it's horrible. But again, it's like the brutality of that, you know, we did a series on Ireland and, you know, the Magdalene Laundries were sort of similarly just dehumanising, robbing of an identity. The thing that's different for the Magdalene laundries, and again, this is this goes to what you were saying before, which is, you know, sort of brutality in a Victorian school is brutality in a Victorian school.

Those things are common. But some run with your culture. That's what everybody's going through. in some run absolutely at your culture at great speed. And in these schools, in this particular school, you had a priest hammering it into the children that they are not to think or act or speak like an Indian. And he would reinforce that message with you would go to hell and burn for eternity if you didn't listen to their way of teaching.

So, you know, not only the fear of being caught speaking the language of your 13 siblings, But also Hellfire, which, again, must have been a new concept because what religion were the children who were coming here? What was their belief system and how different was it to the belief system being imposed upon them? Well, it's a very complex set of spiritual beliefs where Coyote plays a major role. There is a creator. Coyote is a lovely character who wanders through the world, often making mistakes and doing crazy things, and has some problems with what he's done. it falls over a cliff and dies, but then rabbit comes and jumps over him four times, and he goes

on into the world making his next mistake. So it's a very gentle kind of teaching in that, you know, when he's making mistakes, the stories usually involve a lesson for children who are listening, but also a reminder for adults who are listening. The stories would be told in winter houses. They were only told in the wintertime. They would be told in winter houses, and they were lessons. But lessons that showed you make a mistake, don't do that. being taught about not going into the woods. They'd be told Sina is out there. Sina is the owl and if you go out into the woods after dark, Sina is out there and she would get you. Well, it's an important lesson. Don't go out in

the woods after dark because they're cougars and bears and all kinds of things. But the story is about the owl. So there's no comparison, really. No, there's no comparison. And it's sort of atavistic and there's redemption. As you say, the cruelty figure. You know, there's redemption for him. He makes mistakes and he comes back. But now they go to a school that if you do this, you will burn in hellfire for eternity. You could burn in hellfire for, you know, this whole thing about thinking and talking like an Indian. You know, it's just for being who you are. How did the children suffer under that?

I mean, you know, what are the accounts say of the kind of mental trauma? You talked about the bedwetting. But I mean, what else was going on in these tiny little minds when they're so terrified by what could happen to them? I believe they were all traumatized and they discussed specific. moments and times. But I think one of the larger ramifications of this is that, of course, when they did go home in the summertime, some of them were there all year and only went home in the summertime, then they would look at their parents and realize that these are terrible people who are on their way to hell. So it completely interrupted family life as well.

But I really want to emphasize not everybody. It's not everybody that this happened to, because I think it's important not to see every indigenous person who went to residential school as a victim and a down they went. Some people found ways to survive, and there were many reasons that they found those ways. I mean, really, really, really very good to point that out. Not everybody is a victim, absolutely. But when we talk about these kind of schools in other contexts, and the maglid and laundries, again, is sort of ringing in my head. Sexual assault and sexual violence takes place when you have children under the control of, you know, domineering adults who are not watched and are given carte blanche. At this Camloops, Indian residential school, was that happening at all? Did you ever come across that?

Sexual violence did occur in the school. People talked to me about the sexual violence. When I was interviewing people, however, they talked to me about the sexual violence and abuse after I turned my tape recorder off. So I felt it was not appropriate at the time that I was doing this research. I had to be respectful of what people were prepared. to say. The research was done in 1986. This was long before people were talking about residential schools and the stories were just beginning to come to the surface. As a matter of fact, resistance and renewal is one of the first books that has indigenous perspectives about the schools represented. So since that time, of course, there have been incredible amounts of

documentation of sexual abuse and all of the violence that occurred in the schools. In 2021, there was discovery of the remains of 215 indigenous children in an unmarked grave. Were those children murdered or did they die of neglect? What are we to make? I mean, this is much worse than burnt porridge. Yes. And this, of course, is a very controversial topic. How they died, people don't know.

Who's in the burial sites? People don't know. Some people are very dismissive of those sites. And other people recognize that they represent horrors of residential school across the country, exactly who's there, how many, what happened. We don't know. But residential schools were sites of death. But they're children.

I mean, there are definitely graves of children associated with the school. That's clear, is it? That's definitely the understanding of what's there. What's happened is there has been radar detecting devices that have found materials. that appears to be graves. Can I just say something about the 215 because I do think that this has a really, really important moment. It is something that is causing huge controversy. There are people who want to be very dismissive. The 215 graves and other grave sites since that time around residential schools finally brought non-Indigenous people's attention to residential schools. Before that, despite the amounts of documentation, stories told, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, people had managed to avoid thinking about these things. Suddenly, there was no avoiding. The conversations became much longer, much richer, much deeper. So I just see those 215 as being a really, really important impetus for people to acknowledge what Canada's history has been.

At what point in Canada's history did it become, unacceptable to have Indian residential school like this. I mean, when do they suddenly say, actually, you know what, these are wrong? We're going to close them all down. There was not a watershed moment. I'd say the closings came gradually over time. Generally speaking, the schools are said to be in existence to 1985. Between 1838 and 1985, there were 134 schools across Canada.

And Stelia, just to again get this clear in people's minds, these are compulsory by law. You have to send your children off if you're indigenous. When does that end? Or is that still in place? It was actually after the revisions to the Indian Act that occurred in the 1950s. At that point, children were then being allowed to go to public schools in various contexts. That didn't stop the residential schools. So, in other words, not segregated schools. They could go with the same sort of schools everyone else went to.

But very often, the residential schools became residences for children from outlying areas. and they went from the residents to the schools, to the public schools in town. So some of the horrors of the residential dimension continued, although things definitely lightened up considerably after the 1950s revisions. Cedia, we've nearly run out of time, but just again to return, I'm still troubled by these 215 skeletons turning up. I mean, is there any suggestion on the skeletons, presumably they've gone through an autopsy,

that there's skullduggery, that there's violence on the bones? Is there a suggestion of physical abuse or neglect? We can't just leave it hanging like that. These graves have not been touched. The people of the area have said that they must be respected and they will not be exhumed and they will be honored and recognized

if there comes a time when these graves should be exhumed, then that will happen at that point. Celia, when the graves of fetuses and newly born children were discovered in the Magdalen, in schools of Ireland, there was a massive national inquiry and a determination to make sure that this sort of thing never happened again. In a sense, you could say there was a positive outcome from this very, very dark piece of history. It's the same true after the 215 graves of children was found at the residential schools? I think you could say the same thing. And I'd sort of like

to put it in context of how to think about the schools and the people who attended the schools. This is really in the words of a Haudenoshone scholar. Her name is Patricia Montour-Angus. she's passed away. She talked about the fact that first we were victims, then we were survivors, now we are warriors. And I think what's really important to recognize with people who've attended the schools, now they are the warriors. That being said, the 215 who attended those schools fit even more with something that Patricia Montere Angus wrote late in life. She said, after we think about being warriors, we become the teachers. And I believe that those two 15, that lie in their respected resting places

are actually teachers for all of Canada, for all of the world, to pay attention to what these schools were about and to also see the resilience of the people who are continuing to move in and move on in the Canadian context to declare themselves indigenous in every way. A National Truth and Reconciliation Commission

was set up in 2015 as part of the government's apology. There was an apology that was delivered for these schools. and there was a settlement over the schools, and it found that at least 4,100 students had died while attending these schools, many from mistreatment or neglect, Willie, it might answer the question. Others from disease or accident. In terms of Kamloops specifically, the commission identified 51 student deaths at Kamloops using church and state records. And it found, and this is the thing that's really painful, I'm sure, for the families, that in many cases families never learn the fate of their offspring. who are now known simply as the missing children. So in their minds, you know, that kids might have grown up, might have gone on to do jobs. They don't know if they're in among the 215 or anywhere else. They don't know. And that must be the most heartbreaking thing of all. Celia, there's some sense that these schools have now been reopened in a more positive manner. Is that right? They still exist, but are now very much pursuing a different end with

the different politics. No, the schools themselves are no longer funded by the federal government, so none exist. However, those buildings are used by Indigenous communities in a whole range of ways from summer resorts to Kamelips is being used for a whole range of activities. Associated with the Indigenous people. Oh yes, cultural revival, museums, archives, etc. Well, that is the greatest irony, yeah. It's been turned around now into an institution, which bolsters the identity of Indigenous nations rather than having them deliberately erased, which was the initial point of them. Celia, it's a really difficult story to tell.

Thank you very much for telling it to us. Celia Hayg Brown was our guest on this episode of Empire. Let me tell you our next episode is very, very different. We have something of a historical scoop for you. It really is very exciting. Related to indigenous communities, not in Canada, but just south in the United States, an absolutely fantastic eye-opener, mouth-watering, great big, red meat scoop with Mark Horton, the archaeologist, who has made a massive discovery that seems

to completely disprove. You know, the Roanoke, you love telling the Roanoke story, the mystery of the Roanoke people who disappear. I do. Yes, go on, quickly sum it up. And I love Mark Horton. Yeah, I know you do. But they disappear, all these people of Roanoke, the first settlement. So this is going right back to the very beginnings of English colonialism in North America. this is the first colony planted on the coast of what will be called Virginia. And when I think it's Sir Francis Drake, isn't it, it comes back to pick them up, everyone has disappeared. And all there is is these mysterious words written on a tree trunk,

Croaton, Croaton. Croaton. And the suggestion is that they've been wiped out by, quote, savages. But Mark Horton has recently returned and has other ideas. If you want to hear that episode right now, you know, what to do, join Empire Club for the price of a cappuccino a month and you can get early access, bonus episodes, weekly newsletters, head to Empirepoduk.com. That's Empirepodukuk.com. Tell your friends, tell your families, tell your enemies, tell everyone. But until the next time

we meet, it is goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Drupal.