Front Burner - Stories from the Kamloops Indian Residential School

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

From drownings to suicides in broad daylight, a new CBC investigation reveals a horrific picture of what life was like at the Kamloops Indian Residential school. Today on Front Burner, the stories of some who lived and died there.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. The story that we're covering today involves the deaths of Indigenous children at the hands of the residential school system. There are some really difficult details here. At the Kamloops Indian Residential School in 1937, during an outbreak of measles, a young girl named Marie Francois was taken to hospital.

She'd been sick with pneumonia, with two bacterial ear infections, and inflamed kidneys. By the time her parents were called and made it to hospital some 60 kilometers away, it was too late. The girl had died without them, of a blood clot in her brain. Marie Francois was one of many Indigenous children who died at the school, which was run mostly by the Catholic Church between 1893 and 1978. It's now become a household name after the Tukumlips Tshwetmuk Nation recently announced the possibility of as many or more than 215 unmarked graves on the site. Today, my colleague Jorge Barrera has obtained documents and talked to survivors, and he'll tell us about life inside the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Hi, Jorge. Hi. Thanks for having me. Thanks so much for making the time today. You know, I know you met with survivors of the Kamloops Indian Residential School recently. Barbara McNabb Larson is one of them, and I wonder if you could tell me a bit about her. Well, she attended Kamloops Residential School from about 1948 to 1950. She's from Skecherson First Nation, which is about a 40-minute drive from the Camloops Residential School. I was born here on this reserve at Skecherson.

I was raised by a very loving family until I was taken away to the school. And I was only five at the time. And she spoke about a creek she often goes to. And she goes there because it brings her back to a time before she went to residential school. It was a creek that she went to as a child. Things have been pretty hectic since then. creek that she went to as a child. Things have been pretty hectic since then, but I always have to be beside the creek and beside the water because it's the thing that calms me and it gives me strength. And for her, it was a time when she was free, when her world was beautiful,

framed by water and green and blue sky. Time when I lived in peace and comfort and safety and I felt protected by my family. And then things shattered, she says, when the cattle truck came to get her that first year to go to Kamloops Residential School. And the next year, she said it was an army truck. And they drove us back to the school in these trucks,

and they unloaded us like we were just little animals. And she still remembers the delousing. The first things they did was they took us down to our cleansing room, where they cut off our hair. Then they scrubbed us down with disinfectant like we were diseased animals. Sorry. And then she talked about the fear that they live with,

these threats that we're swirling around about. Don't get out of line because there's the graveyard and there's also the river. Those were warnings that were given to us as little tiny children, five, six years old. I don't think you really grasp it at the time, but when your friends disappear and don't come back, even as a child, you know something's wrong. As a child, you know something's wrong. And she remembers that they believed that it was in the orchard,

the place where people were buried. Wow. And when she heard about this announcement of the suspected remains of children, she said she felt more pain than she had ever felt before, and it brought it all back for her. I thought that perhaps that after all of these years, as old as I am, I thought I had gotten over it and I had a grip on things. When they discovered those babies, for three days, I went into a depression so deep and a grief that I'd never do a hat.

I can't imagine how difficult the recent news must be for people like Barbara. As you mentioned, and as you've recently reported, there are many, many people who did not get to live and remember their time at the school. And what do we know from the records that you were able to sift through recently about the children who died there? I understand that some died from illness. So the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation, which is the national repository for residential school history, they have records and also have oral testimony that was gathered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They have death records from 1935 to 1945

from Kamloops Residential School. And basically these records are drafted by the Indian agent with input from a medical doctor and the school principal. And these records show us that disease did take a lot of children's lives, as well as incidents like drowning. And there's this one child, Leslie Lewis, he was nine years old. He died from an epileptic attack in 1935. And the doctor in the file says that he believed that this was

caused by an outbreak of measles, that as he was recovering from it, this is what triggered this attack. And the Indian agent notes in this report the overcrowded conditions in the school. And he says that, you know, you have 285 students here in five dormitories, and they're all crowded together. And I'm going to quote from the letter. The Indian agent writes, During an epidemic, it is impossible to properly isolate the patients and contacts. The need for separate quarters to house six children is evident. And it is evident that tuberculosis and measles and other kind of infections

really affect a lot of children. I understand, too, that other students at the school died by suicide. And this is something that's talked a lot about in a book that you found. And can you tell me about that book and what the survivors describe? Yes, this book is titled Behind Closed Doors, Stories from the Kamloops Indian Residential School. And it was published by the Sequepmec Cultural Society in 2001. It has the stories, the raw testimony of survivors. And there's one survivor named James Charles who

attended the school. And he talks about witnessing and knowing about the suicides of three students, one on a bell rope, another one in the orchard, which Barbara McNab-Larson spoke about, this orchard that keeps on coming up. And I'm going to read a little bit of what he said about one instance that almost, you know, a lot of the student body heard about, because it was on a day that all the students went for a school bus ride, and I'm quoting from his excerpt. When we got back, everyone had to fall into assembly with their own group. They gave a head count and called out the names. One oblique brother was asking who saw that student last.

He was seen hanged on that swing. It was a big surprise to all the students. We knew there were a lot of students following that suicide path. I've been told by students that they wouldn't be back after summer, and their words would ring true. I guess they couldn't handle the school system. There was another survivor that I spoke to, Jerry Oldman, who told me that he personally knew of a boy.

At the same school I went to, this young man or young boy hung himself in the bathroom. My brother and my friend are both the same age. Still today, they remember that. They still get nightmares about it. He also spoke about students dying trying to flee the school. About the runaways and getting killed, jumping a train, freezing outside, running away in the wintertime. Everyone heard those. The sad part is no one checked it out or believed the survivors when they tell their stories. So death was, and the threat of death, was part of life in Kamloops Residential School.

They forget about it, get over it, it's a past. Easy for a lot of Canadians to say that hadn't been hungry for 10 months. Being afraid to go to sleep at night because the abuser might come. Afraid of the violence of being struck and kicked, or making a mistake or not moving fast enough. I know in the same book that you found, there was mention of a furnace, and this is something that Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner Murray Sinclair has talked about as well. Can you tell me about the furnace?

Yes, so retired Senator Murray Sinclair who chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in his video response to the news out of the grounds of Kamloops Residential School, he talked about how survivors Some of the survivors talked about infants who were born to young girls at the residential schools who had been fathered by priests, having where survivors speak about a furnace and abortions, and girls who went through abortions at the school and hearing the clang of the furnace, and it starting up in months when it wasn't cold. The National Center for Truth and Reconciliation,

they've been able to account for 51 child deaths at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. And then, you know, of course, there are now these preliminary findings from the Tukumloops to Shwetmuk Nation, which show unmarked graves of possibly 215 Indigenous children. And I know that number could rise or fall, as our colleague Angela Starrett recently explained.

But Jorge, I wonder if you could help me understand why there's such a large discrepancy here. Many key records, including for Kamloops Residential School, were destroyed over the years by the government. We were provided documents from National Archives Canada that show three volumes of funeral records from Kamloops Residential School were destroyed, along with three volumes from Indian agent files, along with quarterly returns. Now quarterly returns are basically student lists, and these would tell you what communities the students came from, and also whether any of them died during that quarter. These were pulped by the federal government, and these create a gap in the record that prevents us from getting an accurate count,

not only in CAM moves, but these types of records are destroyed for residential schools across the board. Why were these records destroyed? The Department of Indian Affairs just did not prioritize these records. Historian John Malloy, who wrote a seminal book called A National Crime about residential schools, says that when you think of Indian Affairs, it's better to think of it as a really massive real estate firm. Their priority, the department's priority, is managing the lands that they hold in trust, which are reserve lands. And so for the department, the priority records are land records and things like band membership lists. So when edicts came to the department from the federal government that they need to, say, for example, recycle 15% of their records during a paper shortage like during the Second World War,

when it came to deciding what they wanted to destroy, they would focus on residential school records. So an awful lot of information which one could have had to describe the nature of the system, the treatment of the children, and these sorts of things where a lot of that information was simply lost. Wow. And what about from the side of the Catholic Church? So the missionary oblates of Mary ran the school, do they have any records that would help paint a fuller picture? So the oblates and the Order of St. Anne's, so the oblates were sort of the ones who ran the

school and the Order of St. Anne's provided nuns to taught and did provide some nursing. and did provide some nursing. They turned over records that they deemed relevant to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But when it came to these records, it was up to these entities to determine what was relevant to residential schools. They're the ones who determined what that was. Now, let's try to think of these records

as being held in three filing cabinets. So in one filing cabinet, you have records these Catholic entities deemed to be relevant to residential schools. In another filing cabinet, you have church function records. And in another filing cabinet, you have personnel records. Only one of these cabinets provided records to the TRC and by extension to the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation. What wasn't turned over were the church function records. What wasn't turned over was the personnel files. For example, disciplinary reports on priests or transfers of priests or church function records like baptismal records or funeral records. These were kept away.

And especially when it comes to the personnel files, apparently priests and nuns kept these types of, for lack of a better word, these diaries that basically itemized their daily life, their daily work, and their daily spiritual administration in residential schools. These records have not been turned over. Is there any indication that they may be, you know, perhaps under increasing pressure? Right now, it's unclear whether we will ever see these types of personnel records. There have been some calls to have a body with actual subpoena power to go after these records in church archives across the country. And there's some Catholic entities that have never turned over any records. Roughly

17 haven't turned over any records, never turned over records to the TRC. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years.

I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cops. I want to just come back to what we know about the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

And so you've painted this portrait of some of the survivors who went there and lived, some who never came back home. But I know that you also dug into the history of the school and why it was built in the first place in the 1890s. And I wonder if you could tell me a bit about that. My reporting on this mainly relies on the research of John Malloy. He said that while there were, you know, residential schools or industrial schools began in Canada in sort of the late 1840s, their development sort of ebbed a little bit and then picked up again under John A. MacDonald, which is where we get sort of that national system that we are so familiar with or increasingly familiar with today. One of the biggest influences in this system stems from what the americans were were doing with

industrial schools residential schools and and mcdonald actually sent um an official on a fact finding mission and this came back in an 1879 report by an individual named nicholas flood davin and according to malloy what davin would have discovered during his meetings with the Americans was, quote, this covert purpose of residential schools using the institutions to hold the children hostage against the good behavior of their parents, to hold the children hostage and prevent any type of resistance, arm resistance from Indigenous nations, especially as the railway was penetrating deeper across the west. You know, you had the Riel Rebellion and there was worries that there could be something even worse triggered with the wrong move and the fledgling Canadian state wanted to avoid this. And so they saw

these schools as a way to take a hold of the children and then use them as bargaining chips to prevent any type of potential insurrection. And it actually was voiced in black and white by a letter found by Malloy by a school inspector named J.A. McRae. In a letter, an 1886 letter, he wrote to the Indian Commissioner, quote, it is unlikely that any tribe or tribes would give trouble of a serious nature to the government whose members had children completely under government control. And Malloy says that this is one of the reasons that also drove the development of the Kamloops Residential School, because, quote, he says that the situation in the area was tenuous for the government, and that these schools are very much part of the colonial process

for the sake of the development of Canada. This is a much bigger story in terms of the significance of the system than just taking children away from their parents and doing a bad job of quote-unquote educating and taking care of them. Wow, you know, that's the first time that I've heard that, that these schools were used as a way for the government to control Indigenous resistance, that these kids were used as leverage and bargaining chips against their parents. I would imagine maybe lots of people listening hadn't yet heard that.

Just to be clear here, given everything that you've just talked about, it's very possible that we never really get answers and know the stories of the souls in these unmarked graves at the Camelot Residential School and then I suppose elsewhere around the country as well, right? It is possible because of the loss of records over the years. What we have to rely on to fill these gaps between pages is the history carried by all those survivors who came home, who have shared their stories for many, many years. And it's their stories that hold the truth about the history of these institutions. And by taking the pieces of paper that are still out there and allowing the words of survivors front and center, I think we will always have a clear picture of what these schools were about and the impact that these schools had on the nations that controlled these lands before Canada was even thought of. Okay, Jorge, thank you, as always.

Thank you. All right, so before we go today, terror charges have been laid against Nathaniel Veltman, the 20-year-old accused of deliberately driving into and killing a Muslim family in London, Ontario. He's facing four counts as well of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. To prove terrorism, prosecutors need to demonstrate that Veltman was responsible for the killing and that he did it for a political, religious, or ideological purpose, objective, or cause. We don't yet know what evidence underpins these charges, but London police have previously alleged that this was a premeditated act against Muslims. Federal and provincial Crown attorneys did not provide any further detail about

the terrorism charges when they laid them on Monday. The funeral for the family took place this past Saturday. Thousands of people turned up at the Islamic Center of Southwest Ontario to mourn the loss of Salman Afzal, his wife Medeha, their 15-year-old daughter Yumna, and Salman's mother Talat. Nine-year-old Fayez, who survived the attack, has been discharged from the hospital and is expected to make a full recovery. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner, and we'll see you tomorrow.