Original subtitles

(Transcrito por TurboScribe. Actualizar a Ilimitado para eliminar este mensaje.) I was born in Ispat, Iroquois.

All elders were at my mom's door to welcome me into the world.

They had the responsibility of rearing me as a community member.

I was part of their nation.

Life was engaged with their grandmothers, grandfathers.

And they were always with the land.

The rivers, the lakes.

That was our home, that was our classroom.

Life was spontaneous.

Life was full of creation, imagination, encouragement.

And life was always in the language.

I was born in Muskegon.

I was born in Sam'spact.

I was born here, right on the land.

All my grandmothers brought me into this world.

Grandpa, very seldom speak English to me.

Carrying me on his back, just always.

Seeing it in Soushoa.

If I asked my grandfather a question, he wouldn't give me the answer, he'd tell

me a story.

There's always a learning inside of a story.

You never miss it, you can see it.

When I was really young, all of the elders were grandpa or grandma.

My grandfather, he said, well, let's go down to the beach.

I heard the church bells coming across the water.

And I smiled, and my grandpa says, why do you smile like that, that's a big

smile.

I said, oh, I don't have to go to church today.

I'm with you out here, so I'm happy.

And then I just said, I've never seen you in church.

You never go to church.

Grandma goes all the time, like three times a week.

And you never go there.

No.

No.

No, I don't like that place either.

He looked up at the sky.

Looked at the land, looked all around.

Looked at the water.

And he looked back at me and he said, this is my church.

I come

from your ancestors and mine.

We all come from the same place.

We are all related.

And there was a time when I thought I was half Indian and half English.

And I learned that I am half First Nations from the northwest coast.

I still use the word Indian because that's what I've used all my life.

I came into this world at seven o'clock in the morning, springtime.

The river is high, the first spring salmon are running.

And the old woman had the right to give me a name.

Because she was in charge of my birth.

And I was handed to her and she held me up.

And she called me Weehast.

And Weehast means big fireweed.

So that was my first name, not Roy Henry.

Weehast.

I was given a name from my home village of Gidghala.

And that name is Tsukum Daxq.

My mother, who was here in Shikwepemc territory, in Isgat, they say Sama.

She was a white woman.

Her parents were from England.

And she went to the village as a missionary.

Married my father, who is Gisbet Wada, or killer whale.

And when they had their first children, the eagle chief made a decision to

adopt her.

So we would have a place, being a matriarchal society.

That's where I come from.

That's where my roots are.

And I'll say I'm from Gidghala because my mother was adopted there.

My memories here are often on the riverbanks.

Learning to balance on the rocks.

Playing with driftwood.

Always caught up in my imagination, throwing crab apples at my siblings.

Digging holes in the fields.

Just exploring the land, being out in the bush.

I come from the house known as Gitlulumhetwit.

Which means those who stand in the front.

And that is the house of the fireweed clan of the Gixsan Nation in the village

of Anspayach.

Or is also referred to as Kispiox.

We bought this place, this trailer, in 1987.

Oh, wow.

Anybody home?

Oh my God, don't take a picture right there.

Been nobody here for a long time.

Oh, these were good times.

That's when everybody danced till 6 o'clock in the morning.

Long time ago, that's how we were.

My name is Phyllis Amelia Chelsea.

I'm Wanda, the majority of the year.

I lived out in our traditional land.

This place, called Alklai Lake, came together under the direction of the

government and the church.

And houses were built for us here.

To take part in those ways that were new to us.

And that became a way of life here.

The Canadian Indians come to greet their great white father from across the

sea.

And 2,000 dark-skinned tribesmen are happy.

She came 80 miles to see the princess.

The loss of land, our territory, when they created this reservation.

When you look outside, it's only one mile square.

But our traditional land is 100 miles all around.

The Indian Act restricted us to live on this little piece of land.

That's not natural.

It's like asking a horse not to eat grass.

This land that we're on right now, my house, you know, we have a certificate of

possession to this land.

But the land ultimately belongs to the Crown.

To me, this idea of Canada is a myth.

It's a construct to justify colonization, to justify genocide.

The myth of the Mountie.

You know, the myth of the helpful, polite Canadian.

You know, that detracts from the realities of what happened here.

That detracts from the long history of severe environmental impacts, genocides.

This idea that Christian nations had every right to use any means

necessary for the conquest of non-Christian peoples and lands.

And so, fundamentally, within Canadian law, we are still considered heathens.

We are still considered people uncivilized enough to manage our own affairs.

To manage our own governance.

To manage our own territories.

To look after our own resources.

So that's why we're confined to reserves.

That's why we're confined in this dependency trap.

The welfare systems that were imposed upon our people.

In conjunction with the limitations on our people's economic growth.

For years, it was illegal for us to gather.

It was illegal for us to hire lawyers.

It was illegal for us to practice our governance or our culture.

It was illegal for us to even leave the reserve without permission.

And when we lost our land, from then on, they gradually tried to civilize us.

Looking back in history, 200 years, the first Prime Minister thought it would

be best for Native children to go to school.

How far along do you want to go in school?

Up to grade 12.

And then what do you think you'd like to do?

I'll try to learn to be a sister.

Why do you feel you'd like to be a sister?

So I could help the people in the world and teach them about God.

The residential school, it was Sarawak.

It was priests and the nuns.

Want to take, want to make us something that we weren't.

Trying to civilize us.

We were civilized.

We were civilized.

And they were trying to civilize us.

Because we don't kill.

Today, you look in the world today, people kill and they're civilized.

I got no sorrow, I got no tears.

I had many tears in here already, 10 years of tears.

Why should I cry anymore?

I hear little boys whimpering for their mom.

It'll be 9, 2, 3 o'clock in the morning.

Some, many died with their secrets.

But I'm happy with the people that are still alive.

I just hope for them.

1950, I came here.

50, 51.

This little guy.

I came here, 1954.

Today, we're going to the mission where some of the Shikwemik elders had

unspeakable experiences.

And they've done decades of healing work.

I was telling you, I'm looking at this place from my observant eye now.

Not from my assessing eye.

Where I blame them and I judge them.

I want to look at this as, hey, I was here.

Amazingly strange how it's enclosed.

Amazingly strange.

Private drive, no trespassing.

It's so funny how they lock us out.

Now, there's irony to it.

No trespassing, we can't get into the place where we were trapped in there for

years.

We were at home when the cattle truck from the residential school come to pick

us up.

I remember I was seven years old.

My oldest brother was on the truck.

My mom's tears as she lifted me on the truck.

How really sad she looked.

And she couldn't take me away, otherwise they'd put her in jail.

So involuntarily I was taken away.

There was a little excitement, hey, we can have a car ride.

But I didn't know that trip would change the rest of my life.

I learned how to be quiet.

I learned how to be alone.

But the one hardest thing I couldn't be alone with is not to have a mom.

I went to the residential school from age seven to age 16 at St. Joseph's

Mission.

When I got there, we were no longer allowed to speak our language.

And I had grown up speaking my language as the only language I knew.

And for that change to happen was done in a harsh way.

We were punished if we spoke our language.

We were punished if we were doing native things.

And we had to learn a whole new way of life to become white people.

And the reason why he is associated with Christmas is because he loved

children.

We weren't allowed to talk to our sisters.

Maybe we're sadly away with them.

But it's about all we can do.

Even very seldom did I talk with my brother.

When my sisters, two sisters, talk about residential school, and I don't even

remember them there.

That's how separated we were.

I felt lonely.

And oftentimes in the middle of the night you hear some little boys in the dorm

crying for mom.

In my heart at 70 years old, I was wondering when mom was going to come and

pick me back up, pick me home.

That was the saddest part.

Mom never came.

We weren't really abandoned.

We were stolen.

We were stolen children.

Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

Amen.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

Jesus.

The old school used to be here.

That's where the girls used to live.

Right here.

The boys were way over there.

This was the door.

Steps going up to the second floor.

There was the supervisor's living place over there.

This was the dorm.

When I came here, they took off all my hair.

Hair in our culture is sacred, really sacred.

You know, that's your spirit.

Anyway they cut it, you know, yes, long.

But they cut it right, right off.

Where you used to hear a hundred and fifty kids, all in this yard over here

now, it's a silence.

But you can hear them screaming yet.

I hear people, they say, oh nothing happened here.

I used to watch one of your school buddies get tied up on the bed and get

beaten.

Nothing happened, you tell me that, nothing happened.

I seen it.

But I couldn't talk about it.

Being exploited and witnessed other boys being exploited by

people who had an addiction in hurting.

And touching you.

That was the hardest part.

People say nothing happened to me, nobody touched me.

Yeah, but you witnessed it.

It's just like if you were being touched.

I wake up three o'clock in the morning with three tiny little boys under my

bed.

They were there because they wanted my protection from the perpetrators.

The supervisors that had this severe illness.

The extent of sexual abuse that I experienced there was when I would bring the

lunch to the priest and the brother.

He would grab my hand and rub my hand on his crotch.

And I hated that and I couldn't pull away because I'm just a kid.

I hated it and I didn't like that job.

But I realized as I spoke to other people about what was going on with me that

they were also experiencing the same with that same guy.

And that as I lived there I was shocked to hear that the priests were having

babies with some of the girls.

And that just tore apart my respect for the Catholic Church.

They had a plan to assimilate us, segregate us.

Dehumanize us.

Become a thing.

But that was 8 years ago.

I was just a thing.

I had a number.

They never called me by name.

I was number 19.

19, where are you?

Not Dave.

Where are you?

I was just a number.

I had many numbers but 82 was etched in my heart.

Why didn't I run away?

Why didn't I hide?

I had my rope here already.

You know, I can't.

There's a doctrine.

A teaching from the church that kept me here.

You know, it's called hell.

You go to hell.

I don't want to go to hell.

So I keep coming back here.

I was frozen.

Scared to do anything.

But that was a great sign for my tormentors to know that their work was

succeeding.

Always.

You're not going to amount to nothing.

You're just a stupid Indian.

You know.

Every aspect of what I learned when I was a little boy in my grandmas

university residential school it all changed.

Become a different kind of classroom.

Where near the end it was teaching me one day for me to be marginalized, to be

pushed away.

I could never fit in in a non-native world.

When I left the mission and alcohol was allowed for native people I became part

of that.

That's how we all were as young people.

The teenage crowd back then all our friends all our causes of appearance and

culture and no family and no home.

So alcohol became a way of life.

There was a lot of deaths.

There was a lot of hatred.

There was a lot of self-doubt.

And no respect for who we were Suquamish people.

I didn't even know then that we were a tribe of Suquamish.

I just knew we were a bunch of drunk Indians of Alkali Lake.

That's all I knew.

I did not know I had an addiction.

But after a while a friend of mine says I have the same thing.

I witnessed here in the residency school how I coped with that pain with

drinking.

And it was so problematic.

Affected my relationship.

Affected my behavior.

Affected how I talk.

Those hands are a mystery.

That's where they find those 93 people.

People were mystified what was going on what is happening because we did not

know how to express ourselves.

I knew my dad.

I knew he was a chronic alcoholic by that time.

I could only imagine what happened to him.

My dear, my brother my father-in-law told me your dad was perpetrated.

Was horse whipped at the residency school.

My dad went here.

My dad was an angry man.

Really angry.

He was hung up sitting there at last.

My dad missed his brothers.

You know.

And how many other men that resisted you know, the priests in the school.

How many others get hanged up.

They hang them up on a post like that.

And they left there like this.

Last time on his back.

Hit him three times.

Passed out.

And he hit him four more times.

That's the anger in that man that was holding that.

Now I understand.

He doesn't have to explain to me anymore if he doesn't want to.

It's too painful.

But I'll need to cut those awful things right now.

I don't want to pass it to my children.

My boys and my daughter.

I stop it right there.

He took from here his anger.

It's in here.

It's in the blood.

Blood memory.

And I carry that on to my children.

My son.

But I made up my mind that when I went to treatment for alcoholism I

was down there for eight weeks.

And I learned some things about addiction and healing.

And I don't want my grandchildren to go through that.

Intergenerational trauma.

I pass that to my children.

It don't matter how much I say I'm sorry.

Can't take away that trauma.

But I remember so-called having a party with my friends when I finally