The residential schools are Canada’s shame and the road to reconciliation is a long one and many will never reach the destination.
My mother came from New Brunswick, and she graduated from the teachers’ college in Fredericton. She wanted to travel, so she applied for a job at the Anglican residential school at Moose Factory, Ontario. She was accepted and she moved north to the south shore of James Bay.
She had a one-year contract and looked forward to her northern adventure. This was during the early days of the Second World War, and they were very isolated. One family dropped off its three children and went north to their trapline.
Over the winter, two of the children died of influenza and were buried in the school graveyard. In the spring, the parents returned to pick up the remaining child.
My mother told me that the sight of the poor parents receiving the bad news, and the heartbreak of the mother, made her commit to never work in a boarding school again. She didn’t renew her contract, and she took a job in La Ronge teaching the children in the village school.
We never went to boarding school. Instead, we went to an integrated town school, which had its own challenges, but we had the luxury of living with our parents and siblings.
There are people who try to gloss over the residential school experience, but they have no idea of the loneliness, the violence both lateral and from the staff and the sexual assaults endured by some.
Education was treated as a necessary evil and as soon as they reached the age of 16, most dropped out and returned to their families on the reserve.
In the 1970s, our people took control of their education and the landscape changed.
This is where the story changes. We are the fastest growing group in the country, our Indigenous Saskatchewan population was around 80,000 in 2000 and since it has more than doubled and is approaching 200,000.
The Sask. Party government is very proud to point out that the province’s population is growing, but they fail to recognize that about 100,000 since the year 2000 have been Indigenous and Métis births.
This is both the challenge and promise of the future of this province. We will eventually become the majority and play an important role in the province’s economic, social and racial success.
Right now, Indigenous and Métis combined are approaching 30 per cent of the province’s population. We’re on track to be the majority by 2050.
Our futures are tied together, and we can either continue to be marginalized and out of the mainstream or we can take our place as partners in a brave new example of successful multiculturalism.
This is what reconciliation is all about. We must build a new post-colonial society where we shed our old attitudes and prejudices and go forward together. We have the young workforce that can step up and fill the gap left behind from the baby boomers and other retirees.
Our future is right here and now, and we have both the need and the potential to make it work.
Doug Cuthand is the Indigenous affairs columnist for the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and the Regina Leader-Post. He is a member of the Little Pine First Nation.
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