LEGACY OF INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS a poem by SkyBlue Mary Morin Then the mass exodus of children from Indian Reserves, Inuit, Inuvialuit, Innu and Metis communities… exodus to Residential Schools Indian, Inuit, Inuvialuit, Innu and Metis children forcibly taken from families by Indian agents... by Northwest Mounted Police and red coated Royal Canadian Mounted Police arresting mothers and fathers if they stood in the way.... the dark era of our ancestors. E man sa ki wi sta ka ya... they cut their hair...their spiritual connection to Mother Earth while children with long and braided hair stood in fear took away their sacred feathers, medicine pouches and animal kinship ties breaking children’s spirit by teaching them the fear of God and burning in hell Forced them to memorize, recite foreign prayers... learn the hierarchy of a new god force through spiritual abuse.. where traditional native songs and chants turn into hymns.. instilling fear of their own Pipe Ceremonies, Sweat lodges, Yuwipi and Sundances instilling fear of their own sacred objects: prayer pipes, ceremonial rattles and drums so they will ever be fearful to return to their culture. To take the Indian out of the child... take the culture away... stop the language, call it the devil’s language, machi man’to pekes kwe win.. beat their language out of them Break their minds… force through mental abuse... calling them dumb and stupid.. as if children didn`t see their craziness... as if they weren’t crazy trying to change god’s creation take away their name giving them a number.. that would forever replay in their minds.. Break their hearts through emotional abuse... with names like savage, pagan and heathen tell them lies like your parents don’t want you... don’t love you take their kinship away... cut the ties to cousins, aunties and uncles and grandparents so they will forever lose their connection to family and community. Forcing physical abuse washing bodies in lye soap...brushing teeth untill they bled hits to the head with wooden rulers and sticks, sometimes wooden planks.... straps with a machinery belt... physical pain forever implanted in the body and brain. breaking children’s bones... no one would know or question an accident the final assault.... using children as sexual objects.... sexual assault to kill the child’s soul sending the Indian agent to retrieve runaways… dead of alive Those who came back alive chained or handcuffed to their beds hiding children’s dead bodies behind residential school buildings to hide their crimes Children’s spirits lurk from hiding places... behind those residential school walls where children left their spirits to protect themselves... from residential school horrors crying alone children, beaten children, raped children, broken spirit children their attempt to break the Spirit, Heart, Mind, Body... our Medicine Wheel of Life. Today`s sixth generation residential school survivors live with their private pain not wanting to re-live painful trauma and horrors of residential school experience existing forgotten and homeless rough sleeping on streets, parks, back alleys and dumpsters, discriminated homeless in a grieving state of addiction... drinking and drugging to kill heart`s pain some lost youth lost in addictions.... drowning in abandonment we need to reconnect youth to the land through natural law and nurturing Mother Earth to teach today’s Seventh Generation, each generation to come, our leaders of tomorrow the Haudonasaunee Great Tree of Life and the Way of the Mide wewin, the Seven Rites of the Lakota and the Way of the Medicine Societies, the Way of the Sacred Pipe and the Sweat Lodge and Smudge Purification Ceremonies the Yuwipi, the Sundance, the Potlatch and the Tea Dance ceremonies the Way of our Medicine Wheel of Life and its Seven Sacred Laws…All My Relations
36 | NEW TRIBE Special Edition | Spring 2012