Canada: Residential schools leave a burden on the survivors

[Oscar]

After Residential School, My Path to Healing
Theodore Fontaine spent 12 years in residential school. And the rest of his life learning how to talk about it. A memoir, part one.
By Theodore Fontaine, 25 Aug 2011, TheTyee.ca

A few days after his seventh birthday in Sept. 1948, Theodore Fontaine walked with his parents to the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School in Manitoba where he was left. For the next 12 years, Fontaine endured the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse now synonymous with Canada's residential school system. Broken Circle is his story of a childhood lost within the company of the school system's "black-robed strangers" and an adulthood spent reeling in the aftermath, and then finding ways to heal. This first of two installments from Fontaine's memoir is drawn from the chapter "Chubby."

An unlikely catalyst in my confronting my residential school experiences was my dear friend and older cousin Allan. He was the second-youngest of a large family of more than a dozen children, all of them older than me. Their mother was Dad's sister Sophie. Although Dad and Sophie were very close and the families visited as much as possible, transportation in the late 1940s and early 1950s was an adventure, even for short distances. I remember well the visiting done with Mom and Dad before I entered school and, most vividly, during the summer holidays. It allowed me to get to know our uncles, aunts and cousins more closely. Sophie and her husband, Ambrose -- we knew him as Mis-Kus ("Red") -- lived approximately two miles from us, past the residential school.

Allan was more than three years older than me, and as a kid I thought of him as a big macho guy I only saw at family functions, visits, weddings or funerals. His playfulness and work ethic were always evident, and I looked up to him as someone I wanted to emulate. I was actually a little afraid of Allan and stayed close to my family when he was nearby. When I entered residential school he'd already been there for two or three years, so we had no relationship there.

Not for Indians

We saw each other the odd time during holidays. I remember another cousin and me going with Allan to an afternoon movie in Pine Falls during a summer holiday. I don't recall much about the day except that we wandered around after the movie and heard hollering, laughing and splashing at the swimming pool, which was close to the theatre. We peered through the wire fence there and saw kids enjoying the cool water.

After much debating about what these white kids would do if we took a swim, the blazing sun made our decision. We ripped off our clothes, left them piled by the fence and leapt into the water. An adult soon came over and summoned us to the pool's edge. I thought, "Oh-oh, this pool is not for Indians." Sure enough, we were told we couldn't be there.

Allan argued.

Finally the attendant stated bluntly that we couldn't be in the pool because we didn't have swimming trunks. Our undershorts were too revealing. Although I had felt safe being with my big cousin, this was an instance of our not understanding what was proper or not proper around white people.

Chubb

Another memory I have of Allan is him chasing me around a snowbank at his house during the Christmas holiday, and burying my head in the snow after he'd had enough of my teasing. He'd grown up a lot faster than most boys on the reserve, as had his siblings, because of his mountainous father, Ambrose, who had strict expectations for his children. It's not my place to tell Allan's story, but in later years we talked about what it was like growing up in that family.

Ambrose, being a trucking and construction contractor, taught all his sons the nature of his business, including operating trucks and construction equipment. He pulled Allan out of school early to work in the family trucking business, which is why I didn't see him for years. His dad convinced Church authorities that Allan was old enough and was needed at home. From his dad, Allan learned how to run tractors, bulldozers, transport trucks and other heavy equipment. He drove all over Manitoba. Later, while he was still a young man and I was elsewhere in the country, he became great friends with Dad, and eventually our bond as cousins and friends was renewed and cemented.

We started calling each other Chubb because when we first met after not seeing each other for eight years or so, he (and presumably I) appeared a little chubby. That encounter broke the ice. This mutual name evolved in meaning over the years and was an expression of closeness and brotherly love. Allan would also greet other relatives and friends with nicknames in a lighthearted way, because it made it easier for him to start talking about serious issues like residential schools. However, he didn't do so consistently and the nicknames never quite meant what ours did to us.

'Small once just like me'

When I moved back to Manitoba in the late 1970s, Chubb and I caught up with each other again. I had been chief of the Sagkeeng (Fort Alexander) band for almost a year. Chubb recognized my need for a break and a return to the basics of life, so he asked me to join him and his nephew in gathering wild rice. Thinking I'd enjoy renewing my knowledge about that activity, I agreed. I didn't know that Chubb had arranged for a charter plane to fly us to a remote lake northeast of Sagkeeng, where I would be completely isolated from my work and duties as chief for a whole week. Chubb and his nephew would stay for 12 days. When we landed at Octopus Lake with all our paraphernalia, including a canoe attached to the plane's landing floats, I was excited.

The first day was mostly spent setting up the campsite. The next day we harvested wild rice until sunset and we couldn't see to pick anymore. We sat around the campfire with our evening meal, made small talk, reviewed our day over tea and then went to bed. On subsequent days, we had our evening meal and then lay on the rocks, watching the sky and counting the satellites making their way across it.

One night I was startled and dumbfounded by Allan saying, "I wonder if Father P.'s actions could be seen if someone was looking down at us from one of those."

There was an awkward silence. I couldn't imagine that little priest taking advantage of my macho friend the way he'd done with the small boys.

Then I realized that Chubb had been small once just like me, so would have had similar experiences. His simple comment allowed us to talk about the menage and tell each other what had happened at school. By the end of the week, we had remembered the names of priests, nuns and brothers and had categorized their places on a scale of mean and abusive behaviours.

Besides suffering the probing hands of Father P. and others, Chubb told me he'd once been knocked around by Brother M. and kicked "in the rear" because the brother believed he was neglecting his chores; he'd gone to the toilet without telling his supervisor. Chubb thought the school authorities figured it was okay to be physical with him because his dad was so strict that he wouldn't care.

Not alone

When we reminisced about our younger days and our residential school days, it made me feel a bit relieved to know that some things didn't happen only to me. I had never before talked about my experiences to the extent I did with Chubb.

The joking and casual mention of what had happened began to evolve into more serious and therapeutic talks. These talks made me realize that I needed to deal with what had happened to me and how it had affected my life. During my years of being locked up at the school, I had thought my family, as well as others in the community, did not realize or understand that this was not natural. Why would they not allow us to live at home and still go to school, like the white kids in town did? Chubb had started to think about these things, too, and about the unnaturalness of residential schools, long before our wild-rice adventure.

After that rice-picking trip, the name Chubb or Chubby forever replaced Allan and Ted. My formal confrontation with what had happened after my seventh birthday became a life-long journey. A few months after this trip I went to see my first counsellor to start dealing seriously with my memories.

After my sobering talks with Chubb, I marveled at the idea that I could lead a community as big and vibrant as Sagkeeng.

An Inspiration Named Chubby
If Ted Fontaine was going to make it after residential school's horrors, he needed a friend for 'letting it out.' Second of two.
By Theodore Fontaine, 26 Aug 2011, TheTyee.ca

In a piece yesterday from Theodore Fontaine's memoir Broken Circle, the author introduced us to his friend nicknamed Chubby, telling how, as adults, their first, tentative sharing of remembered experiences in residential school set Fontaine on the path towards healing. In this second and last excerpt, Fontaine describes how their friendship deepened, as did his strength to come to terms with the damage he, Chubby and others had endured. Click here to read the part one.

Over time, Chubb and I dug deeper into comparisons of our experiences.

Questions of healing or compensation weren't even remote ideas then. We were just letting it out and were comfortable talking about how we felt about being in that school, that it was not right and that it was a bad experience. When you live your whole life with the idea that you experienced something unnatural, and if you don't have an outlet or place to dump the garbage, you begin to wonder if it happened at all. I'm thankful that I found Chubb again. Otherwise my life may have ended abruptly in some disastrous way or I may never have begun the work toward healing.

From that time at Octopus Lake and on, we provided a mutual outlet for each other, small as it was and although verbal communication was never our strongest attribute. Our conversations brought us closer together, but it was years before either of us could bring up the topic with others, even in our own families. It was another 14 or 15 years before the residential school experience became a hot issue in Canada and attracted the attention of the public and the media.

Suddenly out in the open

It was our cousin Phil, who had recently been elected Grand Chief of Manitoba and was getting attention in the media, who shocked a young audience and a reporter in 1990 by saying he'd been sexually abused at the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School. All the rumours, innuendo and hidden shame of former students were suddenly out in the open.

I remember Allan saying, "You know, Chubb, I get very perplexed at the idea that our parents would send us to a place like that when everything we needed to know and learn was available anywhere and we were just as smart as anyone else and probably smarter than most of those people who came to teach us." (English wasn't our first language, and having re-learned Ojibway quite well by then, this and other conversations were all in Ojibway; I'm paraphrasing in English as accurately as I can.)

Mungi Too Nay

One of Chubb's all-time peeves was government people talking to Indian people as if we were children and having the attitude that they could say anything that suited them and we would believe them. He scoffed at the idea of their thinking they were saying something useful. He believed that government authorities and long-winded, trivial conversations and/or orders from them could be worked around or ignored. I smile when I think about his voice and tone when he expressed himself in this way.

I still find that as First Nations people we struggle with dialogue and discussion, even within our own families. This is a characteristic that might be inherent in all First Nations in both Canada and the United States.

Chubb's philosophy was that if something important was going to be said, someone would say it eventually.

I often heard him use the Ojibway phrase mungi too nay ("big mouth") to describe a government official or opinionated person at a community council meeting. Sometimes, in my cockiness and wanting to be recognized at functions or meetings, I too have said something aggressively, whether it made sense or not, then caught myself with a self-admonishing "Boy, ni mungi too nay! ('Boy, do I have a big mouth!')" And then I'd remember Chubb, and his down-to-earth sense and wisdom. It's unfortunate that his star didn't begin to shine brightly until he began to shed the garbage left by his residential school experience.

His little Chubby brother

He was a simple man but also very complex in nature. His way of dealing with his residential school experience and the healing path he utilized would have been a model for what could be done through holistic healing. Although he learned to express his feelings more deeply and openly than anyone I know in our family on Dad's side, he had difficulty expressing love for others.

Often a quietness would come over him and he'd gnaw and bite off little pieces of skin from his knuckles and finger joints and be lost in himself.

You could see in his eyes that some memory was playing in his mind. I'd sit and stare at him, and Chubb would be completely oblivious until he came out of his trance and exclaimed, "Yok-i-nane? ('What is it?')" I'd answer, "Ah Pizan-a-bin," an expression that means something like "Oh, be quiet" or "Oh, forget about it."

Not until he was close to death did he actually use the word "love," and the closest for me was when he'd call me his little Chubby brother and ask if I needed anything -- not as an empty, polite offer, but as a genuine expression of caring and wanting to do something for me. I used to suffer in silence on the numerous occasions when he insisted on buying me lunch or dinner at a greasy spoon. I didn't argue because it was his treat and he was doing something for me. It's incredible that it took more than 10 years from our second encounter as adults to come to the comfortable relationship we had at that point.

Father's Day

I spent the evening with Chubb at Assiniboia Downs racetrack in Winnipeg on a Wednesday night in 1997, enjoying the ponies and a light snack. Throughout the evening Chubb experienced blurred vision, weakness and exhaustion, and he wasn't his usual jovial self. He left before the races were half over. We arranged to meet again on Father's Day, Sunday. He was to bring his sons, his brother Henry and Henry's sons. "I'll see you Sunday around noon, Chubb," were the last words he said to me. My cousin and friend died of a massive heart attack two days later, walking up the bank from the Winnipeg River to his home.

The phone call late Friday afternoon buckled my knees and took my breath away. The talks we'd had and his sudden death strengthened and crystallized my resolve to work on the issue of residential schools and what I'd experienced in my years at the Fort Alexander school. Perhaps Chubb left me in order to give me time to accept and assess the experience with understanding and less anger.

In spite of his leaving me when we had just opened the door to discuss this issue, his departure caused me to delve into the issue more deeply, to understand and to expedite what I needed to do for my healing.

Conversations with Chubb

He missed out on nine provincial judges' recognizing that what he'd experienced in five years at residential school was unnatural. The judges approved an agreement between the federal government and residential school survivors.

Chubb's early death also meant that he couldn't benefit from the proceeds of the subsequent class action lawsuit, which culminated in a national settlement agreement.

Other people at the graveyard at Fort Alexander have probably wondered why I talk to myself when I'm visiting there. While I pray at the markers for Mom and Dad, my brothers, sister and others, I actually carry on a one-sided conversation with Chubb and bring him up to date on my healing journey.

Theodore Fontaine is a member of the Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba. He attended the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School from 1948 until 1958, and the Assiniboia Indian Residential School from 1958 to 1960. He now chairs the Indigenous Leadership Development Institute, a national leadership training institute based in Winnipeg. Theodore lives with his wife, Morgan, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The following excerpt from Fontaine's memoir Broken Circle was used by permission of Heritage House Publishing Co. Ltd.