Residential school survivors in Manitoba say they’re grateful to see the final report delivered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission but painful memories from their experiences still haunt them to this day.
Susan Caribou, 50, spent five years at Guy Hill Residential School in The Pas, Man. in the 1970s—a place where she experienced physical, sexual and mental abuse, abuse which still brings back nightmares.
Caribou said she doesn’t think the nightmares will ever go away.
“Still living with it every day,” said Caribou. “If you haven’t been in a residential school there’s no way anybody can understand only the person that went to the residential school.”
She turned to drugs and alcohol as a teenager but kicked her addictions once she became a mother.
Caribou said the abuse she suffered cost her a proper education as a child
“We weren’t in class long enough,” said Caribou. “We’d be pulled out and we’d be abused.”
She said it was actually her own children who taught her many lessons like how to read and write.
“I don’t have any education,” said Caribou.
Right now she’s working as a cashier and housekeeper and also serves on the board of directors for the Families First Foundation to help families of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
One day she would like to get post-secondary education and open her own business.
Caribou said she hopes Canada will learn a lesson from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and make the country a better place for everyone to live.
“I just want to be treated as everybody else,” said Caribou.
Ted Fontaine spent 12 years in residential schools at Fort Alexander and also at the Assiniboia Residential School in Winnipeg.
He hopes the federal government will work towards implementing the 94 recommendations which came from survivors through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“It’s a lifelong initiative,” said Fontaine. “I think that Canadian history has to realize it did happen, first of all.”
“What TRC has done is highlighted what Canada did in Canada. They highlighted the true history, the real initial history was being swept under the carpet.”
Now in his early 70’s, Fontaine said he met with one of “the perpetrators” from his time in residential schools who apologized for what happened.
Fontaine said he accepted the apology and forgave the clergyman—a meeting which had a profound impact on Fontaine.
“The fact that he really meant that he was sorry in the midst of tears and the fact that I said ‘I forgive you,’” said Fontaine. “I’m still amazed that I got to that stage.”
“Believe it or not I was a survivor after the fact of being a victim.”
Fontaine said he felt better after the apology and offering his forgiveness but he continues to deal with the trauma from the physical and mental abuse he suffered.
He wrote a book on residential schools called Broken Circle and has presented his work in some 300 communities across Canada and the United States.
