My story is typical. I am a residential school survivor of St. Anne’s school of Fort Albany in Ontario. I am what I call myself as the tail-end of the residential school era. I remember leaving Winisk in the fall and going across the river (the airport side) and the snow geese were flying inland from the bay to feed in the muskegs. It was beautiful seeing this wildlife activity. The wind was kind of cold and drizzling. I did not know where I was going except to meeting this big sea-plane (Canso) at the Winisk airport and going to school somewhere far away in the distance.

I remember being lifted and getting on the plane and flying through fog, It was windy- I remember landing in the rough waters of the Albany river- The waves were rough and splashing on the seaplane. I remember being lifted again from the hole of the passenger section onto the boats, which had met us to take us to an island where the school vehicles were waiting to take us to the residential school. As I was being lifted out of the plane I remember looking into my dad’s face and wondering why he was handing me over to strangers. I did not know what was happening. Nobody explained to me this transition I was making at a very young age. I do not remember the Journey from the boat landing to the school, or the registration if there was any when we got there or the introduction of what to expect in the school. I believe I was 6 at the time and my brother was 4.

I don’t remember if we had supper that evening, in fact I don’t remember where I slept or where my little brother slept the first night?

I can tell you that the first gift we lost in the residential school is our innocence as children, It did not take us long to become con artists with one another and with our supervisors. The absence of adult family members (parents) to guide and to love us was not there. I can tell you I never received parental type of love and affection from the foreigners who managed the school.

I spent seven (7) years at St. Anne’s. In my time there I can share that there was spiritual, intellectual, physical, emotional, verbal, cultural and sexual abuse there.

All of the type of abuses I am mentioning I was abused in those forms at St. Anne’s. The abusers were both the adults managing the school and those of our kind who were older and taking advantage of their own kind in both the boys and girls dormitories.

Yes, some of our kind did abuse their own kind at St. Anne’s.

This is the untold story, which has remained hidden in the healing conferences which are being held today. Sadly, some of these individuals have either committed suicide or they continue to live in dysfunction or have found jobs counseling in our communities today.

In the residential school year of 1973 and 1974, my little brother drowned at Lake St. Anne’s, skating too early during freeze-up. This was a big blow for our family as we were at our trapline that season. I remember my brother Charlie, he never knew what his last name was when we first got there. So the supervisors used to call him Charlie Pogo (In Cree pogo is the same as saying the word only in English) He simply did not know his last name.

I was abused at the tender age of nine at St. Anne’s. It took me twenty-four years to disclose my sexual abuse to my family and safe others. I tried sharing this with my parents and friends but they choose to use it against me at first. Today I do not mind sharing this with you now. I have come a long way and although my abusers may not know it, I want to let them know I FORGIVE THEM completely. I choose to forgive the abusers, the school, the church and the past residential school policies of the government.

Today I choose RECOVERY over laying charges and filing lawsuits to anyone. My recovery program guides me to understand the discovery of myself, my flaws and defections and to keep uncovering destructive learned behavior. I continue to have and to change these as I journey to the future so that I may find peace and contentment. I must prepare myself for my journey to the spirit world.

To those whom I may have injured or harmed knowingly and unknowingly, I am deeply sorry for the pain and sorrow I have caused to you. I admit I made these mistakes in my life.

Now in recovery I must say that it is difficult in taking this road. First of all, the majority of our communities live in a state of dysfunction. And the majority of the time our leaders do not offer effective recovery programs. I believe 85 to 98 percent of our communities are dysfunctional today. Because we have been hurt and oppressed for several centuries, we have learned as a defense mechanism to adopt behavior which is quite destructive and abnormal.

In favor of effective recovery programs, we choose to recycle anger, pain, resentment, aggression, toxic oppression, pity, toxic shame and cultural denial. Year in, year out this is the stuff we recycle in our communities. We live in a state of managing crises all the time. We need to get out of this state.

I know that as we begin to embrace recovery and as we become more therapy friendly, we will stumble like infants at first. This is what I find in my recovery. A majority of the time I have no one to turn to. There are more unsafe people presently than there are safe people in our communities at the moment.

A good number of our Elders, spouses, children, therapists and friends are not even safe or healthy. But this is the environment where we must begin our recovery. Right at home.

Consider the following visualization I made on my own when I was trying to understand what this environment looked like and what the odds looked like now and what we are up against.

Visualize a beautiful river, which runs alongside your community or territory. Visualize that it is deep…that it is wide…it has rocks and aquatic plants and the fish are swimming by in all directions following the currents.

Visualize that the riverbank is high, low, rocky and muddy in different spots along its banks. Create different scenes of the river by yourself.

Now visualize you are going under water and you can breath and you are looking around and walking upstream against the current. You are walking at the bottom and it feels good. You can’t see the other side of the river. It is too dark to see the other side because the river is wide. But you see one side to the right. The riverbank is beautiful. Now walk upstream. The rocks, plants and fish are beautiful as you walk up the river. It is strong but you can move forward. You pass several bends as you make this journey. Soon you find a fish net up ahead. You keep walking to it. There are fish and other things caught and tangled there, you walked into it and you get tangled yourself. You can’t get out.

Your arms, legs and body gets tangled. You struggle to get out. But you can’t. In your entanglement you get a chance to see who is stuck there. It is all of our governments, the Indian Act, the issues and grief of the residential school, the churches, our elders, our spouses, our children, our friends, family violence, alcoholism, drug and all kinds of addictions, social problems, infidelity issues, marriage and family breakdowns, brainwashing, suicides, cultural denial, Post traumatic stress disorders, elder and child abuse, incest, economic manipulation, failures of all sorts, toxic divisions, toxic shame, toxic anger, non-forgiveness, codependency, loss of self power, gambling and Internet addiction, people sharing with unsafe people, false prophets, wounded healers, sleeping leaders, community deficits, people dumping their garbage and anger with unsafe people and getting hurt all the more, staying and living in the pain, over utilized and stressed leaders, fear of self-discovery and recovery…and all of those things that make up of our communities and those that you may want to add.

Stay with that for a while and observe all of that. Get acquainted with all of that.

Now visualize you struggle and quite easily you get out of the entanglement and you back off downstream a bit and you are free. Now begin to travel again by avoiding and going around the net and continue upstream. Along the journey you encounter a lot of other nets along the river. This time you are more wise. You avoid by going around them.

You now make the choice to never again to get caught in that entanglement where you were before. Such are the obstacles of healing and recovery.

Knowing the environment where we must recover from is essential to successful recovery.