Normally, I would talk for a day, but I will restrain myself and take only five minutes. The fact remains that this is a very important moment in our lives.
My name is Jean-Charles Piétacho. My family name is actually not like the Oblates wrote it back in the day. In Innu, my name means "he who comes with the wind”. I have been chief of the Innu community of Ekuanithit for 30 years. I have been elected for many years.
Before I forget, I would like to highlight an important event that involves one of our legendary figures. I am talking about Grand Chief Max Gros-Louis, who has left us and was laid to rest yesterday. Vigils were held for three days, around the clock. They were powerful moments. I was present for the beginning of the ritual and I went to pay my respects to the family, both personally and as chief.
Let me start by telling you that I am a former residential school student. I will say “wave” because that's often the word used these days. I am one of the second wave of kids who were abducted, put in trucks, and taken to the airport on an old American base. Then we were put into planes. We were very young and we were having fun, until the evening when we realized that we were no longer at home.
I am trying to imagine and describe, as quickly as possible, what that was like. You should do the same. We were no longer at home. I don't know how many kids from the Innu community of Ekuanithit left that day. My grandfather and grandmother raised me. I imagined my grandfather and grandmother crushed because they could no longer hear me speak. They could no longer hear me cry. I knew that there would be no more communication because I was no longer there.
I was at the residential school for a long time. Some of us went to live in the school to the west of our community of Maliotenam. We stayed there one year, three years, seven years, 10 years. Some never came back. Times like those are what we are now trying to have people understand.
I am trying to not make this speech about victimization anymore, but I want all Canadians to remember, and never to forget, that tragic period for our families and for ourselves. It happened during the 1950s and 1960s. There were a lot of children. When we got to the residential school, they took off all our clothes and cut our hair. We understood not a word of what people were saying to us.
I want to tell you something I have said before: this is not about money. My wife and I were not entitled to the amounts that all former residential school students received. My wife comes from Sept-Îles. Her case was considered inadmissible because her school was described as a day school. We are following what is happening in British Columbia with day schools very closely. They are in court at the moment, and our thoughts are with them.
For administrative reasons, I was denied the amount that should have come to me. However, what hurts me most is the sexual abuse. That does hurt. Sometimes I have difficulty, because it comes back to me. Certainly, it is good to decide to hold a day of commemoration and acknowledgement. However, for some, including myself, it brings back painful memories.
Today, I am a chief and I have had to watch other children being abducted. I've seen young children leave as a result of an order issued by an external legal body. In the present case, it is the director of youth protection who once again has decided that those kids will go somewhere other than into our families. That is too much for me; I must not fail to react.
We are in the process of handling things ourselves, although Quebec is challenging Bill C-92. Despite the lack of funding, the bill would have allowed us to come up with our own solutions. We will get there anyway, with nothing. We have succeeded in placing our own children in families in our communities. That is my greatest concern.