Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs.
I was a little reluctant to stand up today to speak to this motion. However, I felt it was my responsibility as an indigenous member of Parliament to talk about this very important issue, which has left its mark on our history. It is an issue we would rather move past. However, the issue continues to warrant recognition, and it is part of some very important recommendations that were made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This is number 58 of the 94 recommendations that were brought forward.
We were all very happy to see the inquiry start in 2008. It was an opportunity to document and talk about the history of the residential schools and their impact. The conclusion of that report is also important to note. The commission found that the school system amounted to what was considered cultural genocide. There were many students who attended the different schools across the country over the years. A total of over 150,000 students attended residential schools. It was for a fairly long period of time. It went on for 120 years. Of those 150,000 students, 32,000 were sexually assaulted.
Some of those people were my friends. Some were people I knew, people I grew up with. Almost everyone in my community attended residential school. Everyone from my generation or older attended residential school. Everyone in my family attended residential school. Everyone in my wife's family attended residential school. The residential school experience in the north is still very fresh. It is still very new and talked about, and the impacts are huge.
I belong to the Deh Cho Tribal Council. I am a member of the Fort Providence Métis Council. My community is located on the Mackenzie River. We call it deh cho, which means “big river” in the Dene language.
When the Catholics first came to my area in the 1800s, they settled along the shores of the Great Slave Lake, and my family, the people of the Deh Cho, were concerned. One of my great-grandmothers talked to the men in my community and said that the church could not stay there because it was not a good place to set up a community or a mission. They sent the men to convince the church to move to the present location of Fort Providence. It was fortunate that they did that, because the church would never have survived in the first location where they set up. It was a flood zone, and it was dangerous for ice. It was not a very good hunting spot.
The church moved, and the small population in my community was very excited that the church was going to build a mission, because it was going to help the community and create opportunity for people to work. The first mission was built with many members of my community and surrounding areas. The different clans also had people working on the mission itself. In fact, we had a second mission built in 1930, and we also had a church built. It created enough activity to help people gain some extra money, because everyone was living on hunting, trapping, and gathering.
There was some opportunity created because of the mission. However, I grew up in the community where the residential school was located. The Dene name for our community is Zhahti Kue, which means “the priest's house” or “the priest's community”. We do not like that. We would rather not use that name. We have told people in our neighbouring communities and everybody else that this is not a name we would like to be known for.
We have a graveyard in our community which is still there. We have erected a huge cement marker and on it are all the names of the people who are buried there. People came from all over the north to Fort Providence to attend the mission. There were many young children who passed away. The names on this monument are names of families from all over the Northwest Territories. Some of the people were very young. Some were babies, and some were two or three years old. I do not know the history of why all these people passed away while in the care of the mission, but there were many. We have made it so people from different communities can come and look where some of their family ended up because nobody was shipped home.
It is also important to note that this graveyard was also used by the mission for the priests and nuns who died while there. When they created a new graveyard they took all the nuns and priests out of this graveyard and set up another one, but left everybody else in the old graveyard.
Soon after the mission was built, people started to realize the mission was not going to bring all the benefits and positive things people had expected. We started to hear the horror stories. I grew up listening to horror stories of children being abused while in the mission's care. Those acts were conducted by priests, nuns, and brothers who were part of the mission, part of the Catholic Church. There were really terrible things done to those children. There were children who were sexually abused and children who had bones broken. Children who had issues like bedwetting were grabbed and thrown in tubs of cold water and scrubbed with brooms. There were all kinds of mind games being played. There were children who were not allowed to sit in chairs and had to stand all day. They were only allowed to sit down when the priest was coming. There were all kinds of things going on.
We are seeing the lasting effects. The fallout of residential schools is still very prevalent in our communities. Addictions are something we know are a result of residential schools. That is not the only cause, and there are other causes, but there is the trauma that was inflicted on the aboriginal population. It has really caused a lot of cultural disconnect such as loss of language, culture, and traditional abilities. Some of the hunting and trapping pursuits are no longer happening. We have lost a lot when it comes to pride in our identity. It has resulted in addictions, in suicides, and in many issues that are going to plague us for a long time.
It really embarrassed us, in a way, to have housed a residential school in our community, a community we are very proud of. At the same time, our adults, our elders, were very helpless to stop the abuse. As a young child, I watched the float planes come in and the children would be gathered up. I watched as some of my family and friends cried and begged their parents not to be put on that plane. It really created a lot of hard feelings between the families.
Our Prime Minister has talked to the Pope about an apology. I have real mixed feelings. We need the church to acknowledge there was wrongdoing. We need to acknowledge that the church has a responsibility for what has happened to many of the people who attended residential schools.
It was very disappointing to have the Pope say that the church did not want to apologize. I think that members of the church have to speak up. We would then be able to accept the apology and be ready to move on.
It is my responsibility to speak here today because historically, the people who made the decision to bring in the residential school policy were sitting in these very seats, one of which I now occupy. We want to make change. We have a number of recommendations to bring forward and things that we need to see dealt with. I am hoping that this will be one more that we will be able to put aside and thank the Pope.