Respect, remembrance, resurgence and recovery

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The priests instilled such fear in his grandmother, Bobby Baker said, that whenever he passed a church he would kneel and pray.

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“I was afraid he would burn himself in hell,” the 83-year-old residential school survivor said Thursday. “She was 70 years old and she was still kneeling on the ground and praying, that’s how scared she was.”

Baker’s mother died when he was three years old and his grandmother raised him; and he hid it as best he could when the repeated knocks came to the door, until he could hide it no more and the authorities took the boy away.

“The officials have arrived and the children must go,” says the book A knock on the door puts.

Once in custody, there seems to be no better way to put it, Baker was lost and alone.

“I’ve been lost ever since,” the great-great-grandson of Maria Capilano said.

Baker was celebrating Canada’s first National Truth and Reconciliation Day Thursday at the O’Siyam Pavilion in downtown Squamish, one of perhaps 300 Truth and Reconciliation Truth and Reconciliation allies present.

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At a gathering of family and friends the night before, Baker told his loved ones things that he had never told anyone before. About the sexual abuse she suffered when she was seven years old in the 1940s in a residential school.

“I was ashamed to tell someone, I was ashamed to tell what happened to me at that school,” he said. “When I got out of school, I was very happy. I wanted to run away. “

He said he is happy now that there is a day to honor truth and reconciliation.

“I hope that every year now we have a celebration,” he said. “We are all the same, we never hurt anyone.”

Thursday’s gathering, like those across the country, was in honor and memory of the survivors and victims of residential schools, and a celebration of the resilience, resurgence and recovery of ancestral teachings.

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The afternoon began with a parade down Cleveland Avenue. Among those who were in charge of the possession, a chief of medicine named gyauustees He carried a staff that symbolized unity, dignity and world peace.

The head of an eagle and the feathers of a condor adorn the staff, symbolizing the unity between the indigenous peoples of South, Central and North America.

“I think it’s the next phase,” he said of what the day meant to him. “We had an acceptance of what has happened. Many of us have moved to a place of forgiveness and this is part of redemption. “

Girls and young women danced, followed later by men and boys dancing. There were chants and prayers in their mother tongue, all innocent acts of celebration and joy that would have been a jerk, or worse, not so long ago.

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32-year-old Ben Lewis wrote a song in the 10th grade after survivors visited his classroom and heard the sheer horror of the residential school system for the first time.

With Stawamus Chief behind him looming over Howe Sound, where Captain George Vancouver first anchored in 1792, Lewis shared the powerful and visceral feelings he had after that visit to his school. Lewis said he visualized what had happened at the time and wished he were dead.

“There was a lot of hatred and anger in my heart,” he said. “I really don’t feel that way anymore. That song came from a difficult time in my life. “

Jonathan Williams, 22, said he’s trying to understand what it must have been like for his ancestors to have their children taken away, some never to be seen again. He gave his people stamina, he said, but also a sense of humor that helped them through nearly unfathomable times.

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Randall Lewis, who as a young man rubbed himself as hard as he could to try to remove the Indian in him, spoke reverently about the return of a once-extinct salmon streak in Squamish as Mother Earth begins to heal herself. .

As the celebration ended, sections of the crowd were given animal names, such as takaya (wolf), and shown how to dance that particular animal. An orange-crested sea rose and fell to the beat of the drums as each animal’s name was called out, followed by a boisterous cheer from the crowd: “All life matters!”

Reconciliation is different from assimilation, said gyauustees.

“We have to take the initiative now,” he said. “We still remember in our souls and in our spirit. It seemed like we lost everything, but we only got lost for a while. “

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