The public unveiling for the completed residential school memorial statue on Sept. 19 drew more than 100 people – both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal – to hear testimonies of residential school atrocities spoken by survivors.

The monument now sits in front of the shíshálh Nation’s health and social development building (behind Raven’s Cry Theatre), close to where one the 140 residential schools in Canada once stood.

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“Today is a new beginning and we’re happy that you’re all here to witness. We welcome you all,” shíshálh Nation Chief Calvin Craigan (híwús) said.

“There will be a shift in the attitude, there will be a shift in the way we think as we remember what happened to us in the past, but we’ve got to go forward and look at what our future will be like for our children and our grandchildren,” Craigan said.

Several residential school survivors shared stories of the abuses they suffered.

“A lot of our people who are here today are survivors – whether you went to the school or you’re an inter-generational survivor – because all of those abuses were handed down to our children,” councillor and hereditary chief Garry Feschuk (?ákístá) said.

Feschuk said he was glad the RCMP were in attendance for the statue unveiling. He said that when parents had tried to keep their children out of residential schools, the RCMP had shown up and arrested the parents before they took the children away by force.

Lytton First Nation Elder Terry Aleck (Coyote) said his court battle for recognition of the abuses he suffered lasted 17 years.

“This started for me in 1987, when I first disclosed about the sexual abuse I had gone through at St. George’s in Lytton,” Aleck said. “My court case was 17 years through the court system, but we won. We won. We stand before you as winners.

“It was quite a battle, there are a lot of scars,” Aleck said. “Emotional scars and spiritual scars, and yet, we stand here honouring each of you for stepping up and joining us in the sacred work we do here.”

The sculpture stands over 1.6 metres high and depicts a shíshálh Nation child being taken from the protective arms of its grandmother. - Jacob Roberts Photo

Although it was clearly difficult for her, Elder Mabel Guss shared some of her past and ongoing trauma as a residential school survivor. She was six years old when she was taken away to the residential school in Sechelt.

On her first day, Guss said, the children were each given a sock with a hole in it and told they needed to learn how to darn the sock. Gus reached inside and found a ball in the sock.

“I said, ‘Oh, a ball. That’s to play with.’ I started bouncing it but then the nun said, ‘Mabel come here. You’re not supposed to play with that ball.’ She told me to put my hands out, so I put my hands out and she hit me on both hands with a strap. I was six years old and I started crying because that hurt,” Guss said. The nun hit her again for crying, she said.

Guss’s younger sister Lillian was sent to the residential school two years later when Guss was eight.

Guss said her sister would wet the bed nearly every night – her sister was six at the time. Guss said she would try to wake her sister up early to stop her from wetting the bed, but most of the time she still did.

As a punishment – every time Lillian wet the bed – the residential school teachers would fill a tub with ice-cold water and force Lillian into it.

When that proved ineffective, Guss said the teachers made Lillian wear her underwear on her head through the school as a humiliation.

Guss said that her other sister was also put into the residential school with them. They found out later that she was epileptic. She was beaten for having epileptic seizures.

“I drank – I haven’t drank since 1986, but I did drink,” Guss said. “My sister did drink, my brothers drank. The reason I drank was to forget. We forgot all right, but the next day it would still be there anyway.

“I drank and my kids would say, mom can drink, well, so can we,” Guss said. “But I kept on. I abused them. I abused my children because we were abused too.”

Guss said she has lost three of her children to alcohol and drugs.

“It’s getting easier, but I remember every time Christmas comes, Thanks-giving comes, their birthdays come,” Guss said. “I think of them. If it wasn’t for me drinking, they would still be here.”

Elder Valerie Bourne also shared her traumatic experiences as a day scholar survivor.

“On the very first week, I was told I was a sinner. I had no idea what that meant,” Bourne said. “During my eight years, that was repeated and repeated to me – like brainwashing me – I was a sinner.

“The worst day of my life was when I was about 10 years old,” Bourne said. “Me and my sister Audrey had been caring for our brothers and sisters while our mom and dad were drinking. It was the weekend.”

They watched the kids all weekend and were late for school on Monday morning.

“Mrs. Carbonneau, who was French, had a very short fuse. I remember being terrified of her,” Bourne said. “She had what she called a magic stick – it was a red stick about 18 inches long – and she used it to beat the children who angered her.

“When I entered into the class she beat me on the head and gave me a note to bring to the head priest. I held my breath as I walked over to his house, not knowing what to expect. He grabbed the note out of my hand and read it, then dragged me inside his office and screamed at me. I remember him smelling like booze, which is a smell I was familiar with,” Bourne said.

“He screamed obscenities, called me a lazy savage and told me I was not as important as his dog. Then he raped me. The pain was so excruciating, I didn’t understand what was happening. It terrified me to my core.

“After he finished he let me go with a warning that this would happen again if I made one mistake,” Bourne said. “I was always terrified in that school.”

First Nations across the country are still in court fighting for recognition of the abuses perpetrated on the day scholars.

“They’re fighting us tooth and nail that anything happened to our day scholars,” Feschuk said. “When that truth is told, we are going to move forward, but we are going to move forward together.”

The statue that now stands on the ground where the Sechelt residential school once existed depicts a shíshálh Nation child being taken from the protective arms of its grandmother. It was carved by Halfmoon Bay resident and Kahnawake:ronon artist Michel Beauvais.

Beauvais is a member of the Kahnawake Mohawk Band, located near Montreal.

The monument is carved from an 80-million-year-old stone, which was brought to the Coast from shíshálh Nation territory on Texada Island.

“When we make this change, when things shift over in the way we’re thinking, our children are going to be able to walk to the schools, walk through the schools, through the communities with their heads held high – with the pride that they lost many, many generations ago,” Craigan said. “I am looking forward to that day.”