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Some residential school survivors can still remember how to speak Oneida.

Others understand it, but can’t bring themselves to utter the words.

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There’s a tragic reason for that.

Starting in the late 1800s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children — more than seven generations — were placed in church-run schools established by the Canadian government, including the Mount Elgin school southwest of London, where they were separated from their families, communities and culture.

At many of the schools, kids were punished for speaking their native languages.

“We are lucky that even though they went to residential schools — some of them kept their language and maintained it — they would speak in quiet and find ways around it,” said Kathleen Doxtator, an Oneida language teacher at Saunders secondary school in London.

“But some of our older people say they can understand, but not speak it because they ‘are scared inside of them.’”