Harley Peters was five and a half years old when the Indian agent snatched him from his grandfather’s house on Walpole Island First Nation and took him to the “Mush Hole.”
The infamous Mohawk Institute in Brantford became the bewildered child’s new home – a place where he was beaten for speaking his native Ojibway language and mispronouncing English words.
Peters said he went silent and froze up inside.
“There was no more friends and there were no more ‘I love yous,’” said the Walpole Island First Nation band member. “I lost my voice; I lost my language. I learned to disconnect at the Mush Hole. I disconnected altogether. I went all the way through school like that.”
Bill Sands is another residential school survivor from WIFN Bkejwanong Territory who was cart-ed off to Brantford. As a preteen, he was taken from a Wallaceburg elementary school to the Mush Hole in 1957, living there until 1960.
“It was a hard four years,” Sands said of the experience. “I didn’t know what happened…I was 11 years old. I had never been separated from my family before. It was a hard thing to swallow…I always wondered ‘what did I do to get here?’ I thought I did something wrong.”
Romaine Blackbird is another Walpole Island residential school survivor. In 1947 at age 6, she was taken to the Shingwauk Indian Residential School in Sault Ste. Marie, hundreds of miles from home.
“I wasn’t even aware or understanding that I would no longer have parents or family for support and comfort,” Blackbird said of the experience. “I recall crying and sobbing for what seemed like hours when they left me.”
Blackbird, whose parents and aunts and uncles were also residential school survivors, spent the next seven years at Shingwauk.
“What was happening to me was something the government wanted,” Blackbird said. “Over seven years I slowly adapted to the white man’s ways. I learned to feel shame…shame for my Indigenousness.
“Today I am proud and accepting of my Indigenous heritage,” she said. “I am now struggling with what truth and reconciliation mean. In order to have reality to that slogan, we need to see more ac-ceptance and responsibility on the part of the government…more honouring of the treaties that were broken…more truth in relaying the history of this country in the classrooms, and in this I am optimistic.”
The three were among the survivors who told their stories at the fourth annual Truth and Reconcili-ation Healing Walk and Gathering held in Wallaceburg Sept. 30. Hundreds clad in orange shirts, including local schoolchildren, marched through the downtown in honour of residential school survivors and for ones who didn’t come home.
Residential schools were government-sponsored facilities run by churches for the purpose of edu-cating Indigenous youth to assimilate them into Canadian society. According to the Canadian En-cyclopedia, an estimated 150,000 children attended residential schools and 6,000 children are be-lieved to have died at residential schools, although records are incomplete. Some 130 residential schools operated in Canada between 1831 and 1996.
A total of 550 children from Walpole were taken to various schools, of whom 52 still live on the First Nation. Many are part of the Walpole Island Residential School Survivors Committee, meet-ing regularly to discuss their experiences and to heal.
According to Sands, sharing with other survivors has helped “tremendously.
“We’re healing through our meetings,” he added. “We give each other hugs – something we never got during our time at residential school.”
Peters also continues to heal, saying he had to revisit his time in residential school from the beginning.
“I go back to that little Harley that was very scared and hurt and I’m taking care of him.” Peters said. “Slowly.”
Peters, who was present in Edmonton in 2022 when Pope Francis gave survivors a face-to-face apology for the abuse children endured in Catholic residential schools, said it was the “best feeling” he ever got.
“I just burst into tears,” he said. “Finally, somebody said they were sorry for doing that to us.”
When speaking to the gathering, WIFN Bkejwanong Territory Chief Leela Thomas stressed the importance of truth and reconciliation for residential school survivors, urging people to advocate for justice for those who were wronged.
“Listen with an open heart and do what you can do on a personal level for truth and reconciliation,” Thomas said.
The Wallaceburg Truth & Reconciliation event is a joint effort between Walpole Island First Nation Employment and Training Program and the Municipality of Chatham-Kent.
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Chatham Voice
