After an earlier presentation on the residential school and its effects in 2003, I wrote about the experience in the Mennonite Central Committee newsletter. I also had a connection with an indigenous person during my children’s elementary school years. Yet our trip to the Woodland Cultural Centre, near Brantford, in early October was my first in-person look at the place.

It was a slow walk through the residence, reading signs, hearing recorded stories along the way. It’s sobering knowing that the children were so terribly treated, with life long after effects.

Most children were separated from siblings, including the girls from the boys as well. One story stayed with me of two sisters, one girl trying to soothe the younger one’s crying at night, but they both end up in tears. Young children separated from their mama, and possibly anger of older children on being taken away from all they knew. The stories made me feel sad for them and what they carried with them into adulthood, of those who survived. Their parents had no recourse to keep their children home because it was a mandate from the government.

We’d been warned that there were stories of a sensitive nature. We could pass by those rooms if we needed to do so. I chose to skip those areas, because I knew something of the abuse matter in those rooms from a previous presentation. It was a fair warning.

Everyone I saw that day wore the same sombre expression on their faces upon walking through that building.

Our small group decompressed a bit over lunch after the tour. In our conversation I described the feeling coming away as “heavy.” Someone else expressed concern that our society, and particularly, churches, were a part of the system. We who have been taught to “love one another.”

I spoke to a friend a day or two after the visit. She was quite young when she heard words of an RCMP officer working among the First Nations at the time, but she remembered some of what he said, that many of the families lived under challenging circumstances, and perhaps not the most sanitary conditions. Still to subject the native children to such cruel treatment feels unfair and unjust.

“What if their God, The Great Spirit, is the same as ours?” I said to a friend. I don’t know the answer to that question. All I know is that the native organization that bought our former church, St Philip, honours our worship space, calling it sacred.

I encourage you to take the tour to get the full effect. It is important that we understand. And then what do we do with that information and feeling?

I’m glad that churches and government have taken the step of apology. It is right that we have the list of actions in Truth and Reconciliation to consider and act on. And like resolutions after war, we must take ownership to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

A few small purchases that day

After the tour, we had opportunity to visit some art shops by aboriginal craftspeople.