Cuthand: Compensating residential school survivors is a start

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It was a long time coming, but now the survivors of the Ile-a-la-Crosse residential school are going to receive compensation in the same manner of the Indigenous survivors of the other provincial residential schools.

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I’ve travelled throughout the north for years and often one of my travelling companions will ask me, “Why would anyone live way up here?” I point out that at one time, this was an important transportation route, a gathering place and the centre of activity. Ile-a-la-Crosse is no different.

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Ile-a-la-Crosse has an interesting history. For years it has been an important hub in the north and it was called Sakitawak (the place where the river flows). The Beaver and Canoe rivers join the Churchill at Ile-a-la-Crosse, making it a meeting place and later a valuable collection point in the fur trade.

Its strategic location on the Churchill River was a gathering place for Indigenous people for generations. To the north lay the Dene Nation and the route to the Arctic Ocean and to the east was the land of the Woodland Cree and the route to Hudson Bay.

It is also the second oldest European settlement in the province. It was founded as a fur trading post in 1776, a year after Cumberland House. Next year the community will celebrate its 250th anniversary. European trade routes came through Northern Saskatchewan via the Churchill River system. European contact came much earlier in the north.

Northern and southern Saskatchewan are very different places and it’s not only geographic, with a land of forests and lakes compared to the open plains. It also includes the people who have a longer and shared history with the fur trade that includes Indigenous, Métis and European people.

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In 1845, a Catholic mission was established and, in 1860, a residential school was built, but it burned down a few years later. In 1917, a new school was built, and it remained in use until 1970.

During the 1990s the First Nations and Métis lobbied for an apology and compensation for the survivors of residential schools. In 2008 Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a special apology in the House of Commons, but it didn’t include those who attended the Métis residential schools.

Members of the Métis Nation were present for the apology, but it was hollow since their people were left out. The reasoning from the federal government was that the Métis weren’t a federal responsibility the same way the First Nations students were.

However, the federal government had a responsibility, since they provided funding for the school at Ile-a-la-Crosse and Saint Paul’s Hostel in Dawson City, Yukon.

The school survivors told stories that are hard to hear, but not unusual from those institutions. The students were prevented from speaking their language, in this case michif. They were lonely, bullied and malnourished. It’s another sad chapter in the history of Indigenous people in Canada.

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There are outsiders who try to sugarcoat the experience, but there is no justification to remove children from their families with the idea of converting them to Christianity and some version of European. It’s evil and immoral and should have never been done.

The misplaced theory of the churches and the government was that they would remove the “Indian” from the child and create a new person. Of course, it failed, and the result was years of trauma and cultural displacement.

The process continues since we still have the Timber Bay on Montreal Lake boarding school that requires recognition.

We are still in a period of reconciliation where we must address the past but go forward into a much more positive future. This settlement with the survivors of the Ile-a-la-Crosse residential school is an important step in that direction.

Doug Cuthand is the Indigenous affairs columnist for the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and the Regina Leader-Post. He is a member of the Little Pine First Nation.

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