SASKATOON — April Gamble fought back the tears as she recalled the day when she and her sisters were taken from their home and sent to the St. Michael’s Indian Residential School in Duck Lake. She was sent to St. Michael’s near Duck Lake, a place where she experienced being beaten up, bullied, ridiculed and even stabbed.
Gamble, who is from Beardy’s & Okemasis First Nation, joined other residential school survivors — some now aided by canes, walkers, wheelchairs or motor scooters — at the Survivors’ flag-raising event on Monday at Civic Square to honour survivors like them and remember those who never returned to their communities.
For over 10 minutes, Gamble stood firm and pushed on to tell her story, despite bringing back painful memories of attending the residential school and at the same time, losing her mother at a young age. These traumatic experiences affected her. She struggled with adulthood and being a parent, and lost her child in a car accident linked to inter-generational trauma.
She recalled the confusion she felt when she turned five years old and was hauled in a bus with her sisters to a residential school. Once in school, they cut her long hair and fitted her with school clothes — denim jeans, grey sweaters with blue sleeves, burgundy hoodies for girls and navy for boys, worn by all students.
“How can they tell us apart? I look the same. I am dressed like every other girl in a sea of children. I had hair down my back, and it had bangs, and I used to look like my mom. Now I have a brush cut. We went for lunch in the mess hall, and the other students asked if I was a boy. I pulled my hoodie, and I cried in my sister's arms,” said Gamble.
“The other kids stared and laughed at me. I don't like this school. The students were mean and they made fun of my hair. They made fun of me. A girl stabbed me in my chest with a pencil as I walked past her. One of the girls pushes her tongue down my throat. And I learn about things that are beyond my age and beyond my years.”
She wondered what she had done to experience this, being beaten up by the other students, to the extent of being kicked and struck multiple times on her back as she got out of the shower room. “Why are they beating me? Where were their teachers and adults, and why did they not do anything about it?” were the questions that filled her head.
Her voice quivering, she emphasized how residential schools stripped children of their identity, language and culture, forcing assimilation through practices such as baptism and religious instruction. She attended St. Michael’s from 1984 until 1995 and was among the last generation of survivors, though not the last to feel the lasting impacts.
Despite the trauma she experienced, she persevered, earned her degree at age 22 and became a counsellor to help “relatives” who are lost within the judicial system, other residential school survivors and those who are still feeling the effects of inter-generational trauma. For Indigenous Peoples, everyone is related, which is why it is common to refer to everyone as a relative.
“I try to educate and reintroduce our culture while working alongside our elders. Someone asked me: ‘Why are you so comfortable working in the institution?’ My answer is because I was raised in one myself. Today, the city raises its flag to honour Truth and Reconciliation. I share my story as a reminder of my truth. My fellow survivors, I see you all.”
There were more than 134 residential schools in Canada from 1893 to 1996, where the system stripped Indigenous Peoples of their culture, identity, language and traditions. An estimated over 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were forced to attend these schools, where thousands died and many remain missing.
