WARNING: This story is about the survivors of the Indian internship house program and talks about abuse and domestic violence.
Melissa Ethier and Marilyn Gaudreau get into a single wide chair and comfort themselves, while they open about what it was to be removed from their homes in Mattagami First Nation in 1969.
They joke nervously, calling themselves m and m and seek the tissues preventively while preparing to tell their story.
As teenagers, the Federal Government sent both of them to address with a Kirkland Lake family, Ontario, to attend high school there.
The couple, who are cousins, says they have never really talked about the trauma they experienced at the hands of non -indigenous families; Not even for their parents or children.
They say that they did not even reveal their brothers, who were approached in different homes in the same community.
There were simply spoken, they said, but now it is time to put aside those secrets.
They want to encourage other survivors of the Indian boarding school program to present and request compensation.
Ethier, 73, and Gaudreau, 71, were first placed as teenagers with a young couple who already had two young children in 1969.
They say that the husband was noisy, drunk and violent with his wife, and the girls heard fights from where they were curled up in their rooms up.
The most haircase was when the man shouted that he was going to burn the house.
Ethier described how they changed in their clothes and planned an escape route, making sure they could take the other young children with them if the man were fine in his threat.
They spent the night and went to school the next day.
When they returned, the wife told them that other arrangements were being made for them.
“I was happy to get out of there, thinking that we are going to a better home, but it wasn’t better than the first,” Gaudreau said.
In the next house, they described the new landlord as very cross.
Gaudreau said they only had oatmeal and water for breakfast and pasta for lunch and dinner for weeks.
“You couldn’t even go to the refrigerator to drink a fruit or drink,” Gaudreau said. “We had to go to our room and stay there. We were not allowed to watch television, so we were isolated.”
That isolation, says Ethier and Gaudreau, was deep at a time when there was no Internet or cell service.
The two returned to their community for Christmas holidays, and promised to return to Lake Kirkland. Ethier resigned from his dream of becoming a nurse.
“It bothered me a lot, but you know, it’s something I had to let go,” he said. “I had to do it for me because I no longer returned to that kind of life.”
The Indian Boarding House program was active between June 1, 1951 and June 30, 1992 and saw the Federal Government take thousands of indigenous children throughout Canada of their homes and force them to address private houses in other communities for education, pay those families to house them.
A collective lawsuit filed by some survivors in 2019 was resolved and compensation for an amount of $ 50 million was agreed to recognize the damage of the loss of culture and language, as well as other abuses that students suffered.
Claims opened last August.
William Platt is a lawyer who is helping to administer claims.
The first step, he said, is that survivors qualify, what they can do by completing an online or paper form.
A survivor, once qualified, is eligible for $ 10,000.
Platt emphasized that even those who feel that they were placed in a good home are eligible for compensation, with the argument that they had no other option in the matter and suffered loss of culture and language,
Survivors who suffered additional abuse such as hunger, violence, forced labor and sexual abuse can request up to $ 200,000.
He said it is important that the survivors know that once they qualify, their claims on additional abuse will not be challenged in court.
He estimates that up to 40,000 people can qualify, with thousands of them in northern Ontario.
Platt said there could be 600 to 800 survivors on the island of Manitoulin and its surroundings alone.
Because the program began in the early 1950s, some survivors are no longer alive, but Platt is encouraging families to request in their name.
He said it is important that anyone who thinks he can qualify, to communicate because they do not have a list.
“Due to privacy legislation, Canada cannot or cannot share that list with us,” he said.
“So we stayed with our own devices, which means that we approach the communities where we know that there were great segments of children who arrived in the last 40 years in this program, and we ask if we could enter the community and celebrate sessions in person.”
In the session in Mattagami First Nation, the people, some visibly stressed, paid close attention to a presentation on the claims process.
Dorothy Naveau said he took his months to request compensation and feels that he is being rheumatized by having to provide details.
“It wasn’t a sunny day for us every day, right?” She said.
“We were taken from our homes, out of the security of our community, and then we suddenly placed in a place where we do not feel safe at night, and many times they gave us a bed and a little space in the corner of the basement.”
Mental health support is provided in most information sessions.
Faye Naveau is with Wabun’s tribal council and kept some sage when the survivors began to present their claims.
She advised some people about coping strategies and offered encouragement to those who fought to open about their experiences.
“You are helping to keep secrets that were treated by others,” he said.
“Then you are keeping other people’s secrets doing that. And you carry that trauma that is not yours to take. When you return those ugly gifts, it is released and released and does not occupy more space in your brain.”
People who need support can call the Hope for Wellness team for comfort and emotional assistance, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The free number is 1-855-242-3310 or online at www.hopeforwellness.ca
Because the claims period covers about 40 years, generations of the same family were taken from their communities.
Jennifer Constant is now head of Mattagami First Nation.
She and her mother were sent.
Constant said that the first of the eight different boarding houses in which he lived in more than four years in Timmins was an overcrowded apartment.
Generations of young people from the first impacted nations
Thanks to his mother’s defense, he said he stayed in some good houses, but he knew that some students were seen as a merchandise.
Even for her, she said that instability interfered with her grades and ate her self -esteem.
She said that indigenous students were often collected and left without any place to socialize, particularly difficult for adolescents in a vulnerable period in their lives, without families to guide them.
“That generates that feeling of not being good enough or that are not drawn to success,” he said.
“It is not expected to succeed. And for students who later internalize that, that creates many complex problems when none of that belonged to them, which were pushed into a situation that created this.”
The program ended in 1992 with the federal government is no longer involved in the relocation of students.
While students must still go to Timmins for school, Constant said the first nation offers the daily transport option now, an hour in each sense.
“The main objective is that they are at home in the afternoon, they are sleeping in their own beds and that they are with their family,” he said.
Constant finally went to University and was recently accepted in a program in Harvard.
As for Marilyn Gaudreau and Melissa Ethier, they married and had their own families, who are proud to say that they graduated from high school, and went to university.
They also made sure that their own refrigerators were never closed to any child who would need food.
“We broke the chain,” they said.
The deadline for submitting a claim is February 22, 2027.
You can find more information and mental health support here.
Collective demand is different from that of residential and day school survivors.
