The Woodland Cultural Center, a new museum that was once the oldest residential school in Canada in Brantford, Ontario, celebrated its great inauguration on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, attracting hundreds of the renewed building that highlights indigenous language, culture and art and history.
On Tuesday, some of those who left told CBC News who wanted to learn about the history of former Mohawk Institute, while others wanted to honor parents or grandparents who were forced to go there when they were children. Some 15,000 children from 60 communities were sent to the Residential School, which was directed by the Anglican Church and the Federal Government from 1828 to 1970.
John Moses went to the museum’s opening with his cousins, Lesley and Patty Davis, who said they are from Mohawk’s mixed heritage and Mohican Delaware.
Around this time, this is the fifth year in which the day of truth and reconciliation has been marked as a federal holiday, indigenous peoples are often asked what reconciliation for them means, Moses said.
“Reconciliation lies with non -indigenous Canadians to reconcile with what is really the true history of the country. And families like ours provide the truth they reveal.”
Standing where their relatives were
While in the museum, the three were with a photograph framed by Moses’s father, Russ, and Lesley’s mother and Patty, Thelma, in the same place where the photo was taken in October 1943 when the young brothers attended the institute.
The image, said Moses, shows the couple during a 15 -minute visit that was once 15 minutes that the school allowed them.
Moses said his father wrote a memory about his experience in school in 1965. The cousins said their parents refused to define themselves for their harsh experiences in school.
Russ went on to serve in the Navy and played a leadership role in the development of an indigenous pavilion at the Expo ’67 in Montreal. Thelma was a leader who advocated an apology from the Anglican Church for his part in the residential schools, the cousins said.
Those schools had “a severe impact on the [First] Nations, “Lesley told CBC News.” That must be recognized, reconciled … and never be returned here again. ”
The oldest residential school in Canada, known as the Mohawk Institute, has reopened as a museum at the Woodland Cultural Center in Ontario with the aim of preserving the stories of the hundreds of children who were forced to attend and the legacy of abuse that often occurred inside.
At least 105 died while enrolled in the Mohawk Institute, according to the Secretariat of Survivors, a group led by survivors of the Institute that aims to support research in missing children on the site. The students died from illness or injuries, or escaped and died elsewhere.
The Woodland Cultural Center established two years after the residential school was closed to concentrate on gathering research and artifacts. Until now, he had closed to the public since 2019 by renovations.
“I think this building has that really tangible evidence of what happened in residential schools and what our families experienced,” said Heather George, executive director of the center and curator chief, to CBC News. “When you are in space itself, it actually impacts you differently and I think it really stays with you.
“I hope this becomes a catalyst for people who come, who want to learn more.”
George added that he hopes that visitors also look at the present and how a legacy of discrimination affects indigenous communities today.
Carol McDonald, Brian Burleight and Cathy Mountenay, who are cousins of Mohawks from Quinte’s bay, said their grandmother was forced to go to the Mohawk Institute, but they don’t know how long because I would never talk about it.
“We are here to honor all the people who had to endure what they had to endure here,” said Burleight, and said he grew up without knowing about residential schools, although he was an adult before the institution ended.
He said he feels that this is a time when it is well “being open and native”, unlike when he grew up in Toronto and “he was not considered something good.”
Burleight said his grandmother told her father to tell people that she was Scottish, not indigenous, for fear that she had to endure what she did.
McDonald said he was waiting for an emotional day for the great inauguration of the museum, but that she and her family “would stop and cry” together.
“We need each other.”
Jessica and Kyle Nguyen are brothers who went to the museum on Monday.
Kyle said that the two had recently taken a course on the history of workers who are black, indigenous and “people of color” through their union, and wanted to learn more about local indigenous history.
“We are visible minorities, so to help each other, we have to be strong allies for others,” he said, and that implies understanding the other’s past.
Before George, Janis Kahenktha Bomberry was the director of the Woodland Cultural Center for 20 years.
Lightbulb He told CBC Radio Fresh air About starting the campaign to restore the institute. At that time, he said, most of the members of the community that consulted his team were in favor of keeping him open so that people remember what happened there.
Part of the restoration of the institute is a language center, which Bomberry said he fought hard to preserve. Many children who went to the center were punished for speaking their own language and forced to speak English.
For Bomberry, preservation is a “middle finger” for a system that tried to eliminate indigenous languages.
“You tried and failed because we still have our language,” he said. “You failed and we are still here.”
A line of crisis of the Indian National Residential School has been established has been established to provide support to former students already affected. People can access emotional services and crisis reference by calling the national crisis line 24 hours: 1-866-925-4419.
Mental health advice and crisis support are also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the HOPE for Wellness Direct Line at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat www.hopeforwellness.ca.
