Pope Francis apologized to a delegation of indigenous communities, including the Metis, Inuit, First, Mulatto and others, in early April 2022, recognizing the damage caused to boarding schools in Canada, after finding in August 2021 the More than a thousand graves near boarding schools.
Canadian bishops acknowledged the "sufferings experienced by boarding school students" and the "serious violations committed" by some members of the Catholic community, while Canadian historians said that between 1883 and 1996, about 150,000 indigenous children, specifically from American Indians, Mulattos and the people of The Inuit, for "integration" into the white community of Canada, were forcibly separated from their families, language, and culture, and placed in 139 such boarding schools across the country in order to forcibly infuse them with the prevailing culture.
Many were mistreated or sexually assaulted, and between 4,000 and 6,000 people died in those schools, according to the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which concluded that what happened was a real "cultural genocide".
Barry Kennedy story
In this report, which won the "Best Journalistic Story" award at the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA) awards, Al Jazeera English reporter Brandi Morin recounts some of the stories of those victims, whose survivors continue to suffer psychological damage to this day.
Barry Kennedy, 62, of Saskatchewan, Canada, stares weeping into a field of bones containing the unmarked graves of Native American children who died at the former Marival Boarding School, which once stood just meters from the current cemetery.
Barry recounts how he attended a Canadian government-funded school run by the Catholic Church from the ages of five to 11.
One of the organizations announced in June 2022 that 751 graves had been found at the site, without evidence, believed to be the graves of children and adults alike. Barry called it a “scandalous scandal,” and said, “No one has ever believed us… Now, I think that society Al-Kindi is sad that all these atrocities happened in his name."
There were 139 of these boarding schools attended by an estimated 150,000 Aboriginal children in Canada;
The first school opened in 1831 and the last school closed in 1996. These institutions were intended to undermine indigenous culture, language, and family and societal ties, and enjoyed a bad reputation for neglecting and mistreating the children they were forced to attend.
Thousands of Aboriginal children have died in schools, and there have been numerous reports of children's remains being found near former residential schools across Canada, while Aboriginal peoples continue to search for their missing children.
"The day they came"
Barry remembers the day they came to pick him up and his sisters, he was 5 years old then.
It was an autumn morning, and he was at home in the cabin where he lived with his parents and seven siblings when the hell suddenly exploded.
The first thing he heard was his father's screams, and then he saw them in the doorway: a representative of the Canadian government in custody, a police officer, a priest, and others from the boarding school.
"My mother gathered the children and took them to a bedroom, told them not to go out, and left the room, her screaming erupted. I don't remember the words, but I heard her crying and screaming...My parents were fighting to protect us, but to no avail," says Barry.
"My parents went to boarding school, there was a reason for this screaming because my mother knew what we were up to, there was absolutely no choice. They had to do it, otherwise they would have gone to jail."
Barry shakes his head and turns red in anger;
He doesn't even remember if he said goodbye to his parents.
"predatory beasts"
They dragged him and 3 of his sisters into a waiting vehicle, and threw him in the back seat.
He says it felt like the longest journey of his life, he had no idea then where to go or why.
"We were all crying, and we gathered together in an attempt to comfort each other, and to try to hide behind each other," he says.
When they finally stopped near a large brick building resembling a cathedral, they got Barry's sisters out of the car, who were to be staying in the girls' dorm at the school, and he was led into the boys' room, and a priest pulled him out of the car.
He says fear overcame him, and he tried to escape, so he was caught and sent to line up with the other boys to complete the procedures.
He was stripped naked, his head shaved, and pale-faced women forced him to shower with cold water from head to toe, he says, "as if someone was holding you and kicking you in the process."
Then he was given a mattress and some clothes, and sent to a large room with cots.
That night, while he was sleeping with 100 or so boys, he heard strange noises.
He then understood that the "monsters" lurked in the dark, and soon discovered who those monsters were.
The staff known as the "night watchmen" were tasked with watching the children sleep. "When that door opens and the light comes on in the dorm, you can hear the sobbing," he says;
They were wandering the family lines and molesting the children.
"I'll never forget the smell," he said as he suffocated, explaining how the boys would soil their underwear out of fear, and others would do it on purpose to try to keep their abusers away that night.
During the six years he was there, Barry was regularly molested.
Tears in his eyes, anger in his voice as he says, "They were predators."
"When I knew death"
As he wanders the field of graves filled with rows of solar lanterns, teddy bears and the colorful plastic flowers that mourners have brought in the past few months, other painful memories have resurfaced.
He was 8 years old when he was awakened early one morning and asked to put on the robes he wore when working as an altar boy, to help the clergy in church services.
A priest and some other altar boys took him to a place behind the church.
There, they saw a small person wrapped in a white cloth beside a freshly dug grave.
"We had to help with the last duties of the deceased."
Barry stops to point to a distant point. "It was out there somewhere... I don't know if it was a boy or a girl because it was just wrapped in a piece of cloth. That was the first time I knew... death," he says.
"I know that after today, I will feel real tired. My body is in real pain, I just prefer to be alone and stay at home for a few days. My wife noticed this, and she is helping me."
"How do you forgive?"
There was a time when he was overwhelmed by shock, and he would turn to alcohol to distance himself from the pursuit of his past.
He says that his mother and father were patiently praying for him from afar.
Barry is currently a father of nine children and has worked two terms as the president of a company, yet he said that "a lot of people don't survive trauma," he ponders and then explains, "I, I walk a fine line."
This fine line is between healing the past and living in the present, "Part of that involves forgiveness, but it's not easy."
“How do you forgive?” Barry asks. “If someone can tell me how, let them do! How can you live with that? It was done to us, the kids!”
"This fact should come to light," he added, adding that there are some Canadians who say "Oh, why don't you stop crying?".
Barry hopes that survivors will be given the opportunity to continue telling others about boarding schools and their repercussions, "to provide tips to ensure this does not happen again".
"No Indians allowed"
To the west across a prairie landscape, on the threshold of the Rocky Mountains in Calgary, Alberta, 79-year-old Ursuline Reddud, another boarding school survivor, tells her story for the first time.
She remembers her shattered soul when she cut her braids on her first day at school.
Ursuline Riddud was forced to attend boarding school when she was a child (networking sites)
"I was so scared," she said softly, shivering, "I was shocked because I was like a zombie and doing whatever they asked me to do."
Although she did not understand why she was being mistreated, it was not her first experience with racism.
She remembers that when she was five, she joined her parents on a shopping trip to a town near Cuisine.
She needed a toilet, so her mother took her to a public outhouse behind a store, but she stopped abruptly to read a shingle with black writing on it, and said straight away, "We can't go there."
Remembering her confusion, she says, “I couldn't forget it, I can see the writing to this day even though I didn't know what it meant at the time,” she said. “No Native Americans are allowed.”
In the end, her mother took her to use the restroom in a Chinese restaurant "which was always good towards the natives".
Fear and distrust
When, in the summer, hearing about the discovery of children's remains across Canada, she spent time grieving, she said she felt the weight of her soul and had to stop herself from collapsing.
She meditates, before being silent for a moment, takes a deep breath and cries, then says, "The hurt will always be there."
Her son Kirby Redwood, 56, admires his mother's courage and dedication to stem the cycle of trauma, but says he felt uncomfortable growing up;
She had suffered a lot of ugliness that affected his generation as well.
Kirby has followed in his mother's footsteps, to become a social worker and is now CEO of the Miskanawah Community Services Association, a Calgary Indigenous-led social services agency. Everyone's always shocked to boarding schools, but so is all colonial violence."