WEBVTT 00:00:58.991 --> 00:01:00.881 [children singing] 00:01:00.881 --> 00:01:03.154 ♪ One little, two little, three little Indians ♪ 00:01:03.154 --> 00:01:05.822 ♪ Four little, five little, six little Indians ♪ 00:01:05.822 --> 00:01:08.229 ♪ Seven little, eight little, nine little Indians ♪ 00:01:08.229 --> 00:01:10.772 ♪ Ten little Indian boys. ♪ 00:01:10.772 --> 00:01:13.020 ♪ Ten little, nine little, eight little Indians ♪ 00:01:13.020 --> 00:01:15.680 ♪Four little, five little, six little Indians ♪ 00:01:15.680 --> 00:01:18.222 ♪ Seven little, eight little, nine little Indians ♪ 00:01:18.222 --> 00:01:21.022 ♪ One little Indian boy. ♪ 00:01:29.364 --> 00:01:34.534 ♪Jump around, ten little Indians, jump around, ten little Indians ♪ 00:01:34.534 --> 00:01:39.016 ♪ Jump around, ten little Indians, one little Indian boy. ♪ 00:01:39.016 --> 00:01:41.582 ♪ One little, two little, three little Indians ♪ 00:01:41.582 --> 00:01:44.308 ♪ Four little, five little, six little Indians ♪ 00:01:44.308 --> 00:01:46.713 ♪ Seven little, eight little, nine little Indians ♪ 00:01:46.713 --> 00:01:49.101 ♪ Ten little Indian boys. ♪ 00:01:49.101 --> 00:01:51.774 ♪ Ten little, nine little, eight little Indians... ♪♪ 00:01:51.774 --> 00:01:55.264 [singing fades out] 00:01:55.264 --> 00:01:57.808 -"Ten Little Indians." That's a song 00:01:57.808 --> 00:02:00.639 that was counting dead Indians 00:02:00.639 --> 00:02:02.906 back on the trails when they would kill Indians. 00:02:02.906 --> 00:02:04.871 -We'd see all these little kids in uniform, 00:02:04.871 --> 00:02:06.994 and we'd be wondering how come they're like that. 00:02:06.994 --> 00:02:09.969 We weren't dressed like that, but these little kids were. 00:02:09.969 --> 00:02:12.509 -I remember being younger, 00:02:12.509 --> 00:02:15.379 growing up on the reservation, and being told, 00:02:15.379 --> 00:02:17.869 "Don't trust white people. Don't listen to them." 00:02:17.869 --> 00:02:18.954 Never told why. 00:02:18.954 --> 00:02:22.530 -The government schools are constantly being built, 00:02:22.530 --> 00:02:24.960 and hospitals added. 00:02:25.490 --> 00:02:28.069 We bring them in, clean them up, 00:02:28.069 --> 00:02:31.394 and start them on their way to civilization. 00:02:31.394 --> 00:02:34.592 So I would ask social services and human services audience, 00:02:34.592 --> 00:02:36.878 "How many people know about residential boarding schools? 00:02:36.878 --> 00:02:38.280 How many people here do?" 00:02:38.280 --> 00:02:41.187 This never makes it into the history books. This is never talked about. 00:02:41.187 --> 00:02:44.969 -Why did those schools get started, and who started them, 00:02:44.969 --> 00:02:46.978 and what was the rationale behind it? 00:02:46.978 --> 00:02:50.732 -The first general policy was "the only good Indian was a dead Indian." 00:02:50.732 --> 00:02:54.762 That we needed to be killed, exterminated, eradicated. 00:02:55.432 --> 00:02:58.166 Once they realized that's a little bit more difficult to do-- 00:02:58.166 --> 00:03:00.620 is to have mass genocide of a population-- 00:03:00.620 --> 00:03:03.052 that the policies changed, from killing, 00:03:03.052 --> 00:03:05.086 to killing the Indian and saving the man. 00:03:05.086 --> 00:03:08.022 There's a General Pratt who is well famous and documented 00:03:08.022 --> 00:03:12.091 for using those words, "to kill the Indian and save the man," 00:03:12.091 --> 00:03:14.859 and that we are subhuman, and that our ways are savage, 00:03:14.859 --> 00:03:16.816 and we need to be civilized. 00:03:16.816 --> 00:03:19.442 Well, the governments in Canada and the United States 00:03:19.442 --> 00:03:24.782 followed that policy up until the 1980s, in one form or another. 00:03:24.782 --> 00:03:28.228 -There is a boarding school far, far away, 00:03:28.228 --> 00:03:31.939 where we get mush and milk three times a day. 00:03:31.939 --> 00:03:35.826 [singing] ♪ Oh, how the huskies run, when they hear their dinner bell. ♪ 00:03:35.826 --> 00:03:39.077 Oh, how the huskies run, three times a day. 00:03:39.077 --> 00:03:42.953 Like I say, I went to the Mush Hole when I was four years old. 00:03:42.953 --> 00:03:45.463 I was there for nine years. 00:03:46.493 --> 00:03:49.343 And once in a while we'd come home in summertime, 00:03:49.343 --> 00:03:51.134 but not all the time. 00:03:51.134 --> 00:03:55.124 When the counselors came and told my dad that he couldn't raise us properly, 00:03:55.124 --> 00:03:59.434 we were at the Mush Hole one week, and our heads were full of bugs. 00:03:59.434 --> 00:04:02.004 -There was a lot of sad times, 00:04:02.004 --> 00:04:04.544 but I didn't get, like, angry and have any resentment 00:04:04.544 --> 00:04:06.003 till after I got out. 00:04:06.003 --> 00:04:09.543 'Cause I didn't know, from just five-and-a-half to sixteen, 00:04:09.543 --> 00:04:12.984 I thought it was just, like a normal upbringing, 00:04:12.984 --> 00:04:16.265 like, to not have no parents and stuff like that [chuckling]. 00:04:16.265 --> 00:04:17.927 So that's, uh— 00:04:17.927 --> 00:04:20.124 And after I got out, and then they thought, 00:04:20.124 --> 00:04:22.664 well, this is the way they were supposed 00:04:22.664 --> 00:04:24.174 to be treating us. 00:04:24.578 --> 00:04:26.612 I think my mother couldn't take care of us, 00:04:26.612 --> 00:04:30.712 because our father was into alcohol. 00:04:31.327 --> 00:04:33.877 Me and my sister, we started there 00:04:34.248 --> 00:04:36.248 in 1945. 00:04:36.991 --> 00:04:39.481 I was five years old at the time. 00:04:41.530 --> 00:04:43.760 We had all our hair cut off. 00:04:44.243 --> 00:04:47.763 We were made baldies; we were really bald. 00:04:48.530 --> 00:04:51.540 And that wasn't a very good feeling to have. 00:04:53.077 --> 00:04:57.137 And they used to call us "Mush Hole baldies." 00:04:57.137 --> 00:05:00.544 That's what the kids on the reserve used to call us. 00:05:01.743 --> 00:05:03.653 Well, we can go in now. 00:05:04.343 --> 00:05:06.884 I mean, this is going to take like, all day, eh? 00:05:06.884 --> 00:05:09.504 [laughing] -Looks like it. 00:05:16.691 --> 00:05:18.928 We were taken to the hospital 00:05:18.928 --> 00:05:24.258 to get checked out for nits and whatever, I guess that was. 00:05:26.473 --> 00:05:29.410 Well, they checked us out, you know. 00:05:29.410 --> 00:05:31.526 Then they split us. 00:05:31.526 --> 00:05:34.763 The school was split in age group, 00:05:34.763 --> 00:05:37.851 and by boys and girls. 00:05:37.851 --> 00:05:40.788 Boys were on one side, the girls were on one side. 00:05:40.788 --> 00:05:45.238 And they went from the lower age up to high school level. 00:05:45.870 --> 00:05:49.870 My ma was gonna walk out here and go to the store, 00:05:51.493 --> 00:05:55.803 and at five and a half, my sister tells me that 00:05:55.803 --> 00:05:57.981 I grabbed my ma's leg, 00:05:59.053 --> 00:06:03.233 and of course we were all just crying. The whole four of us were just crying. 00:06:03.484 --> 00:06:06.797 Like, you know, 'cause my ma was going to leave us here. 00:06:06.797 --> 00:06:09.537 So I grabbed my ma's leg 00:06:10.502 --> 00:06:13.012 and, well, crying and that, 00:06:14.274 --> 00:06:17.264 and just kinda like, hollering, like, "ma don't leave me." 00:06:17.264 --> 00:06:19.314 "Don't leave me," like, you know. 00:06:20.064 --> 00:06:22.872 But anyway, while that was going on, 00:06:22.872 --> 00:06:25.979 a supervisor came over and just kinda grabbed me, 00:06:25.979 --> 00:06:28.549 and took me off my ma's leg. 00:06:30.286 --> 00:06:32.769 And then my ma just walked out, 00:06:33.269 --> 00:06:35.089 and I never seen her. 00:06:36.250 --> 00:06:39.092 For those ten years I don't see her. 00:06:39.092 --> 00:06:42.492 She never come to see me once. I don't know why. 00:06:42.862 --> 00:06:45.259 They took my brother away 00:06:45.259 --> 00:06:48.231 to where he was supposed to stay. 00:06:48.231 --> 00:06:51.151 And my sister, she just went on her own. 00:06:52.760 --> 00:06:56.510 I was with most of the four- and five-year-olds, 00:06:58.011 --> 00:07:01.761 We didn't go to school, 'cause we were too young. 00:07:02.468 --> 00:07:05.871 Yet, to the agencies of the government, 00:07:05.871 --> 00:07:09.065 they are being rapidly brought from their state 00:07:09.065 --> 00:07:13.655 of comparative savagery and barbarism to one of civilization. 00:07:13.972 --> 00:07:17.892 When we used our language, at that young age, too, 00:07:17.892 --> 00:07:19.582 we were just learning. 00:07:20.659 --> 00:07:22.781 They used to wash our mouth out with soap. 00:07:22.781 --> 00:07:25.128 They would take the whole bunch of us 00:07:25.128 --> 00:07:28.818 and march us to the shower— cold shower— 00:07:28.818 --> 00:07:32.488 and they'd throw us in there, and beat us along the way. 00:07:34.228 --> 00:07:37.248 That was a routine thing, I guess. I don't know. 00:07:39.084 --> 00:07:41.498 But that taught us, you know. 00:07:41.498 --> 00:07:44.253 They'd throw us in this dark press room 00:07:44.253 --> 00:07:47.916 where they kept all our Sunday 'go to meeting' clothes. 00:07:47.916 --> 00:07:51.763 And they'd throw Rosemary and I in there, 00:07:51.763 --> 00:07:55.094 and tell us the rats were going to get us. 00:07:55.094 --> 00:07:58.914 But I didn't know then why I was being thrown in there, 00:07:58.914 --> 00:08:01.764 and I used to wonder, what did I do? 00:08:02.205 --> 00:08:05.251 And I would cry, and Rosemary would cry, 00:08:05.251 --> 00:08:07.909 and we cried and cried for hours in there, 00:08:07.909 --> 00:08:10.369 not knowing why we were in there. 00:08:12.469 --> 00:08:14.524 And they'd take us out. 00:08:14.524 --> 00:08:17.245 And when I did get to learn a little bit of English, 00:08:17.245 --> 00:08:19.263 I knew then they were throwing us in there 00:08:19.263 --> 00:08:21.653 because we wouldn't speak English. 00:08:23.420 --> 00:08:26.153 I must have been stubborn right from the day I was born, 00:08:26.153 --> 00:08:29.384 because I thought to myself, "I'll never speak English, either." 00:08:29.384 --> 00:08:32.232 "You want me to speak English? I won't speak English." 00:08:32.232 --> 00:08:35.240 So I didn't speak at all for two whole years, 00:08:35.240 --> 00:08:39.470 because I figured if I spoke Indian I'd get a lickin', 00:08:39.836 --> 00:08:42.327 and if I spoke English, 00:08:42.327 --> 00:08:45.563 then it would be against everything that I stood for, 00:08:45.563 --> 00:08:47.658 and so I didn't speak at all. 00:08:47.658 --> 00:08:50.202 -But today they all speak English, 00:08:50.202 --> 00:08:53.947 and some have taken business courses, 00:08:53.947 --> 00:08:57.157 home economics, and other higher training. 00:08:57.727 --> 00:09:00.970 -Took us into another room down there, and maybe down in the play room, 00:09:00.970 --> 00:09:05.780 we took all our clothes off and we put the clothes of the school on. 00:09:06.782 --> 00:09:08.562 And they give us a number. 00:09:09.112 --> 00:09:11.522 So my number was like, 48. 00:09:12.129 --> 00:09:14.599 And my brother was 36. 00:09:15.005 --> 00:09:18.637 My family was the state-run institute. 00:09:18.637 --> 00:09:23.127 And the nickname for the Thomas Indian School is "Salem". 00:09:24.824 --> 00:09:28.424 And Salem was derived from "asylum". 00:09:28.424 --> 00:09:32.423 And you now what an asylum is; it's for crazy people. 00:09:33.125 --> 00:09:36.755 So we were thought of as being crazy, I guess. 00:09:37.973 --> 00:09:41.279 They were just considered bad people, bad children, 00:09:41.279 --> 00:09:43.931 but they weren't bad children, okay? 00:09:43.931 --> 00:09:46.841 They were placed there for so many different reasons, 00:09:46.841 --> 00:09:51.728 But not because of any kind of delinquency on their part.