WEBVTT 00:01:00.610 --> 00:01:03.154 [children singing] ♪ 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 --> 00:01:21.272 ♪ One little Indian boy. ♪ 00:01:29.364 --> 00:01:31.899 ♪ Jump around, ten little Indians ♪ 00:01:31.899 --> 00:01:34.534 ♪ Jump around, ten little Indians ♪ 00:01:34.534 --> 00:01:36.775 ♪ Jump around, ten little Indians ♪ 00:01:36.775 --> 00:01:39.016 ♪ 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 --> 00:01:54.984 [singing fades out] 00:01:54.984 --> 00:01:56.536 (speaker 1) "Ten Little Indians." 00:01:56.536 --> 00:02:00.639 That's a song 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 (recording) The government schools are constantly being built, 00:02:22.530 --> 00:02:25.490 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 --> 00:02:39.733 This never makes it into the history books. 00:02:39.733 --> 00:02:41.187 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 --> 00:02:48.605 -The first general policy was 00:02:48.605 --> 00:02:50.732 "the only good Indian was a dead Indian," 00:02:50.732 --> 00:02:55.432 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 --> 00:03:02.712 then the policies changed from killing 00:03:02.712 --> 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 --> 00:03:16.706 and we needed to be civilized. 00:03:16.706 --> 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 (survivor 1) 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 --> 00:03:33.722 [singing] ♪ Oh, how the huskies run ♪ 00:03:33.722 --> 00:03:35.826 ♪ 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 --> 00:03:45.353 I was there for nine years. 00:03:45.353 --> 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 --> 00:03:53.129 When the counselors came and told my dad 00:03:53.129 --> 00:03:55.124 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 --> 00:04:01.804 (survivor 2) There was a lot of sad times, but I mean, like, 00:04:01.804 --> 00:04:04.544 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 --> 00:04:24.578 well, this is the way they were supposed to be treating us. 00:04:24.578 --> 00:04:26.612 (survivor 3) I think my mother couldn't take care of us 00:04:26.612 --> 00:04:31.327 because our father was into alcohol. 00:04:31.327 --> 00:04:34.248 Me and my sister, we started there 00:04:34.248 --> 00:04:36.991 in 1945. 00:04:36.991 --> 00:04:39.481 I was five years old at the time. 00:04:41.530 --> 00:04:44.243 -We had all our hair cut off. 00:04:44.243 --> 00:04:48.280 We were made baldies; we were really bald. 00:04:48.280 --> 00:04:52.137 And that wasn't a very good feeling to have. 00:04:52.137 --> 00:04:57.137 And they used to call us "Mush Hole baldies." 00:04:57.137 --> 00:05:01.004 That's what the kids on the reserve used to call us. 00:05:01.743 --> 00:05:04.343 -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 --> 00:05:10.094 [laughing] -Looks like it. 00:05:16.691 --> 00:05:18.928 -We were taken to the hospital 00:05:18.928 --> 00:05:22.888 to get checked out for nits and whatever, 00:05:22.888 --> 00:05:25.538 I guess that was, you know. 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 --> 00:05:45.870 And they went from the lower age up to high school level. 00:05:45.870 --> 00:05:50.183 -My ma was gonna walk out here and go to the store, 00:05:50.183 --> 00:05:55.803 and, at five-and-a-half, my sister tells me that 00:05:55.803 --> 00:05:57.731 I grabbed my ma's leg, 00:05:57.731 --> 00:06:00.732 and of course we were all just crying. 00:06:00.732 --> 00:06:03.484 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 --> 00:06:09.112 So I grabbed my ma's leg 00:06:09.112 --> 00:06:12.512 and, well, crying and that, 00:06:12.512 --> 00:06:17.264 and just kinda, like, hollering, like, "Ma don't leave me." 00:06:17.264 --> 00:06:20.064 "Don't leave me," like, you know. So... 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 --> 00:06:29.319 and took me off my ma's leg, and uh... 00:06:30.286 --> 00:06:33.269 And then my ma just walked out, 00:06:33.269 --> 00:06:35.359 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 --> 00:06:42.862 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 --> 00:06:58.011 I was with most of the four- and five-year-olds. 00:06:58.011 --> 00:07:02.468 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 --> 00:07:13.972 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 --> 00:07:20.659 we were just learning, so... 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 --> 00:07:33.058 and they'd throw us in there and beat us along the way. 00:07:34.228 --> 00:07:37.768 That was a routine thing, I guess. I don't know. 00:07:37.768 --> 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 --> 00:08:02.205 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 --> 00:08:12.469 not knowing why we were in there, and, uh... 00:08:12.469 --> 00:08:14.524 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 --> 00:08:22.160 because we wouldn't speak English. 00:08:22.160 --> 00:08:26.153 And... 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 --> 00:08:39.836 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 --> 00:08:57.727 home economics, and other higher training. 00:08:57.727 --> 00:08:59.348 (Geronimo) Took us into another room down there, 00:08:59.348 --> 00:09:00.970 and maybe down in the play room, 00:09:00.970 --> 00:09:02.436 we took all our clothes off, 00:09:02.436 --> 00:09:06.782 and we put the clothes of the school on. 00:09:06.782 --> 00:09:09.112 And they give us a number. 00:09:09.112 --> 00:09:12.129 So my number was, like, 48. 00:09:12.129 --> 00:09:15.005 And my brother was 36. 00:09:15.005 --> 00:09:18.637 (Elliott) 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 --> 00:09:33.125 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.