1 00:00:58,991 --> 00:01:00,881 [children singing] 2 00:01:00,881 --> 00:01:03,154 One little, two little, three little Indians, 3 00:01:03,154 --> 00:01:05,822 Four little, five little, six little Indians, 4 00:01:05,822 --> 00:01:08,229 Seven little, eight little, nine little Indians, 5 00:01:08,229 --> 00:01:10,772 Ten little Indian boys. 6 00:01:10,772 --> 00:01:13,020 Ten little, nine little, eight little Indians, 7 00:01:13,020 --> 00:01:15,680 Four little, five little, six little Indians, 8 00:01:15,680 --> 00:01:18,222 Seven little, eight little, nine little Indians, 9 00:01:18,222 --> 00:01:21,022 One little Indian boy. 10 00:01:29,364 --> 00:01:34,534 Jump around, ten little Indians, jump around, ten little Indians, 11 00:01:34,534 --> 00:01:39,016 Jump around, ten little Indians, one little Indian boy. 12 00:01:39,016 --> 00:01:41,582 One little, two little, three little Indians, 13 00:01:41,582 --> 00:01:44,308 Four little, five little, six little Indians, 14 00:01:44,308 --> 00:01:46,713 Seven little, eight little, nine little Indians, 15 00:01:46,713 --> 00:01:49,101 Ten little Indian boys. 16 00:01:49,101 --> 00:01:51,774 Ten little, nine little, eight little Indians, 17 00:01:51,774 --> 00:01:55,264 [singing fades out] 18 00:01:55,264 --> 00:01:57,808 -"Ten little Indians," that's a song 19 00:01:57,808 --> 00:02:00,639 that was counting dead Indians 20 00:02:00,639 --> 00:02:02,906 back on the trails when they would kill Indians. 21 00:02:02,906 --> 00:02:04,871 -We'd see all these little kids in uniform, 22 00:02:04,871 --> 00:02:06,994 and we'd be wondering how come they're like that. 23 00:02:06,994 --> 00:02:09,969 We weren't dressed like that, but these little kids were. 24 00:02:09,969 --> 00:02:12,509 -I remember being younger, 25 00:02:12,509 --> 00:02:15,379 growing up on the reservation, and being told, 26 00:02:15,379 --> 00:02:17,869 "Don't trust white people. Don't listen to them." 27 00:02:17,869 --> 00:02:18,954 Never told why. 28 00:02:18,954 --> 00:02:22,530 -The government schools are constantly being built, 29 00:02:22,530 --> 00:02:24,960 and hospitals added. 30 00:02:25,490 --> 00:02:28,069 We bring them in, clean them up, 31 00:02:28,069 --> 00:02:31,394 and start them on their way to civilization. 32 00:02:31,394 --> 00:02:34,592 So I would ask social services and human services audience, 33 00:02:34,592 --> 00:02:36,878 how many people know about residential boarding schools? 34 00:02:36,878 --> 00:02:38,280 How many people here do? 35 00:02:38,280 --> 00:02:41,187 This never makes it into the history books. This is never talked about. 36 00:02:41,187 --> 00:02:44,969 -Why did those schools get started, and who started them, 37 00:02:44,969 --> 00:02:46,978 and what was the rationale behind it? 38 00:02:46,978 --> 00:02:50,732 -The first general policy was "the only good Indian was a dead Indian." 39 00:02:50,732 --> 00:02:54,762 That we needed to be killed, exterminated, eradicated. 40 00:02:55,432 --> 00:02:58,166 Once they realized that's a little bit more difficult to do— 41 00:02:58,166 --> 00:03:00,620 is to have mass genocide of a population— 42 00:03:00,620 --> 00:03:03,052 that the policies changed, from killing 43 00:03:03,052 --> 00:03:05,086 to killing the Indian and saving the man. 44 00:03:05,086 --> 00:03:08,022 There's a General Pratt who is well famous and documented 45 00:03:08,022 --> 00:03:12,091 for using those words, "to kill the Indian and save the man," 46 00:03:12,091 --> 00:03:14,859 and that we are subhuman, and that our ways are savage, 47 00:03:14,859 --> 00:03:16,816 and we need to be civilized. 48 00:03:16,816 --> 00:03:19,442 Well, the governments in Canada and the United States 49 00:03:19,442 --> 00:03:24,782 follow that policy up until the 1980s, in one form or another. 50 00:03:24,782 --> 00:03:28,228 -There is a boarding school far, far away, 51 00:03:28,228 --> 00:03:31,939 where we get mush and milk three times a day. 52 00:03:31,939 --> 00:03:35,826 [singing] Oh, how the huskies run, when they hear their dinner bell. 53 00:03:35,826 --> 00:03:39,077 Oh, how the huskies run, three times a day. 54 00:03:39,077 --> 00:03:42,953 Like I say, I went to the Mush Hole when I was four years old. 55 00:03:42,953 --> 00:03:45,463 I was there for nine years. 56 00:03:46,493 --> 00:03:49,343 And once in a while we'd come home in summertime, 57 00:03:49,343 --> 00:03:51,134 but not all the time. 58 00:03:51,134 --> 00:03:55,124 When the counselors came and told my dad that he couldn't raise us properly, 59 00:03:55,124 --> 00:03:59,434 we were at the Mush Hole one week, and our heads were full of bugs. 60 00:03:59,434 --> 00:04:02,004 -There was a lot of sad times, 61 00:04:02,004 --> 00:04:04,544 but I didn't get, like, angry and have any resentment 62 00:04:04,544 --> 00:04:06,003 till after I got out. 63 00:04:06,003 --> 00:04:09,543 'Cause I didn't know, from just five-and-a-half to sixteen, 64 00:04:09,543 --> 00:04:12,984 I thought it was just, like a normal upbringing, 65 00:04:12,984 --> 00:04:16,265 like, to not have no parents and stuff like that [chuckling]. 66 00:04:16,265 --> 00:04:17,927 So that's, uh— 67 00:04:17,927 --> 00:04:20,124 And after I got out, and then they thought, 68 00:04:20,124 --> 00:04:22,664 well, this is the way they were supposed 69 00:04:22,664 --> 00:04:24,174 to be treating us. 70 00:04:24,578 --> 00:04:26,612 I think my mother couldn't take care of us, 71 00:04:26,612 --> 00:04:30,712 because our father was into alcohol. 72 00:04:31,327 --> 00:04:33,877 Me and my sister, we started there 73 00:04:34,248 --> 00:04:36,248 in 1945. 74 00:04:36,991 --> 00:04:39,481 I was five years old at the time. 75 00:04:41,530 --> 00:04:43,760 We had all our hair cut off. 76 00:04:44,243 --> 00:04:47,763 We were made baldies; we were really bald. 77 00:04:48,530 --> 00:04:51,540 And that wasn't a very good feeling to have. 78 00:04:53,077 --> 00:04:57,137 And they used to call us "Mush Hole baldies." 79 00:04:57,137 --> 00:05:00,544 That's what the kids on the reserve used to call us. 80 00:05:01,743 --> 00:05:03,653 Well, we can go in now. 81 00:05:04,343 --> 00:05:06,884 I mean, this is going to take like, all day, eh? 82 00:05:06,884 --> 00:05:09,504 [laughing] -Looks like it. 83 00:05:16,691 --> 00:05:18,928 We were taken to the hospital 84 00:05:18,928 --> 00:05:24,258 to get checked out for nits and whatever, I guess that was. 85 00:05:26,473 --> 00:05:29,410 Well, they checked us out, you know. 86 00:05:29,410 --> 00:05:31,526 Then they split us. 87 00:05:31,526 --> 00:05:34,763 The school was split in age group, 88 00:05:34,763 --> 00:05:37,851 and by boys and girls. 89 00:05:37,851 --> 00:05:40,788 Boys were on one side, the girls were on one side. 90 00:05:40,788 --> 00:05:45,238 And they went from the lower age up to high school level. 91 00:05:45,870 --> 00:05:49,870 My ma was gonna walk out here and go to the store, 92 00:05:51,493 --> 00:05:55,803 and at five and a half, my sister tells me that 93 00:05:55,803 --> 00:05:57,981 I grabbed my ma's leg, 94 00:05:59,053 --> 00:06:03,233 and of course we were all just crying. The whole four of us were just crying. 95 00:06:03,484 --> 00:06:06,797 Like, you know, 'cause my ma was going to leave us here. 96 00:06:06,797 --> 00:06:09,537 So I grabbed my ma's leg 97 00:06:10,502 --> 00:06:13,012 and, well, crying and that, 98 00:06:14,274 --> 00:06:17,264 and just kinda like, hollering, like, "ma don't leave me." 99 00:06:17,264 --> 00:06:19,314 "Don't leave me," like, you know. 100 00:06:20,064 --> 00:06:22,872 But anyway, while that was going on, 101 00:06:22,872 --> 00:06:25,979 a supervisor came over and just kinda grabbed me, 102 00:06:25,979 --> 00:06:28,549 and took me off my ma's leg. 103 00:06:30,286 --> 00:06:32,769 And then my ma just walked out, 104 00:06:33,269 --> 00:06:35,089 and I never seen her. 105 00:06:36,250 --> 00:06:39,092 For those ten years I don't see her. 106 00:06:39,092 --> 00:06:42,492 She never come to see me once. I don't know why. 107 00:06:42,862 --> 00:06:45,259 They took my brother away 108 00:06:45,259 --> 00:06:48,231 to where he was supposed to stay. 109 00:06:48,231 --> 00:06:51,151 And my sister, she just went on her own. 110 00:06:52,760 --> 00:06:56,510 I was with most of the four- and five-year-olds, 111 00:06:58,011 --> 00:07:01,761 We didn't go to school, 'cause we were too young. 112 00:07:02,468 --> 00:07:05,871 Yet, to the agencies of the government, 113 00:07:05,871 --> 00:07:09,065 they are being rapidly brought from their state 114 00:07:09,065 --> 00:07:13,655 of comparative savagery and barbarism to one of civilization. 115 00:07:13,972 --> 00:07:17,892 When we used our language, at that young age, too, 116 00:07:17,892 --> 00:07:19,582 we were just learning. 117 00:07:20,659 --> 00:07:22,781 They used to wash our mouth out with soap. 118 00:07:22,781 --> 00:07:25,128 They would take the whole bunch of us 119 00:07:25,128 --> 00:07:28,818 and march us to the shower— cold shower— 120 00:07:28,818 --> 00:07:32,488 and they'd throw us in there, and beat us along the way. 121 00:07:34,228 --> 00:07:37,248 That was a routine thing, I guess. I don't know. 122 00:07:39,084 --> 00:07:41,498 But that taught us, you know. 123 00:07:41,498 --> 00:07:44,253 They'd throw us in this dark press room 124 00:07:44,253 --> 00:07:47,916 where they kept all our Sunday 'go to meeting' clothes. 125 00:07:47,916 --> 00:07:51,763 And they'd throw Rosemary and I in there, 126 00:07:51,763 --> 00:07:55,094 and tell us the rats were going to get us. 127 00:07:55,094 --> 00:07:58,914 But I didn't know then why I was being thrown in there, 128 00:07:58,914 --> 00:08:01,764 and I used to wonder, what did I do? 129 00:08:02,205 --> 00:08:05,251 And I would cry, and Rosemary would cry, 130 00:08:05,251 --> 00:08:07,909 and we cried and cried for hours in there, 131 00:08:07,909 --> 00:08:10,369 not knowing why we were in there. 132 00:08:12,469 --> 00:08:14,524 And they'd take us out. 133 00:08:14,524 --> 00:08:17,245 And when I did get to learn a little bit of English, 134 00:08:17,245 --> 00:08:19,263 I knew then they were throwing us in there 135 00:08:19,263 --> 00:08:21,653 because we wouldn't speak English. 136 00:08:23,420 --> 00:08:26,153 I must have been stubborn right from the day I was born, 137 00:08:26,153 --> 00:08:29,384 because I thought to myself, "I'll never speak English, either." 138 00:08:29,384 --> 00:08:32,232 "You want me to speak English? I won't speak English." 139 00:08:32,232 --> 00:08:35,240 So I didn't speak at all for two whole years, 140 00:08:35,240 --> 00:08:39,470 because I figured if I spoke Indian I'd get a lickin', 141 00:08:39,836 --> 00:08:42,327 and if I spoke English, 142 00:08:42,327 --> 00:08:45,563 then it would be against everything that I stood for, 143 00:08:45,563 --> 00:08:47,658 and so I didn't speak at all. 144 00:08:47,658 --> 00:08:50,202 -But today they all speak English, 145 00:08:50,202 --> 00:08:53,947 and some have taken business courses, 146 00:08:53,947 --> 00:08:57,157 home economics, and other higher training. 147 00:08:57,727 --> 00:09:00,970 -Took us into another room down there, and maybe down in the play room, 148 00:09:00,970 --> 00:09:05,780 we took all our clothes off and we put the clothes of the school on. 149 00:09:06,782 --> 00:09:08,562 And they give us a number. 150 00:09:09,112 --> 00:09:11,522 So my number was like, 48. 151 00:09:12,129 --> 00:09:14,599 And my brother was 36. 152 00:09:15,005 --> 00:09:18,637 My family was the state-run institute. 153 00:09:18,637 --> 00:09:23,127 And the nickname for the Thomas Indian School is "Salem". 154 00:09:24,824 --> 00:09:28,424 And Salem was derived from "asylum". 155 00:09:28,424 --> 00:09:32,423 And you now what an asylum is; it's for crazy people. 156 00:09:33,125 --> 00:09:36,755 So we were thought of as being crazy, I guess. 157 00:09:37,973 --> 00:09:41,279 They were just considered bad people, bad children, 158 00:09:41,279 --> 00:09:43,931 but they weren't bad children, okay? 159 00:09:43,931 --> 00:09:46,841 They were placed there for so many different reasons, 160 00:09:46,841 --> 00:09:51,728 But not because of any kind of delinquency on their part.