Unseen Tears: The Native American Boarding School Experience in Western New York Part 1

Unseen Tears Native American boarding school documentary. Residential schools / boarding schools in the U.S. and Canada have had a lasting impact on Native communities.
Native American families in Western New York and Ontario continue to feel the impact of the Thomas Indian School and the Mohawk Institute. Survivors speak of traumatic separation from their families, abuse, and a systematic assault on their language and culture. Western New York Native American communities are presently attempting to heal the wounds and break the cycle inter-generational trauma resulting from the boarding (residential) school experience. Unseen Tears documents the stories of boarding school survivors, their families, and social service providers.

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[children singing] ♪ One little,
two little, three little Indians ♪

♪ Four little, five little,
six little Indians ♪

♪ Seven little, eight little,
nine little Indians ♪

♪ Ten little Indian boys. ♪

♪ Ten little, nine little,
eight little Indians ♪

♪ Four little, five little,
six little Indians ♪

♪ Seven little, eight little,
nine little Indians ♪

♪ One little Indian boy. ♪

♪ Jump around, ten little Indians ♪

♪ Jump around,
ten little Indians ♪

♪ Jump around, ten little Indians ♪

♪ One little Indian boy. ♪

♪ One little, two little,
three little Indians ♪

♪ Four little, five little,
six little Indians ♪

♪ Seven little, eight little,
nine little Indians ♪

♪ Ten little Indian boys. ♪

♪ Ten little, nine little,
eight little Indians... ♪♪

[singing fades out]

(speaker 1)
"Ten Little Indians."

That's a song
that was counting dead Indians

back on the trails
when they would kill Indians.

-We'd see all these little kids
in uniform,

and we'd be wondering
how come they're like that.

We weren't dressed like that,
but these little kids were.

-I remember being younger,

growing up on the reservation,
and being told,

"Don't trust white people;
don't listen to them."

Never told why.

(recording) The government schools
are constantly being built,

and hospitals added.

We bring them in,
clean them up,

and start them on their way
to civilization.

-So I would ask social services
and human services audience,

"How many people know
about residential boarding schools?"

How many people here do?

This never makes it
into the history books.

This is never talked about.

-Why did those schools get started,
and who started them,

and what was the rationale behind it?

-The first general policy was

"the only good Indian
was a dead Indian,"

that we needed to be killed,
exterminated, eradicated.

Once they realized that's
a little bit more difficult to do,

is to have mass genocide
of a population,

then the policies changed
from killing

to "killing the Indian
and saving the man."

There's a General Pratt
who is well famous and documented

for using those words,
"to kill the Indian and save the man,"

and that we are subhuman,
and that our ways are savage,

and we needed to be civilized.

Well, the governments in Canada
and the United States

followed that policy up until the 1980s,
in one form or another.

(survivor 1)
There is a boarding school far, far away,

where we get mush and milk
three times a day.

[singing]
♪ Oh, how the huskies run ♪

♪ when they hear their dinner bell. ♪

♪ Oh, how the huskies run,
three times a day. ♪

Like I say, I went to the Mush Hole
when I was four years old.

I was there for nine years.

And once in a while,
we'd come home in summertime,

but not all the time.

When the counselors came
and told my dad

that he couldn't raise us properly,

we were at the Mush Hole one week,
and our heads were full of bugs.

(survivor 2) There was a lot of sad times,
but I mean, like,

I didn't get, like, angry
and have any resentment

till after I got out.

'Cause I didn't know,
from just five-and-a-half to sixteen,

I thought it was just,
like, a normal upbringing,

like, to not have no parents
and stuff like that [chuckling].

So that's, uh--

And after I got out,
and then they thought,

well, this is the way
they were supposed to be treating us.

(survivor 3) I think my mother
couldn't take care of us

because our father was into alcohol.

Me and my sister,
we started there

in 1945.

I was five years old at the time.

-We had all our hair cut off.

We were made baldies;
we were really bald.

And that wasn't
a very good feeling to have.

And they used to call us
"Mush Hole baldies."

That's what the kids
on the reserve used to call us.

-Well, we can go in now.

I mean, this is going
to take, like, all day, eh?

[laughing]
-Looks like it.

-We were taken to the hospital

to get checked out for nits
and whatever,

I guess that was,
you know.

Well, they checked us out, you know.

Then they split us.

The school was split in age group,

and by boys and girls.

Boys were on one side,
the girls were on one side.

And they went from the lower age
up to high school level.

-My ma was gonna walk out here
and go to the store,

and, at five-and-a-half,
my sister tells me that

I grabbed my ma's leg,

and of course we were all just crying.

The whole four of us were just crying.

Like, you know, 'cause my ma
was going to leave us here.

So I grabbed my ma's leg

and, well, crying and that,

and just kinda, like, hollering,
like, "Ma don't leave me."

"Don't leave me," like, you know.
So...

But anyway,
while that was going on,

a supervisor came over
and just kinda grabbed me

and took me off my ma's leg,
and uh...

And then my ma just walked out,

and I never seen her.

For those ten years,
I don't see her.

She never come to see me once.
I don't know why.

-They took my brother away

to where he was supposed to stay.

And my sister,
she just went on her own.

I was with most of the four-
and five-year-olds.

We didn't go to school
'cause we were too young.

-Yet, to the agencies
of the government,

they are being rapidly brought
from their state

of comparative savagery and barbarism
to one of civilization.

-When we used our language--
at that young age, too,

we were just learning, so...

They used to wash
our mouth out with soap.

They would take
the whole bunch of us

and march us to the shower--
cold shower--

and they'd throw us in there
and beat us along the way.

That was a routine thing, I guess.
I don't know.

But...
that taught us, you know.

-They'd throw us
in this dark press room

where they kept
all our Sunday "go to meeting'" clothes.

And they'd throw Rosemary
and I in there

and tell us the rats
were going to get us.

But I didn't know then
why I was being thrown in there,

and I used to wonder,
what did I do?

And I would cry,
and Rosemary would cry,

and we cried and cried
for hours in there,

not knowing why we were in there,
and, uh...

They'd take us out.

And when I did get to learn
a little bit of English,

I knew then
they were throwing us in there

because we wouldn't speak English.

And... I must have been stubborn
right from the day I was born

because I thought to myself,
"I'll never speak English, either."

"You want me to speak English?
I won't speak English."

So I didn't speak at all
for two whole years,

because I figured if I spoke Indian
I'd get a lickin',

and if I spoke English,

then it would be against everything
that I stood for,

and so I didn't speak at all.

-But today,
they all speak English,

and some have taken business courses,

home economics,
and other higher training.

(Geronimo)
Took us into another room down there,

and maybe down in the play room,

we took all our clothes off,

and we put the clothes of the school on.

And they give us a number.

So my number was, like, 48.

And my brother was 36.

(Elliott)
My family was the state-run institute.

And the nickname
for the Thomas Indian School is "Salem".

And Salem was derived from "asylum."

And you now what an asylum is;
it's for crazy people.

So we were thought of
as being crazy, I guess.

-They were just considered bad people,
bad children,

but they weren't bad children, okay?

They were placed there
for so many different reasons,

but not because of any kind
of delinquency on their part.