I was six years old when they took me to a residential school.
I remember the day, walking toward that school with my mother.
And it was a silent walk, and I was so afraid.
Twenty or thirty little kids herded into the showers, and then your body being painted
in white liquid of some kind.
Your hair cropped and then doused in kerosene, and that was pretty traumatizing.
The school held roughly 220 people, half boys, half girls.
And we were segregated.
If I was caught waving at my sister, there'd be a punishment for it.
And so, as a result of that segregation, I never really learned any social skills that
young people should be learning as they grow up.
From a religious and spiritual perspective of course, the churches lobbied hard to convert
Indigenous people, Aboriginal people.
They said that we were heathen, and pagan.
They targeted language, and those things we had learned through all of millennia - to
know where we came from, to know who we were - as something that had to be eliminated.
Before that time, I lived in a place called Kwikwasut'inuxw Haxwa'mis,
they call it Gilford Island now.
We harvested from the forest, all of the animals that we needed to provide us sustenance.
And from the ocean in front of us as well - all of the species of whales and mink, and fish.
And I had a connection to the environment around us.
And so, after having spent years in those schools, by the time we were ready to leave,
most of us were pretty broken.
Many of us including myself, descended into addictions, alcoholism and violence, it was
pretty, pretty uh, difficult.
Those schools lasted, for over a hundred years.
There were over 150,000 little children.
And the last school that closed in Canada, was in 1996 in Saskatchewan.
There was a history on this land that had been absolutely ignored.
Nobody knew about the residential school legacy, nobody knew about the intent of the
Indian Act, the chronic challenges now facing Aboriginals.
And we're starting to accept the idea that we have this shared history
for which we all are responsible for.
When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report was submitted, I was in the room, when
Justice Murray Sinclair, the chair of the commission denounced Canada.
He had just recited a litany of intensive harms against Aboriginal people.
And when he said, "Canada, you have committed cultural genocide."
There was just a silence in that room, and then all of a sudden it erupted in euphoria.
We said, survivors want an apology from the Prime Minister, in the House of Commons.
And I was there, and I heard the words, "I'm sorry," and then I couldn't see because
my eyes were just, flowing with tears I was so happy that somebody had said,
"I'm sorry."
Canada, by the way, is the only western country that has had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
So we're trying to look through a new lens, we and Canadians, we as an Aboriginal,
we celebrate each other.
Everybody cheering each other up, as we move toward a more equal, prosperous future for all of us.
My name is Chief Robert Joseph and I believe that Truth and Reconciliation is Canada.