Indian Residential schools
- 40 some years later
by Gilbert Oskaboose

Well, our class action lawsuit against the federal Department of Indian Affairs, the Jesuits et al has just taken one helluva kick in the crotch. Dont know if the whole group will survive this collectively and in one piece. Those opposition lawyers are tricky.

A group of Ojibway ex-students of Garnier Residential School for Indians in northern Ontario are suing the Department of Indian Affairs and the Jesuits (Blackrobes), the former for a breach of their own fiduciary responsibilities and the latter for their unsavory contributions to a childhood filled with sexual and physical abuse, pain, loss of childhood, loss of language and culture...etc etc.... The lawsuit is in its fourth year.

Now the opposition is intent on breaking us up further into "compensable" and non-compensable categories - Group A and Group B. Smells like the old divide and conquer routine. Group A will be made up of only those who have suffered extreme sexual and physical abuse. Group B will be made up of those who ONLY did hard time in a residential school, ONLY lost their parents, ONLY lost their languages and cultures and everything else it means to be Ojibway.

Jeez, it is exactly this kind of crap from Group B that has put Indian Country in the sorry state of affairs that exists today - and no one wants to recognize it? We in Group A have learned to live with the memories but the Group B stuff just keeps going on and on.... There are children in Indian Country not even born yet that will feel the dark shadow of those residential schools.

Conventional wisdom among white lawyers these days says that no white judge has ever ruled on such things a loss of childhood, loss of language, loss of culture, loss of native spirituality etc., therefore the category does not exist - and is considered non-compensable. Incredible, eh?

As well they have summarily removed survivors children from the lawsuit. They do not recognize the pain and suffering the kids put up with inheriting the bullshit we brought back from those schools to screw up their lives.

Whatever happened to the long and eloquent apologies, expressions of regret and deep assurances by government and various and sundry church groups a while back about doing everything in their power to make things right with residential school survivors? Was that more promises broken even before the ink was dry? Was there nothing more to it than more of their flatulent oratory?

Is there no goddamn end to these people?

First we get used and abused by white professionals - a perverted clergy. Then we have to spend years in therapy with other white professionals - high priced shrinks and therapists. Then we have to have our lives and pain validated by yet more white professionals - old ex-judges hired to determine if we are lying or not. Then we have to leave ourselves in the hands of white lawyers who can only work with legal precedents that have been set by white judges already.

Wake up and smell the coffee. Our very lives since residential school have been a precedent in themselves!