Save the Evidence – A Virtual Tour of the Mohawk Institute Residential School

To be Canadian means to share the legacy of Indian Residential Schools

Kim Uyede-Kai 

When the last of 130+ Indian residential schools in Canada closed in 1996, stories of abuse, hunger, disease, and deaths were not publicly acknowledged. It took lawsuits and truth-telling by courageous survivors of repeated physical and sexual abuse and systematic cultural genocide for non-Indigenous Canadians to finally pay attention. 

For more than 100 years Canada’s Aboriginal policy removed approximately 150,000 children from their homes and placed them in residential schools established by the federal government and run by the churches “to kill the Indian in the child”.

A major part of the work of the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) from 2010-2014 was to bear witness to thousands of survivors and their families who told gut-wrenching stories of cruel abuse and torture by teachers, principals, dorm supervisors, nuns, priests, and clergy, and the subsequent generational effects on survivors’ lives and their communities.

When we think of our own and society’s negative stereotypes of Indigenous people have we ever wondered collectively what was behind the behaviours? The result of residential schools and other policies was alcohol and substance addictions to try to forget, children torn from families and communities, original languages silenced by beatings and tortures, traditions destroyed, and ceremonies forbidden, lateral violence and unspeakable abuses passed from one generation to another, and, for many, suicide to end the pain. The TRC process broke the silence and opened a national dialogue as a way to heal as nations that did not end in 2015 when 94 Calls to Action to Canada were released.

Regardless of whether we arrived in the distant past or present, Canadians of Japanese ancestry settled on Indigenous land. Many of our ancestors who arrived in the early 1900s had some relationship with the Indigenous communities on the West Coast mainland and islands. It is our generation’s responsibility to learn about the Treaties we are part of and the traditional territories we now live on, and to learn about the devastation of the Indian residential schools, as well as the resilience of Indigenous peoples, so that we can be part of the journey of reconciliation.

In response to this call to responsibility, the Greater Toronto Chapter of the NAJC began to explore ways to engage our community in learning about residential schools. The first learning event took place this past November. The Mohawk Institute Residential School in Brantford, Ontario was in the midst of a major renovation project when the pandemic hit. Opened in 1828 and finally closed in 1970, the Mohawk Institute is one of two former schools whose survivors chose to keep and renovate the building so that the history is never forgotten. Virtual tours that included interviews by former students were offered as a way of fundraising and the Greater Toronto Chapter NAJC was able to sponsor a tour hosted by an intergenerational survivor.

For the NAJC attendees of the virtual tour, the general story of residential schools was not new. However, seeing the actual rooms and hearing the former students’ stories of how they arrived at the school as young children and the horrors that happened in those rooms was very moving, shocking, and incredibly powerful.

One attendee said after the tour: “One particular point which struck me was that the school was merciless in taking away the native language of the children – not only was it extraordinarily cruel to separate young kids of five and six from their families but to not let them speak in their native tongue even when parents and relatives with no English visited them was…the worst kind of cruelty and inhumanity imaginable. It is astonishing that such cruelty went on in the modern era in this country for such a long time.”

The virtual tour was hosted live by Carley Gallant-Jenkins, Cayuga Nation, coordinator of the Save the Evidence campaign of the Woodland Cultural Centre who fielded questions from NAJC attendees. The recorded tour was led by Carley’s mother, Lorrie Gallant, Education Program Coordinator of the Woodland Cultural Centre and Creative Arts Therapy professor. Both mother and daughter are intergenerational survivors of the school. It was a gift to see the generational relationship with the residential school and the land.

The virtual guided tour took attendees through many rooms and told stories of each room: the bathtub room, kitchen, dorm rooms, the room where boy students were made to fight one another for staff “entertainment”, etc. For many, the most haunting room of the tour was the introduction to the boiler room. Just as Lorrie was pointing out that this was where sexual abuse took place, the loud boiler suddenly kicked in as if to emphasize the drowned out cries of the children.

How could children survive such an inhumane place? And yet, many did. Lorrie shared a story of one girl student who climbed through a window and scaled down the wall to pick apples for the younger malnourished children. Even though she was punished when the apple cores were found, she did it again. Recorded interviews with survivors showed their pain in remembering but also showed their resilience and healing as they are now able to talk about their experiences and be believed. The restoration of the school is one way that survivors can keep healing themselves and tell their stories.

Where was the nearest residential school to where you live now or where your ancestors settled? What are the survivors’ stories of that school? What is your relationship to the peoples who were original caretakers of the land you are on?

A tour attendee said: “Like the Japanese Canadian story, people need to know about this history…More of Canada’s ugly past needs to come to light in order to create a peaceful and inclusive environment for everyone. We need to learn from the mistakes in order to create a better future. Reconciliation is a must. It doesn’t matter how many years and generations it takes, it needs to be done.”

Relationship is everything in reconciliation. Japanese Canadians also have a legacy and a story. It is a starting place for relationships with Indigenous peoples. We have experienced legislated family separations and community dispersals, racism, loss of language in different ways. Many of our hard stories have been silenced, even to newer Japanese immigrants to Canada.

Did anything good come out of the residential school policy? No. The residential schools closed but cultural genocide and broken Treaties continue in the Indigenous day schools; in the foster care system and prisons; in the scores of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls; in Treaty and unceded territory lands continually taken over for housing or resource extraction or a golf course; in the mistreatment and racism experienced in the health care system; in mercury poisoning and undrinkable water.

We have a responsibility to follow the TRC Call to Action #93 to teach newer immigrants from Japan about residential schools and our relationships with Indigenous peoples. While our Japanese Canadian community’s collective voice may be small, we have a responsibility to not be silent. But first we must listen and keep learning how our generation can be good relations. And we must tell our own stories so that our history is not forgotten. Our story is where we meet Indigenous stories.

Kim Uyede-Kai is Vice-President of the Greater Toronto Chapter, NAJC. She lives and works on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, also now home to Inuit and Metis Nations, and the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Treaty. Kim works for The United Church of Canada, one of the church parties to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.