Residential School Survivors Healing Through the Power of Story

Over 150,000 First Nation, Inuit and Métis children were forced to attend residential schools in an attempt to assimilate them into the dominant culture.

From the early 1830s to 1998, children some as young as four years old, attended the government-funded and church-run residential schools.  They suffered abuses of the mind, body, emotions, and spirit that can be almost unimaginable.  It is estimated that there are 80,000 residential school Survivors alive today.

The Aboriginal Healing Foundation and the Legacy of Hope Foundation provides healing assistance to the

Survivors. Today, healing initiatives are taking place in every region of the country, in cities and small towns, on reserves and in rural, remote and isolated communities.

Pattie LaCroix, The StoryWorks  Review’s Editor, spoke with the Foundation’s Acting Executive Director, Trina Bolam and researcher Sara Fryer.  They explored how story is leading towards the transformation of individuals, their families, communities and ultimately the narrative of Canadian history.

Question:  How has story been leveraged to support the process of healing and reconciliation?

Trina Bolam: We wanted to know how we could tell the story of residential schools.  The first thing we did was to listen to the stories of survivors. Sharing the stories in the early phase in the process of reconciliation can set someone on the path of healing as it is often the first time they have acknowledged the experience themselves.

What we are learning is that stories are the first steps on the path of reconciliation and that survivors are on many different places along this path. It is the recognition of the impact that residential schools had that fosters real understanding.  These stories have provided opportunities to have real intergenerational dialogue about this legacy and that is having a huge impact on communities.

Sara Fryer: Stories are integral to fostering understanding and leading to reconciliation. In understanding peoples’ experiences and what they went through at residential schools it teaches us many things about forgiveness. Hearing about what someone experienced and how they healed is key to leading towards a new relationship and to a new story between Canadians and aboriginal people.

When you think about the act of witnessing someone’s story and the simple act of acknowledging that experience this sometimes leads to a positive outcome for the survivors.  The telling of the story itself has the power to lead towards transformation.

Question:  What has been the biggest surprise or key learning in the use of story in this work?

Trina Bolam: People often don’t have a context for these stories but the degree to which these stories resonate for people who didn’t have that has been surprising. I didn’t expect that depth of resonance.

Sara- I think what I have learned is that it isn’t the same; a survivor may have told their story more than once but it is never the same experience for them and in that way it is not the same story.  It affects survivors differently each time they tell the story.

Trina Bolam:  There are things that might be laying there in wait each time a survivor tells their story.

Sara Fryer: Sometimes one element of sharing the story is overwhelming this serves to remind us that in every situation we have to ensure that there are health supports available, it needs to be safe for the survivor each time they tell their story. There is immediate care available, there is follow up and post-interview care in place.

Question:  If you had one wish for the role that story will continue to play in your work what would it be?

Trina Bolam:  I think the role for story is a wish would be to create a mechanism to be able to collect stories in an ongoing basis to create a center where stories are prominent.  There is an ongoing healing role in the telling and re-telling these stories. There are broader stories to be told; these include the stories of families, of communities of health care providers of all that have been impacted by the legacy of the residential schools in Canada. I would also wish for our work to include a broader scope  to provide opportunities for the telling of all of the stories that surround the survivors.

Sara: I think that it is so relevant for a health organization to be working with narrative and even more so for an aboriginal organization. To be using narrative it is so innovative and so relevant ; the ability of using people’s experience for better health outcomes is an emerging field.

My real hope is that people’s stories are places of fact and build better understanding.  Stories are not just about collecting information to me they are ways in which to foster greater understanding. I wish for us to recognize the fact that the subjective matters just as much as the objective.

Aboriginal people are on the cusp of that they have been using their stories as fact for centuries and only recently has qualitative information or experiences been used in research.  This is seen as a new trend in health research; for the mainstream Canada it is a return of an oral tradition after a lapse of 100 years.

Trina Bolam:  If you read an historical account mainstream about the first contact with traders or whalers and then if you listen to an aboriginal account it is an entirely different Story. Sometimes there is a huge gap in emphasis. History is all about the speaker all about the storyteller so in that fashion we are recasting history.

Sara Fryer- With these stories we are rewriting history and aboriginal voices are finally being heard.  It is not re-informing history; it is rewriting what we thought we knew.

This story to be continued…

We will follow the stories being revealed through the Legacy of Hope Foundation’s ground-breaking healing and reconciliation narrative initiatives.  Upcoming features include:

Story 10 years later: The story of the Legacy of Hope foundation how it enshrines the concept of oral history.  How narrative has taken root in healing and reconciliation and what has been learned.

Story collecting:  Learn about the methodology in place that has been developed with different survivor groups in collecting these transformational stories.

The impact of story on design:   What can we learn about how stories inform project design?  This case study will explore the direct impact of stories on informing the Foundation’s exhibits.