Page 56 - Restorative Journey: Indigenous Educational Wellness

Mush Hole
Mohawk Institute Residential School: 1951 – 1958
I often hear that those of us who “attended” residential school never talk about the time we spent there, with our children or grandchildren. More recently, from talking to my sisters who were also
in the mush hole, I have come to realize that this silence is where intergenerational trauma is rooted and thrives. I was
in the mush hole for eight years from
1951 – 1958.
Whenever I spoke of my experience, I would make light of it. I never discussed the reality of it and how it made me feel. Those memories are still, all these years later, too raw to talk about.
It wasn’t until I read my granddaughter’s poem, The Haircut, that I realized that she had researched on her own, to discover what might have happened at the school.
The fact that we all got our hair cut off
on arrival, and then our heads were shaved up the back, only emphasized that they thought we were “dirty Indians” bringing
in “bugs/head lice.” That haircut
was the first thing that they used to take away every part of our identity, right
upon arrival.
We marched two-by-two to church every Sunday. All the girls with our matching short haircuts and wearing matching navy blue uniforms with our matching sweaters, all of our pairs of stockings matched and all of us with the same shoes. We were a familiar sight along Mohawk Street. The children in the area, the ones that lived across the road with their families, would stand across the street and whoop those “Indian war calls” like in the old Western movies. It was humiliating and left us feeling ashamed.
Whenever we got to go home, to our own community, like on Bread and Cheese Day (Victoria Day) we never felt like we really fit in. We arrived on a bus, and we were all dressed the same. Nobody came to talk to us. Nobody said, “welcome home” or “we are glad you are here to visit.” I didn’t think it even felt like we were getting
to go “home.”
The kids who lived on the reserve, who still lived with their family, had their language and culture. Their connection to the community wasn’t severed like ours was. They still had “family.” Over the years, that shame that we experienced, or that we were taught, became engrained in
our psyche. We were ashamed of who we were. The mush hole made sure of that.
48 Commemoration • Education • Healing/Wellness