Truth commission tours Yukon communities

Former residential school students in Yukon are sharing their experiences with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is wrapping up its pan-northern tour in the territory this week.

The national commission is in Watson Lake, Yukon on Wednesday to hear testimony from former students from southern Yukon and northern British Columbia, many of whom attended Lower Post Indian Residential School.

Local leaders and elders are urging other former students to share their experiences with the commission, the CBC's Leonard Linklater reported on Wednesday from Watson Lake.

"I'm glad I'm still here, I'm still alive … because most of our residential school children passed away," Ann Szabo, a 68-year-old Watson Lake elder who went to Lower Post as a child, told CBC News.

About 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were placed in more than 130 residential schools across Canada from the late 1870s until the last school closed in 1996.

The schools, most of which were run by churches, were part of the federal government's plan to force the assimilation of young aboriginal people into European-Canadian society.

'Kidnapped by the government'

Many students were forbidden to speak their native languages or otherwise engage in their culture at the schools.

'I never, ever … kiss my child goodnight because we were always taught [that] touching was a no-no in school. It was a sin to touch the next person.' —Ann Szabo

The Lower Post Indian Residential School, which was operated by the Roman Catholic Church, was open from 1940 to 1975 in Lower Post. B.C.

Some former students have told the commission that they experienced physical and even sexual abuse at the school, while others like Szabo said they were traumatized by being removed from their families and their aboriginal culture.

"That's what really bothers me, that I really think we were kidnapped by the government," said Szabo, who planned to testify before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Wednesday.

"A lot of the time, when I'm going to bed or I'm just sitting around without my neighbours, or doing something by myself or going for a drive, I'm always going back to how we were treated," she added.

Szabo said she and other children were taught not to show their feelings, and she fears that lesson has been passed on to her own children.

"Whenever I put my children to bed I never, ever … kiss my child goodnight because we were always taught [that] touching was a no-no in school. It was a sin to touch the next person," she said.

Szabo said it could be another three or four generations before the effects of the residential schools experience leave her community.

Northern tour concluding

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has the mandate of documenting Canada's residential school experience, has spent the past few months holding hearings in 19 communities in northern Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and now Yukon.

'I was a baby boy, being put in a dangerous environment.' —Roy Johnson

The panel's northern tour will conclude in Whitehorse at the end of this week, with hearings scheduled there for Thursday and Friday. The tour will culminate with the commission's national event in Inuvik, N.W.T., next month.

Before the commission went to Watson Lake, it heard testimony from a few former students in Dawson City, Yukon, on Tuesday.

One former student, 59-year-old Roy Johnson, told the panel he was sent to Choutla Residential School in Carcross, Yukon, at the age of four, not long after he had been shipped outside the territory for tuberculosis treatment.

"I shouldn't have been there in the first place. I was a baby boy, being put in a dangerous environment," Johnson testified on Tuesday.

Johnson spent two hours recounting the physical and sexual abuse he witnessed and experienced through 14 years at the Carcross residential school.

"When I left in '69, I was illiterate. I'm 59 years old now, seeking closure," he said.

While Johnson was a special guest at the federal government's official apology to residential school students in 2008, he told the commission he would still like a personal apology from Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"I really do," he said quietly.