N.S. residential school survivors and police face the past together
Aboriginal people forced into a Nova Scotia residential school when they were young children are facing a potent symbol of what happened to them this week: the police.
The Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nation Chiefs is holding a series of sessions in Dartmouth to help former residential school students heal from their experiences in the now-closed Shubenacadie Indian Residential School.
The residential school survivors are facing everything that happened to them, including the role the police played in collecting and taking them to the residential school.
Rita Martin was seven years old when she was taken from her family in New Brunswick and placed in the school near Truro.
She doesn't remember how she got to the school or much else about her experiences over the next five years.
"I'm just going through my healing process, trying to deal with what happened to me," Martin said Tuesday. "The lack of memory is really hard for me and I know the pain will be even worse when everything comes out."
Between 1930 and 1967, thousands of native children were taken from their families and placed in the Shubenacadie school, where many lost their language and culture. The children were also physically and sexually abused.
Former officer Jim Potts said it's important for the police to rebuild trust with aboriginal communities and understand the history of residential schools.
Potts, who is native, recalled the story of one officer who arrived at a detachment in northern Saskatchewan.
"He said: 'I went into homes and helped pull young kids out from underneath the beds and took them and put them in that cage and took them to school.' And I reflect now and say, holy smoke. But the thinking of the day was you're doing the right thing for these children," Potts said.
Repairing relations
Martin knows it's tough to relive the past.
But like Potts, she said it's important to work with the police on the many issues facing aboriginal communities.
"Even though there's been damage done by former police officers, we have to learn to not dwell on that and learn to work with the present police officers because there are some good ones," Martin said.
Doug Reti, the director general of national aboriginal policing services for the RCMP, said there is a lot of work to do in repairing relations with the aboriginal community and educating police officers about what happened in the past.
"In order to ensure that it doesn't happen again, you need to understand what took place. So it's really critical that our members understand the residential school legacy so they understand when they go in a community and see a certain level of dysfunction and a community struggling in a number of ways, they're able to make sense of that for themselves," Reti said.