By Andrew de Souza

Community comes together helps find healing

Jul 29, 2011 | 6:28 AM

The scars of abuse in Canada’s residential school may never fully heal, but it’s through community and communication that those in area are healing.

From July 27 – 28, several hundred people came to Prince Albert and the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation Urban Reserve to attend the Prince Albert Grand Council’s Residential School Gathering.

It’s part of the federal government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It sets out to acknowledge the often grim realities of the more than 130 residential schools and the 150,000 students that went through the system and works towards recording their history and providing support to help with the healing process.

Howard Walker, originally from the James Smith Cree Nation was the master of ceremonies. He said it was important to have a venue to for the aboriginal community to join together.

“When I as by myself, I could not find any answers but what I did find was forgetting temporarily through alcohol and the use of drugs,” he said.

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“And it was coming to these places where I wasn’t the only one abused, I wasn’t the only one who almost lost a culture and when you get together with people that went through the same traumatization that you did, it makes you feel stronger when you talk about it.”

Walker was a student at a residential school, where he was sexually and physically abused. He said it was important for people to move from anger and pain to forgiveness and understanding.

“Now that I’ve grown spiritually, physically, emotionally that I begin to understand that people such as these (that ran the residential schools) have done the wrongs on me, needed help also,” he said. “It’s now my hope that they receive that help.”

It was a sentiment echoed throughout the two day event. Elder Henry Felix from Sturgeon Lake said letting go of that pain had helped him focus on loving his family and passing on to his children what he had missed when in a residential school.

“In the residential school era, I never learned to be a loving father or a loving grandfather,” Phoenix said. “When you are with your family from birth you learn all these things; you’re watching your mom and dad do this.

“When you go to residential school there’s a void of 10, 12, 15 years and you’re in a cold environment.”

The day was also an opportunity to apply for reconciliation funds through the Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat and receive information about the sometimes complicated process.

Through the program, is similar to the Common Experience Program, except that it deals with serious abuse cases.

It is based on a class action lawsuit that has been approved. More information about the program is available here.

The deadlines for either program are in 2012.

adesouza@panow.com