SaltWire E-Edition

TELLING HER STORY

Millbrook’s Jane Abram comes to grips with residential school experience

MILLBROOK, N.S. — “I need to forgive. But I can't forget." Clutching a gifted feather representing the strength of residential school survivors, and with burning sage lending protection, Jane Abram feels ready to tell her story – finally.

The 78-year-old knows it is hard, and that many are unable to find the same strength.

“I need to talk about the sadness that was there,” she said. “It's something that needs to be told ... young people have to hear this. See what happened to our people.

DEHUMANIZING EXPERIENCE

Jane was the second youngest of 11 children, and the only one surviving today. An Indian agent came to her family's house near Antigonish and told her parents, Thomas and Sarah (Bernard) Young, that they were required by law to send their children to the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School. At the age of five in 1947, she went – brand-new clothes, given to her by her mother, were stripped and tossed. Her hair was cut, head scrubbed with DDT, a toxic pesticide meant for bugs.

“There was no welcome or any kind of greeting or anything," she said. “You could hear the kids hollering and screaming and crying ... these were nuns and priests running that place, and they were beating these young, innocent children.”

Always hungry, and eating terrible food, some children would throw up in their bowls and be forced to stand up to eat it where everyone else could see them. Jane sometimes stole a slice of bread by putting it in her bloomers. She was always afraid of getting caught.

At night children cried. The nun would yell, “Who's crying in here - what are you crying about? Here, I'll give you something to cry for.”

She started the fire at 6 a.m. with three other girls, working hard in the kitchen until 11 p.m. Other days, half of the day was spent working while the other half she was in school.

“Ten years old and you're working in the kitchen all day,” recalled Jane. “And you're just so tired in the end. So very tired. Then you had to get up the next morning.”

BEATINGS, PUNISHMENT

She had never made a fire before and needed help. The nun belted her with the strap and demanded, “Make that fire, make it work.” Shaking, she said, the other kids hurriedly showed her how.

She said they were beaten everywhere by the strap, or a pointer stick. Jane had trouble solving a math problem on the board one day so the nun strapped her on her rear and back. “Did you learn something yet today?” the nun asked.

Another girl was forced to strip her shirt, with a wide strap belted all over her shoulder and back, and Jane will always remember the red marks.

Linda “Cookie” Maloney, who passed away last February, often defended Jane. Her sister, Nora Bernard, later a wellknown activist who sought compensation for survivors, was the same way.

“They were brazen women, they tried to fight back,” said Jane.

Another punishment she had was to scrub a long concreate hallway with only a toothbrush.

During morning mass, she prayed for help and for her parents to take her away. They did not want to believe what was happening at school. When sending letters home, children copied what was written on the board: “Dear mom and dad, I am doing fine. I am happy.”

Her brother, Morris, was sick with tonsillitis for a long time and should have been sent to the hospital much earlier. He died after being administered too much ether, which used to be a common form of anesthetic, in hospital.

She said there were stories about a girl becoming pregnant after being sexually assaulted by a priest and that the baby was burned in the furnace. And there were rumours that the boys were burying bodies.

I remember the boys telling us, ‘We just buried someone behind the barn.' And we didn't believe them, because we were just young.”

Often, RCMP would bring back kids who tried to run away, screaming and crying.

SAFETY

Jane said she was lucky to be one of two families at the time who got to take the train home for Christmas. Her mother was very religious and they said the rosary every night. Her father, who was crippled with a clubfoot, was a traditional hunter and fisher, known for trapping muskrats.

“We were so happy (at home),” she said. “We didn't have running water or toilets or anything. But we were happy, we grew our own garden, our own food and everybody helped.”

After coming home from residential school one time, she charged out, still wearing pyjamas, to take the boat out. After asking where she was going, her father let her go, just warning her not to go further than the bridge.

“We had so much freedom at home, so much love and care,” she said. “When I went to residential school, it was sad. It was so sad to see all these kids beaten every day. If we didn't make a straight line, that person got beaten. It was horrible.”

Not liking who they were in Canada, her oldest sisters left for the United States after coming out of school.

“Our language, our heritage, the wisdom, culture – they took that all away from us,” she said. “Some people came away very bitter. But I came away scared … we didn't want to be who we are; we were the lowest on the totem pole.”

END OF IT

In 1954, Abram's mother was sick in the hospital. During the summer, before passing away, she told her father not to let the children go back to residential school.

When the Indian agent came, the children hid in the loft while her father told the agent to get off his property. True to his promise, they got lucky – the children stayed and continued their education at St. Andrews Rural High School. Jane still endured racism – being picked on, called a “squaw” – but it was a better experience than residential school.

“I was afraid of the kids knowing that I was Indigenous," she said. “I was afraid to speak up.”

Two years later, her father died, and she was left alone in a big house. She met her husband, later settling in Millbrook and having six children of her own. She received a teaching degree and doctor of humane letters at Mount Saint Vincent University, worked in the school system and was an education counsellor for Indigenous students at Dalhousie University for a decade. In 2018 she received an honorary degree from MSVU.

“I was trying to prove to them that I was a somebody,” said Jane. “That I was strong enough to pull ahead … I was very proud of myself, because I was so put down after coming out of there, and you feel like you're nobody.”

FRONT PAGE

en-ca

2021-06-12T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-12T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://saltwire.pressreader.com/article/282153589223893

SaltWire Network