Episode 3 - David Poitras

Photo: David Poitras. Credit: CBC North. 

David Poitras was born on a trapline near Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, a small community on the western edge of Lake Athabasca, the eighth largest lake in Canada. 

"Life [before residential school] was really peaceful. My parents both didn't drink and we had lots of love. We had lots of care, lots of food. My mom put us to bed every night and she did it lovingly. My father, he was different from my mom. He was a Survivor, but he was very kind, and the thing I remember most about him was he let my mom do the upbringing...He brought home the food, the caribou, buffalo, wood. He did all those things and he was a special constable and he patrolled the park, Wood Buffalo Park, by dog team."

Dave was taken to Holy Angels, a Catholic residential school in Fort Chip, for the first time when he was four years old. He remained there off and on until he was eleven years old. 

Holy Angels Indian Residential School

Holy Angels operated for a hundred years, from 1874 to 1974. Most of the children institutionalized at Holy Angels were, like Dave, from Fort Chip and the surrounding area, but there were also students from Tthebacha (Fort Smith) and other parts of the Northwest Territories. Indigenous students were primarily Cree, Dene, and Métis. There were also non-Indigenous students at Holy Angels. 

You can watch a short film about Holy Angels here.

Photo: Holy Angels Indian Residential School, Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, date unknown. Source: Deschâtelets-NDC Archives.

Life at Mission Schools

Recreation was part of life at residential schools throughout their history. However, the kinds of activities, the time spent doing these activities, and the amount of structure or organization changed over time.

Children who went to residential school before the late 1950s, children like Dave, were more likely to be put to work than given opportunities to play musical instruments or join a sports team. In fact, residential schools depended on the labour of children to operate.

Nevertheless, children found time for recreation and play.

"I don't remember doing many team sports, but we did play a lot, kicking things around. We also did a lot of running around in the bush, trying to set snares and stuff like that." 

For some Indigenous children and youth who were institutionalized at mission schools, recreated helped them live through the hard times of residential school. For example, recreational activities like hockey and sliding helped keep Dave busy when he was missing his family.

Left photo: Hostel girls harvesting potatoes in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, 1951. Right photo: Hostel children at recreation, sliding in the snow, 1951. Credit: ©NWT Archives/Bern Will Brown fonds/N-2001-002: 00050 and 00003.

Life After Residential School

Dave used anger and alcohol to survive the experience and aftermath of residential school. Part of his journey after leaving residential school was letting go of alcohol and anger and reconnecting with his spirit and emotions. This is a journey that is familiar to other Survivors. 

Dave also turned to music. In 1994, he wrote this song about turning his life around.

If you are a Survivor or intergenerational Survivor of residential school or day school and need help, there's a free 24-hour support line. Call 1-800-695-4419. 

 

Episode Credits

Host: Paul Andrew

Guest: Dave Poitras

Producers: Amos Scott, Jess Dunkin

Editor: Jess Dunkin

Audio Engineer: Brandon Larocque

Theme Song: Stephen Kakfwi

 

Episode Transcript

Paul Andrew

My name is Paul Andrew. I am the host of How I Survived. This is a podcast about recreation at residential and day schools in the Canadian North. 

In this episode, you will hear about abuse and trauma. 

If you are a Survivor or intergenerational Survivor of residential or day school and you need help, there is a free 24-hour support line. Call 1-800-695-4419. That number again, 1-800-695-4419.

Please, take care as you listen.

David Poitras

Residential school was, the first month, was being lonesome for home, learning to get to know the other boys, learning to play out in the yard with the other boys.

I don't remember doing many team sports, but we did play a lot, kicking things around. We did a lot of running around in the bush trying to set snares and stuff like that. 

Paul 

In June 2021, I got together with my friend, Dave Poitras, at his home in Fort Smith to talk about his experiences at residential school. Fort Smith, or Tthebacha, is in Treaty 8, on the traditional lands of the Salt River First Nation, Northwest Territory Métis Nation, and Smith’s Landing First Nation. 

In the 1950s, Dave was a student at Holy Angels, a Catholic residential school in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta. Fort Chip is a small community on the western edge of Lake Athabasca, the eighth largest lake in Canada. 

Holy Angels operated for a hundred years, from 1874 to 1974. Most of the children institutionalized at Holy Angels were, like Dave, from Fort Chip and the surrounding area, but there were also students from Fort Smith and other parts of the Northwest Territories. Indigenous students were primarily Cree, Dene, and Métis. There were also non-Indigenous students at Holy Angels. 

Dave and I have known each other for at least 25 years. He’s been a good friend, a fellow musician. We laugh a lot, we enjoy each other’s company, and there’s a reason for that. We both went to residential schools. 

Paul 

Dave, thanks for speaking to me today. Can you start by introducing yourself?

David

David Poitras is my name. Uh, my father was Joseph Poitras. Dene, Cree, a little bit of French. My mother was Scottish-Cree-Métis, and I came from Fort Chipewyan, Alberta.

I was born on a trap line there and uh, two old grannys were my midwives, nurses. 

Paul 

You’re holding an eagle feather in your hand. Can you tell me the story about the feather?

David 

This feather was given to my wife Martha, who passed away three years ago on May 31st. It was given to her by Danny Beaulieu, Fort Providence. So I keep it and I treasure it. So whenever I speak I carry it with me and it gives me strength and gives me focus. Cause she really thought a lot of stuff like that. 

But you know, I begin to get feathers from people. People recognize I had some gifts, like for helping people. They would give me feathers and my wife would fight me. She just hated me having feathers. And finally she made me get rid of them. And when I went to the sweat lodge, she'd become very angry with me and I could never figure out why. But I found out later that she had a lot of shame about being Indigenous. Because she'd go to the store here and she'd hear the white people talking about, “Oh, them Indians all they’re good for is drinking and fighting” and stuff like that. She was only about six, seven years old, so it'd put a lot of shame into her. 

But, eventually, after she went to treatment, she came to accept the feather. She'd come to the sweat lodge with me, and we shared that, I guess, native spirituality. We shared it, it was really strong in our home. Like I use sage, I use sweetgrass fungus, and I pray every morning. I pray for strength for the day. I pray for the people that are sick. It's things like I never learned in residential school. I learned that from, after I got older. My mom and dad were Catholic and they didn't use stuff like this. 

As a matter of fact, there was an old guy in Chip. I remember he used to sing across the water there on, on an island in the summer. You know, in the summer, the sound carries across the water. He'd be singing with a drum. We were scared of him cause we didn't understand that drumming. Later on I realized that he was probably praying for us, you know, now that I think about it. Things like that I regret because I could have learned to drum when I was young. I was afraid of him. I was afraid of him. Yeah. That's how far removed I was from my culture. Being afraid of someone that was praying. 

Paul

What was life like before you went to residential schools? 

David

Life was really, I guess, peaceful. Like my parents both didn't drink and we had lots of love. We had lots of care, lots of food. You know, like my mom put us to bed every night and she did it lovingly. 

My father was, he was different from my mom. Although he was in residential school, he was a Survivor, he was very kind. The thing I remember most about him was he let my mom do the upbringing. He was the, I guess he brought home the, the food, the caribou, buffalo, wood. He did all those things and he, he was a special constable at the time, and he was also a buffalo ranger here. He patrolled the park, Wood Buffalo Park, by dog team. And then as a special constable, he taught the RCMP how to travel with dog teams, how to camp, and how to look after themselves.

And so I was very proud of my dad because what I remember the most about my dad is when I was walking up town with him and my mom, Fort Chip, going down the street. Every person they met would stop him and shake hands with him, and they'd kiss my mother on the cheek and he'd talk Cree. If it was a Cree guy, he'd talk Cree to them.

If it was Chipewyan man, he'd talk Chipewyan to him. It was French, he'd speak French with him or English. I saw the way people respected him and, even though I was very small, I could see this and I was so proud of my father. People really respected and thought highly of him.

Paul 

And did you learn some survival skills at that age at home?

David 

One of the things we did very early is we were responsible to bring in the wood, to saw the wood even when we were small and haul the water and stuff like that. We all had some responsibility. My mom would show us how to set rabbit snares, nothing big because my dad would bring home caribou, a big sleigh full of caribou meat and put it in the warehouse. And my experience with that was chopping off some shavings in the winter and eating in the meat raw, frozen. And we'd run out and play and come back and eat some more. But I didn't hunt with my father. Later on after residential school, I went down a trap line with him. We were trapping muskrats and mink and stuff like that, you know.

Paul 

Now how were these skills taught? 

David 

Mostly by watching. Like, I watched my father, I saw how he was careful. He explained to me about being careful with an axe, being careful when I use the tools, make sure the wood is cut a certain length. But I watched him. 

Not so much my mother because she had a different role, but I watched my father all the time. He had a dog team when he was with the RCMP. And my earliest memories are being around him with the dogs. And how the dogs responded to him, how he was kind to them. He talked to them. His dogs really loved him, and I could tell he loved them too. But his dog care was meticulous. He really took good care of them.

Paul

When did you go to residential schools and where were these schools? 

David

Holy Angel School in Fort Chipewyan. And the first time I went there, I was four years old. And the second time I went there I was six years old. I went every year, but sometimes not for the full year, but sometimes for the full year till I was about 11 years old.

Paul

Dave, can you tell me a bit about your life at residential schools?

David

Residential school was, the first month, was being lonesome for home, learning to get to know the other boys, learning to play out in the yard with the other boys.

I don't remember doing many team sports, but we did play a lot, kicking things around. We did a lot of running around in the bush trying to set snares and stuff like that. Mostly we kept ourselves busy after school, if we didn’t have to cut wood or split wood, or things like that. 

Paul

You started out by saying you were lonely. 

David 

Yeah, I was. 

Paul 

Did you think a lot about your Elders and parents? 

David 

I thought about my parents a lot. Yeah. Especially my mom. Cause in the mission, I had an older brother look after me and he made sure that I got into my bed and stuff like that. But the nuns, they never tried to show us caring love or anything like that. Like my mom used to put us to bed, kiss us goodnight, make us pray. In the mission. we prayed all right, and then we jumped into bed and that was it. Very cold kind of an environment.

So I thought of home a lot, but I didn't wanna cry in front of the other boys too. And I'm pretty sure they didn't want to cry in front of me either. So that was my first three weeks to a month, if I can remember. It was very, it was difficult. It was hard to learn in school. It was hard to enjoy the meals. My whole mind was at home. That's where I wanted to be, was home.

Paul

When you were at residential school, were there spare times? 

David

Yeah. After school? Yeah. Uh, if you were little, like when I first went there, I didn't have any chores, but my charge was my older brother, he had chores to do and stuff like that. And when we played out, it was mostly, we just made up our own recreation. Winter came, there was a lot of hills around Fort Chip and really nice skiing, pretty rough. We made skis out of those old round barreled tapes that kinda rounded. So Brother Saru would give us a piece of leather and some screws and we'd screw the leather on the side and we'd come bouncing down the hills like that. It's funny we never got killed because it's all wrong, but we really enjoyed that. Like it was, it was fun. Yeah. 

Paul 

Now, when you were older in residential schools, how much time did you spend doing recreation or sporting activities? 

David

A lot of the recreation happened as part of school curriculum, I guess you wanna call it. Like we had contests of racing. I don't know if they measured it out, but there was some short races, some longer races, and throwing the baseball. Playing softball. I remember having a great big bag of suckers cause I was really good at sports. There's only one guy I couldn't beat racing. That was George Vermillon. He always beat me by this much So he got three suckers. I got two. But for everything else, I got three. And I remember vowing that someday I'm gonna beat him, but I never did.

But yeah, mostly it was arranged mostly in the spring too. When the weather was good, they'd arrange all kinds of sports, competitive sports. But in the winter it was mostly, we played hockey with big frigging homemade hockey sticks. And that was a killer because I remember one guy swinging this thing at this, I forget what it was, but he missed it and he hit this guy on the nose like that and the blood just flowed out of him like a waterfall, you know. But they eventually stopped the bleeding. 

But those are the kind of things we did. Really rough hockey. Like really rough. But mostly we did a lot of running around pretend hunting and in the winter, like I talked about, skiing. And we also made what they call jumpers with a piece of board with a barrel stave in the front sort of rounded and a piece of, block of wood topped with a handle. And then we'd kick that with one foot like that and call them jumpers. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. So a lot of stuff we did was not organized.

Paul 

Recreation was part of life at residential schools throughout their history. However, the kinds of activities, the time spent doing these activities, and the amount of structure or organization changed over time.

Beginning in the late 1950s, more time and resources were devoted to recreational activities, but especially sports, at northern residential schools. For children who went to residential school before that, they were more likely to be put to work than given opportunities to play musical instruments or join a sports team.

Paul 

Were there differences between the kind of recreation you had in residential school and at home? 

David

At home I did a lot of things like fishing. Fishing with a line. We didn't have fishing rods, but we'd go fish. Swimming in the summer, we did a lot of swimming and we had contests amongst ourselves, like who could dive the furthest and who could swim the furthest, who could swim the fastest. We made up our own recreation. 

There was one RCMP officer that made a club. We did a game called The War. Like we'd have a flag on this end of town and the opposition would have a flag on the other end of town, and we each had a flag on our waist. We spent hours and hours and hours, like we could run two miles in a bush to get around to steal their flag. So he kept us busy. I still remember that and I really enjoyed that. Like it was a team sport and they had guys protecting their flags. So we had to attack from all sides and try to get their flag. If we did, then we’d get their flag, their main flag. So that was a lot of fun. And he arranged boxing. He arranged other kinds of competitive games like inside the community hall. So it was different in the community.

But what I liked most was getting up early in the morning, in the summer, no school. And go fishing, you know, spend hours fishing. And then we had hills all over Chip. When I wasn't in the mission in the winter, we would dig tunnels cause along the rocks, the wind off the lake would blow the snow and harden it up really good. And it was thick and deep. We would make tunnels all through there. Every once in a while we'd get into scrap and wreck each other's tunnels. Next day we'd be rebuilding. 

We found all kinds of things to do if we weren't running around in a bush hunting, chickens, setting snares.

In the fall when the ice was freezing, there was no snow on it, we could skate for miles and miles and miles, just clear, clear ice. And once in a while we'd find a muskrat on the ice and we'd chase it around, play with it, and he'd try to attack us cause they're mean little critters. And we'd try and grab his tail and flip him around, but he'd turn around and take a jump at us.

Yeah. We did things like that. It was a lot of fun. Yeah. And a lot of us had homemade skates, just a piece of wood with a piece of metal underneath like that. We'd scrounged it somewhere and we'd make skates. 

Paul 

Now, when you were in residential schools, how would you say sports and recreation affected you? Was it a negative or positive experience? How would you describe the experience at residential school? 

David 

It was positive because we were away from the nuns and we were by ourselves. The only time it wasn't positive for me was when old Brother Saru was making a hockey team and I couldn't play because I had injured my knee in a skiing incident. I took a jump and I flipped with these long skis and I twisted my knee. So that year that's why I ended up in residential school cause my dad couldn't look after me. My mom was in a hospital in McMurray. But I was making fun of Brother Saru’s hockey players. And he chased me up the stairs. He got really upset, but he wasn't fast enough to catch me because I was gonna slide down the stairs. If he came to the top, I was gonna slide down. Then he'd be going in circles. So he gave up. “You a little bugger,” he said. I was shocked because he said bugger. 

Yeah. Yeah. That was the only negative experience about sports. Yeah. 

Paul 

Was sports and recreation a way to deal with being away from family and friends and way of life, your language>

David 

It kept us busy. It kept us busy, like when we had free time, if we weren't cleaning. I guess one of the reasons I eventually got over the loneliness is because I found out that my parents could visit me on Sundays. They'd bring treats, a few candies. One time they brought me a birthday cake, a cake about this size. Had to be split between 52 boys. So we just got a little square, just a taste. 

But, once life got settled in residential school, I trusted my parents. I guess some of the negative experiences were some of the abuses that I went through there. That kinda made me hyper-vigilant. I spent a lot of time watching where I was going, what I was doing, making sure I wasn't trapped in a cloak room alone or stuff like that, you know? So that way, that was negative, but playing outside was fun.

Paul

I know I skied a lot. I used to ski a lot. I really liked it because it got me out on the land. It was foreign land–I was in Inuvik–it was foreign land, but it still got me out on the land. And I think that's one of the reasons I really skied a lot. And it did save my life quite a bit. Then hockey, I got to hit somebody. You body check people. They're bigger than you. They're tougher than you, but you don't care. 

David 

You don't care. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Paul 

How did these recreation and sports affect you after you got out of residential schools? 

David 

After I got out of residential school, except for playing softball. I didn't have a lot of time because, in the spring, I had to go trapping with my dad, and I had wood to cut, wood to saw, water to haul, along with my brother. So we were pretty, pretty busy. Recreation wasn't a big part of my life then when I was 13, 14, 15 years old. 

When I was 15, my dad got me a job at the Swanson Sawmill. I had started boxing then too. I’d just came off the trap line and I was 124 pounds and really fit. So I got into boxing. One day my dad said, I got you a job at the sawmill. And that was pretty much the end of my boxing career. Yeah, I didn't have a lot of time for sports, but when I did it was mostly softball and stuff like that.

Paul 

Nowadays, no more residential schools. What do you want young people, recreational leaders, what do you want them to know about your experience in residential schools? And especially about with recreation and sports? 

David 

I'd want them to know that it's very important because I think we missed out on a lot because we didn't have really much organized sports. Except for Brother Saru making that hockey team, I don't remember a lot of organized sports. Like we mostly made them little skis on our own and went down the hill. We ran around the bush. We played in the yard, we kicked some rags, things like that, we kick it around. But there was no real organized sport. 

And I think it's very important to have organized sports. Anywhere, any child should have that because I think it develops character and it develops. You don't have to win all the time. It develops team sports. You get to learn to work with other people, other kids. I think they need to know that. And also not expecting every kid to be a top athlete because not every kid is ever going to be a top athlete, but they can still have fun. They can still be part of that team.

So I think that's what some of the things that recreation leaders need to know, and also, especially with Indigenous people, to be able to raise money to provide the equipment they need. You know, like one year, I remember I took all the, they used to call them juvenile delinquents. In 1973, I believe it was, I told a couple of them–14, 15 year olds–I said, “Tell your friends I'm gonna be at the ball diamond tomorrow and I'm gonna teach them how to play fastball.”

Well the next day, 25 bad kids showed up. One of the first things I did was said, “You guys have a meeting amongst ourselves. I'm gonna go and stand over there. Pick a leader. Pick an assistant coach and a captain.” It took them about an hour to do that because they had all kind of little politics going on. I just didn't interfere. They called me and they said, “These are the guys that we picked.” So I said, “Okay, now you tell me: what if somebody doesn't listen, what am I gonna do?” They had another little meeting and they called me. “We're gonna send 'em home,” they said. “Who's gonna send 'em home?” “We are,” they said. So they used that peer pressure in a positive way and they did send one kid home eventually, cause he wouldn't listen to me. So I didn't have to do that myself. They did it. 

But that summer when they learned some basic skills, we joined the rec league here and people donated bats, balls. Parents bought gloves. We spent the summer in the rec league and we only won one game that summer. But boy, we had fun. To this day, they still call me Mr. Poitras and they respect me cause I took that summer and spent it with them, you know? I get emotional when I talk about that because it was good for them. And a lot of them turned out to be okay people. 

Paul 

Dave, you just talked about all the times you spent in residential school, going at four, talked about the abuse you went through, the loss of a lot of stuff. How did you survive residential schools? 

David

I'll tell you one thing and it's gonna sound strange, but what helped me survive and I think helped a lot of others survive, the ones that didn't die, is rage. I found out later that rage covers all the shame, the fear, the hurt, the embarrassment, the rejection that you go through in residential school, the abuses. The rage covers all that, and it's a powerful energy. But it doesn't allow you to feel. To me, that's one of the things that helped me survive, although it was really negative.

It wasn't until I got into really intense therapy and high level group therapy where I was allowed to kick this punching bag, hit it. And the guy, he was a psychologist, he was a member of AA too, so he had both sides. But I pounded this bag with his rubber hose, cried, yelled, swore until enough rage moved aside, and all this hurt, shame, fear came out. I became a human being again. 1989. 

I became a human being again because what residential school does is dehumanizes you with all the abuses, being abused by a nun, being abused by a couple of older boys, which made me learn to be a victim, and I was sexually abused in my community. I was physically abused by nuns, and it just made me, well, I talk about that rage and that's all that people saw with me. It kept everybody away. Kept people from saying things to me or it just kept them away. 

It wasn't until I went to that therapy that I realized that the rage wasn't my problem. The root of it was all the fear, shame, hurt that I was hiding, that I was repressing. But I remember coming home from that therapy. I sang and whistled all the way home. It's like I was on a high, I was on real high, yeah. So I guess in a nutshell, that rage got me into a lot of trouble, but it also saved my life. But getting into that therapy was what really turned me into human being again. Yeah. 

Paul 

So, well, thank you for sharing that part with us. I know you play music. I know you sing. Did that play a role in your survival in residential schools? 

David 

Well, the nuns tried to make a singer out of me, but I had no interest at the time. They had this metronome. They were trying to teach me timing, but I just didn't have the interest. So finally they just quit trying. 

But I remember when I wasn't in residential school, I'd sing a lot to myself like country songs or whatever. I'd sing and when later on I learned to strum with the guitar and I became a party singer. 

But residential school mostly it was singing during high mass or something all in Latin, you know. There was no guitar playing, no piano, for us anyway. So there was not a lot of music for me in residential school.

It was only later on I became interested in music and I like it today. I love music. I really love music today, and I think it's healing. It also tells stories that people can relate to, identify with. I wrote a song in 1994 that I still do when I sing in public, I sing it. I did a talk last week. They had a gathering for those 215 children they found at Kamloops. 

Paul 

On May 21, 2021, Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc announced that ground-penetrating radar had possibly located the unmarked graves of approximately 215 Indigenous children on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. This was the first of many similar announcements as other Indigenous communities across the country remembered loved ones who died while institutionalized or as a result of their time at residential schools.

David 

I did a talk and I sang the second verse of my song cause it’s a positive, like it's a turnaround song. The first verse is how it used to be, and the second verse is what it's like now. It goes some thing like, 

Old memories seem like a distant dream. 

Remembering the heartaches and all the fears,

Knowing now that life can be serene. 

I look up to say, thank you, Lord. I can't stop the tears. 

In the dawn, I hear someone softly praying. 

It's the healing sound of a nation's dream awaking. 

And to me, residential school, alcoholism nearly killed us. But today, one by one by one, we're coming alive. We're becoming warriors again. We're knowing how to keep our children safe again. We're knowing how to keep our women safe again, not all of us, but it's growing. Most of us are becoming warriors, so I can say that in two minutes, but it took a lifetime to learn to be a warrior again, to learn to be a safe man again, to learn to be able to say, I love you: to you, to my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren. They hear I love you about a hundred times a day from me. And we hug each other. We could see each other twenty times a day, and we'll hug every time we leave and we say, I love you. 

Something we never got in residential school. There was no touching, no sharing of our feelings. But at home I heard I love you. At home we were shown love, caring. It took me a long time, 1989, after I came out of that therapy, that's when I could show love again. 

I guess it's kind of like, you talk about the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual to be in balance. Well how I survived was the physical and the mental. I developed my muscles. I became very, very strong. I could lift things that nobody else could lift, like sometimes with one arm. Mentally I was two years ahead of my peers. In school, I read a lot, so if I felt threatened, I could sound really smart and it would intimidate people.

But I left out my spirit. I left out my emotions. I come to the point, why I say it dehumanized me, is that I reached a point where I couldn't empathize with anybody. I could hurt anybody and not feel any empathy. I could hurt somebody really bad with my mouth or my fist. And it wouldn't bother me a bit. What's scary about that is that's what makes murderers. Not being able to empathize with people that you hurt. 

And after I came out of that therapy, my spirit came back. My emotions were alive again. And today I realize that if I would've stayed with my physical and mental side of me. Mentally, when I get old, I'm gonna get maybe dementia, who knows? Physically, I'm gonna get really weak. But my spirit is gonna be the last thing that's gonna stay strong and it's gonna get stronger. So I came to see that and then I got myself back into balance, and that's what I mean when I say I became a human being again. I'm balanced physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It took me a long time to figure that.

Paul 

Dave, I asked you about a whole bunch of things. Is there something I didn't ask you about that you wanted to talk about?

David 

I guess the only thing is is today when I pray today, it's mostly thank you. Today I'm grateful for the air we breathe, the water we can drink, because without that we're dead. I think of other people beside myself. Like in the morning, I pray for people suffering with covid, cancer, lung diseases, every manner of disease. I pray for them before I pray for me now. In the past it was always “Please God, get me out of this mess and I'll never do it again.” So I guess that's what I wanted to say is, I guess I've changed.

Paul

Recreation was one thing that helped Indigenous children and youth live through the hard times of residential school. For example, recreation helped keep Dave busy when he was missing his family. But it wasn’t the only thing. Dave also talked about how he used anger and alcohol to survive the experience and aftermath of residential school. 

Part of his journey since leaving residential school has been to leave behind alcohol and anger and reconnect with his spirit and emotions. This is a journey that is familiar to other Survivors. 

I want to say a big máhsı cho, thanks, to Dave for sharing his story and memories with us. We will end this episode with the song he wrote in 1994 about turning your life around. You can watch a video of Dave playing the song on our website, www.HowISurvived.ca. You can also see other photos and materials related to this episode there. 

Crystal Fraser

If you are a Survivor or intergenerational Survivor of residential or day school and you need help, there's a free 24-hour support line. Call 1-800-695-4419.

How I Survived is a collaboration between the NWT Recreation and Parks Association and the University of Alberta. The podcast is co-hosted by me, Crystal Gail Fraser, and Paul Andrew. I also provide historical direction. 

How I Survived is co-produced by Amos Scott and Jess Dunkin. Advisory support is provided by Dr. Sharon Firth, Lorna Storr, and Paul Andrew. Our research assistant is Rebecca Gray. Haii’ to EntrepreNorth for sharing your recording booth with us.

Our theme song is “Love the Light” by Stephen Kakfwi. This episode also features music by Sean Williams. The cover art for this podcast was designed by pipikwan pêhtâkwan based on a wall hanging made for the project by Agnes Kuptana. 

This podcast is produced with support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and NWT and Nunavut Lotteries.