By Joyce Jonathan Crone
Four heroes were in the Town of Huntsville last month.
Elder John Elliot, Grandmother Roberta Hill, Grandmother Diane Hill, and Grandmother Sherlene Bomberry, all survivors of The Mohawk Institute, the longest-running residential school in Canada, 1831-1970, visited.
The documentary film, “The Nature of Healing,” produced by Faith Howe, an Indigenous producer, was screened at the Three Fires International Film Festival in July. The documentary, filmed at The Mohawk Institute, is the lived experiences of seven survivors.
Each survivor shares their true story of the “living hell, the pure evil,” of what children faced day after day. Watching the reality they faced first-hand at residential school on screen, and hearing their Q and A responses after the film, was staggering.
Survivors shared their intense loneliness for family, the mental and emotional pain and suffering, and the constant sexual abuse experienced by children, as young as three and four. The audience hung their heads, and cried, throughout the film as the reality of the injustices unfolded before their eyes. Crimes committed against children, who are alive, still, no justice served.
Elder John Elliot, was 10 years old when taken from his home, with his brother, to “the Mush Hole,” named after what children were given to eat. John does not recall how many times he ran away from the dark torture to find his home but he knew he needed to run. He was always caught, and hit with a strap, “until that guy got tired.” John always ran away on Christmas Eve, to see his, “Maw.” John, now 86, cane in hand, smiles as he remembers his sister, and brother, who attended the same residential school. John can no longer run away but shares his lived experience of truth, despite the childhood hardship of suffering, punishment, and pain. John feels fortunate his family home was close to the residential school. “The majority of the kids, lived hundreds of miles away, and did not know where home was.”
Grandmother Dawn Hill and Roberta Hill attended the Brantford residential school from 1957 to 1961, together as sisters, but feeling a world apart.
“We were taught to be quiet. Punishment was given even if you followed the rules, if one girl talked everyone got it. The authority would pull your pants down, flip you over, and strap you.” Older sibling Dawn shared how the school was a place of violence. The home the sisters grew up in was not. Being hit and abused began at the school.
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