New relationship built on promise to find answers

The Akwesashronon Shonatatén:ron – Residential School Survivors Group invited community members to march to the Trinity Anglican Church in Cornwall on Saturday, September 24. The march was less of a protest and more of an expression of opening communication, building trust and finding answers to how many Mohawk children were stolen from their families and never returned home after being taken to a residential school. Mohawk children were sent to a number of residential schools in Canada and the United States. A complete and final number of children who never returned home may never be known.

As community members met at the tennis courts – four corners of Kawehno:ke, they made signs, drank coffee and talked about the impact of residential schools on their lives, with many wearing orange – Every Child Matters t-shirts.

Doug George, a residential school survivor and director of the Akwesashronon Shonatatén:ron – Residential School Survivors Group, organized the march to bring awareness to residential school survivors' stories, the role of the Anglican Church and what we can do to address the number of Mohawk Children who never made it home.

According to newly released records, at least 97 Mohawk Children died at the Mohawk Institute residential school located in Brantford, Ontario. The Mohawk Institute – the Mush Hole, operated from 1830 to 1970.

The Mohawk Institute mass burial site is currently being investigated using contemporary technology to find the remains of children using ground penetrating radar and oral testimony.

They are slowly approaching that area, but the former Mohawk Institute has over six hundred acres which is heavily forested.

Access to church records will provide a complete story of residential children – what they were taught, their medical records, their diet. George said this is impossible to do this without full cooperation from the Anglican church.

Along with several other boys from Akwesasne, George was at the Mohawk Institute for 18 months in the late 60s. There, he and other Mohawk children faced hunger, beatings, and abuse.

George spoke of three strong emotions they felt every moment while in residential school – fear, hunger, and abandonment

"We felt this every day. Fear of abuse by supervisors and older boys, we had to fight to prevent that from happening to us... the second was hunger, we were nutritionally deprived during our formative years. Our food consisted of starches and carbohydrates, that is what we subsisted on. We always had that feeling of wanting more – it was all prevailing. The third was abandonment – abandonment by our own community, our own councils. They should have known better, they should have to come to rescue us.

George mentioned the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 2008, saying survivors were never asked what they wanted in the way of truth – 'we want those children found and returned back to us, our communities and their families.'

George said it's essential to have access to the Anglican records of Mohawk residential school children. Their records will help piece together every child's story at the residential school, to find out what happened to them, and to bring them home to properly send them on their journey.

"We cannot heal unless we account for every single child that was taken from us," said George.

"Then we have to begin the very difficult, highly emotional part, which is once we locate them, and we bring them back to the surface, we have to find out where they came from, which families they came from," he said.

Arriving at the Trinity Anglican Church on Second St. in Cornwall, the parish priest Peter Crosby and several members of his clergy were there to greet everyone.

Crosby greeted everyone by saying, "We are here really to listen and to learn. The invitation to walk with you, that was very appreciated. I honor your invitation. We are here because we want a closer relationship, and we look forward to a closer relationship going forward. A relationship based on truth, our desire for reconciliation and healing. Through the communications that Doug has had with the diocese of Ottawa – we've learned more about access to records your group is seeking. Bishop Claude Townson of Huron Diocese is making those records available to the community, with full transparency. That will be very important, because knowing the truth is very important to healing.

Going forward I anticipate more conversations. We will have more conversations in our own council. This is an opportunity to learn more and to walk more closely together and come to a reckoning on this very dark history and the evils of the residential schools. Thank you for coming today, if I can say that, with a sincere heart. Thank you for including us in your own journey, we want to walk with you."

The national leadership of Canada's Anglican church has publicly apologized for its role in residential schools. The diocese with control over Mohawk Institute records also gave its full support to a search of the grounds for unmarked graves. They've covered about 2% of the school's 600 acres so far.

Before heading back across the bridge, two Mohawk singers offer a song of friendship. A song for the missing dead of the Mohawk Institute.