Anyone else who has lived on a native reservation?
I’m dying for someone to talk to who can identify with and understand my experiences! I lived on a native reservation in northern canada on and off for about four years of my childhood. There was no running water, no police, and packs of wild wolfdogs roamed the streets. Sound familiar to anyone? Than please reply to my post! I’ve been back in white suburbia for years but am still in culture shock. I can’t seem to ever really adjust back. I’ve met all kinds of cool TCKs on this website who’ve lived all over the world, but so far nobody who understands reservation life from personal experience. Everyone I talk to answers my life stories with ‘Oh my goodness!’ and I feel more like a sideshow - hey, listen to the stories of this kid who lived in the wild, wild northwest!
Anyway, if you’ve got the ‘been there, done that’ Rez T-shirt, respond to my post. I’ll be glad to hear from you.
By the way, I’ve uploaded some pics I’ve found that remind me of the reservation, if anyone’s interested. They’re on a new post called Pictures - Reservation Memories. It’s not spectacular vistas, just stuff that makes me kind of flash back. There are certain pictures, certain smells, certain sights that make me flash back to the rez: houses without glass in the windows, with garbage bags taped up against window frames instead… seeing a dog wandering around loose… hearing a certain kind of bird that I know only by sound, not name… hearing gunshots at night… smelling sewage… seeing garbage strewn on the side of the road… smelling fish bait…
June 24th, 2008 at 2:23 am
Kristine, you SHOULD write about residential schools, because it is a shame, a blight, a horror, and an atrocity in our history that needs more public exposure. Besides being torn away from their families and their entire way of life and forced to speak another language and live a completely different culture, thousands were physically and sexually abused, and some were tortured (flogged, electrocuted,etc) and even murdered. I’ve heard stories of mass graves behind many residential schools. The schools were less educational than they were work camps, with most students never being allowed to go beyond a grade three level, instead spending their time working in the fields. This systematic and wholesale traumatization of an entire generation is what led to the immense problems on the reserves today. The legacy has reveberated through each succesive generation. The kids who were released from the residential schools basically had many of the same experiences as hostages/POWs. Thus, with Post Traumatic Stress and no training of how to handle life, relationships, bringing up children, etc, they not only turned to drugs and alcohol to drown their pain, but became abusers as well. Canadians look down on Natives for the substance abuse and violence, but are unwilling to examine the root cause. The government did this on purpose because once a people group is addicted to illegal substances, on government welfare for livelihood, assimilated to the money system, and loses the knowledge of survival off the land, they are then dependent on the governent and are no longer a threat. Self-sufficiant people are a threat to any government because they cannot be manipulated or controlled. You must take away their self-sufficiency, and tear them from their way of life.
Well, Kristine, you wanted touchy and controversial, you got it. Now I expect to be receiving hate mail…
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June 24th, 2008 at 4:52 am
Haha, jackrabbit, don’t expect any hate mail. Well said though.. What you feel about residential schools is something you share with many other people. I made a post about it already. It’s called the fetal diaries #34: behind canada’s mask. Hope you like it. It’s for the people who have suffered such atrocity.
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