Indian residential school survivors in northern Ontario share stories, hopes for next generations

Victor Chapis says his experience at St. Joseph's Indian Residential School in Thunder Bay, Ont., destroyed his self confidence — but he's starting to see a shift in the next generation as more people in his community embrace their Indigenous culture.

"My own trauma of being in residential school is coming out of there and feeling empty inside, feeling not good enough," said Chapis, an elder from Ginoogaming First Nation in northern Ontario. "Not knowing if I'm welcomed in any store or in the hospital or in the school or any institution."

Chapis turned to alcohol to cope with his experiences at St. Joseph's. He received support through Alcoholics Anonymous, but even in recovery, he said he still struggles with self-doubt.

"It's always inside of me that I'm not good enough because of [residential] school. If you get a 98 per cent on your test, they don't concentrate on what you did right, they concentrate on what you did wrong," he said.

"They don't make you feel like you are worth anything or you're a human being."

It's estimated that more than 150,000 Indigenous, Métis and Inuit children in Canada were taken to Indian residential schools between the 1870s and the 1990s. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada found that these schools were "a systematic, government-sponsored attempt to destroy Aboriginal cultures and languages and to assimilate Aboriginal peoples so that they no longer existed as distinct peoples."

The TRC's 94 calls to action, which were made in 2015, aim to address the ongoing challenges experienced by Indigenous people as a result of the Indian residential school system, and prevent anything similar from happening again. According to the Yellowhead Institute's 2023 report, "Calls to Action Accountability," 13 of these calls have been completed.

Chapis sits on a committee with Nishnawbe Aski Nation, which represents 49 First Nations across Treaties 9 and 5, that is developing a protocol to repatriate the remains of those who never made it home from Indian residential school.

"There's many across Turtle Island that are in unmarked graves," he said. "Every time I smoke my pipe, I put an extra pinch of tobacco in my pipe and pray for those people."

Elder Veronica Waboose, former chief of Long Lake #58 First Nation, was sent to St. Joseph's Indian Residential School as a teenager.

"The loneliness is what gets you," she said of her experience there. "You miss your family and you've never been away from them before."

One night, she and her friend, Genevieve, decided to leave. They made their way from Thunder Bay to Nipigon, where they stayed with Genevieve's uncle until their parents brought them back to Long Lake #58, Waboose said.

Two weeks later, an RCMP officer came to Waboose's house and threatened to take her back to St. Joseph's, but her mother wouldn't let him.

'"Where were you when they were wandering the streets of Thunder Bay?' she told them. 'Where were you? How come you weren't there? They could have froze,'" Waboose recalls her mother telling the officer.