Some Mi'kmaw residential school survivors say settlement wasn't worth the painful process

Mi'kmawresidential school survivors tolda feedback gathering session last weekthat the results of the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement processwereoften not worth recounting thepainful memories of their time at the schools.

The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) held thefeedback gathering session at Eskasoni First Nation lastThursday.

"People don't realize just how much of thetrauma from residential school still lingers," said Alan Knockwood of Sipekne'katikFirst Nation.

"When you dredge it up and have to repeat and repeat itthrough that process, it becomes alive again. That's very difficult to go through."

TheNCTRhas been meeting withresidential schoolsurvivorsacross the country since October, throughan initiativecalled Lessons Learnedfrom the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, asking them what workedand what didn'tthroughout the various settlement processes.

The $2 billion settlement was approved in 2006. As well as providingpayments to residential school survivors, it funded the Aboriginal Healing Foundation for a limited period and created theTruth and Reconciliation Commission.

Knockwood was one of about a dozen former students ofShubenacadieResidential School whoattended the one-day session in Eskasoni. The school operated for 37 yearsinShubenacadie, N.S.

He expressed frustration that, throughoutthe settlement process,he was asked to provide "nuanced"details of the same abuse numerous times to different people.

He saidhe thinks statement gatheringcould have been handled in a more sensitive way,limiting the numberof times a survivor had to revisit traumatic moments.

"I feel a lot better about the process now, but [it] was demeaning and very difficult," he said.

"You had to dredge up memories that you've suppressed for years.It's taken a long time for me to put those back in perspective and heal again."

Knockwood, along withmany of the other survivors at the session, agreed thatthe settlement processprompted him to fully confront his painful memories at the school a step he resisted vehemently, he said.

He said the biggest benefit was reconnecting with classmates and learning of other communities' unique healing programs. Knockwood said he's thinking about starting one in his own community.

Settlement led to 'grabbing'

Multiple survivors at the session, including Georgina Doucetteof Eskasoni, who attended Shubenacadieschool from 1950 to 1958,expressed concerns about where and how money was spent in the settlement process.

"What we got was not worth it," she said.

Doucettesaid that while she didn't expect her own financial settlementto help her heal, sheand others in her community thought that the process led to non-Indigenouslawyers and mental health clinics"grabbing for First Nations people" to receive funding. She said that money could have gone to survivors and their communities.

Doucettesaid she grewsuspiciouswhensoon after embarking on the settlement process, numerous therapists from outside her community began approaching her, offering treatment.

"Everybody else was making money off these poor people, us, who ... had to open old wounds and go through this process," she said.

Doucettesaid she was also disappointed that taxes on legal fees were deducted from the settlements she and her brother, also a survivor of Shubenacadie school, received.

"We didn't get enough to begin with," she said. "Then they take away what little we have."

Other survivors said their financial settlements were too smallto make any significantimpact on the lives of theirfamily members, and theywere not given advice on how to manage the money even though they often leftresidential schools with less than an elementary education.

Descendants feelleft out

Survivors also brought up concerns about the intergenerational effects of the schools, and questions about what's to come for their children and grandchildren.

Elizabeth Marshall, whose father attendedShubenacadieresidential school,said she thinks Canada has a responsibility to push the settlement agreement forward, andput forth the resources to allow descendants of survivors to design their own methods to deal with intergenerational trauma.

Addressing the racist practices that allowed for residential schools should also have been a focus of the settlement agreement, Marshall said.

"[Survivors] brought home those 'civilized ways' from the Christians ... and it almost destroyed us. Now we're all suffering these social ills."

The NCTR's Lessons Learned sessions are scheduled to wrap up in December. A report on the feedback is expected in March 2019.