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The Current Transcript for September 30, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

I'm Belinda [speaks in Han] This is The Current on National Truth and Reconciliation Day.

MATT GALLOWAY: It is a day for reflection on those issues of truth and reconciliation. This morning, conversations about the road ahead and the work being done by individuals here and abroad to get us there. In a moment, we'll hear more from Belinda Daniels, who's part of a new generation that is learning and teaching traditional languages that might otherwise disappear forever. And later, a story about reclamation and how one museum in England reached out to a first nation in British Columbia to return home items in its collection and why institutions here need to catch up to the rest of the world when it comes to giving back stolen goods. Plus.

SOUNDCLIP

I sank into a pool of forgotten stories. I became a fool to my dreams and my future. I was at the bottom of nothing.

MG: Dennis Saddleman is a survivor of the Kamloops Residential School and an hour his conversation with the CBC's Falen Johnson about trauma and healing. We start, though, with the power of the word. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music]

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At 95, Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation’s last fluent Hän speaker hopes to pass on as much as he can

Guests: Belinda Daniels, Georgette McLeod, Mskwaankwad Rice

SOUNDCLIP

[Han speech]

MG: Today we have to teach our children. If we take care of our land, it will be better. That is a message from Elder Percy Henry speaking in the Haitian language. At 95 years old, he is the last known fluent speaker of that language. New census data suggests the number of indigenous people who can hold a conversation in their traditional language is in decline. Elder Henry is working to change that. He's passing on the language to a new generation. That includes Georgette McLeod in Dawson City, Yukon. She is the language administrator and oral historian with the Tr'ondek Hwech'in First Nation. Georgette, good morning.

GEORGETTE MCLEOD: Kʼä(h)mänt hǫzǫ. Good morning.

MG: You've been studying for a number of years now with Percy Henry. Tell me a little bit about what that's like and what it's like to learn this language from an elder.

GEORGETTE MCLEOD: Learning a language from an elder. It's an amazing experience. One, he's a teacher. He always has the patience like a teacher as well. So even though he may be correcting us, he's always like joking and laughing with us. So that makes it really enjoyable to learn. The other thing is, is that he is strongly connected to who he is as a First Nations man. He's connected to his history. He reminds us all the time about our young people who we have to look towards, but who we also have to connect to in the past, when we say that, we say Dä̀nǫ ǹtsʼą̈̀ʼ trʼädäl. It's how we come through the past. And he has strong connexions to that. And he reminds us all the time of the people who were his teachers. And he wants to be able to really pass on not only the language, but he wants to pass on all of those teachings that go along with it.

MG: How did it come to the point where there is just one fluent speaker of this language left?

GEORGETTE MCLEOD: I mean, you know, the history of indigenous peoples across the country. Here in the Yukon, we have we have had the Klondike gold rush. That was one of the huge impacts by how it changed peoples indigenous lives from being about the land to staying in communities. And then residential schools really had a huge impact in the Yukon much later than the rest of the country. So like from the 1950s onward, a lot of people in the Yukon had to attend residential schools and they were, of course, forbidden to speak their language. And a lot of the elders who who used to speak have all passed on now. And so then that transmission to that next generation, there wasn't enough time. We only have people who are very knowledgeable in the language who can hear it but can't really speak it. We have those, what we call silent speakers. And then there's people like me who are kind of the next generation after the residential school period, who weren't exposed to it as a child and have had to relearn it as an adult. And so it's been challenging to carry that on.

MG: When did you start to learn the language?

GEORGETTE MCLEOD: I didn't start learning the language until 2003. I worked as a heritage researcher or, as most people know, an oral historian. One of my jobs was to work with elders to interview them about their history. And so when I started working, Percy was one of the first people that I started working with.

MG: We're going to hear from a couple of other people who are involved in helping to, if not revitalised and then relearned those languages. But just for you, I mean, personally, why was it important for you to put the work in to learn this language?

GEORGETTE MCLEOD: Han language is not a well documented language. It doesn't have a long history of being written down. And it was only until like the late 1970s, actually, I was able to find some of the earliest recordings of Percy back in the late 1970s, when there was linguists that came from the University of Alaska. They came all the way to Dawson and were collecting basic knowledge about the home language back then. But even then, a lot of that language was written in in the phonetic alphabet. I had to learn a different way from Percy. I had to learn how to actually write the alphabet. And it's a fairly recent alphabet. It only had been used really since the early 1990s. This language wasn't well documented, and so I really made it my effort to document as much of Percy, a much of the time that we spent on my record, just about every session that we have and also sessions that other language learners have, and the teachers that work at the school to support them, to carry on the language, and then also to be able to teach the language in the community to adults, to young children, might work at the day-care. And I also teach adult classes.

MG: Stay on the line with us because I want to bring a couple of other guests into this conversation around language and in learning language as well. Mskwaankwad Rice is a learner of Anishinaabemowin medicine, which is a language that he was surrounded by, but perhaps not fluent with. He studies linguistics as well. Mskwaankwad, good morning to you.

MSKWAANKWAD RICE: Good morning.

MG: So how much of the language did you hear growing up? What was around you in the house that you were growing up in when it came to that language?

MSKWAANKWAD RICE: Well, in my home, we used a handful of words and that's it. Basic nouns, things at the dinner table. We didn't actually speak because my mother is not Ojibwe and my dad didn't speak. Growing up, he spoke as a very young child, but then was discouraged from doing so once he went to school. In the community, I heard it a lot. My grandmother was a first language fluent speaker and everyone in her generation spoke all the time. And so as a kid, I heard it and in the community, but not at home.

MG: And so why did you decide that you wanted to learn the language?

MSKWAANKWAD RICE: I think I kind of decided I wanted to learn in my teen years, but it wasn't until I was older that I actually made the effort.

MG: How difficult was it?

MSKWAANKWAD RICE: It's pretty difficult. From a technical standpoint. The language is pretty complex and completely different for English, and English was my only point of reference. There was also a lot of emotional baggage that comes with learning your endangered indigenous language.

MG: Tell me about that.

MSKWAANKWAD RICE: Working with my grandmother, she was my go to language person. It was really hard for me to try to speak in the language with her, not only because I was still a fairly new speaker at that time. So it was hard for me to carry on any conversation, but just the upsetting or unbalancing of the relationship we'd always known, speaking in English. Me trying to speak in Anishinaabemowin one. With her, I found to be very difficult. I was very afraid of making mistakes. I was really shy, even for her as well. I think she could tell that it was hard for me to try and do that, so she didn't want to make me uncomfortable.

MG: Why was it important for you to persevere through that?

MSKWAANKWAD RICE: Because we only have like in my community, we only have a handful of speakers left. Some communities have no speakers left. That's a very serious thing that we're facing right now. Yeah, we have to pick up and carry this language on because if it's gone, it's gone forever. Which is an apocalyptic reality.

MG: An apocalyptic reality?

MSKWAANKWAD RICE: Yeah. The end of who we were, you know, before residential school, before we were taken from our land. We have had so much taken from us that the language and culture was the last thing targeted. No, it's all we have left. And so we want to I want to make sure we hold on to that as people.

MG: And part of that responsibility that you've taken on is also helping other people learn the language through this immersion programme. Tell me about that and the work that you're doing.

MSKWAANKWAD RICE: Yeah, for sure. So myself, as a beginning learner, I would get to a point where I could start speaking basic sentences and I realised I needed more. I needed to do immersion in the language and myself. Jessica, Sonia and Monte [unintelligible] who are my comrades in Ojibwemotaadidaa Omaa Gidakiiminaang, which is the immersion programme we run. I met them through the Ojibwe and we're trying to get back to, you know, Immersion Academy in Fond du Lac, Minnesota, and saw that their programme was really good, really effective. So you basically copied exactly what they do and do it here in Ontario.

MG: How far along are you in what you've called the language journey? Are you fluent now?

MSKWAANKWAD RICE: I am conversationally fluent. Yeah, I can basically hold a decent conversation. I am nowhere near where I want to be. The ultimate goal really is like native level fluency of the language, and that is a really tall order because Anishinaabemowin is so much different from English that is hard for our English brains to really grasp the higher level [unintelligible]language. That being said, there are people who are helping us do that. One of them is Brendan Kishketon, who is Anishinaabe and [unintelligible] linguist who works at the University of Minnesota where I'm going to school. The language itself has been studied by linguists for well over a hundred years, but they've always focussed on it from a linguists perspective. People like Brendan, if he wants to understand the language, to help us learn and speak it and not to further the field of linguistics itself, which is kind of the same reason I got into linguistics as well.

MG: And presumably that will help then teach the next generation.

MSKWAANKWAD RICE: Yeah, exactly. We're just trying to pick it up so we can bridge the gap between first language speakers and the next generation. So ideally, babies and children will learn the language as a first language.

MG: We have one other guest who has been listening in to the conversation that I want to bring in Belinda Daniels. Is an assistant professor of Indigenous Education with the University of Victoria, and since 2003 she's run this intense summer language immersion camp to revitalise the Cree language in Saskatchewan. Belinda. Good morning to you.

BELINDA DANIELS: [Indigenous greeting]

MG: What do you make of what you've just heard to people who are putting in hard work to learn a language that that is so important to them, but can be seen in some ways as threatened.

BELINDA DANIELS: I'm inspired by their efforts, while at the same time I can relate to their feelings and to their thoughts and to their passion towards their language.

MG: Tell me about what you can relate to and the language that you are working to try to revitalise.

BELINDA DANIELS: I too am a second language adult learner, although I heard Cree growing up because I was raised by my grandparents. I was never encouraged to speak back to them, although the benefit for me was hearing the tone and the intonation and the rhythm of the language. So I was able to understand when people were speaking Cree and be able to decipher when a word ended and when the word began. I became inspired to, in my late twenties, in my early thirties, to start like really looking and studying the language. Like the speaker before me talking about how our language was mainly studied through linguistics. And I've taken grammar, translated classes at the university. I wasn't feeling like I was learning in an authentic, natural way. And then it wasn't until in 2000 that I started to really look at the language and think about how did our people learn the language? What's a natural way to teach it? It just dawned on me one morning and thinking, Well, I'm going to learn Nêhiyawêwin in my home community, in my home territories, on the land, with Cree-speaking people. It sounded like such a simple concept, but yet nobody was doing that or thinking just that just yet. And so I thought, Well, I'm going to create this for myself and see if anybody else wants to come and learn with me and see if there are other Cree teachers who would like to teach the language who are passionate about it. And so that's how my summer intensive Cree language camp started out.

MG: I mean, it sounds obvious in some ways, but if you learn that language on the land in the community. What's different about that than learning it?

BELINDA DANIELS: Separate for me, what makes sense inside my brain is that there is a connection between the things we identify out on the land. Like the sky, like the river, like the grass, like the plants. There is a connexion to those words that relate to our body parts. When you're learning Cree in the context, you get that feeling of kinship and relationship to the environment that you're in. And then something else happens in my brain. I don't know how to describe it, but I definitely think of the world in a different way of being and doing and thinking when I practise that.

MG: Can you give me an example of that, a word that that triggers that in that way in your brain?

BELINDA DANIELS: Okay. So for example, this is a common example, the word for eye is miskisik. The word for sky is kisik; the word for day is kisikaw. So once people understand like the connexions in our language and how they relate to our land and how they relate to our bodies and how they relate to our philosophy, I don't know how to describe it, but that is the sensation that I'm always trying to create.

MG: The census data shows that there's a decline overall in the number of people who speak indigenous languages. But as I say, the number of younger people who are learning their native languages is growing. What does that tell you about the future and what the future might look like when it comes to the full richness of indigenous languages in this country?

BELINDA DANIELS: Again, I'm definitely happy about that rise in the number and what that tells me is that we are now like consciously thinking about our language and coming to this understanding that language is connected to our identity and parents. Young people are now wanting their children to come back home to the language, to have an opportunity to learn it, to speak it, to feel proud when they do so it makes me happy to see that movement.

MG: Mskwaankwad, you talked about the idea that your hope is is, you know, babies and children will grow up speaking the language, that that will be their name. Tough language, what has to be put in place to make something like that possible.

MSKWAANKWAD RICE: We need to have our communities speaking, our languages, getting the whole community. But that's a pretty tall order at this point. We're going to try. Those of us who are working on it are going to do our best and hopefully get more people involved. I do understand that's easier said than done. Not just because of the time and effort it takes, but because of, like I said before, there is some emotional baggage, there is historical trauma there. And some people are not able to work on language yet because of damage that has been inflicted from residential schools and various aspects of colonisation that have impacted who we are at this point in terms of our languages.

MG: Georgette, you and I spoke when I was up in Yukon in Dawson City, and we talked about the work that you're doing. How confident are you that John will survive?

GEORGETTE MCLEOD: That's a challenging question, of course, because Percy is doing all that he can to share as much knowledge as he possibly can with us. And, you know, there's a small group of us who are learners as well, but also teachers. As quickly as he's sharing information with us, we're quickly trying to turn that around and share it with others. It's happening and in a fairly fast pace because we want people in our community or toward equity and citizens to want to learn this language. And it worries me that, you know, once Percy is gone, what are we doing? So I have to think about what our contingency plan is like. What? What's the next step? I was given a lot of hope recently because I went to go and attend a language camp over in Eagle, Alaska, and meet with language speakers who are speaking still Han but it's in the Eagle dialect. And I think that's where, you know, some of our hope lies is that the two dialects are very similar. When I get a chance to be able to spend time with them, it's been incredibly uplifting. And I think that's where our hope for a future of the language will continue to grow, along with like all of the programmes and activities that we have happening in our community. People are starting to pick up on the language and that's where I get excited because even if they're not learning the language, just the fact that we're hearing the language even in the smallest amount gives us that spark and gives us that hope and helps to carry us into the future.

MG: We're out of time. But can I ask you, I mean, you talked about hearing the language. And I want to ask if it's possible, each of you, in the course of learning your languages, is there one word that you have learnt that's really meaningful to you?

GEORGETTE MCLEOD: Georgia There's one word that really sticks with me and that is Wët’ä̀tr’ë̀dähch’e. It basically says, we depend on him. And I'm not only speaking about Percy, but I'm speaking about, you know, the overall connection to the higher power that him could also be our creator, but our land. It could be the people that are living, who are carrying the language.

MG: Belinda.

BELINDA DANIELS: There's a word that I'd like to share and it's the word onīkānēw. Now there's multiple meanings in that one word. It translates to he or she who leads. When I break down that word, the other words that come to mind are the words nikāwiy, nikā, my mother; nīkān, in front of. The root word for nīkihk, nīk, my home. And so when you translate that, onīkānēw translates to he or she who stands in front of their home. That's the word for leader.

MG: Mskwaankwad.

MSKWAANKWAD RICE: Yes. One of two answers. My old answer used to be this word. It's weweni or wewena. InAnishinaabemowin word. It means to take care of do things well, do things calmly and properly. And that's a really good philosophy. We also say it when we part ways with someone, we're not telling them to take care. At this point, there is no one word that encompasses things for me. Right now, what I'm focussed on is the words that are untranslatable. There are these small discourse protocols that don't mean anything in English, and those things are the key for us learners to master in order to be able to speak like a fluent first language speaker. So those are my favourite words right now, the ones that are untranslatable, but that we have to understand.

MG: That's like the connective tissue in the language.

MSKWAANKWAD RICE: Exactly. Yeah. The salt and pepper on the moose meat, as my body calls it.

MG: I'm really glad to talk to you all about this and to hear about the work that you're doing. It's important and will inspire people, I think. Thank you very much.

BELINDA DANIELS: [Cree speech]

MSKWAANKWAD RICE: Thanks for having us.

MG: Georgette McLeod is the language administrator and oral historian with the trying to question First Nation. She's learning hard and she was in Dawson City, Yukon. Mskwaankwad Rice is a learner of Abishinaabemowin who studies linguistics. He's also co-host of the podcast The Language. And Belinda Daniels is an assistant professor of Indigenous Education with. The University of Victoria. She speaks Cree. Your CBC News is next. And then we head to Haida Gwaii, where reconciliation is at work through the long process of bringing cultural artefacts home. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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Indigenous objects repatriated from small British museum to Haida Gwaii

Guests: Bret Gaunt, Nika Collison, Sara Angel

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current.

[Music]

MG: Still to come. Residential school survivor Dennis Saddleman shares his journey of healing and the powerful poetry that has come from his experiences. But first, reclaiming what was taken.

[Music: Theme]

MG: A painted wooden ladle, a bolt panel pipe, an intricate ceremonial feast platter. These are just some of the artefacts returned to Haida Gwaii last month from the Buxton Museum in England. The movement for repatriation of Indigenous artefacts has accelerated over recent years, but this time it wasn't the community who reached out looking to get its artefacts back. It was the museum that reached out. Bret Gaunt is Assistant Collections Officer of Restitution and Repatriation at the Buxton Museum and Art Gallery in Derbyshire, England. Brett, hello.

BRET GAUNT: Hello. Nice to meet you.

MG: Great to have you on the programme. How did a small museum in England end up with artefacts from the west coast of Canada?

BRET GAUNT: Basically, the local government authority who owns the museum also ran another service which was called the library set. And what they did is they from the 1930s, they amassed a huge collection of basically museum quality objects that were then sent out to schools in the local area. Derbyshire is a very rural community and a lot of the villages are quite isolated and especially even more so by the first orders. So these objects were sent up to schools to be used by children for their education purposes, and then over time due to budget cuts and changes in the curriculum and the local authority could barely afford on that service. And then they were transferred to the museum. And from 2019, up until earlier this year, we were running a separate project which was looking at rehoming a lot of that material and I recognised that basically we could do a repatriation restitution project.

MG: Why did you want to do it? Why did you want to repatriate these items back to the communities that they were from?

BRET GAUNT: Buxton Museum is a very small museum, focuses really on the archaeology and the history of Derbyshire. So to have these objects was quite a unique thing. Obviously repatriation and restitution is has been a growing interest and I just saw this as a golden opportunity. And more than anything, I think that looking at the objects that we had, they were really good, they were high quality objects and it seemed such a shame for them to either end up in our stores and probably never be seen again or end up in another museum stores and never be seen again. And looking at the objects, I'm reading more about repatriation, restitution. I just saw this as a real golden opportunity to reaching out to communities in Canada and the US.

MG: You've said that this was the right thing to do, but it was the only thing to do now. The right thing to do makes one bit of sense, but saying it's the only thing to do is something else. Why would you say that?

BRET GAUNT: In some cases we can say that some of these objects were traded in the 19th century with Europeans who went to North America. But certainly in the case of some of these objects, some of them were taken under duress. You know, in the case of the Potlatch material that was like the northwest coast, you know, there was an awful part of the history of the northwest coast communities. So for these objects to be taken off them under such horrible circumstances, it seemed the only right thing to do to actually get them back.

MG: What was it like contacting the community to say you had these items and you wanted to return them?

BRET GAUNT: I was actually quite nervous about approaching communities. I didn't really know what kind of response I was going to get, and I contacted Nika and just sent an email out of the blue and Nick, his response was just amazing. I could almost picture her jumping up and down with joy so to know, Oh my God, somebody is actually reaching out to us and we're not having to do it the other way round. So yeah, and to be honest, the response sense from all the communities that contact, it's been overwhelmingly just really amazing and positive and really quite touching.

MG: So Nica is Nika Collison, who is the executive director of the Haida Gwaii Museum in Skidegate, British Columbia. She's been listening in. Nika, good morning to you.

NIKA COLLISON: Matt. And hi, Bret.

BRET GAUNT: Hello.

MG: Were you jumping up and down when Bret sent you a note saying we have these items and we'd like to get them to you?

NIKA COLLISON: Oh, my goodness. Yeah. I'm just grinning, listening to the recounting of Brett's initiative and good work. When I got that email, I think I was in shock at first. Like, honestly, we have great relationships and and relationships to be formed with global museums, but it's very rare that a Western museum would actually just come and say, How can we help you?

MG: Tell me about the items from your perspective. Tell me I gave you kind of a very quick little sketch off the talk, but tell me about the items. What are they and what is their significance?

NIKA COLLISON: Well, there's two articulate pieces. One is a a tray that has ivory inlay in it. And it's absolutely gorgeous and got a lot of attention from our hyperscalers and artists up here. Another delight piece comes from an early period in the 1800s when our people were creating our delight and smaller wooden sculptures specifically for sale to ship captains. And those pieces are rare for us to have access to. So it was beautiful, ceremonial, wooden spoon, absolutely gorgeous. A tiny little ivory appears to be ivory pole that we're still trying to figure out. And the last one really interesting to us, because working with Bret over Zoom and everything, we weren't 100% sure about this lake piece that came home. It was definitely not done in Hydra style. It looks very much like a Japanese clay sage, but we wanted to inspect it further and were able to determine through testing, it's not too late. So we're going to be reaching out to some of our Japanese colleagues and seeing if this is something valuable to them. We're working with Bret on that.

MG: What did you know about these pieces before he reached out to you?

NIKA COLLISON: Oh, we knew nothing of them. And no offence, but we didn't know of the Buxton Museum.

BRET GAUNT: So not many people in Buxton know about Buxton Museum.

MG: [Laughs] Fair enough. So when, when you saw them for the first time, Nick, and you get to hold these pieces, what was that like?

NIKA COLLISON: Oh, it's the most amazing thing. And I sure wish the pieces came not at the same time as Bret. We really wanted Bret to be in the room too, but it didn't work out. That's okay. But opening the pieces, you know, you have a little prayer and ceremony. You need to ground yourselves. And our whole museum team is there. There's about seven of us or ten of us centred around this box and just carefully opening it. And, you know, you see photos and photos are wonderful, but you can not replicate actual in-person experience. And to pull these pieces out of the box and hold them and know they came from our ancestors hands and and from a really turbulent and complex time. And there's so beautiful and unique. And it was just incredible to be able to share in a quiet, intimate space and just really welcome them home. And then, of course, it's very important that we host we host our guests and Bret travelled to our island and we work, we're inextricably linked to the Haida Repatriation Committee. And when Brett first got a hold of our museum, the first thing we did is started to conduct research on these pieces and bring everything to our Haida Repatriation Committee, who directed us to to continue the work with Brett. So it's I've been doing this for over 25 years and every time one of our ancestors come home from this Emory University or every time it belonging come home, it is an incredible step forward in healing and in reparation and in knowing we're going to find really good ways to co-exist.

MG: Bret, what was it like when you went to Haida Gwaii?

BRET GAUNT: I love that. I think it was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen, and not just that, but people were just so wonderfully warm and welcoming and genuinely interested in the work I'm doing. And yeah, I just I love that I didn't want to come home.

MG: What did you learn while you were there about the meaning of these items to the community itself?

BRET GAUNT: Yeah. I mean, I'm learning quite a lot about how what these objects mean to a lot of communities in both the US and Canada. I suppose it's difficult because in the UK we don't really experience that turbulence where object, where communities are broken up, objects are taken and the kind of eradication of code now almost like a cultural genocide. Hmm. It just hasn't really happened in the UK. And so to experience that and I think, as I said, it's the healing process, it's giving something back that, you know, it was taken for the wrong reasons. And to see that healing process and to see the kind of. Intense curiosity about these objects, but the love that they have for them and just yeah, it was just really quite an amazing experience.

MG: Nika. There was a report from the Canadian Museums Association saying that the federal government needs tougher laws and more funding to help get artefacts like these back. Normally, and you and I have spoken about this before, but but normally, how difficult is it for a first nation like yours to get items back?

NIKA COLLISON: Right. Well, I'll first speak to the Canadian Museum Association report moved to action. I was very honoured to be part of the and Indigenous Advisory Council for that project and I feel it's a really solid report that's going to really help Western museums and Indigenous nations move this important work forward. And it is. It's changing the level of difficulty. And what I mean by that is we've spent over 40 years working on repatriation and the high donation. We're just scratching the surface of the work to be done. It took over 20 years to bring home just over 500 of our ancestors from museums, institutions and private homes. It costs, you know, well over $1,000,000. So it's an expensive thing. And I'm just you know, Canada did start looking at an act to at least create a national strategy for repatriation. I believe build 3391. It kind of got lost during COVID, but it's not just a strategy. This is a hugely expensive process. But I also want to say there's incredible economic and social benefits to doing the work. So people need to really understand, especially Canada's government, the provincial government really need to understand the cost of repatriation, but they also really need to understand the immense contributions this work makes to society in almost all facets.

MG: Bret This is in your job title, the Assistant Collections Officer of Restitution and Repatriation. Do you think that there's been a change in how museums see what is in their collections?

BRET GAUNT: Yeah, a lot of museums in the UK really do have a problem with just they've got too much. There's almost like a hoarding instinct with museums and I think the problem is that we've got a problem where we are and that we've just got stores that are packed capacity and it costs a lot of money to look after things. And there is the old saying that if it's not, if it's not, earning is key and we need to look at sending it to another place where they can look at it and make better use. And certainly a lot of museums in the UK are looking at what they've got in their stores. I mean some museums are probably actually quite surprised when what they've got some things that are hidden away. You know, we're doing a rationalisation of our collections and we're finding all sorts of things that we didn't really know we even had some 40, 50 years ago. And and I think things are changing quite a lot. I mean, there's a saying now that who said this? But morality changes faster than the law. And museums are actually kind of I think they're actually pushing things in the right direction and the law is catching up. And the problem we've got in England is the and the UK as a whole is that a lot of the good work is actually being done by small museums. Small museums are very underfunded and it's the big museums who have got the big collections. They get all the money, all the nationals, they got all the money thrown at them, then they have golden opportunities to do this kind of work and for whatever reason they don't.

MG: Niko Just finally, we're talking on this day for truth and reconciliation and people see this move of repatriation as part of a step towards reconciliation. Where do you see that falling?

NIKA COLLISON: Oh, thank you so much for asking that question, Matt. You know, a brief timeline of genocide in Canada started on the northwest coast in 1862 with the introduction of smallpox. Of course, Canada was formed in 1867 and the Indian Act was formed in 1876, followed by residential school, the Potlatch Ban. And it goes on and on from there and of course, the coming of the church. So there. So what people what we like to help people understand is that this mass exodus of our ancestors remains and belonging and our cultural treasures, our belongings from our homeland, is a part of that whole colonial system and stamp over our lands and people.

MG: I'm really glad to talk to you both about this.

NIKA COLLISON: I just want to say, you know, I've been asked a few times about this and and but when Bret says, you know, how can you not do it or however you said it, but that act of humanity, you know, this this shows that anything is possible. And we and I'm just really grateful to know you.

BRET GAUNT: Oh, thank you. Thank you. You know, I had such an amazing time on how to go. And it's great to meet you all. It was brilliant.

MG: Thank you both. Take care.

BRET GAUNT: Thank you very much.

MG: Nika Collison is executive director of the Haida Gwaii Museum. Bret Gaunt is the Assistant Collections Officer of Restitution and Repatriation at the Buxton Museum, an art gallery in Derbyshire, England. Sara Angel is executive director of the Art Canada Institute. She's also an expert in art restitution. She teaches at York University and she's with me in studio here in Toronto. Sara. Good morning to you.

SARA ANGEL: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What do you make of what you just heard? The story of repatriation. To people opposite sides of the world who've managed to find this connexion and these items end up going back to Haida Gwaii.

SARA ANGEL: Matt It's an incredible story and it's such an important story to be hearing today. On the day of truth and reconciliation, what Nika said about those artefacts, about how important it is to have them back. She's talking not about art, but she's talking about works of spiritual importance, cultural importance, religious importance, works that were literally removed from people's homes, from people's communities, and taken to the other side of the world as intellectual curiosities. So it's a piece of heritage that was removed. And in taking away that heritage, it negates the heritage. And and in many ways, it hides it. It causes a removal of it. It prevents generations from learning about it. So to have those pieces come back, it's not only a beautiful thing, it's a necessary thing.

MG: It sounds like an obvious question, in part because cognitive dissonance is a really powerful thing. People go to museums and they might not understand how the thing they're looking at ended up in the museum. How do items like this and sacred items end up in a museum.

SARA ANGEL: That goes back many hundreds of years when these sacred items were seen as ethnographic curiosities? Really, they were spoils of colonialism. They were they were souvenirs that were taken back and and mapped the way you have to think about the way most encyclopaedic museums were created. The British Museum, the ROM here in Canada is that museums thought about the stuff that they acquired, the product, the artefacts as essentially being something that was a was a trophy. And the more artefacts they had, the better. Now, in some ways, I don't want to say it's all bad because you have to remember, when museums started to originate in the 1700s, it was before the Internet. So in some ways there were some good intentions. If we had those artefacts from Haida Gwaii, people on another side of the world could learn about what Haida Gwaii was about, the culture, etc.. However, the problematic piece is that there was a very different notion of what those cultures meant and there was very little effort to explain what those artefacts meant and how sacred they were. And for all intents and purposes, they were stolen, so they didn't belong to the places that they ended up.

MG: And so Bret was talking about how the Buxton Museum in Derbyshire is a small museum in comparison to the move to the British Museum, to the Royal Ontario Museum, just up the road from us here. What are those organisations doing to return, I'll use your phrase, the stolen items.

SARA ANGEL: Well, Niko mentioned that the Canadian Museum Association has just released a very substantial report with many recommendations for what those museums should do. I will say that in Canada we are behind Europe in the repatriation of cultural objects that's pointed.

MG: Out in the report. It says that Canada's painfully slow.

SARA ANGEL: Painfully slow repatriation. It really is an embarrassment, I would say both of works of art, of Nazi looted art that are in Canadian collections as well as indigenous artefacts. And the the issue is that I think in Europe things are further ahead because as somebody who studies restitution, I can tell you that in Europe, in the wake of the Second World War, where there were so many artefacts looted by the Nazis, Europe really had to confront themselves with the idea of returning cultural patrimony, and they did that a lot. Commissions were set up, legal bodies were set up, structures were set up, means were set up to return objects. And it became something that was very much part of the psyche, a morality, something that was important to do. In Canada, we had we never were dealing with that heritage of Nazi looted art. And in terms of the consciousness about indigenous art, that is something that has really come in the wake of the truth and reconciliation called for actions. So it's been a much more recent history. So what we don't have in Canada is we don't have legislation like there has been in the UK, legislation like there has been in Germany recently, legislation like there has been in France where governments have said to museums, this is something that we have to do. In 2017, Emmanuel Macron in France said This is something that's going to be a priority. We are going to return artefacts from Africa that have ended up in in museums across France. We are going to start repatriating those objects. So the request and the desire really came from on high. It wasn't from museum bodies.

MG: Earlier this month in New York at the Metropolitan Museum, we saw dozens of artefacts that were seised using search warrants. If people aren't going to give it back, if museums aren't going to give it back, could it be taken back?

SARA ANGEL: Absolutely, it could be taken back. And although I should also add, it could be taken back. But that is not a particularly fast. Or easy thing to do because that involves proving that the object was forcefully removed. If it involves a lot of time, lawyers, usually research costs, etc., etc. often will take between five to 10 years. I'm glad you brought up New York because something else happened at New York's in New York State this past summer, which was legislation was passed that museums that display works of Nazi looted art. They must put up a wall label explaining where the work came from and how the the origins of that piece ended up in a museum.

MG: And the value of that is that if I'm standing there in front of it, I know, I know the roots of this piece. I know where it came from and why that community would value that piece 100%.

SARA ANGEL: And I think that is something that our museums could be doing. Matt That really would go a far way and may making people think about what they're looking at in in museum collections. We need to think about museums as reflecting cultures and we need to think about how we can tell the stories behind those works of art. A total rethink is needed about what museums are and how they serve a 21st century audience.

MG: Sara, it's great to see you. Thank you.

SARA ANGEL: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Sara Angel is the founder and executive director of the Art Canada Institute and an adjunct professor at York University in Toronto. Well, coming up after your regional update, the poet and residential school survivor Dennis Adilman shares his words and his stories. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We're back in 90 seconds. Stay with us.

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Poet Dennis Saddleman’s story of surviving residential school

Guest: Dennis Saddleman

MG: Hello again, I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current. All day on Parliament Hill. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation is holding a memorial of the event honouring survivors and mourning those who didn't make it home from residential school. Amongst the performers will be the poet Dennis Saddleman. He's a survivor of the Kamloops Residential School. In the summer, he shared his story with the CBC's Falen Johnson as part of the current special coverage of the papal visit. We're going to hear some of their conversation now. A warning. This includes graphic details about residential schools, abuse and thoughts of suicide. It also includes a powerful message about healing.

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DENNIS SADDLEMAN: I think about my grandpa. I spent a lot of my time there, my early life with him, and he passed away there when I was nine years old. And it taught me the language. And he shared some stories with me, our old stories and and our my other relatives, my uncles and my grandpa and grandma sat around the fire and they'd seen some songs around the fire and share a big feast and just told stories. Or sometimes I'd sit with them and listen for a while. And then just being a kid, I go join the other kids, go and go play. And after my grandpa [unintelligible]. I don't see that happening no more and no sitting around the fires telling stories heard in my community. So I always my grandpa shadow. I followed him wherever he went and and he taught me the language. And he even spoke to our dog and our and our horse in our language. And they understood him. And he said [indigenous speech] which mean, come here, come here. And no horse obeying the dog would obey. And and you say [indigenous speech] and the dog would sit down, you know, and ask a dog, are you tired? [Indigenous speech]. And are you going to go to sleep and, you know, and dog, you know, understand. When I went to a residence cooler that was all gone, just like that, my language, I, I barely speak it. I can understand quite a few of the words but not... My experience in the residential quarter, I spoke my language when we weren't supposed to. The supervisor got really angry. He was our great brother and I was walking with a group of boys here beside the palm near the resident school. And I saw snakes are crawling. And I told them that little boys [indigenous speech]. I mean, look, Snake. I kept repeating that and next thing, next thing I knew, I got slapped in the back of the head. And then he grabbed me by the collar and slapped me in the ear, and then he told me to go back up to the back to the main building. We had a dormitory where all the boys slept, was over 100 boys. And then he had a room, his own room there and a dormitory also. So he told me to stand beside his door like 10:00 in the morning. I went up there. Lunch time went by, I didn't have no lunch and I stayed there all afternoon. Supper time went by, I didn't have any supper. And then bedtime came and all the boys were coming in the dormitory and the supervisor was there and he saw me and he says, Oh, yes, I still got to deal with you. He sent one of the boys to the washroom and get a bar of soap, and the boy came back with a bar of soap open and he ask all the boys to stand around and watch. A lot of times we have public punishments. So he grabbed my hair in the back and put my head back and stuck the bar soap in my mouth, just rubbed it right in there and against my teeth, my tongue. And I was gagging for air. He did that because I spoke my language. So it's sinking there while my daughter or my grandkids are in no sense teaching them wrong and and get punished. So, you know, I don't speak my language too much and my daughter today and my grandchildren, they don't speak the language. And because they live far away from me to [unintelliglbe] devastating experience in residential quarter or how we got treated there and the food was terrible. It was like slop and but not good enough for the pig to eat or a dog. And mush was thick, lumpy, tasteless, burnt a lot of time for a hungry and some of the kids here would put, sneak the bread inside their shirt and a lot of times they wouldn't be for themselves. They to help tell the kids to eat, the small ones. We were always hungry. And sometimes you get public punishment and you get punished when you're innocent. And when you get strapped, they used to be strapped, for heaven's sake, about almost three feet long, almost three inches wide. He'd swing really hard and you could hear that strapped your flesh on your hand with your palm up. He hit it. And I think he likes to see pain in the kids and tears coming down. So if he doesn't see no tears, he told you to turn your hand the other way with your palm facing down and quack, quack. And if he still don't see any tears then you have to put your jeans down. He straps your back, and sometimes your skin gets [unintelligible] in the back and bruised. And I see some kids or even some blood come out when they got strapped and struck by the strap. I was sexually abused in there and my abuser told me, if you tell anybody there, nobody's going to believe you. As he called me in the dormitory one time and I was going to grab some goodies from under my pillow, and I turned around and next thing I knew, he was standing there. I tried to go around them. He blocked my path. And all the boys usually have their shirts tucked in. He undid my shirt, shirt and and his two hands are cold. And to me, my, my mind or I thought his hand was evil and some evil insane was touching me all over and whatnot. And, and then he got me on the bed, turned and sexually abused me and I wanted to be in my mom's womb, the safest place to be. So after that, I remember I was trying to go tell a school principal. I tried to tell him, [unintelliglbe] predator sexually abused me. Then the principal told me, 'What? You are telling lies against a good man and a good, hard worker. You're telling lies'. Guys. Okay, I guess my sex abuser is right. Nobody is going to believe me. So I had it in here for 45 years, never said a word. Crazy, went haywire that drugs and booze and drank Lysol. And I was really down the bottom. I hit the bottom and I drank and drank and drank and my hair was long and greasy and I sleeping in the back alleys, eating my food from the dumpsters, save all my money for the next bottle. Instead of buying food, I save all my money for the next bottle. Sleeping beside the dumpster, smell like the back alley, you know, and my pants always smell like urine. And and even sometimes when I get sick, I throw up here. So I throw up on my, my shirt. Never seen a bathtub there for weeks. My clothes, never seen a washing machine for weeks. I was just down in the dumps and going down the street trying to bum some money there from people on the street. Search for my next bottle, try to borrow money. And they gave me this disgusted look and I grawl at them, 'What's the matter? Didn't you ever see a drunken Indian before?' You know, people that are working or well-dressed people and maybe office workers or maybe rich people, you know, they're giving me a disgusted look and sort of I went of through that way because of my sexual abuse, I was carrying anger, rage, hate and shame and fear and I didn't realise I was carrying all that and I was doing pretty bad out way down there. And I stabbed myself in the rib with a with a butcher knife and I was lucky to survive and a doctor patch me up. So I just lost some blood there. But I was lucky to be alive. I didn't hit anything vital, and I held a gun under my throat. Yeah, I just wanted to say good bye world. Hell with your world. Hell with everybody. Nobody cares for me. Nobody loves me. My parents are gone. My grandparents are gone. Nobody cares. So it was right down the bottom, just straight down the bottom. Just like walking in darkness. I was walking in darkness for a long, long time and I was going to say good bye. And I had nothing. No dreams, no hopes, nowhere to go, no, I was nothing. And I was down at the bottom and and I thinking about death. And I'm saying to you, why died? If I died, my sexual abuser is going to laugh at me. He's going to be walking away, 'Hahaha. Dennis Saddleman killed himself', came with a residence called the building. He is going to be walking with life in there, too, 'Dennis Saddleman killed himself'. So I said, Well, I'm not going to go that way. I'm not going to die. I don't want the residential school or my sexual abuser walking away laughing. I'm going to get up, I'm going to sober up. I'm going to do something for myself. I'm going to be I'm going to be somebody. And that is the hardest, hardest thing to do is turn my life around and even think about the word sober. That word never existed before. So I sobered up and I went to treatment, but that didn't help. I came back there drinking and then I felt guilty because who paid for my way to the treatment centre? Who paid for my aeroplane ride? It was right here in Edmonton, at the Homemakers Lodge, where I went to a treatment centre. So after I came out, I had no support. So I was drinking again and. And I was feeling guilty. I was feeling guilty. So I'm going to get up again and I'm going to try. And I got up. I got up. And since then I've been sober. I got to learn who I was, where I came from and all that stuff inside me, which just like I let a rotten stuff and that rotten and all that hate and anger and everything. It was all inside me for a long, long time and my sexual abuse inside me for a long, long time. And it seemed like it was all rotten inside of me. So I had to get rid of that. Got to get rid of that. So funny. When I got rid of it there and I turned my life around and like a steering wheel, they're really hard to turn, to turn the steering wheel to change my direction, chang my life. Finally changed my life. Last May, I celebrated 42 years of sobriety. No booze, no drugs. And that was a real good feeling. The best feeling I've ever had. And I stand with my head up and I tell myself, I'm a mountain. What I do now, I teach others to look up and touch the sky, you know? So I gained so much understanding and knowledge about sobriety. Learn about my family, learn about my friends. Learn about my homeland, my community, the history. And there's a lot of stuff inside me. After I got rid of all that rotten stuff there's stuff I didn't know I had there, my. My inner child, my inner voice. I didn't know I had a centre. I didn't know I had a centre, I didn't know I had a heart and all that. All so, so, so valuable, so wonderful to... to discover all that. And I found out I had a talent for writing because a lot of times residents call told me I was stupid, no good for nothing. And then later on I found a passion. And I just love writing. I love writing poems, I love writing stories. And I earned the name Word Warrior, and my family and friends called me word warrior. It took a little while to to gain that recognition. And I think it was that common mind called monster. You probably heard it on the radio and made me famous. You know, people all over the world and Cross came and I heard it. I heard the university psychologist and the high schools are using my poem to learn about the residential school. And I share my stories and I share my poems are all over the different towns and cities in B.C., the communities. Shared my stories to the young people. I went to the high school, to universities, even came here to Edmonton and I went to Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Honolulu. So a lot of people know who were the warriors. So I write and write and write. I just love writing and I try to bring myself to places where I never been. I closed my eyes, I let my imaginations go. I have just connections there with my, my inner child, my in this spirit and I realise I have connections out to the world or to the mountains, to the water, spirits to the rivers and my family and friends. I have some very sacred connexions to them today. I'm the word warrior. I'm grandpa, I'm husband. I'm uncle. I'm a amazing man, you know. And I walk around with a big chest and I stomp around like a big mountain. And, you know, people look up to me and I tell them, Hey, don't put your chin on your chest. Look up, be proud. You know, I, I just realised I came from a long, long way to, you know, to be where I am. And, and if you want, I could share some of the poetry and.

FALEN JOHNSON: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

DENNIS SADDLEMAN: And a lot of time they write my experience, you know, how I feel. And hopefully I try to reach out to other people as a survivors. And I reach out to the non-natives, I reach out to the young people being a word warrior as like I'm a voice for the survivors who, when I tell their stories and being a word warrior as I'm a voice for mothers, you know, I speak for her creatures. I speak for the like polluted rivers and that polluted air. And I speak for Mother Earth. That's why I think I'm the word warrior. I just let myself go and let myself free when I write, you know, I just like I say, I try to go places where I never been when I read. I called this the clinch and unclinch. And I think about the building or the residence call. I grabbed its fruit because I'm angry. I'm mad and what the residents school did to me and would what it did to a lot of my people so I couldn't see through it. And that's what I'm writing about. So clenched and clenched: I shouldn't look back. I closed my eyes. I do not want flashbacks to anybody in my past. I shouldn't look back. I clench the throat of the residents. School time cloud. Deep wrinkles on my face. Anger made my tongue hot. Hate made me spit violence all over the place. Years upon years, my beginning could not find the next chapter. I sank into a pool of forgotten stories. I became a fool to my dreams and my future. I was at the bottom of nothing. Days went by and they cannot find the history book without me. The world turned and turned and turned. I'm a nameless voice. My silence swallowed my tongue. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. I'm a persistent wound I can heal. I must gather my rage, gather my pain and dress it with understanding. I must ride the train of commitments. My next stop, a town full of possibilities. The bones of hope repaired my future. Forgiveness, a stranger to my childhood. Forgiveness, a stranger to my innocence. I I unclenched the throat of the residents of school.

FALEN JOHNSON: Hmm. That's lovely.

DENNIS SADDLEMAN: Once we were many. I was thinking about all the children in the residential school. They said there is about 150 or hundred and 50,000 of us who went and that number dwindled down more and more and more. And I remember when I did my residencial school settlement they said there is approximately approximately 80,000 left out of 150,000. So I was thinking about all the survivors that had passed away and didn't make it through. I called this one: Once, we were many. Once we were many, we were taller than pride. Our courage was our armour. We went to the battlefield. We fought the residential school. We fought the federal government. We fought the churches. Many warriors fell. There were killed in the ending in the child. Many warriors could not speak their language. Many warriors had their identity taken away. Many warriors could not follow their ancestors ways. Once, we were many, we were brave. We stood up for our children. We stood up for our grandchildren. We stood up for the unborn. We fought the residential school. We fought the federal government. We fought the churches. Many warriors fell. Darkness swallowed them. Alcohol killed them. Drugs took some ones. We were many. We were warriors. We were courageous. We were heroes. The rise of dance school, the government, the churches. They tried to get rid of us. Once, we were many. Do not forget those who are gone. Do not forget those who are still with us. We are warriors. We are survivors. Our preservations, our resilience made us rise. Made us tall as the mountains. Yes. Yes. Once we were many.

MG: That's the poet Dennis Saddleman. He was speaking with the CBC's Falen Johnson. If you'd like to listen to his poem again, you can find an animated version of it on our Twitter feed. That's at the current CBC. If you are experiencing pain or distress as a result of your residential school experiences, the Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available 24 hours a day. The number is 18669254419. That's The Current for this Friday and for this week. q's up next on CBC Radio One, the Metis painter Christi Belcourt, the Inuk singer Tanya Tagaq and the Cree graphic novelist David A Robinson all join Tom Power in just a moment on CBC Radio One. We're going to leave you this morning with music from the great Buffy Sainte-Marie. This is from her Polaris Prise winning album of 2015, Power in the Blood. Buffy Sainte-Marie. And Carry It On. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. And have a great weekend.

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[Song]

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Friday September 30, 2022 Full Transcript

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