STORIES / Okara’shòn:’a
Nearby farm
I didn’t go home over the summer like some of the other kids at Spanish residential school. I would be sent to a nearby farm to work and the school would be paid for the work I did. It was like slave labour. But I liked it more than going to school. Like day and night. We would have to work at school during the year anyways. They’d make us clean the gym, the kitchen and do things around the grounds.
Scraping every last bit
When I was at Spanish residential school, they didn’t feed us enough. I was always hungry.
We had mush for breakfast - I guess it was some kind of oatmeal. For lunch and supper, we’d have soup, beans and two-day old plain rolls with no butter. And for snack, they gave us a slice of raw turnip and tea.
No written history
I was living in Detroit for a while. In Michigan, there's so many different nations there. They’re scattered around, very small, different dialects, and are disappearing now.
There’s so many words missing now that were lost.
Proper indian
I grew up speaking Mohawk, until English came in. My older sisters were learning it in school, so they started to use English in the house.
Little by little, you pick it up and when I went to school, it was every day. The older people back then couldn’t communicate in English or any other language, strictly Mohawk.
Survival school
We established the school over the weekend. The students called it Survival School because it was for the survival of our language and culture.
Root cellar
There were about 25 Mohawk boys from both Caughnawaga and St. Regis at the Garnier residential school when I was there. And the older ones had our back, us younger boys.
My grandmother Elizabeth
We had a hard time continuing in education because the church was in control of the education here, the nuns. They had these special nuns from Boston. Sisters of St. Anne they call them. And they were experts at what they call proselytizing – how to change who you are.
Her escape
The girls and the boys were split up between two buildings but they were only about 150 feet apart. We were at the Garnier Residential School and the girls were at the St. Joseph Residential School.
Mohawk language in the schools
The summer following my first year teaching in 1973, five of us enrolled in the Teacher Training Program offered by the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi. That fall I got a job at Kateri School teaching grades 1, 2, and 3.
Our own grandparents
There’s so much to say. The education system, to me, teaches you how to make a living, how to make money, all of that. But it doesn’t teach you how to live a good life.
Mohawk names
Growing up, we only used the Mohawk language so when I started going to Kateri School in Kahnawake, I only knew maybe half a dozen words of English. So I had a hard time.
The kind of work I do
My last iron job was in 2004 in Sorel. That was when I was having problems with my lower hernia. I had to have surgery.
A little bit of trouble
Most of the children in immersion came from English speaking families, and there were people out there with second language, but few. So, we had to be very strict in the school, that it was total immersion.
A special time
After a few years in the classroom, I became principal of Karonhianónhnha Immersion School. Oh my goodness, those were the days.
Kahnawake education centre
Kahnawake did a great thing, because in 1980 we established the Kahnawake Education Centre. We took control of our own curriculum and decided what would be taught in the schools.
