Two Tla’amin (Sliammon) First Nation radio producers are helping to resonate reconciliation with a recent documentary which tells stories of survival from Canada’s residential school system.
Producers Devin Pielle, 22, and Shelby George, 19, received a standing ovation for their work entitled We Are Still Here, from approximately 70 people in attendance at the Salish Centre in Tla’amin for the community listening celebration last month.
Both producers are pleased with the way the documentary came out. “I think it’s actually a little better than I envisioned,” said Pielle, who had little experience with producing radio programming before she stepped up to this project.
George helped organize the Idle No More action last year in Powell River and contacted Pielle to work together on the project.
“I’ve never done anything like this,” said George, who set up and conducted two of the interviews for the documentary. “It was pretty cool.”
Participants from the documentary and the community were invited to the listening celebration, given gifts and brushed with cedar boughs, said George.
The documentary, one of 40, was produced as part of the National Campus and Community Radio Association’s (NCRA) Resonating Reconciliation, a project designed to help all Canadians come to terms with the history of the residential schools, to build a record of survivors’ experiences and to bring more First Nation voices into media production.
“We wanted to shed light on first nations’ history because in high school you don’t learn about the residential schools,” said Pielle. “One of the things I’ve heard growing up is residential schools were so long ago and people just need to get over it. We wanted people to understand what their full impact was—to understand the truth and understand our people better.”
Gunargie O’Sullivan, a Vancouver-based community radio producer, suggested the idea for the project. She sits on NCRA board of directors and heads up the organization’s native caucus. O’Sullivan spent a year living at St. Michael’s Indian Residential School in Alert Bay when she was six years old. She never forgot the experience and as an adult has used her radio programs to help tell previously untold stories.
“If you are first nations, you are in some way a product of residential school,” said O’Sullivan. She sees the lasting effects in Canadian society those schools had both on the former students who were taken from their families and subjected to abuse and in the children who were raised in the shadow of those experiences. “The absence of our perspectives in the media is rampant, and that needs to change.”
In the 1870s the Canadian government partnered with Anglican, Catholic, United and Presbyterian churches to establish and operate over 130 boarding and residential schools for First Nation, Metis and Inuit children. Of those, 29 operated in BC and were closed between the 1950s and the early 1980s. The last schools, in Saskatchewan, were closed in 1996.
It is estimated that approximately 150,000 children, some as young as four years old, were removed from their families, often forcibly with the help of the RCMP. The program, under the federal Indian Act, was to educate, assimilate and integrate children into Canadian society. They were forbidden to speak their language, were forced to do manual labour and were fed poor quality food. Between 90 to 100 per cent of those children suffered severe physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized on behalf of the federal government in 2008 and the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established to gather stories and inform all Canadians about what happened in the schools. It is estimated that there are currently 80,000 survivors alive today.
The TRC and Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada funded the 40 documentaries from producers across the country as part of the commission’s mandate to acknowledge residential school experiences, impacts and consequences and create a lasting historical record with a focus on the lived experiences of former students and their families.
“This is something all Canadians need to know more about,” said Shelley Robinson, NCRA executive director. “We can’t reconcile until we acknowledge the truth of what happened.”
Pielle and George, who have known each other since childhood, started work at the end of November and quickly realized that the project would be a challenge. Over two weeks the women approached a number of elders in their community at Tla’amin and were able to interview eight people with tape rolling.
“For some people this was the very first time talking about their experiences ever,” said Pielle. “They were hesitant to answer and really emotional. Others we didn’t even have to ask questions, they were just so ready to share.”
CJMP public radio station manager Courtney Harrop taught Pielle and George how to use the recording equipment and volunteers Emma Belle, Claudia Medina and Zoë Ludski helped shape the work.
“It was really exciting,” said Pielle. “I feel like I learned so much from the people interviewed and from the radio station.”
Pielle’s grandmother and George’s mother were two survivors who were among the first to be interviewed. Pielle’s grandparents on both her mother’s and father’s side of her family attended residential schools and she said it is hard to meet anyone who hasn’t been affected by past experiences at the residential schools.
“There are a lot of issues that are still very real,” she said.
They wanted to make sure that the documentary reflected the community, so they made sure that they were also interviewing people from other families in Tla’amin.
They interviewed elder Dr. Elsie Paul who commented to Pielle, “Not until we fully acknowledge [the experiences] can we make it right within ourselves and move forward as a people.”
After transcribing their interviews, the women had hours of material they could use and started the editing process to select the best clips to tell their story.
Pielle, who has a five-month-old daughter Amaya, said she hopes that her and George’s work can contribute to people reconciling with the past by helping to shine a light on what happened.
“I hope my daughter listens to it some day,” said Pielle, “and she can tell her kids about her ancestors and what they went through.”
We Are Still Here can be found online.
