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DG: All right, now I'd like to know a little bit about your mother. And so, if you could tell me about her life in Canada.

DR: Well, my mom was born in 1923, and when she was five years old -- that was the time that they had the stock market crash and there was very little jobs and very little money. So, what they did is they had Saint Paul's Catholic Boarding School, Indian Boarding School. And my mom was there from age five to age sixteen, and so she was raised by the nuns. There was a funny thing about that, too, is because my mom was just so Catholic, we always had to be at church and everything else. My mom, oh, my mom was so... really good. She could really sing. She was in the choir and she sang in the choir and everything else. But the thing that they did is that they would not let them speak their Indian language and that's the only language they knew. So when they... they didn't speak English, and they spoke their own tongue, they put their hands out and they got rulers slapped on their wrists. 'Cause they didn't want them to speak the language they knew; they could only speak English. But the funny thing is, and when they were singing in the choir and stuff, they were singing all the hymns in Latin. I says, "What's wrong with this picture, Mom?" I says, "Here you go and you can't speak the language you do know, but it's okay to go sing in Latin, the language you don't know?" [Laughs] I said, "Oh, my." She said, "Oh, Doreen, be quiet, sacrilege." [Laughs] But then she came over when she met Dad and then they married, it was "death do us part."

DG: Can you tell me why your mother and her siblings were, had to go to the Indian boarding school?

DR: Well, it was pretty much that way all over, I guess, even here in the United States. 'Cause I hear a lot of them talkin' about going into Catholic boarding schools -- not Catholic boarding school, Indian boarding schools, here in the States. Over there, they have... I know there's Mission that's down in the Stalo Nation, that's an Indian boarding school. And then there was Saint Paul's, that was right there in Mission Inlet in North Vancouver. That was the one my mom went to, and her siblings.

DG: And why were they sent there?

DR: They were sent there because the government sent them there. Or if you didn't... you had to be in school and then that's where they put them, at the boarding schools. And if you didn't... well, they didn't have any money really, 'cause my grandparents had to go down to the booms and kind of steal logs there just to, for firewood and stuff and there wasn't any food because it was depression years. And so they all went there. But, I finally found out too, like if my mom lived in... all those ones that were put in those boarding schools, Indians that were put in the boarding schools, are gettin' paid for each year that they were in there, from the government.

DG: Because they were forced to...

DR: Forced.

DG: And do you remember any other stories your mother shared with you about life in the boarding school?

DR: Oh, she was saying, yeah, she said sometimes there was prejudice, too. 'Cause they all had their Indian boarding school uniforms and they'd go on field trips and walk on the waterfront. And there was kids comin' out there, "You dirty Indians," and everything else, and throwin' rocks at them. And like one of the nuns told my mom, "You know, don't listen to them, because there was never any germs here in this land until they all came over." And that was Sister, I think, Veronica, Mom said. She was from, she was from France. She said she was a really nice nun. [Laughs]

DG: And what age was your mother when she was, while she was there?

DR: Age five to sixteen.

DG: And was her family Catholic before they attended?

DR: Yes, my grandmother was, 'cause she used to go to... my grandmother was Catholic. She was, yeah, Charlotte, she was the only grandparent that I got to know. Charlotte Baker Lewis.

DG: Is there anything else you can think about to explain what the boarding schools were for, why they were there, and how they, how they operated?

DR: Well, they were just trying to "civilize the Indians," I guess. I don't know. But that's, they did put 'em in there and then they did that over here in the United States, too. And it wasn't just Catholic, it was Methodist or whatever else, they were put in the schools. And they take -- they took their language away and they even, all their, the things that they used to do, their, their dances and their potlatches and everything else, they stopped that. They said it was... they couldn't do it because it was not... [laughs]

DG: So, how do you think, in the long run, that affected your grandmother? Did she really lose a lot of her culture and...

DR: Well, my grandmother, she didn't go to the school. What she... she wasn't in the school. And my great-grandmother, either. But all my, my mom and all them got educated, yeah.

DG: And did it, how about with your mom and your aunts and your uncles, did it affect them as far as their Indian culture?

DR: Yeah, it did. It took away a lot from it. Because I could see there was a difference there, where my oldest aunt, Nora, she didn't go to the boarding school because she was already married then. And I could see the difference between her and in my husband's mother. And there is a difference there, just the culture, the way they talk. And right now, that language... they're trying to teach the language and it's not really being said right because that was taken away from them.

DG: Did your mother continue to speak the language?

DR: She could, yeah, she could speak words and stuff. But when you don't use everything you kind of lose it. She had to think and she couldn't really carry on the conversation, a normal conversation, as she did as a child.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.