'The damage from day schools was just as severe as residential schools,' says former student
Like many people who grew up in the late 1950s on the Mohawk territory of Kahnawake, Que., Kenneth Deer has experienced the legacy of federal Indian day schools.
He doesn't speak Kanien'kéha, the Mohawk language; it wasn't taught during the time he attended Kateri Tekakwitha School, a former federally operated Indian day school run by the Roman Catholic Church on the territory.
Kahnawake is on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, across from Montreal.
"I don't speak Mohawk, and I absolutely blame the system for that," said Deer.
The only thing he remembers learning in elementary school about Indigenous people was the Lachine massacre, and that Iroquois burned Jesuits at the stake.
The Lachine massacre occurred on Aug. 5, 1689, when 1,500 Mohawk warriors attacked and killed settlers in Lachine, New France, at the upper end of Montreal Island.
The Mohawk Nation is the easternmost member of the Iroquois Confederacy.
"That's what they taught about Iroquois," he said. "We were the bad Indians. So it wasn't really inspiring to be taught this."
This month, the Federal Court of Canada will be asked to approve a settlement in a lawsuit, the Federal Indian Day School Class Action, against the federal government to compensate for harms suffered by students who were forced to attend Indian day schools.
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