Interview with Lorna Wánosts’a7 Williams outside Ts̓zil Community School

The Mind of a Child Face to Face Media Ltd. SR 50 - LORNA OUTSIDE OF OLD MISSION SCHOOL LONG TONE ROGER Yes, this is roll number 50, five zero, um, Mind of a Child, ah production number 24-597. This is day one. Um, slate coming up is 249. Beep. Slate no: 249 LORNA This building is the - It used to be called the Creekside Elementary School and it was built in the late thirties by the Department of Indian Affairs when they built ah, federal day schools on reserves across the country and um, it was run by veterans ah, after the world w- the Second World War and um, and in about the late fifties, early sixties, the Missionary Sisters of Christ the Kim- King, was the given the contract to teach. And then, in, shortly thereafter the, the federal government and the provincial governments ah, were working out an agreement to send ah, First Nations students to public schools. And um, it was in the - must have been, probably 1969/70 when a group of grade six kids who would have then gone to Signal Hill, told their parents that they were, that they were not going to go to school any more, and that they weren't. The refused to go to the public school and so the action that their parents took was fi- was then to um, to take control of the schools and um, the National Indian Brotherhood's paper in reaction to Chretien's White Paper which was to close down all the schools on the reserves and um, and to begin to close down Indian reserves, act- really, um, so the Indian Brotherhood responded ah, in a paper called Indian Education for- Indian Control of Indian Education and it was through that agreement that um, that the Mt. Currie people were able to take over the SR 50 - PAGE The Mind of a Child Face to Face Media Ltd. SR 50 - LORNA OUTSIDE OF OLD MISSION SCHOOL school and the Board of Education was born and they ran the school, this school here, which was already condemned when they took over, until a new school was built in . ROGER Ambience, children. [off-mic discussion] ROGER This is speed shot 250. LORNA When I um, I spent two years in residential school. So I started school back here - GARY Start it from the top. LORNA No, okay. I can't remember now what - I spent two years in residential school, um, grade two and grade three and then I came back to this school in grade four and I was here until nineteen - until grade eight. Ah, when I came, there were lay teachers in the - in, in the grade four class, grade four-five class and also in the grade six-seven and eight class. So in grade four-five I had a teacher who was quite abusive and she was well known as a very abusive teacher and um, physically abusive and emotionally abusive and in, but in grade six there was a teacher from ah, Prince Edward Island who um, who was, who was teaching here and um, although he was, he was strict, he also was a really good story teller 'cause I think that story telling must have been part of his culture and ah, I SR 50 - PAGE The Mind of a Child Face to Face Media Ltd. SR 50 - LORNA OUTSIDE OF OLD MISSION SCHOOL remember that um, that we used to sta- that we used to get him started on a story and then just listen and we'd sometimes he'd talk for two or three hours ah, before he realized what he was doing and um, and I think that probably, that helped me to come back out of the depression that I was in after residential school. And so I remember him really well and um, as somebody who I feel was um, I felt was a really good teacher. And um, when I was in grade um, seven or eight, I can't re- really remember which year it was, but um, by then the agreement between the fed- federal government and the province was um, was becoming even more entrenched and so they began to do psychological assessments on us and ah, I remember in that year that um, um, when they did the assessments that there were only two people in our class who were ra- who were, um, who had scored at a-above a mentally retarded ah, range, and um, and I don't think - I think they thought we di- we di- we didn't know what this was all about but we knew and we used to laugh about it, but I think that it was something that stayed with me, certainly, and I think that it was practically - it's partly because of that experience that I think - that led me to the ro- the Feuerstein's work. [off-mic discussion] ROGER This is 251. [off-mic discussion] Beep. SR 50 - PAGE The Mind of a Child Face to Face Media Ltd. SR 50 - LORNA OUTSIDE OF OLD MISSION SCHOOL LORNA In um - Sometime when I was in grade seven or eight, the, I remember that they were doing assessments. People from Vancouver came to the school to do assessments on us, ah the grade six, seven and eight class and they did this becau- in preparation for us to go to public school. And um, I remember that when the results, when they were finished and um, there were forty-five of us in the class and um, they did the assessments and we find out that there were only two ah, students in our class who were of a-above the um, mentally re- um, retarded age and I wasn't one of those two. Then, I think that um, although we laughed about and we joked about it that ah, that they would think this ab- of us, that it always stayed with me and it was partly that that I think led me to Feuerstein's work. GARY And how - what's the connection? LORNA Um, the connection is that psychological assessments that were used were not um, appropriate. They didn't measure a person's intelligence quotient and it didn't rea- It, I think um, it masked people's real abilities. Th-the assessments, themselves, masked people's real abilities and I think that Feuerstein's work doesn't do that. [off-mic discussion] ROGER It's 252 [off-mic discussion] beep SR 50 - PAGE The Mind of a Child Face to Face Media Ltd. SR 50 - LORNA OUTSIDE OF OLD MISSION SCHOOL LORNA The Mt. Currie um, um, hm. Yeah, I'm going to start again. The, the agreements between the federal government and the province were escalating towards the end of the sixties and they started to take the um, the classes, one grade at a time over to Pemberton, the neighbouring white community and in about - must have been about 1969/70 when a class of grade six students said that they would not, they would not go. And um, and so, tha- in that school year, in the fall, they um, the parents of those children hired a teacher who actually, um, wasn't paid, but he taught the students and ah, and the final take-over of the school began in a-about 1972. Um, we began with the ah, primary school and the, and some of the upper, the high school classes. We started the high school class, I think, with um, thirty students and by, by Christmas there were ninety students in the high school, of students in the community who had dropped out of school and they saw this as a way to come back. And so, we were then - And at that time, there were only two teachers in the community, my sister, Mary, and Felicity um - There we- and so we knew that if we were going to successfully take over school, this school and the education of our children, that we would need to train teachers. We needed to train the teachers um, here, rather than for them to go to ah, university outside of our community because it was important for us to always be focused that we were being trained to be teachers and teachers of our children and that alot of the - what the people were learning in teacher education programs were, was biased and um, and based on, on SR 50 - PAGE The Mind of a Child Face to Face Media Ltd. SR 50 - LORNA OUTSIDE OF OLD MISSION SCHOOL myth um - And so we knew that we couldn't rely on um, on what we would be taught in University to help us to solve some of the dilemmas that faced us in school, ah, for educating aboriginal children. [off-mic discussion] ROGER 253 beep LORNA When we took over the school, um, one of the things that we did was to ah, negotiate a teacher training program and part of the teacher training program was for us to find ways of teaching um, ah, teaching our children and ah, to understand why our children were not academically successful in school and um, part of it, it was thought, wa- um, was that the school, at that time, the education that we were getting was not um, culturally relevant and so we um, so we went in search. And um, it was really exci- an exciting time because it was the first time that um, that our parents, our people, were able to um, to have a say in the way that they're children would be educated and this has been - This was something that was not part of our community for, for almost a hundred years and so the, so the excitement was really, really high. And um, the other reason why we ah, began to take course - We were negotiating with the universities for a teacher training program was to begin to develop um, um, to take linguistics courses so that we could develop an orthography and um, some language curriculum materials, to SR 50 - PAGE The Mind of a Child Face to Face Media Ltd. SR 50 - LORNA OUTSIDE OF OLD MISSION SCHOOL teach our language, Lil'wat, in the school and to train - And so the people who were training were basically volunteers from our community and about half of those people um, heard the language, but they didn't speak the language, and the other half spoke the language. And so we needed to, and we wanted our own teachers in the classrooms and we wanted our own teachers from our community to teach our children and to teach our children in, in our language. We did a survey in the community. We went to every family to talk about what their vision of this, of a school w-was and to ask them what they wanted from this school. And the-the-there were two things um, main things that, that the families wanted. One was and I- probably the foremost, was for the school to teach Lil'wat in the, in the school. And because we were young and um, and ready to take on anything, um, we agreed that this is what we do and um, and so we set to work and um, and studied and we discovered an orthography, developed th- some curriculum materials from kindergarten right through to adult and we trained our teachers and um, and thought that, you know, we were going to solve everything, that the kids would learn it in school. There were a number of - But there were a number of um, um, issues that came up. One was the, the who- the, a debate that began to um, to happen in the homes and in the community about the language, because what we were doing was ma- bringing an oral language from um, our language from an oral language to a, a written language and so some of the people um, were really concerned about the changes that would, that would have on our language, so can we still call it our language if we're going to impose a foreign system on it and, but it was exciting. SR 50 - PAGE The Mind of a Child Face to Face Media Ltd. SR 50 - LORNA OUTSIDE OF OLD MISSION SCHOOL I don't think very few people would ever have an opportunity to have those kinds of debates about any language in the world today. But what - and so um, after um, a few years, though, we realized that um, we were not so successful in reviving or, or maintaining our language in the classrooms and we realized, then, I think that um, that basically what we had done was taken our language that was unused and put it into an unreal situation which was a classroom, so that the language still continued to not live. And um, and then we realized, too, that although the parents said ah, overwhelmingly in, unanimously said that this is what - SR 50 - PAGE