Isadore Charters was just six years old when he was taken from his grandmother's home on an Okanagan reserve in upper Nicola. He was rounded up on a farm truck with his brothers and sister, and shipped off to the Kamloops Indian Residential School, an hour away.
"They said we were going on a car ride - what a car ride," Charters says in an atrium at Burnaby's SFU campus.
Parents who resisted the removal of their children were threatened with jail time, and police followed through, according to Charters. The Kamloops school opened in 1890 and was one of the largest of its kind, at one point "enrolling" 440 children, under control of the Roman Catholic Church.
"(It was) a big brick building. When you go in there, ... it echoes in the floor and the walls. You hear children talking in the hallway," Charters says. "It never leaves you, the hollowness. It's like an unknown dungeon with lights on."
Charters' first memory of the school was being separated from his brothers and sister, who were all older and knew the drill.
"I was already weeping," he says. "My brother Gary looked back at me, and he says, 'No bro, you gotta go.'"
Brother Murphy took Charter up three flights of stairs to change into his new school uniform, which included a little red sweater, a denim shirt and denim shoes. He was then taken to the dormitory, where the other Grade 1 students were kept.
The first night was a restless one, and little Charters fell asleep to the sound of other children weeping.
"It makes you feel worse. You can feel the loneliness," he says. "You just have to cry and get over it."
When he woke up the next morning, he expected to find himself in his grandmother's house, but he was in a strange new place, lost, lonely, confused and separated from his siblings.
"I thought I was going to go back home eventually," he says. "I was in for a shock - a big shock."
"We're going to take the Indian right out of you"
Charters' family had always called him by his childhood nickname "Yummo," which was short for Yen-mo-ceetza, his traditional name.
"I didn't even know my Christian name was Isadore," he says, adding that school staff had to confirm his identity with his sister. "Then, I never used that name anymore - Yummo. I became Isadore."
The children were not allowed to speak their own language; they were to grow up as Catholics and learn how to be "Canadian."
"That's what the assimilation was about, to make us all like them," Charters says.
But Charters was only a child then, and he didn't understand what was happening.
"We never knew that we were going to be learning a different culture, we didn't know our language was going to be lost, we didn't know that our people actually owned land - the water, the trees - we didn't know any of those things. They said, 'We're going to take the Indian right out of you.'"
The God complex; sins and confessions
Charters' residential school upbringing put the fear of God in him.
"I was so afraid of God, I thought I was going to burn in hell," he says.
Apart from a two-month break every summer, Charters spent his childhood in the school, and after three years, he became "seasoned," like the other big kids - the ones who had given up crying.
"You know how to fight, you know how to lie, you know how to cheat, you know? Confess sins, and go do some more," he says. "You're in between a good person and a bad person."
Abuse and secrets
Charters says he was abused on every level imaginable: physically, emotionally, spiritually, verbally and sexually, and the worst of it was cloaked in secrecy.
"They'd strap you like crazy, pull your ears, call you down - 'savage,' 'your people are nothing but drunks,' 'your dad and mom are just alcoholics.' Sometimes people would run away, but they'd get caught again," he recalls. "When I was molested, I would tell nobody. Nobody would tell anybody. It wasn't till years, later, you find out, man, it was running rampant in there."
The abuse started in Grade 3, and Charters thinks it went on till about Grade 6, but it's hard to say.
"My mind couldn't handle it anymore, and I just blanked a lot of those years out. It's only when (I grew up that) I could revisit that place, but you're scared to even speak about it, they hurt you so bad," he says. "I think what happened - they would start picking on other kids, the smaller ones, recycle, start with another batch of kids."
Fighting back wasn't an option for the children.
"When they do that to you, and the anger in their eyes, it's like an animal looking at you. How could you challenge that person? It's just like a big animal and a little animal. You're not going to win, and you can't get that person angry, because it's going to happen again and again."
Graduation and healing
As Charters tells it, the school system lost interest as the students grew older.
"After Grade 8, they couldn't care less if you got an education. They'd just let you go, you know?" he says. "Smart Indian? That's not what they wanted."
Charters left the residential school, moved in with his mother and attended junior high part-time, but by then, he was already an alcoholic and unable to hold down a job for more than a few months.
It wasn't till his 30s that he started to realize what happened at the Kamloops Indian Residential School was bigger than him - much bigger.
"The stories that come out of the woodwork, eh? Other people are coming out, then you reflect on it years and years, and you're scared to talk about it," he says.
Charters filed a claim for compensation as a survivor of residential school abuse, but he was frightened to speak.
"I was afraid my voice wouldn't come out again. I was afraid to talk. They took my voice," he says.
With the help of residential school gatherings and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, Charters was eventually able to talk about what happened, but it took years.
"My stone of a heart opened up a crack, enough to let the sunshine in, then I started to heal," he says. "I learned how to beat the alcohol. Before that, I was just covering my shame."
The totem pole
Nine months ago, Charters began carving a totem pole inspired by his residential school experience. He's been touring with the pole, sharing his story and encouraging people to try their hand at carving.
In the atrium at SFU, his pole lies flat on a table, and there are tiny wood chips on the floor and the smell of yellow cedar in the air.
"It's important for me to invite other people to carve away when I'm healing. I'm carving away the hurts and the pains, taking off that outer shell. I'm trying to find that little Yummo inside, that little boy before he went to residential school, the one who was saint, the one who was grandmother, the one who was all love. He's the one I've gotta find," he says.
The carving is very much about catharsis, healing and forgiveness, and Charters finds inspiration for that from a higher kind of spiritual connection.
"Our people knew there was a God before we went to residential school. He was a subject there, we recognized him. We might call him different names, but he was there. And I look back, and you know, all the time there was God," he says. "We knew a lot of Bible things, but we would tell them in animal forms. And I realized it's the same person said in a different way. And I realized that now, that's why it's so easy for me to forgive. And those people out there who hurt us, they are in that world where there's no peace. Some day, they're going to reconcile, they are going to have to face their trust (in other people). And I just feel sorry for them, because Isadore, if you can forgive them, the Creator can forgive you for whatever you've done, hurting somebody. If you can't forgive, you can't be forgiven, if you can't love. Nobody will love you. That's why my people, when they see how I see that, they're cross. They are not ready."
Reconciliation
Charters was just one of an estimated 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children placed in Canadian residential schools over a period lasting more than a century. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, there are an estimated 80,000 survivors, many still struggling with complex social problems caused by residential schooling. There were at least 130 schools, funded by the government and run by the Catholic Church, and the last one closed in 1996. The commission was set up to find the truth about what happened during that era and share those stories with other Canadians.
Charters visit to SFU coincided with a series of Truth and Reconciliation events in Vancouver from Sept. 16 to 22.
Charters was invited to SFU by criminology professor Brenda Morrison, director of the university's Centre for Restorative Justice, and she brought her first-year students to meet Charters and hear his story.
Morrison says the Truth and Reconciliation events in Vancouver are very significant, as the commission is still taking testimony from residential school survivors.
"This is the state listening to the harms of the state," she says. "The state listening is important, but we all have to learn from that."
For Morrison, it's important her students have the chance to meet someone who's experienced that harm caused by the state.
"His carving a pole, it's his healing journey, and he's inviting us all to take part," she says. "It's a common story for all Canadians. We have to share and understand and hold that story, and we have to find ways to move forward."
Coming home
Charters is in no hurry to finish his carving. He continues to tour with the pole, sharing his story.
"I have nothing to be scared of, and I have nothing to be ashamed of when I tell my story. It's my story, it's Yummo's story, it's Yen-mo-ceetza's story," he says.
"When (the totem pole is) done, it's going to go back to where I started in residential school," he says, adding the building is now used for administration.
"It's going to be like Yummo coming home. He's told his story, and I can move on to do other things."
