For Canadians: This weekend I heard about a residential school story that I had not heard elsewhere before....
|
I met a woman whose father was First Nations from the Gaspe in Quebec and the father had fled to the US as a kid when they starting truly understanding about the schools in the late 50's and early 60's. Apparently there used to be "Indian Agents" who would track you down to ensure you went to the school and they would go to the US and forcibly take you back to Canada if you tried to get away. The agents operated as far south as Pennsylvania and so the woman I talked to grew up in the Carolina's and Georgia because her father was scared to be any farther north.
Another interesting tidbit is that the father married a Jewish woman from the UK, and so the woman I was talking with identifies mostly as a Jewish woman with a still very strong southern accent but has attended a number of First First Nations events with her fathers community. She and her family recently moved to New Brunswick as the racism in the southern US as gotten really bad over the last few years.
|