Indigenous Exploration – St Paul’s residential school
“All my relations”
this is a podcast about St. Paul’s residential school and reconciling on our mistakes of the past -canada’s history
Reflection
At the beginning it was hard to find a school I felt passionate about. I wanted to research a school from British Columbia and the only thing that would have made the school more appealing was if I knew where it was. As I was looking for a school to research with my partner, I came across St. Paul’s residential school. The first thing that struck me about this school based on the name is that I know a lot of Pauls, so the name stuck with me. The second thing I realized was that it was in Squamish. I know where Squamish is, I pass through there every time I go to whistler in the summer. So, I suggested it to my partner, and she agreed. For overall creating the project, it was lots of fun. I got to work with my best friend on a topic that I want to learn more about, and I think that it was a lot more fun recording a conversation with someone about the subject rather than writing a big document about it. I also think it was an efficient way of learning more about the subject. For instance, instead of taking information and putting it on a word document, students have a conversation about the subject, and it really got people, including myself, thinking and acknowledging what they were talking about
researching content for this assignment have been both educational and emotional. There were times when I was really invested in what I was reading. I wanted to learn more and ask question about the topic. However, there were also times when I could not believe what I was reading. Some of the content was so saddening that I did not want to read it at all. I do not know how it affected my partner kaya, since she was not researching stories of survivors, but I often found myself upset or uncomfortable. To find this information, we mostly used topic finder. Topic Finder is a useful source in the online library information system on the riverside website. You can search one thing, and it takes you to an organized selection of useful links and topics based on what you searched. So, when I searched St. Paul’s residential school, it me sections about what nations went there, facts about the school, survivor stories and more. It made my research easy, and I got a lot of research done in class while using it.
St. Paul’s residential school
An obstacle we faced while making this project was sending the recording of our podcast from kaya’s computer to mine. She and I tried sending it as many different documents but none of them would work. By the time she did send it to me she had made about five different documents with the same recording on her OneDrive. When she finally figured out how to share the OneDrive file with me, we found ourselves victorious. Another aspect of the project we found a little challenging was the ability to put casual conversation into our script. Sometimes while recording we had to come up with conversation on the spot to make it sound more fluent. It was rather intimidating because you would not want to mess it up for your partner, but you needed to say something to keep the conversation alive.
One thing I value about the Squamish nation is that they are very true to themselves. They have their own language, and their land is vast and sturdy. Squamish is famous for its original inhabitants because they treat the land with lots of respect and have lots of famous monuments of indigenous history. They seem to care for each other a great deal and take pride in their culture. They incorporate their heritage into their community, and it makes Squamish feel more united. Whenever we drive through Squamish everything looks so familiar, and it’s lots of fun looking around for different monument or statues or landmarks. As you go into town in Squamish, you also see reminders of a lot of beautiful indigenous art, and it really livens the place up. They use a lot of color and shapes that make people smile when they see it. I appreciate how proud they are to be from the Squamish nation. Since both my parents were born in Canada, we do not really have a “culture”. Since Canada is made up of hundreds of cultures, you cannot really say that I am part of the Canadian culture, or the British Columbian culture. So, I wish sometimes that I was part of a culture like that. One that is proud to share their culture with everyone, and display in their communities
Sites
Squamish Nation survivor of St. Paul’s residential school shares his story
Toronto Star Newspapers Limited
The article tells a story of a man who went to St. Pauls residential school and all the mental, physical and sexual abuse he went through
What language do the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh speak?
Khelsilem ( squamish nation council member)
https://medium.com/@khelsilem/coastsalish101-part-1-f625148818ba
This website tells me wich languages the nations that attended St. Paul’s residential school
NCTR. Retrieved October 14, 2022, from
https://nctr.ca/residential-schools/british-columbia/st-pauls-squamish/ – (sited)North Vancouver, B. C. (2021, July 19). St. Paul’s (Squamish)
This website told us A little bit about the school and why it was so terrible, Kaya used information from this site to talk about how children were getting sick at school