Tsqelmucwílc: The Kamloops Indian Residential School?Resistance and a Reckoning

by Celia Haig-Brown, Randy Fred (Introduction), Garry Gottfriedson (Foreword by)

Overview

In May 2021, the world was shocked by the news of the detection of 215 unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS) in British Columbia, Canada. Ground-penetrating radar established the deaths of students as young as three in the infamous residential school system, where children were systematically removed from their families and brought to the schools. At these Christian-run and government-supported institutions, they were subjected to physical, mental and sexual abuse while their Indigenous languages and traditions were stifled and denounced. The egregious abuses suffered at residential schools everywhere created a multi-generational legacy of trauma for those who survived and, as the 2021 discoveries confirmed, death for too many.

“Tsquelmucwílc” (pronounced cha-CAL-mux-weel) is a Secwepemc phrase loosely translated as “We return to being human again.” Tsqelmucwílc is the story of those who survived the Kamloops Indian Residential School, based on the book Resistance and Renewal, a groundbreaking history of the school published in 1988―the first book on residential schools ever published in Canada. Tsqelmucwílc includes the original text as well as new material by the original book’s author, Celia Haig-Brown; essays by Secwepemc poet and KIRS survivor Garry Gottfriedson and Nuu-Chah-Nulth elder and residential school survivor Randy Fred; and first-hand reminiscences by other survivors of KIRS as well as their children on their experience of KIRS and the impact of their residential school trauma throughout their lives.

Read both within and outside the context of the grim 2021 discoveries, Tsqelmucwílc is a tragic story in the history of Indigenous peoples of the indignities suffered at the hands of their colonizers, but it is equally a remarkable tale of Indigenous survival, resilience, and courage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781551529059
Publisher:	Arsenal Pulp Press, Limited
Publication date:	11/08/2022
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Celia Haig-Brown is the author of four previous books including Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School, winner of the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional BC Book Prize; Taking Control: Power and Contradiction and With Good Intentions: Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal Relations in Colonial Canada, both from UBC Press. Recently, she has turned to documentary film and has been shown at the Smithsonian Film Festival in New York and the Irving International Film Festival in California. 

Randy Fred is an Elder of Tseshaht First Nation who survived nine years at the Alberni Indian Residential School. After a lifelong career in multi-media, he is currently the Nuu-chah-nulth Elder at Vancouver Island University.

Garry Gottfriedson is a Secwepemc poet with ten books to his credit. In 1987, he attended the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado where he studied creative writing under such instructors as Allen Ginsberg and Marianne Faithfull. Currently he is the Secwepemc cultural advisor to Thompson Rivers University.

Table of Contents

Support from Tk'emlúps Te Secwépemc 9

Acknowledgments 11

List of Contributors 14

Prologue Garry Gottfriedson 16

Foreword Randy Fred 23

Preface 29

Introducing the Original Text 45

Chapter 1 Setting the Scene 48

Chapter 2 From Home to School 67

Chapter 3 School Life 98

Chapter 4 The Resistance 160

Chapter 5 Going Home 183

Chapter 6 Kirs 1987 199

Chapter 7 Tsqelmucwílc: We Return to Being Human 207

Closing Note 242

Appendix Study Notes 244

References and Further Reading 274

Index 282