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.
"Tsquelmucw璱c"
(pronounced cha-CAL-mux-weel) is a Secwepemc phrase loosely translated as "We
return to being human again."
Tsqelmucw璱c 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.
Tsqelmucw璱c 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,
Tsqelmucw璱c
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.
