Janet Deneault

Janet Deneault stands in front of the her old school.

When I arrived at the Secwepemc Museum, Janet Deneault was still in a meeting.

I spent the next half hour wandering around the museum looking at exhibits. There was historical looks at the Secwepemc people, an exhibit on the residential schools and some information on the present day people. It was interesting because I’d seen Deneault speak at the TRU during the Aboriginal Awareness Week and heard her talk about her experiences with residential school. In hearing her talk, I felt that I gained more insight into the residential school experience than I had in just reading about it.

Denault is  a museum educator from Skeetchestn, a Secwepemc community near Savona. Her job is to do tours for School District 73 and public. She also goes out to schools and teaches students about the Secwepemc people and some of their history. She’s been working in the job for four years and works under Dan Saul, the manager at the museum.

Here are some excerpts of our conversation:

 “I am a member of the Shuswap nation. I am a Secwepemc. I am a full-blooded Secwepemc, both my parents were full-blooded meaning that we were registered and we have an ancestral background that can go back five generations.”

‘I come from a large family and the history of my family is that we’ve learned our language since we were very young and culture was a big part of my growing up the years before I went to the residential school and I love children because I’m a grandmother myself and I really have a passion towards teaching our history of our people”
 “I was always very interested in history dating back to school, my school years. I always has a passion for not only Secwepemc history but Canadian history in general.”

“It was very rewarding learning kind of from one or two topics to now over a hundred topics and I learned a lot when I first started because boss, Dan Saul is the manager, he know a lot of the history so he’s taught me a lot of history as well as we’ve learned to do tours regarding the museum exhibits which are all museum interpretations so there’s a lot more to it so the more I’ve learned while I was here looking at old documents the better quality tours we produce.”

On her role at the museum:

“It’s been very very rewarding and also very promotional because I now go all the way to the university level which is something for myself, I don’t have a university degree but I’ve been rewarded by that by doing presentations not only at TRU but I’ve gone and done some ministry presentations for cross-cultural(MOF, environment) and I’ve done cross-cultural not only within my own nation but with other First Nations that want to come here and learn about our people.”

“Normally when they come, they have no information about our nation and a lot of them have been living in Kamloops all their lives and they have not known that we do have a museum and we have a history of the whole area.”

“I feel the role is a learning institute and when I say that it’s because we have people here and I mentioned Dan, he’s like a historian and he also has a lot of knowledge about the residential school, the historical history behind it all and I think the museum is a great tool not only for general tours about the history but there’s been a large trend for tourists and students coming here to gain some insight into the residential school so I feel the museum is probably by far the most sought after institute for gaining educational insight into our history and the era of the residential schools.”

How she thinks Secwepemc people see the museum:

“It should be a very honourable and rewarding though that we do have a place to house all our history and I think that the people in the communities are very proud of it. I know because I go out into the public and I always have positive feedback about the museum and what the museum has been offering because it’s been here since 1982 so it’s something that even the children can relate to when they come here that they have pride in knowing their history, that there is a place that they could come to.”

 “I think it’s very important that we continue recording our history and a lot of projects go on on-reserves now especially in the natural resources and the archaeology departments, they go out in the field and they are constantly finding artefacts so what I like about that is they’re willing to share with us and willing to store that history here with us for generations. We have so much oral tradition tapes that were done back in the 80s and it’s sad the elder that were recorded at that time are gone now but we do have the memory of those tapes and the history, the stories, the legends, the mythological, the language especially because the majority of them were all fluent speakers of the language and told those stories in our language with an interpreter to interpret them in English and that’s really unbelievable history right there and I can only see it continuing cause we’re getting a little bit more modern with technology now so we can digitize a lot of researched items.”

“As an educator, because I teach about the mad gold rush, the fur trade and I teach about the impacts of what’s happened to our Secwepemc people since colonization, since European contact and believe it or not members of the 17 Secwepemc communities have a lot of knowledge about those impacts already because they’re a big part of our history already in the process of modern day treaties, and land claims and that so a lot of community members are already aware of our history and the museum is a big part of that because during the tours we often get questions, that’s why when you work here, you pretty well have to be a historian and the timelines, the dates of what happened regarding the impacts so you have to have a really good clear timeline because not only the general public but First Nations themselves come here for information.”

“The significance of having the museum onsite is really great because we can combine history with residential schools. We’re within walking distance of a historical building and within walking distance of a 2,000 year winter pit home site of our Secwepemc people so we got a really good mixture when tourists come here they want to take in everything so I think it’s a good tool to have the history here all in one building.”

“The history of the residential school plays a big part in the museum because we have a museum exhibit that’s dedicated for that and within that exhibit it’s a great tool because we have several videos that we show if we’re doing a residential school tour. They get to view the video and look around the museum and then we stop at the exhibit that houses the historical history of the residential school going back to the industrial school for Indian Children which was first opened up in 1884 in eastern Canada, in Ontario and eventually by 1890, opened up in Kamloops so we had an industrial school for Indian children before this current old building was opened and build in 1923 so it’s a very big part of the museum and it’s a very good educational tool because they get to do all of that, the historical overview as well as go into the old building and actually go in there and see what the building looks like and gain insight into what life was like there by survivors cause Dan and I are both survivors of the residential school so they get a 120 per cent bonus by the time they leave because they’ve not only gained the history but they’ve gained insight and that’s really touching to a lot of people.”

“It was really hard because when I first got the job I kinda didn’t think I’d be doing residential school tours but when I got the job I was a bit nervous because hadn’t been back in the building for many years, I wasn’t sure how exactly I’d handle it or was I going to be able to tell some stories about what life was like in the school. The first two, three times were really hard but I had a lot of support from Dan because he’s been doing the job 10 years prior to when I took over was what he was doing so he’s been a really big support and kind of advising me, ‘you know, you can do it’ so with that I said, ‘OK, I’ll give it a try,’ but it was hard. It was hard because when I stepped back in the building, I just all of a sudden, I could almost like I could close my eyes and I could hear and see everybody was there almost like the day I stepped foot in that building. Ya, it was hard.”

“It’s a lot easier. I find that I can go in there now and do a really good quality tour but for some reason at certain times of the year, there’s something kinda, maybe it’s memories, something to do with at a certain thing that happened at a certain time of the year. Christmas time was always hard because a few times, I spent Christmas here so when I go in there and I have a memory of that and I think that it’s just certain times if the year that kinda feels difficult.”

What it was like for Deneault at the Kamloops Residential School:

“It was hard to get used to because for one thing, being apart from my siblings like my brothers and my sister and that and other kids that came here around the same time from my community so we were all together and when we came here and we have to be apart. That was really hard and then not being able to eat our own traditional food and that was really hard and not being able to do any fishing and stuff like that that we’d normally being doing at that time of the year at home so I think losing our culture was probably the hardest part and then having come to all of a suddenly having gone from that to living in an institution, what I call an institution because everything was done like an institution.”

“I spoke English but what I was saying is that my parents and grandparents they spoke to us in our language pretty much. My mother was fluent in English.”

“I got there and I just turned nine. I was nine. I got there in 1967. I wasn’t even really too sure until I got the records back. I thought I was there only like three years or something. When you were there, you lost track of time it seemed like it because when I got the records back and they were like, ‘Oh no, you were here six years,' I said, 'Oh.' It’s part of my life that I just left behind. I didn’t even ever want to revisit it or go there.”
“When I hear other people’s stories, you know, I always think to myself and the first thing I do is worry about how they’re doing and how I could be of any help to them and for some reason, there’s still a lot of support within the residential school survivors. They all still have a connection even though we might meet one another other once a year, maybe not even. I haven’t seen some of my friends for since 14 years and I finally just met one or two of them in the last year or so because they’re finally starting to have those residential school gatherings and that and I think that when we look back I always remember having the support of a lot of the older girls. They always took care of the younger girls so there’s still support there and I think that’s the good part about it. There is still the friendship and connection even though we’re older now. We’re grannies now.”

On the apology and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Federal apology:

“I think that was a really good step for the Canadian government to come forward and finally recognize, after all these years, the hurt and the suffering that the students have gone through and when I look back on it all, I think that it was probably a long time coming and I think that there’s still a lot of work to be done in the whole area of the residential schools whether it’s reconciliation or whether it’s being compensated. I think there’s still a lot of work needs to be done because there’s still a lot of memories and schools that are still, like this one over here is still part of a historical site now but I think there still needs to be something else put in place for maybe a once a year remembrance day or something of residential school survivors because a lot of them are gone now and their stories will never be heard by them and their families are still going to have to heal from it because it impacted not only the survivors but their families because for five generations it’s affecting them and the reason why I say that is because the effects of the residential school. When I did the presentation at Thompson Rivers University, I mentioned that some of the effects were that because some of the students were going to be working in First Nations communities, they might run in to a residential school survivor that half way, or hasn’t started, or three-quarters of the way through a healing process to get themselves better and be able to actually fulfill a job, actually sit at a job and do a job without falling through any effects such as anger or having issues with employers. There’s a lot of other effects that I didn’t mention and one of them was where there was where they hadn’t reached a part of their lives where they could actually function by getting involved, moving their self-esteem forward. There’s a lot of First Nations who belonged to the school that are still quite quiet and a lot of them are suffering because they were abused mentally or physically, psychologically in the school, have addiction problems as a result and another one, parenting was a big one for me because I was a parent at a very young age and I was pretty strict with my children and I think one of the things they got out of it was they graduated from school because I really pushed them really hard. At the time we had a limit for everything and I think that the effects they have are some of the physical effect where, when I said a lot of parents can’t hug their child and say, ‘I love you and that’ so that was a little bit I was missing I thought even though it’s changed today. It was hard for me to give some of those skills back.”
On the healing process after residential school:

“Yes, it was and I think that part of it will never end. I still find that we have to have a really good support system around ourselves because I have pretty good support with employers if I need to attend to something then they’ve got an understanding or at home in my community, there’s spiritual support so I go to the sweat lodge and talk to elders and things like that and we have councillors right on reserve now whereas before they never had that, they never had trained councillors dealing with trauma or residential school effects and that.”

“What happened in the early days when the school was opened up as the industrial school for Indian children prior to when this building was built, during that time the children were brought here, their main focus was not on education, but on actual child exploitation because the children were made to learn all the physical labour of working to produce not only the orchards but the farming and the ranching, blacksmithing and the girls were forced to do the inside work and the outside work too and they were made to do it at a very young age because some of them remember sewing already when they were six years old on the old treadle machines and made to do harsh cleaning of the floors at that very young age so not wait until they’re 13 or something before they could be introduced to scrubbing floors. They were made to do the physical cleaning on their hands and knees.”

 “I don’t think there was much change for the institutional side of it probably until the late ‘60s, early ‘70s. I feel like when I came we were still subject to the real heavy cleaning and that and I had no idea about how to get down on my knees and scrub a floor but I had to learn. I had to do it.”

About education today:

“It makes me really proud to start with because I think that when we look back at the history of why the residential schools were closed down because it’s very empowering too because what happened was the First Nations themselves, in each community too because they took over the jurisdiction of their own education and that’s why you see all the communities have a school like that because they’ve reached the capacity where they could have a band-run school as well as what you see, band-run businesses now.”

“ I think that it shows that our people have a lot of growth, and when I say that it means they’ve been empowered now to be self-governing, be self-reliant, self-sufficient and a lot of our leaders now have role within their position to better all aspects of our life whether it’s education, natural resources or business development and that and I find that now most all Indian reserves now have education as their number one goal and that’s what I like because rather it means they’re looking back at era of what happened in education, they’re moving forward to better educate our children and the schools, just by going by them you can see why cause it’s a state-of-the-art school.”

“I think it’s important that all the bands now and within our nations because we have 54 nations in all of Canada, 54 that’s quite a bit but that’s still only one third of the Canadian population...It’s very important to keep track of where we’re going with educations because we are moving up quite fast but still in my mine not fast enough, till I see a school on every reserve with a mixture of not only academic education but a lot of culture and that’s what a lot of schools are designed for now.”