A former registered nurse assistant, mother of three, sexual abuse and breast cancer survivor, Diane talks about growing up on a reserve, the racism she witnessed in the hospital and how she began to heal, in part, by finding her screaming voice.
“When I was a little girl my dad was always asking me, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I’d say, ‘Daddy, I want to be a nurse. I want to get married. I want to have 12 children.’”
“When I took my RNA (registered nurse assistant) course in Thunder Bay, it was my first time away from home. After I finished my RNA, two girlfriends and I decided we were going to Toronto. I said, ‘I am going to Toronto. I don’t have to be Indian anymore.’ That’s what they called us up here. ‘You’re Indians, eh?’”
“Toronto was perfect. I worked on the surgical floor of a hospital and really enjoyed it, especially looking after the old people. Toronto is where I met my husband. At the Newfoundland Club.”
“After 15 years, we decided to come back here. Nicole was a baby, Chantelle was two and Michelle was seven years old. They told me we couldn’t live on the reserve because I married a white guy. We eventually moved into this house, which my husband practically rebuilt. I love it here. I finally made it my home.”
“Growing up, I saw a lot of stuff happening with the alcoholism. A lot of beatings and abuse. I really believed that we were drunks. What some people are still staying about us today. I literally ran away from my community.”
“So much happened to me on the reserve. I was sexually abused in the church by a Jesuit ‘brother’ as they are called. I was very young and I carried it with me for a long time. It really affected me as a woman. I was violated and for decades I never could let go of that.”
“My mom lost her mom when she was only four years old, so my mom didn’t have parenting skills. She was a good mom and took care of our basic needs, feeding us, clothing and all that stuff. But she didn’t teach me a lot of things. Like when I started my time, I didn’t tell her. I went to my aunt because I didn’t know what was wrong. My aunt told me to go back and tell my mom. My mom said, ‘Oh, you need this’ and threw me a box of pads. I didn’t know what to do because I thought I got cut in my leg.”
“We raised our kids here. When the girls start leaving for university I was really, really sad. Chantelle did her PhD at McGill, Nicole did her law in Toronto and Michelle did native studies at Trent and got her masters in Education in Thunder Bay. I wanted my kids to have a decent education because I didn’t have one. I always wanted to go to university. They did really well in school and we never had to push them.”
To have three kids graduate from elementary school to high school to university…it’s a big deal, and we are proud.
“I went back to school to prove that I wasn’t stupid. My marks in high school had been very low. I always felt stupid. I think I was dealing with my own issues. So I went back to college here in Marathon and took a business admin degree. I stayed up all night studying. I don’t learn fast. I have to write down notes. I remember that way. At the same time, my husband worked towards getting his high school degree from Marathon high school and he graduated almost the same time as the girls.”
“I worked in the local hospital as a part-time RNA. I had to quit 20 years ago because I couldn’t lift anymore after my breast cancer surgery. I saw a lot of racism in that hospital. In those days, I never spoke about it. I didn’t speak in high school because I thought I was stupid. I believed those lies. Really, they were ingrained inside of me. So when I saw all this racism happening in the hospital I never said anything, I just bit my tongue. I didn’t know how to react.”
One time they brought in a sick baby from the reserve and they stripped him right down. I said, ‘What are you doing? That kid is sick.’ And they said, ‘Oh, he’s from the reserve, which means he is dirty.’
“When I first started working there, an RN went to do a home visit and I noticed on the forms that she was visiting my mom. When she came back, she said she was so surprised. ‘I went to this lady’s house and it was so clean! She gave me tea and baking! She was such a nice person!’ Would you say that about a white person, that their house was so clean? That was one time I spoke up. I said, ‘You know what? That was my mom.’ I knew what she was implying about my community, and she could tell. I was so angry. I walked out of there.”
“Many of the patients were First Nations people while I was working there. We might have had the odd French person. The hospital administration wanted us nurses to learn how to speak French to be able to serve the small French Canadian population. But they didn’t want us to learn how to speak Ojibway, although the majority of patients at the hospital were First Nations.”
“Over time, I spoke out more and more when I saw racism. I think things are getting better now. In the hospital, the schools and the community. I think there is less racism now.”
“But there are still issues. I just had surgery on my knee and was admitted for one night in the hospital. In the evening a nurse came in and said, “Here’s your pill.’ I asked, ‘What kind of pill is that?’ He said, ‘It’s for your diabetes. It’s metformin.’ I said, ‘I am not a diabetic.’ He said I was. I said, ‘I am not a diabetic!’ I didn’t take the pill. The next morning another nurse came in and said, ‘Here’s your metformin for your diabetes.’ And I said again, ‘I am not a diabetic!’ Turns out they made a mistake. They had the wrong patient. What concerns me is that many patients wouldn’t know to ask about the pills. I think it was very easy for them to think, ‘Well here’s an old native woman and of course she has diabetes.’”
“I always checked my breasts. Every full moon. I was in the shower one day and I found this lump. It was removed in Thunder Bay. We had to wait about 5 weeks to get the results.”
The doctor walked in and looked at me, looked at Reg, and said, ‘It’s malignant.’
“Oh my God! It was like he gave me a death sentence. Cancer! My dad died of cancer and so many people had died of cancer. It was the worst time of my life. Afterwards, Reg and I walked away and we were holding hands. I said, ‘Would you believe you’d be walking this road with me?’ We were both scared right? Because I thought I was going to die for sure. But I had a nice doctor and they gave me all the information I needed. I had to have a second surgery, which was followed by eight weeks of radiation. I stayed in Thunder Bay during the week and came home on the bus for the weekends.”
“I developed a terrible burn on my breast from the radiation. It was very, very sore. I wasn’t sleeping because I was in so much pain. My husband was working 12-hour shifts. My last daughter was in Grade 11 and she couldn’t help me. So, I was isolated in that room. At one point, it was so bad I was going to take all my pills. I planned my funeral and everything. I picked everybody that was going to be my pall bearers. I picked all the songs that I wanted played at my funeral. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t do it. Thanks goodness, after a long, long time I got better.”
“When I came back here in the 1980s, I worked really hard on my recovery. Because of all I had endured and seen. The beatings of my cousin. I would hear the lickings she was getting. It’s generational, right? When my dad was sick in the hospital, I was washing his back and I noticed he had a big scar on his shoulder blade. My younger sister told me that he said it was from a beating he got from his mom. My dad never hit us. He was really soft spoken even though he was often drunk. He could be obnoxious but he never…even to the day he died, I could feel his hands were really soft.”
“Decades after the abuse, I went to a sexual abuse program. They have a healing lodge and we had a letting go ceremony.”
We were supposed to scream. I didn’t have any voice.
“I was really working hard to let it go, but I couldn’t. And the counsellor told me, ‘You’re working too hard. You can’t do it.’ I said, ‘Just let me rest for a while. I will do it. I am not going home until I get this done.’ And I did it. I screamed my head off. Screamed my head off.”
“I was in a 12-step program called Adult Children of Alcoholics. It felt right for me. Part of the program involved keeping a journal. I journalled every night. Eventually I had about 25 journals. It all came from my heart and I was really angry. The Catholic Church was really awful. It was intended to break our spirit, right?”
“I also started fasting, and doing the sun dance for four mornings and four nights. I decided I had to start letting go of this stuff. So I asked my husband to take me down to the sacred ground and I made a sacred fire and I put the journals in there and burnt them all. I knew the creator was going to see them. He knows.”
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