Out of the Depths: The Experiences of Mi'kmaw Children at the Indian Residential School at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia

John Steckley teaches human studies at Hunter College in Toronto.

Out of the Depths is an individual and community act of healing that
details life in the Indian residentialsSchool in Shubenacadie, Nova
Scotia, as experienced by Isabelle Knockwood and 26 other Mi’kmaw
(Micmac) students who were there at varying points from its imposed
inception in 1929 to its unmourned demise in 1967. It testifies to the
determination of a woman who received her B.A. in Anthropology in 1992,
at the age of 61, and had this, her first book, published. Knockwood
could easily have descended into diatribe. Instead, she simply outlines,
with an even-handed yet evocative authenticity, the horrors that passed
before the eyes of Mi’kmaw children. While more descriptive than
analytical, her book should at least be recommended reading for Native
education courses.

Knockwood comprehensively portrays the large-scale abuses that only
recently have come out of the residential school closet: physical abuse
for speaking the language of home and identity or committing a myriad
other natural “crimes” of childhood; sexual abuse of both male and
female students; emotional abuse (tearing families apart); educational
abuse (running a school like a Victorian workhouse); and the abuse of
responsibility (mistreatment and neglect, which resulted in premature
deaths). However, for me, the small pictures in this book are the most
vivid ones. Prized Christmas presents were locked away on January 6, not
to be played with for the rest of the year and sometimes never to be
seen again. Berry pickers guilty only of being seduced by hunger would
wash their mouths out in a lake “because if the tell-tale signs were
found, we were beaten.” Amid stories of inadequately clothed children
suffering from the freezing conditions of forced outdoor winter
“play,” we read of a 1958 inventory turning up great supplies of
warm clothing rotted in original wrappings. “The previous
administrator had prided himself on efficiency.”