Student Florence Marshall (L) and FEATHERS board member Mary Desprez said after the first class Marshall and the five other female participants became "more like sisters". (Jordan Davidson/NanaimoNewsNOW).

By Jordan Davidson

learning for life

‘Never really had time to learn because you’re looking out for yourself:’ residential school survivors learning vital literacy skills

Apr 21, 2022 | 7:18 AM

NANAIMO — “We never really had time to learn because we always had our guards up.”

Often, self-protection and survival took precedence over reading, writing and arithmetic for residential school survivor Florence Marshall.

The 68-year-old is one of the people enrolled in FEATHERS, the First Elders Training Accessible Healing Education and Respect Support Society’s literacy circle program, teaching valuable skills in Nanaimo.

“We’d either get hit or have our ears pulled, get called dumb, just put-downs,” Marshall said of her experience as a child. “Never really had time to learn because you’re looking out for yourself or the other kids.”

FEATHERS has operated for around six months, offering literacy classes to direct survivors of residential schools and the families affected.

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Marshall, who suffered a stroke in 2009 which further impacted her cognitive skills, told NanaimoNewsNOW she was apprehensive about going back to school with the traumatic memories of her previous experiences still fresh in her mind.

However, she was able to quickly form a family-like bond with classmates, most of them having a same lived experience.

“It’s totally different from when I went to school…I never got a welcome. I was just a number, they’d never call you by your name, just sit down and be quiet. Here it’s so different, they are right there asking us how we are doing how we are feeling, it makes us feel good.”

Marshall said the class goes at her pace and provides her with plenty of support.

When she was first taken to a residential day school, she didn’t even understand English, which further hampered her learning.

“I spoke my language, so learning, it mixed me up. Trying to learn English and only knowing my language and I wasn’t allowed to speak it. It really messed up all the kids learning.”

She plans to continue taking classes through the literacy program for as long as she can.

“I want to finish. I know I can’t get a job, but I could better my education so I can start learning about high-tech stuff like the computer,” said Marshall. “I’m learning so I can be an example to other survivors out there. Never too old to go back to school and learn.”

Mary Desprez, a FEATHERS board member, said the atrocities of residential schools created incredible trauma and barriers which can take generations to undo.

The program is a small step toward correcting past mistakes.

“We’re trying to address some of the wrongs that have been done. The truth and reconciliation calls to action very clearly talk about education, so our society was created to try and offer that,” Desprez said.

Almost 80 years ago, 86-year-old literacy student Yvonne Frenchie’s mother hid her in the outhouse when officials came to take her and her brother to a residential school. She said watching survivors in her class learn to read and write alongside her is like seeing “somebody come out of the dark and into the light.” (Jordan Davidson/NanaimoNewsNOW.)

The group meets twice weekly at the Vancouver Island Conference Centre.

Desprez said they are working on expanding the program across Canada.

Global venue and investment company The Oak View Group owns 11 conference centres across Western Canada, and has offered those spaces up as classrooms for the literacy program, with the plan to extend to Penticton first.

Their goal is to make it available in 11 communities in B.C., Saskatchewan, and Ontario by the end of 2024.

A pilot project was launched in October 2021 and FEATHERS was officially registered in January 2022.

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jordan@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @JordanDHeyNow