This post is part of a series entitled “Land, Memory, and Schooling: Environmental Histories of Colonial Education.” You can find the introduction here.
This post and series discusses Indian residential and day schools. Please take care as you read. If you are a Survivor or intergenerational Survivor of residential or day school and you need help, there’s a free 24-hour support line. Call 1-866-925-4419. Additional resources are available here.
Earlier versions of this article appeared in the December/January 2024 issue of Nisichawayasi Achimowina and RETROactive: Exploring Alberta’s Past. Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation is one of twelve Survivor communities working with the Government of Alberta regarding the preservation and recognition of the Red Deer Industrial School cemetery.
“Eight children, an equal number of boys and girls, were going with us to enter a Residential School… I applied, but without success, to the Principal of the Brandon Residential School, for the admittance of the Indian children. That they were ‘non-treaty’ was the alleged objection. As, however, the Red Deer school was willing to receive them, we decided to take them there…In the course of two or three years, five of those apparently healthy children had died from Tuberculosis.”
Samuel Gaudin, in Forty-Four Years with the Northern Crees (1942)
Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation are the nisicawayasi îthiniwak: the people whose ancestors lived near where the three rivers—the Footprint, the Burntwood, and the Rat—meet, and who speak nîhitho—the language of the four winds.1 Their territory includes the rich lands of the Canadian Shield and boreal forest in what is now Treaty 5 territory in northern Manitoba.
The nisicawayasi îthiniwak knew, and continue to know, this landscape well. They are inextricably linked to it. The land was transformed for them by the trickster wîsahkîhcahk in kâhyâs—a long time ago. Reminders of wîsahkîhcahk’s presence are everywhere: where he caught waterfowl, where he used the caribou for target practice, where he sat, and where he stood. otôhôwihnihk. atihkô sâhkahikanihk. wîsahkÎcahk ôtîtahpiwihn and otîtiskîwihnihk.2
Following these landmarks—nodes in an extended network of occupation and history—the nisicawayasi îthiniwak can read their territory like a book.
Berries, firewood, labrador tea, wintergreen, and club moss sustained the nisicawayasi îthiniwak. Moose, caribou, bear, rabbit, birds, and lake and river fish gave them strength. They lived as small, nuclear families and relied on broader kinship ties during the fall, winter, and spring hunts.3
Post-European contact, the majority of the nisicawayasi îthiniwak chose to live at otîtiskîwihn sâhkahikanihk—the Lake of the Footprints. Along the lakeshore, wîsahkîhcahk’s footprints were long observed: a mark of his passing so future generations would know of his presence. Following the signing of the Treaty Adhesion of 1908, the central community hub became known as iskonikahnihk, the place which was left over, in reference to the loss of Cree territory.4
“In October of 1900, eight children from nisicawayasihk were taken from their home. They travelled the rivers, streams, and lakes in one birch bark and one Peterborough canoe, watching the landscape become increasingly unfamiliar.”
This landscape of rocky shorelines and many rivers, streams, and lakes is remarkably far from Red Deer, Alberta. And yet, in October of 1900, eight children from nisicawayasihk were taken from their home. They travelled the rivers, streams, and lakes in one birch bark and one Peterborough canoe, watching the landscape become increasingly unfamiliar. First denied entry to Brandon Industrial School on account of their non-Treaty status, the children were then taken to the Red Deer Industrial School by Methodist missionary Samuel Gaudin.
The children were Isaac Bohner, Sarah Bohner, Ellen Hart, Matilda Hart, Florence Hartie5, Richard Hartie, John Sinclair, and Robinson Spence. More than a thousand kilometres separated these children from their families, community, and culture. They were so far from home.
At the time the children were admitted, Red Deer Industrial School had been open for seven years. Located on the north banks of the Red Deer River, just west of the present-day city, the Methodist-run school was only open for 26 years. In those 26 years, however, an irreparable amount of harm was caused to the more than 350 children who were forced to attend. In terms of sanitation, ventilation, the health of the children and the number of student deaths, Red Deer Industrial School was among the worst of the residential and industrial schools that operated in western Canada.
By 1906, Sarah, Ellen, Florence, and John had died.6 They are four of at least 70 children who died as a result of their forced attendance at Red Deer Industrial School. Their causes of death in the student register include “consumption” and “decline”—illnesses inarguably caused and exacerbated by the poor sanitation and ventilation systems and overcrowding that plagued Red Deer and numerous other industrial and residential schools.
Ellen Hart was sixteen years old when she was admitted to Red Deer. She was Matilda’s older sister; both girls were assigned “housework” as their vocational trade in the industrial school. On January 20, 1903, Ellen died at school of reported heart disease. Her grave marker, made of wood, is one of four that remain today, and is displayed at the Red Deer Museum and Archives.
Author William Elvis Thomas is the great-nephew of Ellen. William often wonders what Ellen was thinking, as she was taken from her family and homelands, traveling south to Brandon and then west to a landscape entirely unfamiliar to her. He reflects on what she went through: her forced assimilation, her illness, her death.
Isaac, Richard, Matilda, and Robinson survived Red Deer Industrial School. Richard was “discharged at the strong request of his father,” presumably following the death of his sister, Florence. According to the book Anna and the Indians (a fictionalized retelling of her life and work in northern Manitoba), Anna Gaudin, wife of missionary Samuel Gaudin, wrote an impassioned letter requesting that Matilda—the last surviving girl—return to nisicawayasihk.7 Matilda was formally discharged from Red Deer on December 12, 1903. “How glad that girl was to be on her way home, away from what to her was a dismal school,” wrote Samuel Gaudin in his memoir Forty-Four Years with the Northern Crees.
Isaac and Robinson were both set to return home to nisicawayasihk when—heartbreakingly—they missed their boat and instead were transferred to Brandon Industrial School. The archival record does not tell what happened to Richard Hartie after he was discharged from the school.
Red Deer Industrial School has been closed for more than a century, but the lives and stories of these eight children—those who survived and those who did not—are still known. Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and descendants gather to remember these children: both on the landscape where they were taken and on the landscape where they belong and were stolen from.
“Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and descendants gather to remember these children: both on the landscape where they were taken and on the landscape where they belong and were stolen from.”
In Red Deer, at the cemetery, we conduct ceremony and discuss the future of this place: questions of access, recognition, and truth-telling. At nisicawayasihk, we connect with community and share information, building a more comprehensive and truthful picture of who these children were and what happened to them. It is a profound privilege to do this work: to bear witness to the truth and to work collaboratively to tell it.
These conversations open old wounds, and emotions are deeply-felt. But the land provides grounding and healing, and Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation members return to it as often as they can. The Nisicawaysihk Nîhitho Heritage, Language and Culture (NNHLC) department works with Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and curriculum developers to provide land-based experiences to facilitate connection, remember history, and revitalize language and culture in good ways.
In August 2023, the authors connected with Elders and Knowledge Keepers in nisicawayasihk to discuss the preservation and recognition of the Red Deer Industrial School cemetery. Alongside the heavy conversations, we held space for joy, by sharing stories, meals (that smoked red sucker!), and good company together on the land. We took a boat out along the rocky shorelines to otîtiskîwihnihk to see wîsahkîhcahk’s footprints. They are a powerful reminder of the long histories of those who came before, and the strength of a culture and people very much still here.
Ekosi.
Feature Image: Part of the river near Red Deer Indian Institute. Date unknown. Source: From Mission to Partnership Collection, United Church of Canada Archives.
Notes
1 Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation History: Respecting Our Past…Creating a Bright Future (Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, 2016).
2 Eva Mary Mina Linklater, The Footprints of Wasahkacahk: The Churchill River Diversion Project and the Destruction of the Nelson House Cree Historical Landscape (M.A. thesis: Simon Fraser University, 1994).
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 In the archival record, the last name Hartie also appears as Hardy.
6 Red Deer Industrial Student Register, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PR1979.0268/162.
7 Nan Shipley, Anna and the Indians (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1955).
William Elvis Thomas, Eva Linklater, Laura Golebiowski and Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation
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