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REAL Indigenous Report
Why I Speak Out

Why I Speak Out

Personal Recollections From A Former Indian Residential School Student

Mar 21, 2023
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The following piece written by Mark DeWolf, a retired teacher of English language, literature and drama, living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was first published in another Substack newsletter on December 17, 2022.

DeWolf is also the co-editor of an important collection of original essays about Canada’s Indian Residential Schools titled From Truth Comes Reconciliation (2021)

The REAL Indigenous Issues Newsletter
From Truth Comes Reconciliation
From Truth Comes Reconciliation: Assessing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report *** The publication of this ground-breaking collection of articles in July 2021 has shaken the foundation of the 2015 six-volume Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada charged with reporting on the operation and legacy of the Indian Residen…
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3 years ago · 3 likes · 4 comments · Hymie Rubenstein

In the beautifully composed essay below, DeWolf documents his personal experience attending St. Paul’s Anglican Residential School on Alberta’s Blood (Kainai) Reserve where his father, an Anglican priest, was the principal between 1953 and 1963.

His carefully detailed recollections, reproduced here with his permission, debunk many of the downright preposterous myths arguably rooted in mass psychosis suddenly peddled as being truthful by people looking for unearned and undeserved government handouts (“rent seeking”) decades after the last boarding schools closed.

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