Thou Shalt Not Be An Indian – Summary
Robert attended Marieval Indian Residential School for six torturous years. His powerful memoir is more than just a glimpse, so prepare yourself, as you witness his daily experiences and the hardships, he faced inside the prison walls of this notorious residential school. Sadly, his story is a common theme in most residential schools: it was wrong to be an In
dian. Robert had a very happy childhood until he was six when his life changed for the worse. Most children have no concept of hell. The happy times became memories replaced by loneliness, fear and abuse. He endured the bullies and lived each day in fear of being punished for something he did or did not do. As he learned a different way of life his parents became strangers. The great outdoors he knew as a child was replaced by foreign teachings from the Bible. Robert learned it was wrong to be an Indian. This is a very powerful story of a young boy and how he survived a year in the Marieval Indian residential school. A sad and emotional story of how he was ripped from his home and forced to attend a school completely foreign and frightening; a story of loneliness, betrayal and abuse. Marieval was an Indian residential school I attended for six years. I was sentenced to this prison for being an Indian. The conditions were so harsh and traumatic for me as a child, a little boy in grade-one, that they can never be forgotten. The following is my story and first-hand account of the time I spent there. It was run by Catholic priests and nuns who controlled the students with a strict code of conduct. Parents were discouraged from visiting their children during the school year to separate them from their families. At school, life was unbearable as I described it after returning from my summer holidays. My home was more than a hundred miles away. I would not hear Grandpa’s stories for a very long time as I was stuck at this residential school. Today, my name would be replaced by a number, and I would have to come running when they called it. Any mention of my culture was forbidden, so I would have to be careful not to break this rule. After all, my pagan ways were considered to be the work of the devil, and I was told to pray for my ancestors because they were probably burning in hell. Another thing I learned was to watch out for bullies because of the lateral violence here. Some of the older boys liked to pick on the younger ones and make them cry. This violence stemmed from the nuns, priests, and staff who hit the students with rulers, keys, and straps to vent their anger. I lived in constant fear of making a mistake that was going to get me into trouble. In other words, I had to live a perfect life. There was only one person who lived a perfect life, and he was crucified. When he died on the cross, everyone was happy. I couldn’t understand why Christians killed their god and celebrated it as a good thing. I would long for the days of being at home where it wasn’t wrong to be an Indian. I would miss my mom’s home-cooked meals where I didn’t have to wait for the sound of a bell to tell me I could start eating. Back home, no one talked about going to hell where a devil waited for us with a pitchfork. Grandpa said we didn’t commit sins. He called them “learning experiences,” and each one was sacred because they taught us about life, and life is sacred. Grandpa was a very wise man and there were many things the nuns and priests could learn from him. Oh, I forgot. We were heathens and our cultural ways were forbidden because they were the work of the devil.
