Living Healing Quilt Project
Promoting Healing – One Stitch at a Time

The dark, turbulent background and the crown of thorns represent the harm done to generations of First Nations Children, their families and their cultures by the imposition of Indian Residential Schools.

The light green and yellow tones symbolize the hope for healing brought by the willingness of all parties to communicate openly and honestly in the Truth and Reconciliation Process.

The red flowers stand for a strengthening of understanding, respect and love among all the people of Canada as a result of this sincere desire to have the truth told and forgiveness given and received.

Judi Cumming, Contract Researcher, Indian Residential Schools Resolution Sector, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada

Living Healing Quilt Project
Promoting Healing – One Stitch at a Time

My quilt piece is dedicated to all the mothers of residential school children. I shudder in horror to think of how these poor women had their children taken from them. How you must have suffered. My wish is to give all of you a big hug. Also for you to know that people really care about all of you and your children. It does not matter how old we are, we are all still somebody’s child.

Love,
Claudia Irons,
Curve Lake First Nation

Living Healing Quilt Project
Promoting Healing – One Stitch at a Time

Living Healing Quilt Project
Promoting Healing – One Stitch at a Time

The moccasins represent the child who was taken away from her family. The dark blue and black with the moccasins was where I was placed, a place called Mush Hole, the residential school I attended (Brantford, Ontario). The bear paws represent the tracks the lost child went on during the seven long lonely years. The outer blue represents the blue sky, yellow the sun and happiness upon leaving the school. The feathers are what make me strong after all those years.

Living Healing Quilt Project
Promoting Healing – One Stitch at a Time

This painting speaks of the abuse that took place in the Indian residential schools across Canada. These schools were financed by the federal government and administrated by the church. For decades Native children were brought to these schools in the name of assimilation, and were subjected to various forms of abuse; physical, mental, emotional, and sexual abuse.

I too attended such a school located in Duck Lake, Saskatchewan between 1953 and 1959. During the six long years I spent there, I was continually aware of and often subjected to physical, verbal and emotional abuse at the hands of the nuns and the priests. I was witness to many public beatings and whippings of children who could not or would not adapt to the military-style existence, severed from family and our Native culture for months, if not years, at a time.

Not one of us ever dared speak about the sexual abuse that went on although we all suspected such things were happening. There was a very real fear of reprisal so we kept silent. Besides, who could we tell and who would believe us? Certainly not the priests and the nuns, and certainly not our parents either. Very often, they too had attended and been victims at that very same school as children.

“Preying on the Powerless” depicts the raw and brutal truth of sexual abuse. The pink-skinned torso in the painting represents the non-Native abuser, quite often a member of the clergy or lay personnel who worked at the school as teacher, supervisor or maintenance worker. The abuser hides a religious article behind his back, a cross, which he brandishes as a weapon of authority over his young and powerless victim. The young girl valiantly tries to ward off the advances of her aggressor but her long, skinny arms are no match for his adult muscular strength. Her clenched fist clearly depicts the anger, helplessness and frustration that she is feeling as she tries to escape her abuser. The wolf, whom she hoped would help her, sits leering at her feet. She is totally powerless.

Living Healing Quilt Project
Promoting Healing – One Stitch at a Time

I am a residential school survivor. My meaning for this quilt square is to keep families together and strong after the trauma everyone feels from the results of residential schools. I feel the roots are the strength from Mother, Father and Child.