The Lunchbox Interview: Imelda Perley on Honouring Residential School Survivors

Those who don’t respect history are doomed to repeat it.

There was a very disturbing part of the history of the Maritimes (and all of Canada) that is only really coming to widespread awareness now. The Residential School system treated Native children in atrocious ways, intentionally seeking to destroy their connection to their heritage in horrible, dehumanizing ways.

Those who went through that “school” system aren’t graduates, they are being properly recognized at survivors.

Today, the UNB’s Mi’kmaq-Wolastoqey Centre hosted a Circle of Understanding called “Honouring Residential School Survivors”. This was an opportunity to recognize the difficulties endured by the young children sent through the Residential School system, the lingering damage that their experiences caused to the students and their families and descendents, and the strength, resilience, determination and progress toward healing and growing from that terrible time.

My guest today is Imelda Perley, the UNB Elder-in-Residence. We talked about Circle and its importance, as well as provide some summary of the event.

I was fortunate to attend most of the Circle of Understanding, and I gathered some audio from the event that I hope to compose into something I can share. It was a moving event, but ultimately filled with the determination to make things better for future generations.

Music today:

Hopefully, the ultimate goal of meeting people is to understand them. We heard Jessica Rhaye sing about that in You Know Me Better, from her Far Gone Lullabies album.
And to give both you and I some time to reflect and build determining energy after the interview, I played Groundwork by Kuato, from The Great Upheaval.