Lessons of the past

CBC reporter and former Wawatay editor Jody Porter spent much of the month of August researching and preparing a documentary on the death of Charlie Wenjack, who was 12 years old when he died in 1967 while attempting to walk home to Marten Falls from the residential school in Kenora he had been taken to.
The story of Charlie Wenjack’s death and subsequent inquiry has some striking similarities to the recent deaths of young people in Thunder Bay who have died while attending school in the city.
As planning into the inquest of the seven deaths in Thunder Bay continues to get ready for the expected spring 2013 start date, Wawatay News sat down with Porter to discuss how Charlie Wenjack’s death still resonates 46 years later.
Porter’s documentary on the death of Charlie Wenjack, along with letters, photos and other historical documents related to the incident, can be found on www.cbc.ca/thunderbay under the button “Dying for an education.”
Wawatay News (WWT): Why was it important to look back now at something like Charlie’s death that is decades old?
Jody Porter (JP): One of the seeds of this story was planted with me last summer at the hearing to decide whether the Bushie inquest could go through. I was talking to Alvin Fiddler (now NAN Deputy Grand Chief), and he said to me something along the lines of ‘our children have been dying for a long time. Kids were sent to residential school, children would die and it wouldn’t be properly investigated.’ That really struck me, how long the history is.
The other seed that really made this story blossom was when I was sent the MacLean’s article about Charlie Wenjack from 1968. Talking to people about that story really reinforced to me how many things about it are still fresh. Then I had the opportunity to be in Marten Falls and meet with Charlie’s sister Pearl, and it was Pearl who said ‘had they fixed this after Charlie died we wouldn’t have children dying in Thunder Bay today’.
Also the fact that there was an inquest into Charlie’s death, that there were no First Nations people on the inquest jury. And the fact that the inquest said the education system should be investigated to see whether it was right for First Nations students. All of those things are so relevant today, still.
WWT: You began looking into Charlie’s death by reading the MacLean’s article - how did that story resonate with you?
JP: One of the things that is really sad is that I’ve lived in this region for nearly 15 years, and I knew there was some stuff that happened in Kenora, but I had no idea what activism there has been from the First Nations people there, and how much push back there has been from the non-Aboriginal community there.
That’s one of the things that took the journalist, Ian Adams, to Kenora the first time, before he heard about Charlie’s story, was the upheaval being caused by the racism. That’s in the 1960s, and that’s still there too. One of the things in Ian’s article, about the First Nations woman passed out on the floor of the diner, and people were just stepping over her. You read that and it is such a striking anecdote and it really makes you wonder how far we’ve come in the region since those times.
WWT: The letters from the principal at the residential school to the church official in Ottawa, to me really emphasized what you’re referencing…
JP: I read those letters, and what stands out to me was the back and forth when the principal, Colin Wasacase was saying how proud he was that he had found ‘Christmas parents’ for the children in Winnipeg. So they would take these children who were stolen from their own families and give them as gifts, as it were, to non-Aboriginal families in Winnipeg, so they could have children around for Christmas. Did it never cross their minds that their own families might want to see them at Christmas, and that the kids might want to be with their own families at Christmas?
Sure, you can say they were well meaning, and people thought they were doing good. But it is just really hard to look at that. The letters were a real eye-opener, hard to read, made me want to shout.
WWT: You obviously have a strong feeling of injustice about this. Is that something you saw with the author of the MacLean’s’ story, Ian Adams, and is that something he still carries today, 40 years later?
JP: When I first got in touch with Ian, he sent me an e-mail and said he had woken up that day with a memory very clear of being at the site at the train tracks where Charlie’s body was found. He said what really struck him from that was there was a train going by as he was standing there, and he saw the dining car in all its opulence, and the families sitting down to dinner in their rich clothes and laughing and enjoying themselves, and the contrast to that of this lonely, cold place where Charlie died, the two worlds side by side, one whizzing by the other. He carries that image with him, to this day.
The other thing that resonated in Ian’s article was the way he started it: it’s the story of a young boy who died, the handful of people who got involved, and the community that barely noticed.
I have felt that way very much about Thunder Bay, when students have died. You see in southern Ontario when a non-Aboriginal kid goes missing, there is a huge hue and cry and community involvement. And we have yet to see that here. When we have seen First Nations students missing, we have seen First Nations people looking for them and First Nations people engaged in their disappearance. So we do have a [non-Aboriginal] community here in Thunder Bay that hardly notices.
WWT: What lessons from the story of Charlie’s death should the coming inquest into the seven youth deaths in Thunder Bay be taking into account?
JP: I think the key is that you can’t have an inquest that comes to a conclusion that a study needs to be done. Whatever investigation was done (into Charlie’s death), and it was very little, it certainly wasn’t adequate or we wouldn’t be here 46 years later.
I think the other thing that has the possibility to resonate from the past, one of the things that happened at Charlie Wenjack’s inquest, when Charlie had run away one of the first places he went was a cabin where a First Nations family was living. And they were too poor to help him. And the inquest jury was quite keen to lay a lot of blame on that family for not properly looking after this young boy. I think it’s a cautionary note, when we look at the lack of funding for supports for First Nations students among First Nations organizations; you have to watch for a jury that would point a finger at an organization that doesn’t have the resources to help and say that they should be helping.