Decades of silence: Elder May Sam shares the abuse she endured at a B.C. Indian day school
upport for survivors and their families is available. Call the Indian Residential School Survivors Society at 1-800-721-0066, or 1-866-925-4419 for the 24-7 crisis line.
Sam’s struggles to learn English left her feeling isolated, even with her sister also at the school, because she couldn’t talk in her language for fear of being punished. The nun who taught Sam kept a bar of soap on her desk and would use it to scrub the tongue of any child who spoke another language. It happened to Sam multiple times. Other times she was whipped with a long canvas strap.
The nun dragged her to the nurse’s office, who dabbed the wound with some iodine, wrapped it in gauze and sent Sam on her way. She saw children go off to residential school and never saw them return and saw what that did to the family members who were left behind. But her own stories were something she kept inside. She’s unsure if this is her inherited protective nature of sheltering others, or because of the humiliation the nuns inflicted on her.
Getting to the point of telling her story has been a struggle for Sam. A dichotomy exists within her. The urge to protect others and help battles against the shame that still scars Sam decades after the abuse she suffered in that Duncan day school.