The Bridge

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available to provide support for survivors and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour service at 1-866-925-4419.

Mental health counselling and crisis support is also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat.

Early on a drizzly February morning, Yamatemathexwi stops walking and stands perfectly still before a wooden bridge over a gentle river. The ease and laughter of the morning’s coffee chatter has left her.

She pushes her hands deeper into her coat pockets and gazes up to a white, cross-bearing grotto standing at the top of the sodden hill ahead.

In the far distance, against a sky darkened by clouds, stands the residential school she was forced to attend decades ago as a girl.

“I lived here. I didn’t go home after school … My family was just across the river, but I couldn’t go home,” said Yamatemathexwi, 73, also known as Matsqui Chief Alice McKay.

“That’s a harsh reality.”

Last year, Yamatemathexwi’s community was one of three First Nations to regain six square kilometres of so-called Crown land next to the site of St. Mary’s Indian Residential School, which operated for more than a century.

As the nations move forward with plans to develop the area through a precedent-setting land back agreement, survivors and their communities are re-examining the relationship between stolen children and stolen land that cost them the area in the first place.

Yamatemathexwi was forced to attend St. Mary’s as a teenager from September 1962 to December 1963. The school sat on a grassy field near Fraser River Heritage Park in Mission, B.C.

Residential schools, created to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children, ran rife with abuse and other atrocities perpetrated largely by clergy.

“I still have a hard time talking [about it]. I grew up in that era where it was really bad,” she recalled, standing on the path with her daughter.

“It was really bad.”

The institutions were a key element in the Canadian federal government’s mission to assimilate Indigenous people so settlers could have unchecked access to the land and its resources. By alienating children from their families, language and culture – all of which are deeply tied to the land itself – the government slowly broke families down and removed the resistance against the mainstream.

The schools were central to a policy the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said was best described as “cultural genocide.”

“It all was part of this ginormous, sinister plan,” said Naka:man, also known as Leq’á:mel Coun. Darrel McKamey.

Federal and provincial governments still control the majority of land in Canada, despite Indigenous ancestral rights and title having been proven in courts time and again.

Over the past decade, a grassroots movement known as Land Back has pushed harder for governments and settlers to return land to Indigenous people. Chants of “land back” often echo over rallies, gatherings and protests across Canada.

The vast swath of land that includes Fraser River Heritage Park, on the north side of the Fraser River, was never ceded by the Leq’á:mel, Matsqui and Sumas First Nations. It means those nations still hold the underlying title, but as in countless parts of the country, Crown title was assumed.

“I’ve heard some legal people call [Crown title] a fictitious title that is there to more or less cover up the fact that the land was just practically seized from us,” said Sumas Chief Dalton Silver, who was forced to attend St. Mary’s as a teenager from 1973 to 1975.

“If this were to happen in another country, Canada would probably be the first to criticize – and probably be one of the most vocal critics.”

In 2011, the City of Mission asked the province to acquire the land in the area so it could be turned into a park.

At first, Sto:lo chiefs were on board. Then Naka:man got a call from a colleague, Matsqui Coun. Brenda Morgan.

“She was like, ‘Hey, why are we [giving] up this Crown land in our backyard to the city when we should be taking that land back?’” recalled McKamey, now in his 40s.

The Leq’á:mel, Matsqui and Sumas First Nations set their sights on getting the area back. As a first step, they needed to find a way to qualify for sponsored Crown grants – a program through which the provincial government can transfer land to municipalities and regional districts.

First Nations aren’t eligible for the grants unless they form a society.

So, they did – and the LMS Society was born.

“For us, it is more like a tribal collective now than just a society. We are all family, right? We’re small communities, but when you put the three of us together, this is our shared territory,” Naka:man said.

“I’m so proud to be a part of it,” added Yamatemathexwi. “We’re going to make a difference. We’re going to make people understand.”

After more than a decade of negotiations, the nations formally reclaimed their lands in an agreement with the city and the province signed on July 21, 2021.

McKamey said the deal, called Í:xel Sq’eq’ó, is considered to be one of the first of its kind.

The vast majority of the land – five of the six square kilometres – will be leased back to the City of Mission and preserved as a park for the public to enjoy.

The remainder is being saved for much-needed housing developments overlooking the Fraser River.

Sections of the park have been set aside to be searched with ground-penetrating radar to recover any remains buried near St. Mary’s.

The nations are still deciding what exactly to do with the residential school building itself. The structure is still standing, but has been transformed to house a daycare, an early learning centre and Sto:lo offices.

McKamey once counted himself as a member of the younger, millennial generation who thought such sites should be demolished. Yamatemathexwi believes the building should stay as proof of the past, but needs to be accompanied by new, properly funded healing centres on site.

“We have to work together and talk it out and see what we can come up with,” she said. “It needs to be something that recognizes what we went through and in a way, helping to make it better.”