Eugene Arcand learned to survive in the residential school system. “I’ve never experienced hunger, not until I went to a residential school,” Arcand said. It was an odyssey that I would not wish on anyone, on any land at any time.”Arcand, a Cree man from the Muskeg Lake First Nation, suffered through 11 years in the residential school system— from 1958 until 1967 at St. Michael’s Indian Residential School in Duck Lake and from 1967 until 1969 at Lebret Student Residence. The residential school system, which ran from 1831 to the late 1990s’, was designed with the objectives of assimilating Indigenous youth into Euro-Canadian and Christian ways of living. To this day Arcand said he hates September.

Source: thestar September 29, 2021 16:52 UTC