A Story of Resilience: Gertie Pierre
- Erica
- May 18, 2024
- 2 min read
Elder i'yal-xwema't (Gertie Pierre) of Sechelt First Nation in BC is an Indian Residential School Survivor. Last year, Little Flower Academy was able to invite this Elder to their school to share her experiences as an Inidgenous elder and Residential School Survivor. I was fortunate to be in the audience during her speech and have summarized the information that particularly resonated with me from her sharings:
Her Experience
While many of us are privileged to remember a childhood of warm houses and loving families, Gertie’s childhood was spent at a cold residential school. She would often be strapped for the tiniest things like asking her peers for homework. How many of us have actually been physically hurt by our parents in any sense? As we sleep in warm beds with beautiful dreams, young Gertie had to witness girls being taken from their beds to be sexually assaulted – one of them being her sister. Despite it not being her fault, her sister blames her for the harm she received which contributed to Gertie’s feelings of guilt.
The Lasting Trauma as a Survivor
After coming out of the residential school system, it was extremely hard for Gertie to cope with her experiences. “Alcohol was a way out,” she shares. Later on, when she became a parent, it was hard for her to turn away from the alcohol addictions that helped ease the pain of a traumatic childhood. Her mistreatment of her own children was also a consequence of this. Although it is wrong that she mistreated her own children, one must understand that this is not uncommon among residential school survivors. They were not loved and never taught to love for the majority of their childhood. These are simply things that we have taken for granted. And yet, she was able to share with us that she has turned her life around; it is quite amazing. She shares that when she finally realized that alcohol was only putting more pain in her life, she decided to go through schooling at the age of 65. She earned a social work degree at UBC. She also created a group that lobbied for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. In addition, she now has a healing relationship with her children.
Her journey from trauma to healing and the persistence shown throughout her life is inspiring to many. Despite being hurt, she chooses to heal and continue to help others who are healing from similar experiences. Ultimately, her experiences are a reminder to all of us that many childhoods have been lost due to the residential school system. The sharp contrasts between our lives and Gertie’s should invoke deep gratitude for what we have and our responsibility as settlers to help Indigenous people recover from these experiences. Every piece of knowledge Gertie shared with us regarding her experiences in healing can also be applied to personal healing and healing within relationships.
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