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......today there’s an agency called Child and Family Service- I’m sure they have that in the United States too, where the white people take away our kids. They always find a reason. And that reason is no good: you’re a drunk, you’re- you know. They have a reason to take our kids away and they’re placed into white foster homes. And so we’re getting back into the 1930’s now when the Mounties came, RCMP, and the nuns and the priests and the Indian agent; they came and they took me and my brother away in 1934. My mom, she tried to resist, but if you do that, you’re going to go to jail. And it happened to some other people there in my generation; some of the parents went to jail.
DL: For trying to keep their own children.
AT: Yes. And on account of that situation, as I grew up, even though secretly I retained my Dakota language, I never had a real nice bond with my mom until on her death bed in 1972. So that’s how much damage they did to me.
DL: Almost an entire lifetime.
AT: My entire life. I was always abused and all that, and I got a settlement, but you know, money is never gonna fix nothing, ya know?
DL: You’re talking about the settlement with the Canadian government when they did reparations for children who were forced to go to government schools.
AT: Yes. All of our brothers and sisters, they were raped; they were sexually raped, the girls and even some of the boys, by the priests, by the supervisors. But if you’re going to use some of this, I would like that because right now there is a group from your country, from Montana, they want to sue the pope now- the Catholics do. And, “do you think you can join us?” And, “sure,” I said. They were last to know. They were last to know. When I talked to you earlier at the beginning, I was kind of leery of it, you know.
