Liz Callaway

Transcript

i was a young girl i remember working in the yard with my grandpa in those hot summer okanagan days you could often find him tending to his fish puttering in the yard or washing his prized oldsmobile the midsummer days just wearing shorts no shirt no shoes no service didn't seem to apply to him when he was shirtless it was hard not to notice the marks across his back scars white against his red skin because you see even though i don't look the part grandpa earl was first nations born in saskatchewan and spent most of his life in beautiful british columbia but he had a hard

life the second oldest of four boys when he was eight years old his father was murdered great-grandma and all four boys were sent on a train to vancouver where she became ill and all the boys were left at an orphanage all four with different fates grandpa he was adopted into a family who did so only to enslave him on the surface everything seemed perfect he went to school with everybody else but when he came home it was a much different story some might say that he was lucky he avoided the residential schools but ultimately this young boy was brought into a home with no love

no warmth and only fear while he may not have been part of the turmoil and torture that we're hearing about with residential schools they were still hiding him still trying to take the indian out of him or perhaps just break him and those scars from belts and whip striking his back from not cutting the grass properly with scissors for stopping because his hands were bleeding it was only when he had a few too many scotch that the stories would flow perhaps because they were hidden so deep where the light could not reach them but if you were quiet you could hear them at 18 he

packed his bags and he left never to look back even when the adopted family came looking for him many years later he refused to see them and i can't blame him even with the beautiful life he had built for himself with good jobs a small business and a beautiful family he didn't want to share that he was not willing to forgive this is where things get murky my first nation's grandfather married a scottish woman through and through and when that scotch began to flow and the stories were being told her cadence would change and you would hear the slightest hint of a scottish brogue half

my family victims the other half instigators so this year when people in the media started paying attention to what the elders have been telling us for decades my family history came bubbling to the surface how do you reconcile that half your family is the abuser the other half the abused how do you forgive grandpa earl didn't and now here we are two generations later sitting in this seat asking for forgiveness my question is how do you forgive a family that enslaved a young boy those people are no longer earthside their errors gone with them how do you forgive the trauma that is generations deep that

is in ourselves in my dna how do you forgive a family a country a nation for enslaving a young boy allowing this to happen because he was different this is how you tell the story you no longer stay quiet you write you scream you yell until somebody listens you stand up for those that didn't have a voice you change the narrative and i forgive i listen to the i am sorry i help create change and i understand that the life the family and the love that i have built is forgiveness you

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.