My home community of Attawapiskat First Nation is celebrating the annual graduations of students from Kattawapiskak Elementary School and Vezina Secondary School. These are proud moments for our community as families get to celebrate their children.
These moments are especially important for our First Nation communities, as education in my parents’ time was a traumatic event that affected the lives of young people. My parents, Marius and Susan Kataquapit, both attended residential school as children and it was terrible for them and their families. Their parents were forced to give up their young ones for the entire year in order to go to school and the children were separated from their families and communities. For the government, it was a form of assimilation that was designed to remove the indigenous culture from a child’s life and force them to integrate into European Canadian society. Unfortunately, that kind of education only produced fear, hopelessness and trauma. It is also a matter of public record now that these residential schools were havens of abuse of all kinds that deeply and negatively traumatized an entire generation of Indigenous people.
To add to the hurt and anxiety that my parents must have lived with when they thought of the education system, their children were taken into the Boarding Home school system. My parents had to give up their children so that they could attend secondary school in the south. Before 1990, Attawapiskat and the coastal communities on the James Bay coast had no way to provide secondary school education. The solution was to send young teenagers from their northern homes to be housed in boarding homes in cities to the south to complete their schooling.
I was 13 years old when I had to leave our community to attend secondary school in the south, in Timmins and North Bay. I had a good education and was a good student but throughout that time, I deeply missed my home and my family. It was also a great culture shock for us because we only spoke Cree at the time, and English was our second language, which we used only at school. It was a deeply troubled time for all of us as we were away from our families, our culture and our language.
So when I heard the news that my home community was celebrating its graduates this year, I was happy to know that these young people had completed their schooling while living at home with their parents, families and friends. This is especially true for the secondary school graduates. During those years of high school, they were home, and they had the chance to be on the land, to hunt and fish, or to just wander into the wilderness with their families, Elders and traditional people. They were exposed to the language and the culture and they were made to feel proud of who they are and where they come from.
My nephew, Landyn Kataquapit, and my grandnephew, Adam John Shisheesh, along with eight other local students, are part of the Vezina Secondary School graduating class of 2026. Landyn said he was happy to have completed his schooling at home and that he was looking forward to attending post-secondary studies in Sudbury in the fall. I talked to my grandnephew Adam John a few months ago in the spring and he was just as excited to plan out his future after high school.
Their Principal, Shoukat Ali, who has been with the school system in Attawapiskat for the past 18 years, said that he was very happy to see these young people complete their schooling and to have seen their growth over the many years he has been there. Monica Shah, the school guidance counselor, also shared her praise for these new graduates.
I also spoke to Miriam Wesley, who works for the Attawapiskat First Nation Education Authority, and she added that she was proud to see this latest group of young people completing high school. I see Miriam as a cultural Elder in our community, as her family has been involved in local leadership for generations. She is fluent in our Cree language and she holds a great deal of knowledge and wisdom passed down by her family. She also witnessed the negative effects of the Residential School system and the Boarding Home School system. So it was very meaningful and special for me to hear how proud and happy she was to know that this generation of young people completed their education at home.
In addition to these high school graduates, my family is celebrating Grade 8 graduates, including my grandniece Raylee Shisheesh and Kindergarten graduates, including my nieces Autumn and Susannah Kataquapit. Families in Attawapiskat, as well as all the northern coastal communities in James Bay, are celebrating their graduates again this year and it is a cause of great celebration for everyone.
After generations of traumatic experiences with the education system, we now get to celebrate our young people the way we are supposed to. Congratulations to all our northern graduates!
