"These stories are part of the environmental history of Indian residential schools: a history of energy, Land, and exploitation. Remembering them means acknowledging the children who were harmed and refusing to let their labour remain invisible."

"Forced wood cutting and hauling at Chooutla was not a benign lesson in self-reliance. It was a system that endangered children, stole their classroom time, and transferred institutional heating costs onto their bodies."

"This is a story about Indian Education, but it is also about Land-based resistance, about ceremony, about the scent of beaver castor and sage cutting through colonial fog...I am still here. The Land is still here. And together, we remember."

"The Land has always remembered me, even when institutions tried to make me forget. The Land taught me what the classroom never could: how to listen in silence, how to give thanks, and how to remember. Now, I help others remember too."

In this post, Elvis Thomas, Eva Linklater, and Laura Golebiowski share the story of eight children who were taken from nisicawayasihk in what is now northern Manitoba to the Red Deer Industrial School and how the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation is keeping the memory of these children alive.

The post is an excerpt from Antoine’s memoir From Bear Rock Mountain. touchwoodeditions.com/collections/...