The Berry Pickers

Early in The Berry Pickers, readers learn that two of Ruthie’s siblings were students in Canada’s residential school system for Indigenous children. Although their devoutly Catholic mother believed the religious instruction might be useful, their father objected to the school’s assimilationist policies, as well as the division between children and their families. The Berry Pickers offers a metaphor for the violence, both figurative and literal, inflicted upon young, Indigenous children by Canada’s residential school system: Children were taken, typically without choice, and sent away to live in schools that taught the beliefs, values, and practices of white-Canadian culture, which reinforced the perceived inferiority of their own culture. Ruthie is also taken from her family by force, raised in a culture that is not her own, and told nothing about her Mi’kmaq roots. Peters’s text was published shortly after Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee released its final report on the abuse inflicted on Indigenous children in the residential school system: In creating an allegorical representation of Indigenous children who are torn from their culture and families, Peters places her narrative in dialogue with societal issues within Canada and its Indigenous communities.

Canada’s residential school system was a network of boarding schools created to educate Indigenous children, with an emphasis in Christian religion and white-Canadian cultural values. Funded by the Canadian Government’s Department of Indian Affairs, the residential school system was a large-scale assimilationist project that sought to integrate Indigenous children into Canadian society through forced separation. Because many of Canada’s Indigenous communities and reserves are remotely located, most residential schools were far from children’s homes. This distance heightened the children’s isolation by further limiting their contact with their families and home cultures.

Although residential schools have their roots in church-funded schools for Indigenous children, beginning in the 1880s, the schools came under the authority of the Canadian government, which began to forcibly remove Indigenous children from their homes in order to educate them in a manner it felt appropriate and superior. The last of Canada’s 139 residential schools closed in the 1990s. Although the official government statement about this school system was that it was engineered to provide Canada’s most poverty-stricken population with access to proper nutrition and a high-quality education, it attempted cultural erasure. Further, abuse was rampant: Sexual violence, corporal punishment, malnutrition, disease, and unexplained death were common, and residential schooling became a source of trauma for generations of children. After the discovery of the unmarked graves of children on the sites of schools, as well as years of protests, survivor testimony, and government petitions, Canada formed the Truth and Reconciliation committee in 2011 to investigate abuse in the residential school system. Their final report was published in 2015 and, in addition to finding evidence of widespread sexual abuse, assault, and the use of children in unauthorized medical experimentation, it was discovered that thousands of children died in the care of the school system. Survivors of the residential schools have a higher likelihood of substance use disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression or other psychiatric disorders, and incarceration. Survivors were also much less likely to speak their Indigenous languages; the residential system caused an immeasurable loss of cultural knowledge within First Nations, Métis, and Inuit groups in Canada.

Many Mi’kmaq children were forcibly taken to the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Nova Scotia. It was open between 1930 and 1967 and is likely the historical basis for the school of Ruthie’s siblings. Staffed by the Roman Catholic order of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, the school was poorly constructed, unmaintained, and overcrowded. It is estimated that over 1000 children were placed at the institution during its 37-year history. The school was never properly funded, and both the facility itself and the quality of education and services provided were chronically sub-par. Teachers were underpaid, hunger and malnutrition were rampant, and the school lacked sufficient water and heat. There was high turnover among the teaching staff, as well as reports of both corporal punishment and sexual abuse. The academic standards were low, and children were provided with a markedly racist education that focused on the superiority of white societies and the inferiority of Indigenous ones. After decades of separating children from their families and subjecting them to starvation, abuse, and trauma, the school finally closed in 1967. The Sisters of Charity formerly apologized for their crimes at a Truth and Reconciliation Committee hearing in 2011. There is an association for survivors of the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School, founded in 1995 by Nora Bernard. In 1997, they filed a class action lawsuit against the Canadian government and were awarded $1.9 million in compensation.