Laurie Wilson

Image Credit: Submitted: Laurie Wilson

Growing up at the Head of the Lake in the early 1960s, Laurie Wilson remembers a garden full of food and plenty of cattle that kept the extended family well fed.

She never saw white people but remembers the Indian agent coming to her grandparents' home and her dad drinking whiskey with the conservation officer who would tell him not to shoot too many deer and try to talk him into getting a tag.

She remembers the conversations as being friendly, but unbeknownst to her, at one point the Indian agent was organizing for her to be bused into Vernon to attend St. James Parish School.

Wilson started attending the Catholic school in 1963 or 1964, aged just five or six, and from there, her life forever changed.

"They tried to make us understand why we were so substandard, and why our ways, or what they thought of our ways, was wrong," Wilson told iNFOnews.ca. "They called drums 'calling the devil' and 'releasing the savage.'"

"They made sure that we knew that drumming was evil. We knew that heathen practices were bad. Dark-skinned people were dirtier and more prone to sin."

Wilson faced a daily barrage of racist abuse from the largely white Catholic students who attended the school.

"You get the comments from the other kids that you're dirty and you're stupid... kids are mean anyway, but it was a concerted effort to let us know by the students and by the teachers and by the... nuns... that we were like ... animals," she said. "We had to understand that our ways were wrong, we had to understand that the drums were wrong, we had to understand that the language was wrong, and it was kind of a crash course in how to be a good Indian."

She doesn't remember any of the kids having repercussions for what they did and the abuse didn't just come from the other children it also came from the institution itself.

Now, more than 50 years after she left St. James' school she suing both the Catholic Church and the federal government.

She suffered spiritual, cultural, sexual, psychological and physical abuse at the hands of the clergy, the religious sisters, teachers, staff and other students, she claims.

"We were told... that because we didn't have souls, we weren't going to go to heaven," she said.

Along with the verbal abuse, Wilson says there was a lot of violence at the school.

"I got strapped all the way up my arms... because I wouldn't cry," she said.

And the abuse wasn't just physical.

In Wilson's Notice of Claim filed at the Vernon courthouse Oct. 23, alleges she was also sexually abused.

Wilson said she doesn't remember a single day at school when something didn't happen.

"I was just this little, skinny, mouthy kid...but every single day going in there I was ready for something to happen," she said.

Laurie Wilson cira 1970s

Image Credit: SUBMITTED: Laurie Wilson

Wilson attended the school with her sister who looked out for her, but neither of them mentioned what took place there when they got home.

Her mother was sick with polio and her father spent much of his time life working in camps away.

Wilson's grandparents, and great-grandparents were devout Catholics.

"They wouldn't allow any criticism of the church," she said.

Unlike many stories from residential school survivors who talk of being punished for speaking their own language, Wilson knew little of the nsyilxc?, the language spoken by the syilx. The culture of her ancestors had already been largely destroyed by the time Wilson headed to school.

Both her parents attended residential schools, her father leaving after he spent three months in a coma having been badly beaten.

"I did know that there were several people who had continued the culture...with the threat of being taken to jail, and... having their kids taken away," she said.

Wilson says she was a kid that asked a lot of questions.

"It really irritated people," she said.

After St. James she went on to high school and university.

Years later, and now in her early 40s, she attended UBC law school and graduated with a law degree in 2000.

Sadly, the attitudes of some of her UBC classmates weren't very different from the attitudes she heard 40 years earlier.

"One guy came up to me and said, 'How much money do I pay you a month to be here?'" she said.

Another person said she didn't belong there.

Striking attitudes for those who would go on to become the lawyers and judges of the future.

Wilson says the driving force in everything that she's done has been anger, which she describes as a double-edged sword.

The court case isn't about the money, and she says she won't settle out of court.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED: Laurie Wilson

She's also not the first to sue St. James for abuse.

In 2020, the Catholic church settled the lawsuits of two brothers who were sexually abused by a priest at the school in the 1970s. Several other cases are also ticking through the courts.

While residential school survivors and those who went to day schools have been caught up in class action lawsuits – which resulted in receiving a fraction of the compensation – Wilson's case doesn't fit those categories allowing her to pursue justice herself.

"It's not about anybody saying sorry to me," she said.

It's about far more than that.

"My anger drove me, but if anything did nurture me, it was watching the culture come back," she said. "The continuation and this edification and the support has come from us rebuilding our culture, rebuilding the strength of our women, rebuilding the strength of our family, learning about our ceremonies and using those to heal ourselves," she said.

"That's... the most valuable and that will continue... our ways are coming back in a way that I never could have imagined."

While Wilson's case will likely take years to make its way through the courts she knows doing it this way is right for her.

"Finally, I think that I can let go of that anger and I can tell that little girl that she was looked after. That's the space I'm looking for," she said.

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

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