I used to say to myself, when I grow up and have kids, I don’t wanna be like my mother. But the thing was, I didn’t understand The trauma that my mother went through and the disconnection that she had from her mother when she grew up. And when I got my, my native welfare files back when I was reading through there, I read where Mo Gumbo was full. Um, OSH was full, Tarn was full. Sister Kate’s was full. They was full of all our kids and they only could just squeezes me and my brothers into Mary Bank Mission. And some other kids went to roll. And so everyone went to school, all going different missions, just squeezing them in because all the other missions is all full. I’m the last one standing in my house now because I lost all my sister girls and a lot of, I lost a lot of brother boys too. Even my three brothers died too. So a lot of our family members from the mission have passed. We’re sick and tired of seeing our people struggle, you know, living on the streets, being bashed, alcohol, drugs. It’s just, you know, it’s a pandemic in our own community. Intergenerational trauma is real. It is something that our culture is suffering with so badly. You know, looking back now and going over things, I realize when my mother was pregnant, as I was in her womb, I was already broken. I was already broken as a child. I wasn’t even given a chance from my birth. So how can you know, how can we fix that with our people? You know, we really need to bring that awareness into the justice system, into the government. You know, the government. Were the ones that put all these policies down in our past to make our lives like this, to keep us oppressed. And we now need to empower ourselves, our children and grandchildren, and we need to start healing them before they have children so that we can break this cycle of intergenerational trauma.
Marie Pryor and Lorraine Pryor
Marribank Mission survivor Marie Pryor, and daughter Lorraine Pryor talking about their experiences as Stolen Generations and descendants of a Survivor.
