Former Mohawk Institute reopens at Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford

The Woodland Cultural Institute in Brantford showed off its new self Monday.

The former Mohawk residential school is reopening after being transformed into a historic site reflecting the treatment First Nations children suffered in Canada’s notorious residential schools.

It’s taken 10 years and $26 million to transform the school, and while it represents new hope for the future, as people have a chance to see inside the residential school experience, it also contains painful memories.

The Mohawk Institute dates back to 1828, with a prominent building from 1904.

Established by the Anglican Church, an estimated 15,000 children went through the residential school.

“To me, it’s the doorway to hell,” said Diane Hill. “That was the doorway to hell.”

Hill went to the school in the early 1960s.

“We were taken through this door — my sister, my brother and I — in that room is where we were separated,” said Hill.

She says the trauma of the residential school left her with fearful memories.

“Fear, fear — absolutely deep daily fear, because we lived according to unwritten rules,” said Hill. “How long was I here? I’m still here with the nightmares, with the flashbacks, with all the rest of it.”

“Sometimes I’m still here. It’s a struggle.”

School survivor Roberta Hill says the residential schools were meant to wipe out First Nations’ culture.

“The agenda is to take away your culture, your language, your identity, so this was the perfect place, I guess, for the government and church,” said Roberta.

Former students say there was widespread abuse: children weren’t fed properly, they were denied their own language, forced to work, and encouraged to hate and fight each other.

In the school is a closet where children were locked up, and in another area, a hole in the wall — discovered after the school closed — where children would go and hide.

“These buildings represent harm that occurred, and was perpetrated by the Canadian government, and the churches toward our community, toward our children, so a lot of hurt and a lot of pain,” said Heather George with the Woodland Cultural Centre. “I think it still represents that, but I also think that the space now, is a space of hope.”

“It’s a space to make sure we’re caring for the stories of survivors and the stories are never forgotten,” said George.

The residential school closed 1970, and now it’s reopening at the Woodland Cultural Centre as an Interpreted historic site.

“This will be a Canadian Museum of Conscience, the first one in this country, so we’ll never go down that path again of what happened to us,” said Amos Key, a Six Nations Councillor.

While the people who went to these schools are left with trauma, they also left a younger generation of children whose parents didn’t have the chance to learn parenting skills.

Like Donald Culbertson’s mother.

“She was never able to tell her sons about, she loved them, she never used those words,” said Culbertson, “and that’s what the school taught her: how to not love.”

“It tore the family apart,” said Culbertson.

Children who went to the school called it “the Mush Hole”, because of the bad oatmeal mush they were served as meals all the time.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission determined that at least 3,200 children died in residential schools across Canada, probably many more.

Officials are still trying to determine how many died at the Mohawk Institute.

READ MORE: Ontario government investing $7.7 million in supports for residential school survivors