In daycare, I already met a social worker.
At St. Patrick Elementary in Kindergarten
They called me, “Beaver Tooth.”
The principal gave me the strap
For play wrestling with my sibling.
My grade one teacher was a nun
Who accidentally swore in front of me.
By grade two, I sat in a court room.
By grade three, I saw a lot of RCMP,
By grade four, I was a foster child,
By grade five, foster mom locked me up,
By grade six, a foster mom told me
That my culture was the “devil’s work,”
By grade seven, I saw 23 counselors,
By grade eight, I was drunk and high
In the basement of my foster bedroom,
By grade nine, I was on the foster mom’s birth control pill,
By grade ten, I slept on rocks at night,
By grade eleven, I was pregnant.
By grade twelve, I was a mother.
I found an old Honour Roll.
I once had higher grades
Than the local lawyers and doctors.
I saw their names on the list.
They were all Catholic. I was not.
I graduated with very few Natives.
All my teacher’s faces were White.
They were all Catholic. I was not.
Streamed for trades,
Sent to cooking class,
With a high 90 average in Biology.
I remember sleeping in the same clothes
For weeks as I sat in Chemistry.
I stopped working harder when I always
Saw that opportunities were not set up for
The White passing Dene, Metis, or Natives.
I refused to mine the land,
I refused what they wanted me to become.
Simply because I was Dene.
I chose not to be Catholic,
So I suffered in silence.
When I was raped, I was not Catholic,
When I was kidnapped, I was not Catholic,
When I was strangled, I was not Catholic,
When I was stabbed, I was not Catholic.
Still, I am not Catholic.
I am Dene.
