The Case of the Missing Auntie by Michael Hutchinson

Author:Michael Hutchinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Second Story Press
Published: 2020-03-18T17:56:32+00:00

Chapter 16

A Face from the Past

Chickadee and Samuel were intently and happily looking through documents on the database. Chickadee had hoped to be able to save the research they found to show Grandpa. She plugged the memory stick she brought with her into the computer tower. A collage of tabs was splattered across the screen.

“Find anything interesting?” Meher smiled at the intensity of the Muskrats’ study.

“Oh, yes!” Chickadee tapped the corner of the screen and beamed at Meher. “There is so much stuff here!”

Samuel straightened the screen and took over control of the mouse. “We wanted to ask you about some stuff.” He brought up a scan of a yellowed paper. “What is this?”

Meher studied the contents of the document. “Oh, okay. This was during the implementation of the Indian Agent system. Agents were appointed by the government to enforce their rules and control First Nations. So, what happened here was, a First Nations farmer had some hay to sell. The principal of Chokecherry wanted to buy the hay, but this letter is the principal telling the First Nations farmer that he had to get permission from his Indian Agent first.”

“He had to get permission to sell his own hay?” Atim’s lip curled.

“Correct,” Meher said. “That was the law for First Nations under the Indian Agent system, from about 1876 to 1976. You didn’t want to get the agent angry because he controlled your community and its resources.”

“We figured it was something like that. We couldn’t believe it!” Samuel shook his head. “What about this one?” He brought up another tab with an old letter.

Meher bent to look at the screen again. “All right, this is…this is, well, basically, a threat letter.” Meher kept reading.

“I knew it!” Samuel smacked his hand on his cheek in disbelief.

“What?!” Atim moved beside Meher to read the screen. Once he was there, he couldn’t read, he just thought about how close he was to the attractive woman.

“It’s a letter that was given to us by a parent of children within Chokecherry Pass. They got it from their Indian Agent. It’s basically saying, if the parent left the First Nations lands to go hunting that fall, their children would not be allowed to come home from residential school for Christmas.”

Atim stopped pretending to read the screen and stood up straight.

Meher straightened too and looked around at all the Muskrats. “This actually touches on what I’m doing my book on for my doctorate; how the children in residential schools were used against their parents back on the First Nations.”

“Like when they refer to real people as pawns in a game of chess?” Samuel pinched his lower lip.

“Exactly,” Meher said. “The Canadian government was trying to take control of First Nations without having to spend a lot of resources. Access to their children was often used as both a carrot and a stick against their families. The government in Ottawa, and the local Indian Agents in each area, used the children in residential schools when they wanted to control the parents.

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