Healing begins in Punnichy

A newly-ordained Anglican priest is back on the reserve where her people suffered abuse.

DEBRA FIEGUTH
CW Senior Writer
– Punnichy, SK –

An abuse survivor and Anglican priest is using her experience and skills to reach out to her own people who are still suffering from the trauma of residential school.

Dale Gillman, a member of the Gordon’s Reserve band in southern Saskatchewan, was ordained a priest in the Anglican diocese of Qu’Appelle this spring. She conducts church services in nearby Punnichy, but her main work is in the area of healing and reconciliation between the church and the people.

“I’ve seen so many of my own people commit suicide or die a violent death through alcohol,” says Gillman. “It doesn’t have to happen. My main emphasis is to give people tools to choose different ways.”

Of the 1,600 cases brought against the Anglican Church of Canada, 200 relate to the Gordon’s School, which operated in Punnichy from 1889 to 1986.

Gillman herself was not a student in the residential school system–by the time she went to school the people had a choice and her father wouldn’t allow his children to go to residential school–but she was sexually abused as a child, by an Anglican priest. It was only when she went through counseling and her own healing process that she realized that in spite of abuse, “you can live a full life and a very, very good life.”

Gillman’s Christian heritage goes back to her great-great-grandfather, Charles Pratt, who started the first church on the Gordon’s Reserve, now a community of about 1,200 people. She has had to wrestle with that heritage because of what happened to her personally and what happened to her people.

Angry at church

“I was very angry at the Anglican church because of the whole process of assimilation and the way they viewed us as First Nations people,” she admits.

But it’s because of that heritage, combined with her own story, that she can sit down with residential school survivors and listen to their pain. “One of the things I can do is look the person in the eyes and ask forgiveness,” she says. “I can, as an Anglican priest, say ‘I’m sorry.’ And I’ve done it several times.”

She doesn’t take that role lightly. “It’s a very humbling thing for me to do,” she says. “I speak as Christ’s representative because the pain is so real.”

First Nations people have suffered tremendous loss, Gillman points out, including loss of culture, identity and spirituality. So many of them feel they have no identity.

“As a Christian I have found out that my identity is in Christ,” says Gillman. “It’s important for me as a Christian to tell my people that we are valuable, that we are special and made in God’s image.”

Dale Gillman says her new role as Anglican priest helps her counsel fellow abuse survivors

FELLOWSHIP MAGAZINE

First Nations people have suffered tremendous loss, including loss of culture, identity and spirituality. So many of them feel they have no identity.