‘A vessel of healing’: Survivors’ quilt shares stories, sisterhood

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The small red fabric rectangle in the top left corner of the Talking Quilt, cut and stitched nearly 25 years ago, is full of memories Elder Sandra Head still struggles to speak about today.

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Fabric cut-outs depict the residential school she attended and the dormitories where she and her classmates lived; a small white cross; a raised hand, partially covered with black and white bars, and a tall figure standing behind it.

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But the neighbouring quilt square, set apart by its bright yellow frame, is all about what happened next.

“This is the part of my life where I have turned to my culture, how I go forward in my life now,” she said, pointing out the art supplies, the bright silver jingle, the tipi with one floating feather over the entrance, the comfortable chair where she can now sit and rest as an Elder.

“This quilt is a vessel of healing.”

In 2000, a group of women from James Smith Cree Nation gathered to sew quilt squares representing their life experiences, including the trauma and abuse they had endured at residential school.

The project, begun by Ruby Head, came to be known as the Talking Quilt. For many of the women involved, it was the first time they had ever told their stories.

“Even talking about the residential schools was difficult back then, because we hadn’t talked about our experiences in the residence and how it affected all of us,” Sandra Head recalled. “When we were making this quilt, we cried; we laughed; we shared stories.”

Rhonda Sanderson, a third-generation residential school survivor, remembers how working on the quilt taught her to tell the truth of what happened on her own terms: A lesson she could never learn at home.

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“All my granny could say about Onion Lake School was that ‘we worked hard’ … and my grandfather didn’t talk too much about his experience,” Sanderson recalled. “He was part of the generation where they didn’t talk about it — don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel, don’t cry.”

Sanderson’s parents only told her about their time in residential school after she began speaking publicly about her own experiences, when she and a group of fellow survivors — “it’s like a fellowship; I call them my sisters,” Sanderson says — took their abusers to court.

“When we were at the Queen’s Bench trial, my dad had a lot of anger and I couldn’t figure out why,” Sanderson said. “After the court and all of that was done, he told me that he went through abuse in residential school, and so did my mom. (And) I know my parents blamed themselves for the abuse that I received. They kept telling me they were sorry, and why didn’t I say anything? Why didn’t I tell? But I was too scared, because punishment came harsh in residential schools.”

Working on the Talking Quilt, Sanderson found the support she needed to speak up and be heard. 

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“We talked; we laughed; it was even fun,” she said. “This blanket brought us to sisterhood and healing, and it’s a resource that we can leave for the years ahead.”

Sandra Head says the women who made the quilt did not want these stories to be lost; but as survivors are aging, and the previous keeper of the Talking Quilt passed away, she needed to find a new caretaker for it.

That was when she met Eileen Zaba, a researcher from Saskatchewan Polytechnic who was working with James Smith Cree Nation to develop new tools and frameworks to help communities respond to tragedies like the 2022 mass stabbing attacks on the First Nation that left 11 people dead and 17 more injured.

Head told Zaba about the Talking Quilt and how it had helped the women who made it find healing and community.

“These incredibly courageous women have given a voice to the ongoing trauma and tragedy that they have lived through,” Zaba says.

“Speaking of the horrible abuses that they experienced through residential school and after residential school, the integral part of healing was realizing that the shame does not belong to them. It is also a part of breaking the cycle, of making their children and their câpâns aware that abuse is not OK and not to be tolerated.”

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Through these conversations, the women saw an opportunity to preserve the quilt for generations to come.: They decided Saskatchewan Polytechnic should become the new keeper of the Talking Quilt.

For Julia Whitehead, whose mother sewed her stories into fabric squares 25 years ago, seeing the Talking Quilt on display at Sask. Polytech was an emotional moment: This quilt is her mother’s voice, telling the stories she couldn’t say out loud, finally brought into the open.

“My mom never told me about the experiences she went through — not once,” said Whitehead. 

“I’m glad the blanket is here so that not only our people who went through it now, but some of our younger generation are starting to know. I’m glad it’s out here in the public.”

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