![]() ![]() She said there were many children on the steamer coming from Hazelton, the Nass Valley, Haida Gwaii, and Lax Kw’alaams. She can’t remember what she was told about going away, but she does remember the unconquerable sea-sickness that laid her flat during the entire voyage and the kindly ship’s purser who tried to help her because the person who was supposed to be “supervising” her made no effort to check-in. “You know, it would have been really hard on my mother because it was three of us at the same time, and then just my younger sister would have been at home with her.” She was 10 when she was taken with her brothers, 12 and 14, to a residential school in Port Alberni. Her older siblings had been taken to a residential school in Edmonton. ![]() Haines was on the younger end of 12 siblings. The other parents, grieving in their own ways had left the dock, but Haines said she and her brothers stood at the ship’s railing, watching their mother watching them until they could see each other no more. Haines said that when she wrote the song, her mother’s face was prominent in her vision.Īn image cemented in her memory and clutched in the sanctum of her being is that of her mother standing on the pier, alone in silent sorrow watching a steamship carry three of her children across the water. The accompanying dance personifies priests in long black robes wrenching children from their mother’s and taking them away. The solemn song starts with a heart-wrenching mother’s plea. So I based the song on the fact of the poor mother’s cries,” Haines said. ![]() She wrote it to chronicle the heartache felt across First Nations communities as their children were taken and placed into the residential school system, where many eventually lost their way to the demons of substance abuse, alcoholism, self-harm, stolen culture and identity loss. The song was written more than 30 years ago by Camilla Haines, a residential school survivor born into the Gitxsan nation and married into the Nisga’a Nation. “A Mother’s Cry”, the revered song of northwestern B.C.’s Nisga’a people so effectively orates the anguish of empty-armed mothers as their children were stolen that counsellors and community supports are made available after each performance. My poor broken heart, they’ve taken my children away.” ![]()
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