Movement still restricted after policy ended
OTTAWA— Leona Blondeau, 82, remembers a very different life when she was growing up on George Gordon First Nation, Sask.
“We never went anywhere. We stayed on the reserve. We were very segregated . . . It was the way life was, I thought. I didn’t realize that wasn’t the right thing to do,” said Blondeau.
That was not entirely by choice, as a new documentary film, The Pass System, shows as it depicts a little-discussed era of Canadian history that forbade First Nations people in the Prairies from leaving their reserves without signed permission from the local Indian agent.
Blondeau was 8 years old when the extralegal federal government policy was officially revoked in 1941, but she and other living witnesses to history recall restrictions on their movements lasting until at least her teenage years.
She remembers being 14 years old when she and her siblings — she was the eldest of six — came home from residential school for the summer and their mother took them to the closest town, Punnichy, Sask., for the day.
“We travelled by wagon and horse and go there and our treat was an ice cream cone. That was our treat for the day,” Blondeau recalled.
She says her mother had to get permission from the local Indian agent before she could create those memories with her children.
“They were like a receipt and you had to tell how long you were going away off the reserve and he signed them to give you his permission,” she said.
Blondeau remembers a happy childhood spent close to her family, but says that as she grew older she became angry and resentful at how limited her life and future appeared.
“Your life was finished at Grade 8. That was it,” she said.