The residential school issue has been a "hot topic" for some time now and will continue to be in the minds and hearts of aboriginal peoples effected by systemic discrimination. The thought behind the song "Residential Home Boy" was born out of a discussion I had with two native brothers who were doing time in Joyceville Minimum Institution in Kingston Ontario. Both brothers and their sister were victims of the 60s scoop a government program that removed aboriginal children from their native reservation and families and placed them in foster homes. Their story gave me a heavy burden on my heart. My father was also placed in a residential home in Brantford Ontario and many times I listen to the tales of my fathers expediences. Then I thought to myself if Cord Downie can write a song about Charlie Wenjack a 12 year old native boy who ran away and died trying to get home from a residential home up north, native people like myself full blood Seneca Indian should be willing to express oneself of the hurts and pain of the treat we have felt.
The memory of a home so far away , is one of the phrases in the song that express the loneliness we have felt.
But we have survived and learned from our experiences to become better and stronger people. The pros and cons program and mentor ship group of Chris Brown has given us men the wonderful opportunity to put in music the expressions we could not normally talk about and release some of the frustrations and fears we held inside. Another song I composed was "the truth that sets me free", tells how being "inside" has given oneself the time to properly reflect and examine the issues of life that haunts us and be finally set free.
I am thankful for my freedom yo be with my family.
~~Ronald Burning
lyrics
This poem is dedicated to all residential school survivors
For many times we've been asked what is your spirit and how did your spirit die?
So this poem will tell you about a recovery of an individual and its called “Spirit Death”
Will there be room in my grave for the hurts I suffered long ago?
I have to take them with me for they're on my battered soul
When my body returns to the earth, and the soil lies over me,
Will this be the end of suffering, of a life that used to be?
I feel the warmness of the soil, I'm cradled and I belong
for the journey was very long.
I crave my death, I don't belong here anymore,
I left as I came, what was the journey without the white pain?
It would have been a wonder, and it would have been a blast
To live without atrocities, to be able to embrace my past
To love and be love, for who I was and are,
To stand with my lover, to gaze at distant stars
Making love bathed in moonlight, with a breeze upon my heart,
To finish from the start.
Is it possible I'll return again?
To come back from the northern lights?
In harmony with my people, can I trust once again?
I've been visited by the eagle, wolf and bear,
The four buffalo and the rainbows taught me to breath again.
I embrace the earth as I lay within, waiting to be born again,
This time without sin, taking my place on my earth walk,
with my beauty held within.
It will show the women and the teachings she will share,
so embrace and love her, walk by her side.
She came back for mother earth and the skies were in her eyes.
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