THEBACHA/FORT SMITH - When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for residential schools held a public hearing in Fort Smith on May 6, it made sure there were full Kleenex boxes on the witness table.

Francois Paulette, an elder of Smith's Landing First Nation, addresses the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the residential school system at a public hearing in Fort Smith on May 6. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

The tissues were well used as former students emotionally recounted harrowing stories of the residential school experience and how it negatively impacted their lives.

However, Francois Paulette did not use any tissues as he calmly, methodically and forcefully analyzed and condemned the residential school system.

"I want to make sense of this residential school era," he said. "It is the last straw since Columbus came here of what we had to endure."

Paulette of Fort Fitzgerald, Alta., about 20 km south of Fort Smith, attended both the Holy Angels School in Fort Chipewyan, Alta., and Akaitcho Hall in Yellowknife.

The former chief, treaty land entitlement negotiator and respected elder with Smith's Landing First Nation argued the ideological foundation of the residential school system is the Doctrine of Discovery.

That is a concept that can be traced to a proclamation by a 15th-century pope. In essence, it gave church blessing to colonial powers conquering regions newly discovered by Europeans.

"When Europeans first came to this land, they saw us as subhuman," Paulette said of the treatment of indigenous people. "You were inhuman."

The Europeans' thinking and their religion were based on the premise that indigenous people had to be subdued, he added, noting the idea can be traced to Genesis 1:28, a Bible passage which speaks of subduing the Earth and having dominion over all living things.

"The Christians' Doctrine of Discovery was to do exactly that," Paulette said. "It was to exercise their authority over indigenous people."

Paulette noted the doctrine, also known as a papal bull, still exists.

"It has never been withdrawn," he said. "It's still there."

Europeans looked at indigenous nations and the land of the Americas as being vacant in a legal sense, he added.

Paulette said one of the 10 Commandments - Thou shall not steal - left an imprint on his young mind while in residential school. He could not understand why the people who ran the residential schools could claim they were good people while stealing him away from his parents and his home, forcing him to cut his long hair and taking away his moccasins.

"So thou shall not steal goes back to the Doctrine of Discovery, because they stole everything," he said. "Their whole religion, their whole doctrine was to put us down."

Paulette said, while he was abused physically and psychologically in residential school, he was never sexually assaulted.

The assimilation was the same at Holy Angels School and Akaitcho Hall - going to church, keeping hair short, loss of culture, and being made to be ashamed of who you were.

In Fort Smith in the 1960s and 1970s, the Dene regarded themselves as a very low class of people and were ashamed of what they were, Paulette said, adding many members of his own family had problems with alcohol, including himself.

"This whole community became dysfunctional and that's because they also lost their pride and dignity," he said.

However, Paulette had a spiritual awakening as an adult.

"The drum became an important part of my life," he said. "It was a time of decolonization and decoding. I was never one to be ashamed of who I was. I was not going to be in denial about my history."

However, he said some churches denounce Dene ways even today. "There are still churches that deny the drum. There are still churches that deny the expression of Dene to be who they are. That hasn't stopped."

In concluding his remarks before commissioner Chief Wilton Littlechild, Paulette recommended the federal government abandon the Indian Act and the Roman Catholic Church retract the Doctrine of Discovery.

"Our culture, our way of life is powerful," he said. "We need to get out of this box where religion, this Doctrine of Discovery, put us. We need to get out of there. We need to decolonize. We need to decode."

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.