Above right: Raising of a totem pole by Hesquiaht carver Tim Paul in Port Alberni, BC. Paul said the work could represent the graves found at residential schools. Eric Plummer/Ha-Shilth-Sa Newspaper
For most of her life, Cat Nicholson has felt a little lost, but thanks to a nudge from her daughter Grace to start exploring her Indigenous roots, at the age of 49, she is finally beginning to understand why.
In July 2020, Grace signed them both up for an online course to learn Nuučaan̓uɫ, the language of the Hesquiaht Nation, to which Nicholson’s biological mother belonged. The course taught them as much about the culture and history of the community as it did the language. “Once I started to connect with the community, I realized this was a whole part of my life that I missed. I was that lost girl for so long and I’m on my way back, but I need to do it slowly,” said Nicholson, an Executive Assistant in Canadian Banking Technology at Scotiabank.
Nicholson says it was the Scotiabank Indigenous Network employee resource group that ultimately helped her find a way to be a part of the community. Nicholson, who joined the Bank three years ago is the Ontario communications manager of the ERG, and a member of other diversity and inclusion committees.
Her journey of self-discovery began when she was 16 years old and pregnant with her daughter, who is now 32. That’s when Nicholson learned that Audrey and Garfield Moyer — Mom and Dad — adopted her when she was a baby and were in fact her paternal grandparents, and that her “brother” Kenneth was actually her biological father. It was hard to take it all in, Nicholson said. In addition to being about to have a baby, she had lost Audrey, the only mother she knew, to leukemia two years earlier, shortly after the family moved to Toronto from Victoria.
Moyer later told Nicholson who her biological mother was and how to get in touch with her. “That’s when I learned my biological mother, Geraldine Amos, was from a reserve, though I didn’t understand the full implications of that,” she said. Nicholson connected with Amos, who now lives in Alberta, and eventually got status cards for herself and Grace from Hesquiaht First Nation, a remote 350-hectare reserve on Vancouver Island north of Tofino with a membership of 800. Only one family now lives on the reserve year-round, while many others visit. Flooding in 1964 and the remoteness of Hesquiaht harbour, saw the community scatter to nearby Port Alberni and Victoria, while others moved farther afield to Ontario, Idaho and California.
Connecting with people from Hesquiaht First Nation in 2020 through the Nuučaan̓uɫ course — some of whom are her relatives —helped her understand more about the horrors of the schools and how they affected her and her family. Nicholson had previously taken Scotiabank’s training module, Building Indigenous Cultural Competency, and some courses through the University of Alberta and the University of Toronto, but she still didn’t know if her family had been affected by the residential school system.
 |
Photo: Cat Nicholson's journey of self
discovery started when she was 16.
Among the many learning moments, one that stood out was when a cousin who connected with her through the class told her he was an alcoholic. Not knowing how to respond, Nicholson reached out to the course instructor, who explained that there were many in the community who had been abused in residential schools and who had later turned to alcohol to forget.
Nicholson was also struck by several classmates who are “silent speakers” — people who understand Nuučaan̓uɫ but can’t speak it. They all went to residential schools, she said, recalling the sadness she felt for one classmate who was unable to get past the memory of having sewing pins stuck through her tongue when she used Nuučaan̓uɫ in the school.
While taking the course, Nicholson again reached out to Amos. Amos explained that she had been damaged by the sexual and physical abuse she experienced at residential school and by beatings from her mother from the time she was a little girl. She had given Nicholson up so she would have a better life, she said.
“When I first found out who my mother was, I was angry. She was 18 when she had me. I was only 16 when I had my daughter and it wasn’t easy, but I raised her, and I went to school and have had good jobs,” Nicholson said.
“Now, I understand. Cousins my age and younger went to residential schools. For so many years, families had to deal with the pain of being beaten and abused, being stolen from their families. I’m very fortunate.”
Nicholson is glad Scotiabank is recognizing Sept. 30, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and hopes to be able to continue to educate people about the residential school system. “It took 215 bodies to be found in Kamloops for this to be reported by mainstream media and since then hundreds more graves have been found, but you hardly hear about it,” Nicholson said.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated that 6,000 children died at the schools.
Another thing Nicholson really values is that she was able to add the Hesquiaht name the band gave her — n̓aaswiḥčis, which is pronounced “noss-weeh-chis” and means new beginnings — and the words for thank you to her Scotiabank email signature this summer as an act of reconciliation. “The Hesquiaht language is nearly extinct, and it connects us to our beliefs and history through the many who are now re-learning and speaking,” she said.
Nicholson says her journey to find her voice as part of the Indigenous community has inspired her to look for a meaningful way to help other people like her through work in diversity and inclusion.
We never know what the people we work beside every day are going through in their lives, she said. “We all have different stories and sometimes we need to just take the time to listen to learn, and to have a lot of empathy,” Nicholson said.
Last year, Scotiabank announced a $600,000 donation to Indspire, Canada’s largest Indigenous-led and Indigenous-focused charity, to provide First Nations, Inuit and Métis youth with access to financially and culturally relevant resources that address key educational barriers, including access to networking, coaching and mentorship. The donation was part of ScotiaRISE, the Bank’s 10-year, $500-million initiative to promote economic resilience among disadvantaged groups. Scotiabank has also committed to doubling the number of Indigenous employees across all levels of the Bank by 2025.
