Warning: Some of the details in this story may be disturbing to some readers. Discretion is advised. The passing of Queen Elizabeth II and the mass mourning that’s followed brings up deep-rooted trauma for some Indigenous people, including a prominent matriarch in B.C., who survived aresidential institution.
Now serving as director of the Bosa Centre for Film and Animation at Capilano University in North Vancouver, Manuel founded many of the programs students starting a new term are taking.
What few of them know about the filmmaker and educator is the trauma she carries as a survivor of the Port Alberni, B.C., residential institution. “I was beaten, I was strapped, I was starved.
I had my head held underwater until I passed out. I was just a child,” Manuel said of her experience at the institution of assimilation in the 1960s.