Why I Don’t Like to Kneel
- Nishnawbe Aski Nation, 2005 -
When I was nine I went to residential school. I remember that all of the students had chores to do. On Saturday mornings I had to scrub floors on my hands and knees with several other students. We would get pails full of hot soapy water and added some kind of disinfectant, such as Lysol, to the water. We scrubbed the section of the floor that had been assigned to us with a brush with bristles. We washed the floor with a cloth and hot soapy water and then rinsed it with clean warm water. All of this was done on my knees and I remember how sore they used to get. After lunch when the floor had dried we had to get back down on our hands and knees and wax the floor. The wax was that hard stuff in cans that you had to put on a cloth and rub it onto the floor. After the wax dried then we had to get back down on our hands and knees and polish it. I was on my hands and knees for so long it felt like I had been praying in church for a week. So that is why id don’t like to kneel.
