An archival photograph shows Stimson’s great-great-great-grandfather Chief Old Sun in 1883. He is wearing his chief’s coat and treaty medal and holding an eagle wing fan, and his hat is trimmed with ribbons by Rev. Tims’s wife Violet. (Courtesy of Glenbow Archives)
Six years later, in 1883, Bronson’s great-grandfather, Rev. John William Tims, became the first Anglican missionary sent to the Siksika nation, where he was tasked with building the community’s first church and residential school.
As was the case across Canada, Indigenous children were taken from their parents and forced into residential schools where they were physically, sexually and emotionally abused, creating profound intergenerational trauma that still ricochets through the community half a century after Old Sun closed. Many call it a cultural genocide.
“[Rev. Tims] took the children away from their parents, he forbade them to speak their own language or practise their own customs or wear their own clothes,” Bronson said of his ancestor. “And he did his best to destroy Siksika culture.”
In a bitter twist, the Siksika school was named after Stimson’s ancestor, Chief Old Sun.
“It’s ironic that his name would be used in an institution that was meant to kill the Indian in the child,” said Stimson, who himself suffered abuse at residential schools.
