@BGWFILMSTUDIOS

9 months ago

My mom told me before she passed on that I wasn't even supposed to be born. In 1958 my parents had a baby boy. Life went on, as usual, my dad boated people from remote reserves and boated them to Gold River, BC. During this time my mom went about cleaning and preparing for supper when she didn't hear any sound coming from the baby's room, so my mom went to check on Billy. Well, sadly Billy passed what we know today as crib death. My dad contracted TB which was quite common in Nootka Sound, so my mom said that she put her foot down with my dad and said no more kids. Then I was born. I was born with club feet, death in both ears and borderline retardation. I was taken out of my home at 3 years old and taken to a residential school only to be almost killed there. One day I walked over to the principal who was a priest, and I kicked him in the shins and said I wanted to go home. The principal looked at me with anguish and he grabbed my arm and dragged me over to the basement door. He looked at me for what he thought would be his last time. He puts his hand on my back and he throws me down the step. Remember to breathe. If you believe in angels as I do, I felt an angel wrapping himself around me preventing me from hurting myself while rolling down the steps. He gently lands me at the bottom of the steps. Of course, the principal saw that I was still alive and he runs down the steps. He grabs my arm and puts me in a 5by5 cage and he handcuffs my leg to the cage so that I would not try to escape. I was 3 years old, where would I go? They didn't want me thereafter, and I was taken to the Supreme Court to be made a ward of the courts. I was then handed over to the social service to be put into the foster care system. I remember being brought to the Williams home, I couldn't walk, so the social worker carried me to the steps of the Williams. The social worker gave me a teddy bear that I still have today and his name is Boo Boo. Things weren't the greatest at the Williams, I couldn't hear, but I saw that Mrs. Williams was always yelling and throwing her arms around. Today I'm an advocate for first nations people here in Canada and in the US I am a consultant. I have been doing this now for 38 years. The reason is what I learned as an advocate is that anytime social service wants to hide any child they put them under the foster parent's name. I was born Billy George, and while in foster care at the Williams, I became Billy George Williams. The Williams was getting 1800.00 dollars a month for looking after me in the 60s, that's a lot of money. Mrs. Williams always fought with their family doctor to get me to see a specialist about having feet and ear operations to see if it would be possible. I was sent to see a specialist for my feet and another specialist for my ears. The end result was that it was possible to have feet and ear operations. The first time I was able to walk straight I was 10 years old, and I was 12 years old when I heard for the first time. When social service found out that I was walking straight and hearing, they brought the money the Williams was used to getting and brought it down to money of the day for foster parents which was 3 or 4 hundred dollars a month. The Williams didn't like that and they kicked me out. I went to my social worker and then I was brought into the supervisor's office and I was told that I would be put on independent living at age 13. Read that again. Imagine any child living on their own, this is why I am an advocate today because it still happens to children being put on their own. This happened 9 months after I first heard it, I didn't even know what the noise was when someone knocked on the door. Two weeks after I was on my own, I was kidnapped, raped by a man up in the mountains, almost killed, and left for dead up in the mountains stark naked. I tried hanging myself at 13 and said to myself that no one love me. A still voice in the air said "I love you", and I believe that it was God himself. I got down and went on with my life the best I could. I became a Christian at 15. And today I'm a filmmaker telling our story. The documentary I am working on is called the Indigenous Success Stories series.

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