Katherine Sorbey

Her parents are Susan Johnson from Eskasoni and Noel Johnson from Membertou. Her early childhood with her family was spent living a traditional lifestyle, where we survived by practicing our traditional ways of living off the land and waters. Hunting, fishing, gathering foods and medicines, they moved around to many places. They had a difficult life and this had an impact on my entire family. At the age of five years, Katherine attended Indian Day School on reserve, where she was forbidden to speak my language and experienced the racism of my first teacher on my first day of school. She was sent to the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School at age ten, because her father was sick in the hospital with tuberculosis. She was filled with despair in losing my connection to my family and community. Katherine lost her freedom to be L'nu, to speak, think, feel and be, me. She survived the racism and child abuse as a student for six years in the 1950s. After the IRS, Katherine attended the Convent Our Lady of the Assumption in Arichat, Nova Scotia. They were not allowed to speak Mi'kmaq, nor English. They were in a French immersion school where we experienced more abuse and racism. She quit school at age sixteen and migrated to Massachusetts to work in the factories. Her experience with racism in Canada prepared me for the racism we would survive in the United States. In 1962, Katherine met and married her first husband, Douglas A. Brown and they had three children, Donna Elaine, Michael Patrick and Douglas Edward, and Katherine have five beautiful grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren. She lost her Native status, when she married a non-Native man and even after they were divorced in 1965, Katherine had to deal with more racism under the Indian Act and from her own people. She survived it. Katherine returned to school and joined Native politics as a founding member of the Boston Indian Council, along with her friend, Annie Mae Pictou. I taught Mi'kmaw culture and language and we worked together to educate others in the community schools about our history and impacts of racism. She wanted to acknowledge all the other Indian Residential School Survivors who were also champions and warriors, founding members of many Native organizations in Canada and USA, that developed social programs, addiction programs, social services and cultural and healing programs. She met and married, Joseph Sorbey, her soul mate of forty-one years ago in Listuguj, Quebec. Katherine taught the Mi'kmaw language in the summer months and worked in Nova Scotia at various Native organizations. In the 1980s, she helped to create the Mi'kmaq Language workbook series, maps and storytelling to document our Mi'kmaq history and worked as a translator in Mi'kmaw, as my language is my passion. Some of the highlights of my life are the acknowledgment and gratitude from Aboriginal people. Katherine is the recipient of the New Brunswick Solicitor General's Award in 1981. She was awarded the Native Council Lifetime Achievement Award in June 1985; Katherine was their first President. She received the relations. Canadian Aboriginal Peoples Award in the 1990s and the Grand Chief Donald Marshall Sr. Memorial Elder Award in 2000. She is a published poet and songwriter and I have been a singer in the church choir for sixty-five years. Her most cherished work is to promote our Mi'kmaw culture within many Aboriginal communities in Atlantic Canada. In 1994, Katherine began her acting career began with a small role in Squanto: A Warrior's Tale (1994). She also acted in the documentary "Spirit World: The story of the Mi'kmaq" in 2000, Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013), and North Mountain (2015).