Cliff Standingready, whose spiritual name is Standing Buffalo Warrior, has written a book about his life journey through a residential school, the brink of suicide and what it is to find his true identity. The book is titled Children of the Creator.

By Lindsey Cole
The Oshawa Express

“The earliest memories I have are snapshots and a scene of a dark
hole, looking up, eyeball to eyeball with a house rat. This feeling
I had I was to come to identify as fear. My sister, years later, told
me we were hiding from my father. In the cellar I recall the dank
odor of old earth, of something rotting, not the smell of new
earth.” – from Children of the Creator

Cliff Standingready holds out his left hand. Below his palm there is a small scar but it’s deeply imbedded into his hand.
It marks a dark chapter in his life.
A chapter that he vividly recollects in his book Children of the Creator. It is a time when he was forced into a residential school in Brandon, Manitoba. 
A time when he was forced to abandon his Lakota culture, his freedom and his identity, he says.
During that time he was beaten with a strap after watching his cousin take the brunt of the beating. He watched as a boy was raped. One of his girlfriends in the school was never the same after she was raped by school officials, he claims.
He describes being forced into a bathtub and roughly washed as the boiling water filled the tub – his feet turning red from the heat.

These memories he says are hard to erase and carried with him for most of his life.
His journey takes him through a suicidal phase in his ‘50s through to a sort of enlightenment and special healing process that changed his life.
“The trauma and all that has been released. Trauma doesn’t have any hold of me,” says the Oshawa author, adding he has truly found his inner self after a healing sweat by his native culture.

He has found his spiritual name. His is known as Standing Buffalo Warrior. His courage and perseverance has led him to expose his most personal stories through this book, he says, with the hope of helping someone else face their demons, whether they are First Nations or not.
“Today it’s a matter of being a helper, a healer,” he says.
The book has been six years in the making. The first version was thrown out, his wife Fran, who the book is dedicated to, says with a laugh.
“It was filled with ego, hurt and pain,” she says.
“I was honest so it went in the fireplace.”
He began writing again in 2005 allowing everything to come to fruition.
While his residential school experience has forever impacted his life, he says as a nation, Canadians need to accept it and move on.
“I think that people should accept that part of their history...it is a part of Canadian history,” he says.
“They did not treat us as human beings. I think the fullness of this book will wake people up. This is what happened in Canada at one time. As a result of this consciousness, we could come together as a community. The truth is that every human being, no matter who they are, is sacred. We just want to be respected from our experience.”
He says his strong native roots have allowed him insight into the path he is meant to follow.
“I am attempting to allow people into me to share my experiences,” he explains.
“You have to feel the pain before the healing starts. Everyone has trauma in their life.”
Fran says she went through the process with him and doesn’t even have to read the book to know what he endured.
“We’ve felt the brunt of it,” she says of their family.
“Through his journey of reconciliation we see the possibility of healing.”
Dr. John Milloy, of the Indigenous Studies Department at Trent University, says the book is raw and authentic. Dr. Milloy was recently appointed Director at Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
“I have listened to many survivors’ accounts and read others and not one has been either as extensive nor deeply self-reflective,” he writes in a review.
The book, published by the Boys Press, is slated to come out in late February and Standingready says he hopes people will take something away from it
“Words are spirits in repose,” he says.
“This is true for one man, it is also true for another. We are all connected.”