Gerri Sharpe

My name is Gerri Sharpe – GERRI SHARPE – I like to go by Gerri, but my birth name is Geraldine. I am a loud Inuk and I have no issue finding my voice. I was born in Yellowknife in 1969, Gjoa Haven is my home community. I have lived in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick as well. I also lived – for 23 years – in Inuvik, I now live in Yellowknife. I have also lived in Rankin (Inlet) as well. The story that I’m sharing is in part mine, mostly my mothers, and stories that I’ve heard from others while growing up in Gjoa Haven. People need to know, people need to know how strong my mother was, they need to know what she went through and what I went through to achieve my grade 12 and to get where I am now and what I missed out on. I want to share the story so that other generations and the rest of Canada will understand what, not only my mother went through, but what I went through and others going to school gave up and just what it took to receive an education but also to understand the importance of why everybody needs to acknowledge the stories and just how hard it was and what everybody went through for that to happen. We don’t want to forget because otherwise it’s for nothing.

This is mostly my mother story; she has now passed. When I think about it, up until the day that she died in 2005 was trying to still escape residential school. The impact that it had on her life were horrendous and because of that it she lived with a lot of – self – she hated herself but yet loved herself at the same time and that was a result of things that she went through. As a result, it came down on to me because she was not able to be a mother, so I lost out. When I testified at the TRC, I didn’t realize how I viewed things until after I testified and people witnessing the testimonies came up to me later and said “you didn’t blame your mother” and I hadn’t realize that until they had said that and they had said “thank you” because they felt so guilty about their own actions and then the way that I explained about my mother’s actions and it wasn’t her fault. She developed coping skills in order to survive. What I lost was a direct result of that. And when I say “what I lost”, I mean I didn’t have a mother there when I gave birth, I didn’t have parents with me when I graduated, I didn’t have people to support me – parents – to push me through those hard times. So, I can imagine what my mother went through as well, but she took it a step further. She attended residential school since the time that she was four until she was 19, when she married my father. She married my father right out of Akaitcho Hall. The hard thing about that is her father – my grandfather – was chosen to be the minister and he was told that the ministers were the leaders in the community and had to set the examples. So, he was told that my mother had to go to school when she was four and that it was best for the community because they needed an education. So, he had to set the example, my mother was the oldest of 17 and she would only get to go home in the summer for very short periods of time. It wasn’t her choice and my grandfather’s choice wasn’t his choice either because he was being told to do it to set the example because he was a leader and when I think back – my father died the day before I went to residential school and my mother was not part of my life until after my father died and I lived with my grandfather on my – my mother’s father – after my father died and the amount of phone calls that I made to go home just crying to go home and my grandfather – I could hear that pain in his voice “you have to stay, you can’t come home, I know it’s hard but you have to do it”. My mother at the age of four going though that was horrendous and the stories that I’ve heard of her when she would look after the others. And when I say look after the others, she often when she became older she knew the priests and the nuns and she observed their behaviour so she would see when they were preying on other children and she would, I’m told, offer herself up, so she would make herself be in the way so that those children wouldn’t get the treatment that she had because she viewed herself as no good anymore.

My mother’s story – well I was born in 69’ and the years weren’t actually told me. She was 20 when I was born so I was born in 69’ so it had to have been from the time she was four until 19. So it started in 1950 for her, to 1968. And then for when I was in school it was 85’ – September of 1985 to January of 88’. And there was one supervisor that was actually the same supervisor when my mother was going to school, yeah that was interesting. My mother went to – I’m told – Inuvik, so she was at Stringer Hall or Scoyer Hall, they were both just different churches and she also went to Aclaviksa it was the Immaculate… I can’t even remember the one in Iklavik. She was over at Iklavik, she went to Inuvik, she went down to Yellowknife. So Akaitcho Hall and Yellowknife for her. And for me just Akaitcho Hall. I also went to Akaitcho Hall in Yellowknife from Gjoa Haven.

So, when I was growing up in Gjoa Haven, students going to school was a big celebration. It was two views to it; one that they were actually going, and it was celebrating the sense that they had the success of learning and going on and being, all their hope was placed on those that were getting an education. But at the same time there was parents that absolutely did not want their children to go and as the stories would be communicated “I love my children too much to send them to that place”. So, it was many students. There are stories of parents who would purposely go out hunting and stay away during times that students would have to leave, which was the fall and September. So, they would take their children – Gjoa Haven is on King William Island – and across from King William Island where a lot of people go hunting for the summer is Back River Enchantry Inlet and they would stay out there for months at a time. And that is where I used to spend my summers, but we were back in September. There were many many parents that would purposely stay away because they didn’t want their children to be subjected to the same harms. And I remember the stories at the time – because there are parents who love their children and offer everything so that they have safety but there is also parents that rely heavily on their children for help, especially with big families. And that was the excepted excuse that they loved them too much or that they needed their help. But there were others that were very truthful about it and said, “I’m not going to send my children because I know what happens, I’m not going to allow that to happen to my children”. They knew but you didn’t talk about it, it was kind of like survival of the fittest. There were also students that would go and not be able to stick it out, they would become very homesick and would go home within the first month. That became three strikes and you’re out, so if you did that three times our wouldn’t be able to come back to school after that. There were definite times you could see parents and you could see the hurt in their eyes because they wanted to protect their children so much and they just said “no” and wouldn’t talk about it and then they would go out camping and they would make so they were gone for long periods of time so that their children wouldn’t have to go. Camping was an acceptable form of “education” because this is during late 80’s – mid 80’s – early 80’s, it became acceptable to, it was called “culture inclusion” it was considered education as well. So that was also around the same time there was an understanding as to why parents didn’t want their children to go, and most children my age before we were going to school “we can’t wait to go to school to get out of Gjoa Haven”. And then I remember my father he was (Inuktitut spoken 11:40) – my father is white, and my mother as I mentioned was my grandfather’s oldest daughter, so I have aunts and uncles that are younger than me. I remember when we came back from Nova Scotia to go to Gjoa Haven I was 15 and I was getting very excited, I was at the end of grade 9 and I was in grade 9 and we were practicing exams and I was a student that excelled. And if I didn’t get 100%, I was disappointing to myself, I loved to learn, I loved to read and we would have practice exams and I can’t remember what those exams are called but I remember being really devastated with only getting a 97% because the teacher deducted points for spelling errors so I was really hurt that hurt me but then it came to the conversation about where I’d be going in the fall and I immediately said to my father I can’t wait to go to Yellowknife to go to school at Akaitcho Hall with all my friends that I grew up with and that’s when he said “well no you’re going somewhere else I’m going to send you to a boarding school” and I was devastated by that “why?! No no I’m not going to leave my friends you can’t do that to me!” I was 15 and very head strong. “You’re not going to that place; I know what that place does” and again he would not tell me “I seen what that place did to your mother” “well what’d it do to my mother?” and he would not tell me. I was so devastated by this so effected by this I for a few weeks I finally went and spoke to my principle. The principle had a long meeting with my father, which turned into another meeting with Akaitcho Hall and I was not part of those conversations all I know was that coming out of that my father then said that I would be going to Yellowknife to go to school with all my friends but I would be home boarding. I go what’s home boarding and he said you’re not going to stay in the same place, you’ll stay with a family in town but you’re not going to that place Akaitcho Hall. Again, I was devastated but happier that I would still be with friends going to school and I didn’t understand didn’t know why he was making this decision and he wouldn’t tell me why so I accepted that. On September 1st – see my father was a contractor, a general contractor, and he had quite a bit of contracts and he just received some very lucrative contracts in Gjoa Haven and the contracts he just received, there was a large pre-payment so he bought an 18-foot aluminum boat and he wanted another big boat but it wasn’t going to arrive until the following summer on the barge so he had this 18-foot aluminium boat it was with a 75-horse power kicker on the bottom, which is too strong for an 18-foot aluminium boat very flimsy boat so if you think it’s like these 10 horses pulling this insty bitsy wig its far too much but my father liked speed and racing. Gjoa Haven is on the ocean and normally it’s not calm, the ocean is very windy and on that Sunday which was September 1st, 1985 it was (Inuktitut spoken 15:29) it was so calm you could see your reflection off the water it was that calm (Inuktitut spoken 15:37) and that never happens and he wanted to go for a boat ride and in this brand new boat that he got on day three cause he got it on Thursday before, my brother, my sister at the time was five, my brother was 14. And were going on this boat and he just opened up the throttle and it was just going so fast (hand motions to show the boat lifting off the water) it was going like this instead of this (hand motions boat parallel to water) it was literally like this (first hand motion) and that was the first ride with him I had on that boat and I was happy to get off that boat and I was supposed to meet him at five o’clock that night to go for another boat ride and I remember coming around the game hall buy the nursing station to go down to meet him and I saw my father getting on the boat with my sister and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why he was leaving without me so I yelled for him but he already had the kicker going so he didn’t hear me so I thought okay well I’m going to go say bye to a few friend’s because we were leaving the next day and by the time I made it from over there and here it was maybe 20 minutes later I was going back to my grandfathers. I saw people running down to the water and people were on Hondas going down there all the men and it was a lot of action and one of the Hondas stopped and they said there’s been an accident and I said “what happened” “well your fathers boat is upside down” so I got into the Honda with him and we went. My sister ended up surviving but my father didn’t so I stayed for another 10 days while they tried to find his body and at that point I already made the decision that I wasn’t going to stay at the home boarding I was going to stay with the rest of my friends at Akaitcho Hall. I still didn’t understand everything. When I arrived in Yellowknife after my father – they still didn’t find his body – they found his body the day after I arrived in Yellowknife, I found out a week later, but then again that is the Inuk way. There was a supervisor, Miss Stoby, she introduced herself she was the head supervisor and she was the supervisor when my mother was at Akaitcho Hall and so I thought “oh I get to hear about my mother!” of course the stories I heard were a student very prim and proper young women that was nothing like what I come to know about my mother so I listened to the stories and I go wow. Well the first time I met my mother after my father died, was about month after I arrived in Yellowknife I was 15 and the liquor laws were different back then children could drink in the presence of the parents and they could go anywhere in the presence of their parents. Well this was my mother and I was at a hotel room with my mother and she gave me some wine and she began asking me some questions “are they bothering you – what’re they doing to you – are they –“ and I didn’t know what she meant by these questions “no I’m doing good, I’m going to school and I’m learning” but she was overly concerned with what other were doing to me and I still didn’t get it at the time I still didn’t understand. I remember going back to Akaitcho Hall that night and I was allowed to stay out later because my mother was in town and you had to have special permission so this was my mother and they didn’t know, Akaitcho Hall didn’t really know that my mother had not really been part of my life until that point and when I came in I think it was 9:30 PM or 10 PM we were supposed to be back at like 9 PM and Stoby met me at the door and she goes “I smell you been drinking” and she had this very dramatic way of talking at times and I go “yes…” “where did you get it from?” “my mother” and she says “no your mother would not do that your mother knows the rules” “well… she did” “I don’t believe you” “would you like to call her?” now think of it this way, being in the head supervisors office and then there’s a hallway – think of a two hotel rooms – this doors open there’s a hallway and maybe one room with the door open that’s where the phone was, she went to go call my mother from the phone. And I could just hear my mother from that distance just cursing that Stoby out and just yelling at her. And Stoby asking her if she gave me wine and I could hear “you have no right to tell me what to do with my daughter” well that’s a much cleaner version of it and Stoby came back to the office “you can go back to your room now” so I went to my room and of course I had to attend the administrators office the next day for a “punishment” but they couldn’t punish me because it was my mother that had given me the alcohol and normally being caught drinking especially in your first year was immediate suspension and you were sent home but they couldn’t do that in this case because it was my mother so that was interesting. That started a very tumultuous cycle with my mother and the conversations, because the only time I would speak to her was when she was under the influence and it was never pleasant, never pleasant. The times I would hear the stories from other people about my mother she went to school with that she’d helped or about the work she was doing here in Ottawa. She had very traumatic things done to her by the people she was placed in care with. I’m told that she would offer herself up looking after the others, her sisters and brothers would tell me these stories, she would watch the other kids she would sneak them food if they were being punished, she would comfort them, she acted like a mother. And that’s something I never had, I’ve had people tell me “well you can adopt a mother” that’s never the same, never never never the same.

I remember when I gave birth, to my son Joshua, at that point I was 22 or 23 when I gave birth to Joshua. At that point my mother – I had not had contact with my mother for about two years because I had moved to Inuvik and I thought she had lost me and in one way I was kind of relived because when my mother way drinking if she had my number, it was, she would call and start cursing because I wasn’t talking to her or the I love you – I love you’s “tell me you love me!”. I couldn’t handle it so I’d end up hanging up the phone well if I hung up the phone on my mother when she was in those – my punishment for that was she’d call back every five minutes cursing and yelling all night so then you’d need to leave the phone off the hook and that’s going to solve it and if you did that then that meant for the next three days you were going to get that same punishment. So, when I moved to Inuvik, I thought I was in the clear especially not having heard from her for about a year and a half – two years. I’d also not told my then boyfriend, who ended up being my husband I spent 23 years with, I didn’t tell him about my mother what she was like, from my experience what my mother was like. So, when I gave birth to Joshua, he was born December 21, 1992. I was discharge on the 22 but was readmitted on the 26th and somehow, someway my mother found out I’d given birth. My mother lived here in Ottawa; I was Inuvik. And at the time I worked at the hospital and I was on the board and this is my second admission and it was 11 o’clock at night and the nurses said, “your mothers on the phone” and they’re thinking this is going to be a pleasant call as I’m going “what” so I go and pick up the phone “hello?” “(??) YOU GAVE BIRTH, DOES YOUR CUNT HURT LIKE MINE DID?!” I didn’t know what to say “YES I BET IT DOES-“ and I ended up hanging up the phone and I went to the nurses stations and said “you guys have just breached confidentiality you shouldn’t have told her I was here – your punishment is now coming for the rest of the night my mother will now be calling you every five minutes” and I went back to my room and I said “of by the way – I don’t want to talk to her” and I did hear the phone for the rest of the night but I was able to sleep. The next day I found out that before she called the hospital, she had called my home, where my boyfriend picked up the phone and he was he has three sisters and himself said that he was the only male in his family to give birth. The next day when I was talking to my boyfriend, I found out my mother had called my home I don’t know how she knew my phone number, I have no idea how she even found out my boyfriend’s name, like I said she lived out here in Ottawa and I was in Inuvik and this is 1992. So, I don’t know how that happened, apparently, she had been keeping tabs on me through other friends. I should not have been surprised by that. But the conversation with him, he is the only male, he has three sisters and he is number three in the four children and it is a big event for the first male to have a son. So when he picked up that phone and you also need to imagine that from a Caucasian perspective it’s a prideful moment for him and my mother says “were you there when she gave birth?” “yes” “did you see the baby come out?” “yes” “did you help her?” “yes” “are you going to stick that cock in that cunt again?” (Gerri blows raspberry to indicate tension). But this is the kind of language that my mother grew up with because this was what she had been taught by those around her because this is how they treated her. So, I was mad at her for a very long time for this this is when I started understanding what Residential School did for her. This is also the same year that Phil Fontaine made his announcement about the abuses that he suffered in Residential School. This is when I started to asking questions because my mother had gone to school in Inuvik and Aklavik and Yellowknife and I knew that there was others. You’re associated to others through your relationship to them so people back then it wasn’t “hi who are you?” it was “hi whose your parents?” because once they knew who your parents were then they knew who you were, what you – where you were from, and the (??) that you had. So they would ask me in Inu “whose your parents?” everybody knew my mother was Watcha (Spelling?) and my father was David. So I’d heard many stories, many great stories how great my mother was and back then it was very contrary to what I was seeing because I was receiving contradictory information they would tell me all these great stories of things she did but that’s not what I was getting from her. And I did make the connection to the fact that whenever I did have any communication with my mother was when she was drinking because I would not openly start those conversations. I did not want to pick up the phone to hear cursing and swearing whether it be cursing and swearing with love or cursing and swearing with condonation; I didn’t want it; I didn’t understand it and I was done with it. It got to the point that when my mother would call, I would everyone in a while just go “yep” “yeah” but if I didn’t allow her to do that verbal diarrhea I knew it would be a day or two of hang ups but if I could tolerate that 30 minutes and she hung up then I didn’t hear from her again for another few months. I got to know my mother through her friends and people she went to school with and the achievements she did that way. I got to know my mother through her work she did because she was an interpreter and she was the best at what she did at that point for land claims she was the one they get for legal and medical interpreting but I never got to see that because of residential school.

So back in 85’ the rule that Akaitcho Hall had in Yellowknife was that all first year students it was mandatory for them to stay at Akaitcho Hall. Akaitcho hall also had home boarding and normally first year students wouldn’t be allowed to home board they had to learn the rules and be watched and then after that they could be home boarded. They also had what was called a cluster so home boarding was similar to foster parenting but not foster parenting. It was Akaitcho Hall paying for a room in a house to stay at and it was very strict guidelines. If you were a home boarder you had lunch at Akaitcho Hall during lunch and you attended study periods, but there were very strict times you could go to Akaticho hall and what meals you could eat. My second year I was home boarded and they had to tell me repeatedly not to eat breakfast there. Akaitcho hall had very strict guidelines because they paid the home boarders or home board parents for the meals and for you to stay in the home. And of course I spent as much time as I could at Akaitcho hall with my friends because I didn’t want to stay – I was not asked if I wanted to home board I was told to home board. But yet I wanted to stay with my friends in the comfort- I graduated with one of my uncles. And my connection to Gjoa Haven was through Akaitcho Hall. So home boarding wasn’t a problem for me – although my first home boarding was with one of my “boyfriends parents” he was away at college. The second place I was home boarding with was with my social worker yeah not too much of a conflict there eh she home boarded many of us, she’d also use us to go to bingo and have us play for her, either ways that’s a whole different topic. She was very good to us she treated us the way that we wanted to be treated as if we were home because she was also indigenous and she was (Inuktitut spoken 33:52) so she knew what we were accustomed to growing up so she gave us a lot of lee-way. The cluster was at northern united place at (???) Yellowknife was only for students that were 18 and older that could live on their own so it was like a dormitory without supervisors, they were allowed to drink there, food was bought, food was stocked and they were expected to look after everything else by them selves. They didn’t have the same rules that we had but yet Akaitcho Hall students were not allowed to go to the clusters unless they were staying there. During that time it was 14 years after that it closed, it was the last one to close in Canada, Akaitcho Hall in Yellowknife. So I first went to akaitcho hall in September 85’ and I’d go home for the summers so in June we’d go back and I graduated in June 1988 and I was pregnant during – I got pregnant in my 11th year and was home boarding and I gave birth in my 12 year and I still graduated and I breast fed that baby – I Brest fed Davey.

My mother actually went to residential school from of age of four till she was 19. My father met her while she was going to Akaitcho Hall and they got married after she graduated when she was 19. I’m going to say the year she graduated or that she went to school when she was four – see I don’t know her birth year – I know she was 21 when I was born so I’m going to say she was born in 49’ so she went to school in 1953 till 1968 in Yellowknife. She first went to Inuvik, (??) Hall and at some point, was over in Iklavik as well, I don’t know the years that she was there. And then her, at least grade 8 to grade 12 at Akaitcho Hall in Yellowknife. There was, depending on where you went to school there was different types of treatment.

There’s a blurry line in between with my mother story as to which was worse. She has told others stories about, you know she would be hungry and how she would steal food for other students. There was times that she told us stories about students planning to run away and helping them collect the food so that they could go. Inuit students, well I shouldn’t say Inuit – bear in mind that there are two land claim groups that are Inuit, so you have the Inuvialuit as well as the Nunavut beneficiaries which are all Inuk but the Inuvialuit are much closer to home and the Nunavut beneficiaries being far from home. The Nunavut beneficiaries couldn’t run away to go home because the flights were far too far so they couldn’t run away, there were other students that from (??) Hall and (??) Hall and some that made it. There was the famous three, with one that survived and two others that perished along the way, that story is known. Stories aren’t communicated a whole lot.

I’m – I want Canada to know – I want everybody to know what it was like. That feeling of home sick, I want the rest of Canada to know what it was like. Not only for my mother but for me. That feeling of homesickness – during the time that I went to school there was the option for us to go home and my grandfather there’s many times I would call and cry and want to go home and he kept telling me “you know you need to stay, you need to stay, you need to get your education” and I did stay. My mother didn’t have that same option and from a very young age were ripped away from everything you knew, your comfort, and being put into what she, I’m sure, thought was hell and made to feel like she was garbage by all these different men – not just men but also nuns – that in church would say one thing and in school would say one thing but then do the opposite when they had her alone. Her self-esteem was shot but yet she was such a strong woman, such a strong woman. She had many demons that needed to be out and she wanted to tell her story and just couldn’t find the mechanism. I want people to know her story, I want people to know my mother wasn’t always like that she was made that way. So when she was sober and my mother was very helpful, very strong rugged woman. This was a woman who helped create names for Inuktitut words that didn’t exist so medical and legal terminology to help Inuit understand Inuit land claims to help Inuit with all of that. But at the same token could not face her own image at night and she would drink and drink and that nastiness would come out, just that heaviness that she must be feeling and the hatred she had towards men. She was taught that so don’t condemn her for being the way that she was when it was society that made her into that this this woman was brilliant, smart and beautiful but was made to feel ugly and unwanted and like garbage.

Because of that I didn’t have a mother, I didn’t have somebody to hug me, I didn’t have somebody to give me those teachings that mothers are supposed to, that you grew up hearing. What the majority of Canadians take for granted, I never had, I didn’t – I didn’t have – I didn’t have the “I love you’s” and “I’m proud of you” when I graduated there was nobody standing beside me to say “you did this, you got it” most people when they graduate grade 12 got their parents beside them and it was a huge celebration add on top of that being away from home and family. And I didn’t have anyone beside me and I gave birth in grade 12 and I didn’t have anybody beside me, I got where I am with my own two feet, my mother did that to me, that’s what I want the rest of Canada to know. A lot of societal issues that take place today stem from inter-generational trauma and I mean that in many different contexts because my mother’s father had also gone to residential school and he did run away, he doesn’t talk about it much – well he didn’t talk about it much- he just said that he hated it so he left but he was also a man that would travel from iklavik all the way (??) so from one end of the Arctic to the other. We don’t want this to happen again and the societal issues that are there we need to understand how that first happened with the intergenerational trauma if you understand what caused that then we can get in front of it. The homelessness, the drug and alcohol problems, the spousal and physical abuse, the mental abuse, all of that we need to get ahead of it. We need to be a community again when I say community that means leading towards reconciliation and being a community being what we were, not what the government feels that we should be. Living the way that we did 100 years ago as a strong community, for the community to build that up and make it strong and that means the youngest all the way through the oldest and being treated accordingly, we need to back that.

In order for that to happen we need to understand our place and address them. Address those traumas, acknowledge them because if we don’t acknowledge them then they are meaningless and they are not meaningless, they have massive harms – massive harms and until we can get over that the societal issues that we face like homelessness and poverty, housing issues, food -that’s not going to be solved and we need to start at the beginning.

So one thing that I didn’t mention, my mother was my grandfather‘s first child my grandfather was Nomadic and from the time he would travel between (??) and (??) over to Iklavik and back and forth and that’s when they decided he was the leader and would need to be administered so he travel to minister to other Inuit people and my mother’s mother was actually murdered on one of those trips. What happened was when they were travelling from (??) over to Gjoa Haven, it was in spring time and spring time is when animals are harder to hunt and they were starving so they stopped and made camp and the women stayed there with the children and the old men and younger men all went out seal hunting. They were gone for a couple days but there was an older woman that had – starvation not only plays on your mind but it plays on your body too. She went crazy and proceeded to go around killing everybody – my mother’s mother saw what was happening and my mother was very young, like not quite a newborn but close to that and she went outside into the side of the little camp that they had and she built another igloo and she put my mother in there and she came back and got another child and put that child in the igloo with my mother and went back to get more – that’s when she was murdered the men came back the next day and they had seal, they had food but at that point it was too late. The old woman she has even cleaned up all of the blood that had happened and they found my mother and the other child was apparently a girl. So when they arrived back my grandfather of course he was to marry quite quickly because my mother was still breast-feeding and they say because of this my grandfather‘s first wife was his first love and my mother was the only child from that marriage so my mother being his first child, was of course one of his favorites and in turn became one of my grandfather’s favorites as a result of that.

So, after my father died, I live with my grandfather and his siblings also treated me the same way which I’m thankful for what (??) I lost was a mother. I hear all the stories about how wonderful she was and how powerful and how strong she was, and I got the sense of that when I got those very drunk calls by weeding through all the verbal diarrhea. I knew that she loved me and what she went through in residential school and all those other students to not be harmed she tried to prevent that happening to other students and she would give them food, she would help them and if there was any students trying to run away she would do her best to help but it did up to the day she died, she was still trying to escape residential school in her mind but she could just not escape that.

There were – I remember the last time that I physically saw her, my daughter was four months old, she was in Inuvik For a ICC meeting which is the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, she was interpreting for that and they just happen to be doing a women’s association meeting at the same time and they were opening the new building in Inuvik the IRC building in (??) corporation regional corporation and they at the opening my daughter was four months old and she took my daughter and while we’re all standing in front of the IRC building she held my daughter over her head and was going “this is the future of Powtutti, this is the future” and all I remember thinking is give me my child. What hurts the most is two days ago, I was elected vice president of Powtutti and I’ll never see that pride in her eyes, I won’t hear her say how proud she is of me, I don’t have somebody to tell me you’ve done well, and I’ve got lots of friends, many friends that will tell me “you’re doing good, you’re doing good, you’re doing wonderful, you’ve got this, you’re so strong” but that doesn’t feel the same as a parents love. My daughter when I landed here in Ottawa Powtutti means I landed and the text that I had from my daughter was ‘come back I need you”. She developed a flu and another infection, and she has a newborn – well he’s four months old and my three-month-old grandson, two grandsons and her boyfriend work in the mines, so he’s two weeks in – two weeks out. I couldn’t do that with my mom, my mother wasn’t able to teach me the things a mother does, when I learn to sew, I learned from other women in the community – I sought out other women. I’ll never feel that sense of pride of being somebody’s daughter and I making damn sure that I do that for my daughter, and I tell her how proud I am of her even those simple things. I tell her “Natasha your children are sick, you’re by yourself here’s what we’re going to do” and if she was going to the hospital I’d say “OK now we’re here plan A, Plan B and plan C. Best case scenario is plan A, the medium scenarios Plan B and the worst case scenario is plan C, and if we think these out and prepare”. This way she doesn’t feel so overwhelmed, I never had that, I never had the opportunity to share my children with my mother because my mother was too toxic around my children, I had to draw that line after that Powtutti meeting because my mother didn’t come see me when she was sober, I had to go to her and when I was going to her she was drunk and the alcohol was more important.

So, I had I gave her the ultimatum I said “here’s how it is, you give up alcohol or you give up your grandchildren. I’m not going to put my children through what you put me through and if you can’t you need to be sober” at that point the only time my mother called was on my birthday at seven in the morning and that was the best gift that she could ever give me because she was sober. That may have only been two or three times but it was the best because she made the effort and I know she wanted better there was just too many demons and my daughter knows the story, my son knows the story, my grandsons will eventually know the story. They know how proud I am of my family and I am instilling my culture in my children – my daughter and my son and my grandchildren – and that’s something my mother couldn’t do and my mother actually did not put forth any complaints. She died months before the announcement from the TRC and if she were alive maybe during the TRC she would’ve refused any money. She had absolutely no use for white society and I say that because she died of cancer. She had cancer of the lungs, cancer of the pancreas, cancer of the liver, they said that the hole that was in her lung was so big you could stick your fist in there. Because she refused to go to doctors, she had absolutely no use for white society, white medicine, she had such hatred, so rather than – that hatred was so ingrained in her not to trust that they only wanted to do bad to her. There was no investigations, I never want a person to go through this, I don’t want anyone to feel the way that I do at times. There are times that I feel completely unloved and unwanted and I know that’s not the case. There are times that I feel that I am completely unloveable that I’ll never have that, because this is how I was raised – the word love is lost everything because I wasn’t shown it. In my father’s eyes I was a possession, I was not a daughter. My grandfather was the one man on earth that loves me completely for me and he died and I never felt that love. I never want anybody else to feel that way, I also want people to talk about it because if you don’t talk about it, then you’re not willing to reconcile that within yourself and with things the way that they are now, you need to talk about it you need to let it out because there are others that feel the same way and you’re hiding that, so don’t hide it let it out understand the root cause, understand the root cause of what residential schools did and how that is engrained in our fiber in our being, that not only that fear, but that pride, that strength, that resilience, it’s all there and we’re still moving forward. We’re still moving forward and we shouldn’t have – we claim our space, what will now happen is we’re going to say stop and push back and stand firm – which we are seeing across the country already

I have a real feeling of loss when I speak about my mother because I never knew her the way everybody else did. I see her achievements, I see I know all the work that she’s done, I know how proud I am of her, but that’s not what I saw. The part that my mother ended up giving me after my father died was all that anger, all that bad energy, on one hand she was saying I love you and then demanded that I say it back, it had lost its meaning because I didn’t know her; it was a demand. it wasn’t but that was the only way that she knew how to do that I can’t blame her for that, because nobody wants to be that way. But that’s how she ended up being because that’s how she was taught, that was how she – that was the only way she could survive that. The sense of loss that I had, that I have, is still there. I feel that I’m not able to share those same happy stories that other people have about my mother because I didn’t get that those stories from her and I wish that I had a mother, I want that maternal love and it can’t be replaced