Lillian attended Residential School in Aklavik, NWT from the time that she was eight or nine years old. She was the only one of the twelve children in her family to attend.

“I remember when I went home a few years down the road, about three years after I had been in the Residential School, I found that we were just like separating, the students and the elders were separating because these ones were talking too much in English and they couldn’t understand them. And we couldn’t understand the Elders speaking in their language. That’s what I find that changed.”

BIO

Lillian Elias currently resides in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, but she attended residential school in Aklavik, Northwest Territories from the time that she was 8 or 9 years old. Of twelve children, Lillian was the only one to go to school, which she did so that her parents could maintain their family allowance and support her other eleven siblings. Despite being taught exclusively in English in residential school, Lillian was able to maintain her Inuvialuktun language by speaking it during the summer months and by volunteering to translate for her grandmother and others at the local hospital and government offices when she was young. Prior to retiring from teaching, Lillian carried on her efforts to preserve the Inuit language by integrating it into her classrooms. Today, Lillian organizes and participates in Inuit language symposiums and is the Canadian member of the International Inuit Elders Council of the Inuit Circumpolar Council.

TESTIMONY

I live in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. I used to live in the Delta. I attended RC [Roman Catholic] Residential School. I was eight or nine years old. I don’t remember why they had to send me to school until later on in the years, after I had been there for three or four years, I found out that the reason they had to put me in there was because they were going to lose my Family Allowance, or all the children’s Family Allowance if one of the children didn’t go to school. So my parents thought I was the bravest one to go to school. They thought I could cope with the things that were going on. There were twelve of us. They didn’t go to the Residential School. They just sent me to school because my cousins were there. We didn’t live together out on the land. They were in different places, wherever the animals were we had to live. We followed them.

My parents brought me to school in the fall time. I think it was in August before they went back out on the land for the winter. They don’t come in until Christmas time when they do go out, just for groceries and that. So they left me there, crying. I remember that day very well because it was just like losing my parents, you know, losing my loved ones, just like they were gone forever. It’s like I would never see them again.

The first day that I walked in there I didn’t speak a word of English. I didn’t even know what was Dick and Jane, who they were, you know how they taught us Dick and Jane in the classes, but I didn’t even know how to say “come” or “goodbye” or “hello” or anything. It was really hard. I did a lot of sign language. Today I’m pretty good at sign language! You didn’t dare speak your language, even if you didn’t know how to speak in English. You would get roughed up. One of my friends – we just came in – I can see her plainly today because I was so afraid of this Nun who came up to her and she looked like she was going to kill her. She grabbed her by the neck and just shook her. “Don’t ever let me hear you speak your language again!” Those were the sort of things we had to go through. It was really hard. We weren’t allowed to speak roughly or say nasty things to the other children or even look at the Nuns with an ugly looking face. I don’t know what was ugly to them. “Don’t look at me like that!”

And we all would have to sew our own mukluks at that time. The bottom moose hide is like this (indicating) and that’s what you had to sew. The moose hide wasn’t soft. At eight or nine years old I would have to do that. I would have to make my own mukluks.

They cut my hair, my long beautiful hair.

We all slept in – I would say there must have been a hundred students there, maybe more if – I can’t really remember. But there were a lot of us, I remember, a lot of us and we had little beds side-by-side all the way back like this (indicating). It was scary trying to go to sleep by yourself whereas when you were at home you slept with your little sister or your little brother beside you and it was really hard.

The older students looked after us. They had what they called “charges”, taking charge over the little ones. You had to listen to them or else, because if we didn’t listen to them they would get into trouble. So in order for them not to be in trouble, not to get into trouble, they would make sure that we listened to them, even if they had to rough us up.

Today I’m sixty-five years old and I still remember clearly, just like a picture, a picture of the things that happened in there. We used to go downstairs and us little kids used to have to put logs in the fire, put some wood in that big furnace. We had to go all the way downstairs if they told you to go down and fill it up, you have to go down, you and another person. But still it was hard work. They were heavy.

When they roughed us girls up that’s when I really would get scared. I never got roughed up myself, but I got put in a post a couple of times because I said one word in my language.

I think that’s why I really fought to keep my language. Because they didn’t want me to speak it I thought to myself, “you’re not going to keep me from speaking my language”, and so I really picked it right back up when I got out of there. I picked it up with my grandparents. I lived with my grandparents all the time. My grandparents being there, and my mom and dad and my aunties and my uncles, we had like a little community.

In the summer time we got home. In June. But later on, about three years after, I remember going home for Christmas for a few days. My parents had to come to town and live in town, live in the community. The community was Aklavik and they had to come to town and stay there for a few weeks or a month or so just to have me out there, just to keep me for a few days with them. It was beautiful. I just didn’t want to go back but I had to.

I was in school for five years, really. That’s a long, long, long five years. It was more or less like forty years because the year moved so slow. How long is it going to be until June? You wait for June so you could go home. My husband didn’t go home at all. He died thirteen years ago. I lost my husband. And I know it’s through Residential School. I know for a fact it’s through Residential School because he didn’t know how to talk about the problems that he went through. He was a quiet person. He was there for eleven years. And sometimes he wouldn’t go home because him, he was from further away. He was from the Tuk area.

I never heard anybody talking Inuktitut. It would have been so nice.

My friend and I were talking about it not too long ago. We always talk about the times we were at school. We were saying at least if we saw one Native person coming to the whole school, you know, just to come and visit, it would have been so nice to see that person. Every time you saw a Native person you were so happy. It didn’t matter who it was, even though you didn’t know them. There was a hospital right beside so we got to know a few people from the hospital. We were not allowed to hang out around there either.

They were all Nuns, Fathers or Brothers. They taught me how to read and write. When I looked at Dick and Jane I thought Dick and Jane were in heaven when I saw all the green grass. That’s how much I knew about Dick and Jane. Goodness, they must be in heaven! And there were animals. I didn’t know what they were. That’s why today I think I’m really working, finally working on the things that students know the things that they know about, to learn about something they don’t know and they have to find out about it, let them learn about something they see like Caribou or whatever.

We ate rotten fish which was just yellow. You had to eat it. It was so yellow. I don’t know how yellow it is. But you had to eat it. If you didn’t eat it you will be in trouble. There was a friend of mine who didn’t want to have her porridge. I guess she got tired of eating porridge and she wasn’t going to eat it and she wasn’t feeling well either. Well, the Nun saw it. They called the other Nuns and they just worked her up again. You could see it. Everybody saw it. You get so scared when you see something like that. Right in front of the kids. It doesn’t matter. Just so long as I guess they tried to teach other kids how to – You better listen or else this is what is going to happen to you, too. It was so scary, just like being in jail, rather, I think.

I just loved the Christmas concerts, because these Native people would come and watch us. Just to see them, eh, you’re up there and you’re doing things and you see all these Native people. You’re so excited, it doesn’t matter if you know them or they’re not your relatives or anything. Just to see them. They were so beautiful. I just loved it when they would say we are getting ready for the concert. I looked forward to seeing all these Elders and people from the communities because they used to go to Aklavik for Christmas and Easter and different things like that. They used to go there for occasions so they used to come and watch us. It wasn’t my relatives. It was just the people who came from different places. Sometimes my father and my mother would come and it was nice to see them watching me. My parents came by dog team. Probably took a whole day. They would have to get up really early in the morning if they want to make it right through. But sometimes they would have to camp. Of course they had children, too. They had to make sure the children don’t get cold. What I used to wear was really nice. I don’t remember getting cold when my grandmother from my father’s side was alive. She would make us every year Caribou skin for the all inside, Caribou skin on top, right from (indicating) all the way down, mitts and everything. I don’t remember getting cold. They were so beautiful. [At school we wore] canvas shoes, canvas parkas and duffle, I think it was. It wasn’t really duffle either because it was cold. It was a parka. You would have to wear it. You can’t wear your own. No, not what you went there in. That’s what you went to school with. They won’t allow you to wear those kinds of clothes. Everybody had to be the same, the same kind of mukluks, the same kind of parkas. I don’t know why. I never understood that part. Maybe they wanted us to dress like them!

It was hard for my parents, very, very hard. First of all, they didn’t want to put me in school. These people came around from the government telling them that if you didn’t send any of your kids to the Residential Schools you’re not going to get Family Allowance any more. They were going to have no Family Allowance and that’s the only thing that was the extra money, eh, that they had besides their fur.

Maybe I was hiding a lot of things to talk about. You know, I think that’s where they changed me there. Even though I don’t want to think that it’s like that, it is. That’s where they changed me, to hide things that I don’t want people to know. Or I don’t want to talk about. I understand every one of the persons who are out on the street because it’s a really hard thing to ever talk about. It’s really hard for us Native people, myself anyways, to talk about your feelings, your hurts. You were shunned if you did that. I find that a lot.

Where some of us are so fortunate to get out of it, very, very fortunate to get out of that feeling, even though today I still feel it. If I have some things that are hard to talk about and I don’t get it out, but I do a lot of talking like this, to different ones. That’s why I say if these people that are out there would just – but they don’t know how- start talking about these things they would be set free also. My family is one of the fortunate people that are —

Alcoholism. We drank a lot. We did drink a lot when my husband was alive and when I was a teenager I drank a lot because of that, not knowing who to turn to and not knowing who to talk to because a lot of people that I tried to talk to wouldn’t understand me. They wouldn’t ever understand the situation that I went through.

It’s very important to talk about whatever is in your life that you need to talk to even a person that you don’t know, I think that is the most effective way to go about it because sometimes when you know someone and you talk to them, you don’t seem to get across to them or they don’t know what you’re talking about. But if you talk to other people that you don’t know, when they start telling you that this is what is happening in your life then you know that they’re not digging into your life or trying to find out about your life.

Home is where your family is. That’s what you call home. Your home is where your relatives, your family, your mom and dad, your grandfather and your grandmother when they’re around, that’s what you call home. To me it’s very important to have relatives. Like for ourselves we keep going, even though I have lost my mother and my father. All those are gone now. We still keep going. We still gather together for occasions, birthdays or whatever, we still get together. We talk amongst each other. We talk about our problems and we help each other a lot. We uplift each other a lot.

The only thing that I heard in Residential School about my home was that it was not a fit place to live in. We were poor. We had nothing. We didn’t have good blankets. We didn’t have the foods they were giving us. I’ve heard people talking about that. These are the things that are really very, very hard for me to talk about when they put your home down. They say that your home is cold. It’s not warm like this. Would you rather be home where it’s cold and you don’t have much to eat, and that’s where your home is. You would rather be there but you couldn’t tell them these things. If you start crying about going home they would tell you all these things. They would tell you what a pitiful home you had just to try to stop you from crying. They make you cry harder because that’s where your home is.

Not only that, the other thing I can remember is they would bring a big barge. We used to burn wood at the Residential School. They would bring a big barge; it was a big barge, maybe as big as this room but longer, just full of logs. There were logs right to the top and all over. Guess who would take them out of there?—Us. Yeah . A little plank like this (indicating). You could barely stand on it. And you’re scared. If you turn around and try to go too fast you’re going to fall in. I’m pretty sure from talking to other students, too, I’m sure that someone drowned and nobody said anything because our plank is so tiny. This is what you call a plank —

It goes from the scow up to the bank and we would be as close as this (indicating) I guess, all the way down. There was a chain of us right up to the furnace room, right up to the furnace room. You had to go down the stairs. But there were some boys on the stairs, too. You would stand on a couple of stairs; go down a couple of stairs, all the way to where they piled the wood up. Every fall we had to do that. Every fall my arms used to get just red.

There were some students who tried not to hurt their arms but they must be bleeding or something, because those woods are not smooth. They’re rough. They were trees like this (indicating). We would have to do that. I can still clearly remember that, clear like a picture. I can remember it so well. I don’t remember anybody dying because they were so secretive. I used to be scared to die, too. I used to just think, “gee, I hope I don’t get sick”.

And this cod liver oil that we had to have. Today I think about It and all those — How many hundred girls using the same spoon? They would give us cod liver oil every morning. Sometimes you just don’t want to take it but you have to. You wait for your cod liver oil.

I remember when I went home a few years down the road, about three years after I had been in the Residential School, I found that we were just like separating, the students and the Elders were separating because these ones were talking too much in English and they couldn’t understand them. And we couldn’t understand the Elders speaking in their language. That’s what I find that changed.

Every year there’s more.

My children never stepped in a Residential School because their father wouldn’t let them. He was there too long. From his trap line he had to move to Inuvik. He left his traps and I just know he loved to trap, but he wasn’t going to see one of his children go to the Residential School. He was going to prevent that. Never! So, all four of my children never as much as walked into the Residential School.

It was because of what he went through, eh. I kind of know what he went through, but the only time that he would talk about it is when he was drinking. He wouldn’t talk about it otherwise. But the only time he talked about it was when he drank. I had to have a few, too. It’s very hard to talk about it because he would have been still here if it wasn’t for that. I know they killed him.

I think a couple of years ago maybe there was my cousins and myself and quite a few of us were talking about when we were in school. “You did all that?” Our children were trying to understand what we went through. They couldn’t believe that we went through all that. But other than that we never talk about it. It’s something that is too hard to talk about. For me I had to go back to the same way that my parents brought me up. But my husband wouldn’t let my children cross anything. Never cross his ways, you know. There was no way his children were going to do anything like that. I noticed that. He was a very strict father. And I knew it was from when he went to Residential School. I knew. I could see that. I understood him and we supported each other with that.

There are lots of alcoholics, lots of people who do really good for a few years, maybe five or six years, and they just — Something hits them and they just start drinking again. There’s lots of dope now back home. That’s what the students are going through, too. That’s why I told you that’s what affects the people today, not knowing how to talk to anybody else, not knowing how to make them understand what they’re going through.

Another thing that I see is how the young people start turning to booze and to drugs is because of the Residential School. The parents suffered enough so they start drinking and everything and that’s how come the young people start doing those kinds of things too. Because the parents don’t know how to talk to them, I guess. I’m not putting them down. That’s the way I am. That’s the way I am. I never knew how to make them think differently than what they were going through because I felt guilty already because we drank so much, they were drinking and that. But today they are well-to-do, my children. I’m so proud of them. There’s nothing I could be so thankful for, you know, for how we brought them up and yet they turned around this way. They are just beautiful. They all don’t live at home, except for my daughter. She still lives in Inuvik. I have three boys; one in Kamloops, one in Calgary and one in Edmonton. That was the only way that they could get out of the rut they were in.

These kinds of things I think are some of the things that we have to think about. Help those people that are down there. You just want to help them so much but you’re only one person so to try to do that it’s going to be hard. You need a group.

Talk. Talking, and loving them I think is the most important. I find that you don’t go telling them that they’re wrong. You’re bad. I found that out when I was teaching the teenagers at the high school. Today they are twenty or thirty years old but they won’t pass me by without giving me a hug because I loved them to where they are today. Yeah. I see them doing so well, a lot of them. They still want to look after me. It’s their turn to look after me.

Canadians should really try to find out and ask questions. Find out for themselves. Sit one-to-one with somebody who has been through — Sometimes people think you’re just talking like this just because, but it’s not. It’s not. They have to find out the true facts of what we went through. And that’s when they’re going to finally realize that these people did go through all the things that they say they did.

Take a look at some people, some Native people. You know they say that the majority of Native people who live on the street, all those there in Vancouver or wherever, it’s because they can’t talk and they can’t deal with these things. That’s why they’ve got lots of counsellors for themselves, like the people that have never been to Residential Schools before they’re trying to help their people, or other people to quit drinking and different things like that. It’s the same thing today. It’s just like when you’re in a circle. We have centers. When you’re in those and when you’re in the circle, I would advise them to go to more circles and then they’ll really understand how to help those people with a lot of talking.

I just have to tell other Inuit to keep going. We just have to keep going where we come from, we have to keep talking about it, talking to whoever you’re comfortable with, and don’t keep it inside or it’s going to eat you up. Whatever is inside of you is going to turn into cancer or sickness.

We should try to bring our people back home, back to who we were before. Go out on the land. That’s where you can really feel the healing, the healing part of you, you can feel it when you’re out on the land. For myself, that’s what I’ve been looking for and that’s what my hopes are that they will bring even the younger people out on the land.

Me and my husband used to do that. I still do every summer. I’m retired but I still work hard! We go to my camp. We go walking on the hills. I have hills not far, right across my place. We go for berries. Just different things. We eat out with them and travel around with them with the boat. Just being on the land is a healing part for me, and even for them. They find out about different things, different plants and what you use them for, and sometimes I just purposely don’t bring anything for medicine; no aspirins or anything like that. I just take them without things like that and then they find out that there are other things out there. Plus I always say that your culture, your language, tradition, if you have those three you feel good about yourself. That’s what I told my students for ten years. If you know who you are, if I know who Lillian is, for the rest of my life I’m going to be feeling good about myself.

I got strong. I’m very powerful, I must say, I am today because of when I think back and I think that I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t do that, that’s why I never lost my language because I wasn’t going to let them beat me. I wasn’t going to let them take everything away from me. They could take my pride and things like that but not my language. My grandmother told me that herself. When she put me in the school, she said, “Don’t forget your language.”

How I kept it is by doing it voluntarily. I used to bring my grandmother up to the government offices and I would interpret for her. I would bring her to the hospital and interpret for her. My mother, I would interpret for all of them, anybody that needed. It was voluntarily working. Today I feel so proud of what I did because any time they need someone to do translations and interpreting or anything they come to me.

Today I am the Vice President for ICC [Inuit Circumpolar Conference]. I travel a lot with them. I was over in Kuujjuaq in northern Quebec last summer to speak to NTI [Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated]. I was there and they were talking about young people and the Elders. That was real nice. I really enjoyed it. I had a chance to speak to them about how to help them with speaking of the —

You know, what they’re doing is the right thing. They are walking in the right direction because youth and Elders never separate. If they want to know anything there was always an Elder there. And the youth —

We have to understand this part, too, we have to understand the youth because the youth’s mind is not like mine. Mine is really the opposite. I want them to do it this way. You can’t go around telling them that because I taught for ten years and I had to remember, yeah, I was a teenager once. (Laughter) So this is what I do.

I would just like to encourage all the Residential School students not to forget. If they forget everything else they should try to get home again. Try to get home. Try to go out on the land or speak to people they think might be able to help them. Unless you know who you are and your background all these nice things are going to come back up.

Salamiva was first enrolled in a French Provincial School in the community of Kuujjuaraapik, Nunavik, but was later transferred to the Indian Residential School in Fort George, Quebec. For a time she was the only Inuk at the school.

“It was hard for the parents who lost their kids, too. First they lost their children to the government, their sons taken away when they were trying to teach them how to survive. They were taken away. So, okay, my kids are gone. I’ll support my family by hunting. But then they killed the dogs, too. So it’s like they took everything.”

BIO

Salamiva Weetaltuk was first enrolled in a French provincial school in Kuujjuaraapik, Nunavik, but was later transferred to the Federal Day School in Fort George, Quebec. For a time, she was the only Inuk at the school. It was very difficult for her, but she says she only told her children good things about residential school because she didn’t want them to be afraid to get an education, now that the system is very different. Today, she is the mother of nine children and fourteen grandchildren. Salamiva believes that it is important for Survivors to overcome any fear or shame they might feel in asking for help, so that they can benefit from healing initiatives such as community gatherings, healing circles, and other social services. “To be truly at peace with yourself and to learn how to love yourself and love your culture, [you have to] let it out. That’s what I would like to see.”

TESTIMONY

I went to school first in French in Kuujjarrapik Provincial School. When the provincial government decided there were not enough students I was shipped to Fort George, from an Inuit community to a totally different culture, a Cree community. There were five of us at first and then by Christmastime, I was the only Inuk in Fort George. The other four Inuit students went home for Christmas and I didn’t get to go home for Christmas. I have no idea why. Maybe because my parents had no money to pay my ticket, so I stayed at that Catholic School.

As far as I was concerned, it was at the other end of the world because I was the only Inuk there and I was always pinched and hair-pulled and teased on because I was the only Inuk there in Fort George.

I was nine years old. I stayed there a couple of years. It was only a couple a years because I begged my mom to take me back. After I told her that I was all alone and everything, and she felt sorry for me and decided not to send me back. So I was transferred from the French school to a Federal Day School, totally different from the school environment I was used to. Here in this new school the teachers were beating up their students and hitting them with pointed sticks and strapping them. I had never seen that. So that was my first horrible day in Federal Day School, in Kuujjaraapik.

I remember that first day because the first thing the teacher did was point at the bad students and make them come to the front and show the rest of the class what was going to happen to us if we didn’t follow the teacher’s orders. I had never seen a teacher hit a student in my whole nine years of life until that day. Right after school I went home crying and can you believe it, I wanted to go back to Fort George because not only could I not speak in English, I was really good in Inuktitut and Federal Day School and students at Kuujjaraapik didn’t speak Inuktitut. Everybody who spoke Inuktitut, an eraser or chalk would be thrown at you.

We were allowed to wear our clothes but we were not allowed to speak our language. In my Provincial School we were taught to respect our culture and we had culture classes. But when I was transferred to Federal Day School there was no more culture, we were not allowed to speak Inuktitut. While I had been in the provincial school my mother had been promoting my culture and language all that time so I sort of got confused when I got to Federal Day School because we weren’t allowed to speak our language. So it’s like I went from a very peaceful school to a disastrous school. The teachers were good, yeah, and they taught us a lot. We learned a lot but they were strict and abusive. I never got abused, but I watched it. My cousin used to get hit every day by his teacher. That teacher [also] sexually assaulted a lot of boys. Boys are not supposed to be touched by men.

They were hit in front of the whole class. A friend of mine would pass by a desk and brush someone by accident. If the person he touched tells the teacher, the student will be brought in front of the class, pants down and strapped with those pointing sticks they used to have.

One time the teacher was hitting one student so hard the pointing stick snapped in half and the poor child had lines on his bum. He’s all lost, that boy, and I truly blame that teacher for that. I see him almost every day and I feel for him.

He is lost, like he cannot get a job. He has no self-confidence, no will, stripped of his dignity. Everything of him was stripped from him. It’s because our parents didn’t beat us up at home and this was the first time we were seeing all these assaults and beat-ups. It was not normal but we thought that was the White man’s way of life. We thought that was how they lived. They beat up their kids, strapped them, put them in the corner — Well, I assumed they did that to their own children because they were doing it to my friends and cousins in school. I would go home and tell my mother all about it. She would cry with me.

I had never seen anybody get hit until I went to Federal Day School in Kuujjaraapik. He’s still a lost boy. Not just him. There are a few people. In each community there are a few lost boys and girls. The child that was hurt in there is still lost. He’s a boy that was stripped of ever becoming a man. He’s still a lost boy. I feel for him. Even if he’s hungry, even if us people know that he’s hungry he doesn’t go ask for food. He’s still a lost boy.

Nobody is making the connection. Bad Indians. Bad Inuit. Drunken Inuit. Drunken Indians. That’s all they think. But we would not be drunken Inuit or drunken Indians had we not been abused when we were children, had we not been exposed to assaults and stuff like that. Lots of people that wouldn’t be drinkers are drinkers because they have wounds in there that need healing. Because there was nowhere else to go then, I’m sure some of these guys assume it’s too late. But it’s never too late. No. We can all heal. We all have a day to heal. Yeah. I feel for them.

In school they did not want us to speak our language. They were trying to strip us of our whole culture. When I was in Kuujjaraapik for all those years since I was a baby, I was in the choir. I was an Anglican in the choir, proud of myself. My mother promoted that. Then I got transferred to Fort George. My first night there I knelt down to pray and the Sister spanked me really hard and put me on the bed and I didn’t know what I did wrong. I was not allowed to pray on my knees like the Anglicans do because now I was in a Catholic School.

I used to sit at the supper table for long hours, long after everybody else had left, because there was still food on my plate. I didn’t know what it was and I wasn’t about to eat it. Many times, many times each night my friend Linda, a cousin of mine, she used to come and quickly eat my food so the Sister would think I finished my plate finally.

They can’t cook. I don’t believe any Sister in the world can cook. I don’t. I couldn’t eat anything they cooked. I hated their porridge, too. That’s what they served every morning, a big glob of porridge. And just because I shouldn’t be late for school I wasn’t made to stay until I finished it. That was the only good thing about breakfast! I had to be on time for school so I never had to eat my porridge.

I would pass whatever food I had under the table because I was used to eating only country food, good country food, healthy food, and I’ve never seen cream style corn in my life. And those green beans. I’m almost fifty now and I’m only learning, slowly starting to take vegetables because back then when they made the potatoes they didn’t make them nice and soft. It was a big hard potato, you know. You could eat it like an apple even if it was cooked! That was the worst part of the school in Fort George: the food.

I have an uncle who used to go to school there. He learned a lot. He spoke six languages. So there are good things about these schools, too. My biological mother learned how to be a nurse and a stewardess. They are both gone now but they were the best they can be because they were taught the best they could be in the school I’m talking about. It’s only me, the spoiled one who couldn’t eat the porridge that these two had been eating years before me.

I don’t really have any good memories, not really. It was just boarding school and Church. We never went anywhere to do anything. So I don’t really have any good memories. But I looked forward to going home to my mom in the summertime. Oh, oh, oh, that’s the sound I made when I got off the plane.

I told my mom that I wanted something frozen, frozen food. So I had Caribou meat, frozen, and smoked goose, but because I hadn’t eaten those country foods in almost a year, I had pain for a while. My body had to readjust back to my country food.

When I went home, I learned things I already knew from childhood. In my first five years of life I already learned all about my culture. I knew how to write Inuktitut and everything. I missed going egg picking and picking berries and that. I used to pick berries a lot for my mother because she was stuck in bed with cancer. I missed her terribly when I was in Fort George. But I tried to be a good student. I was trying to make her proud of me.

My grandparents raised me. They didn’t really want to see me go away but they had no choice because there was no more French school in Kuujjaraapik so they had to ship me away because to them my education was important. They wanted me to get ahead the way my Uncle and biological mom had. All my classmates were taken out and put into Federal Day School. My mom didn’t want me to go to the Federal Day School so they shipped me to the next place that had a French school.

When I went to English school in Kuujjaraapik it changed me. I was a shy, timid, smart girl. In the Federal Day School of Kuujjaraapik I had to endure the abuse of other kids. They used to call me “Frenchy”, “frog”, and things like that because they were Federal English students and I’m French. I was already in Grade 5 in French and when I was transferred to English I had all the Grade 5 knowledge of Math and everything in French, but I was kindergarten in English.

There were other changes. Dog killings. My mom cried big time when these red-suited guys were killing the dogs. I asked her why she was crying because I had never seen her cry in all my life. She said, “Our life is being killed.” I didn’t understand that. “Our life is being killed.” She meant our culture, the very existence of our culture was being killed by the way they were killing our dogs. After that the community turned – turned like a big cloud went over the community. It turned dark and all these people we used to trust and love and who we had never seen drunk or anything, started drinking and fighting and all the abuses started. It’s because they were stuck in the community. They had no more dogs. They had no means to go hunting, no means to survive, so all our confused older siblings or young parents, us younger generation from that are totally affected because our parents lost a big thing, and in their loss we lost a lot. It seems like as soon as the dogs were killed the abuses and alcohol and drinking started.

We weren’t going camping until ice break any more. We were stuck in the community. Losing the dogs means no more country food. No more country food means we were getting sick. We were getting sicker because we’re not eating our diet, our food. Our country food is the best food in the world and that was practically stripped away from us when they killed our parents’ means of survival; our dogs.

As a small child I remember a lot of people crying that day. Because I went next door and my friend’s mother and father were crying, too. So I went home and I said, “Mom, they’re crying too. Why is everybody crying?” “Because our life is stripped away”, she said it again. And because I was small I only understand it today what it truly meant.

It was hard for the parents who lost their kids, too. First they lost their children to the government, their sons taken away when they were trying to teach them how to survive. They were taken away. So, okay, my kids are gone. I’ll support my family by hunting. But then they killed the dogs, too. So it’s like they took everything.

I think we were trying to be stripped off the earth but it didn’t work because most Inuit believe in God and we pray and we have a very high protector up there. No man can wipe us off the earth because we have a helper up there.

I don’t like it sometimes when some snob will say, “that damn drunk Indian.” It’s the government’s fault they’re drunk because of Federal Day School. They are victims. They have never been exposed to violence and stuff like that and it’s because of that they’re hurting. They were taken away from their mom’s love, from their mom, not to see them again until next summer. That’s why some people are lost. We had no support, no Social Services, nowhere, no student counselors or nothing.

The healings and stuff are finally coming up and most of the people that were mostly affected are six feet under now. The important Survivors, too, the ones that achieved something, they are six feet under now too. I’m sure my Uncle — he’s written a book called From the Tundra to the Battlefield: Memories of the First Known Canadian Inuit Soldier — he achieved a lot so I believe it would be him who should be sitting here telling you his achievements through his survival. Because Inuit are Survivors. Natives are Survivors, lots of Inuit Natives.

It helps to let it out. We have a hard time letting it out because we never had the Social Workers and Student Counselors and people concerned about us, concerned about how we feel. There was never anybody there. It was like do, do, do, do. You’re going to be this, that and that, and that’s it. No crying. Even if you’re hurt don’t cry. You can’t talk about it.

Inuit are raised to be forgiving people, not to hold a grudge against somebody, not to go to bed still mad at someone because you don’t know if you’re going to wake up tomorrow morning. That was stripped from us, too.

They took the best part of our life. It may have been poor but we were Survivors. Look, that’s how the Crees lived and us lived in igloos. We didn’t need houses.

I have nine kids, seven boys and two girls and fourteen grandchildren. But now they’re eight because two months ago my son froze.

You know what, in school we were taught to abuse our children by being abused by our teachers. Myself, I don’t abuse my kids because I wasn’t abused personally and I don’t want to do something that I don’t want anybody to do to me. But some parents, they’re going to slap their kids silly the way they discipline them. Me, I don’t discipline them in a beat up way, just mouth language. Yeah, I think that’s why they started beating up their children because that’s what they were taught in school. We never saw violence until we had violent teachers, strict violent teachers.

I told my children about the good things, yeah, I don’t want to tell them about the bad things. I don’t want them to be scared to go to school. It was a totally different school. I wouldn’t have sent any of my kids to Fort George. No way! I would have rather taught them at home, their own culture and language.

I don’t know why they were trying to strip us of our culture and language because the only way you can achieve the best you can be is to be who you are; your culture, to know everything about your culture and then it will be easier to learn a second language. So by trying to take away our culture they made it harder for us to learn. Once you know everything — If I know how to say it in Inuktitut, it’s no problem; I’ll know how to say it in English.

The schools are too lenient now. From a totally strict to a too lenient school I don’t think is good, either. I think the strictness would have been okay if they had not used violence because you can just raise your voice and, okay, I’ll do everything you ask. If you want me to comb my hair, if you raise your voice and yell “comb your hair”, I’ll comb my hair right away!

And I think they were trying to make us hate our food. Blah, you eat raw, blah, like that, because I was the only Inuk and all the other students were Cree and they never eat anything raw. So my nickname was “raw eater”. In Cree I don’t know how to say it, though! I’m glad I forgot it! I didn’t make any friends at all. I was always by myself.

Each person is important, your culture is important, no one can take your culture away from you no matter how much or how hard they try, and if you know your culture you can learn and achieve anything in the world. To know your culture is to know yourself and when you know yourself then you can achieve anything.

I don’t like [other people] pointing fingers at the Native people and putting them down because they can never walk in their shoes; never. But we have to let it out. Don’t keep it in there because it’s still going to affect you all the way. The pain in there, the child inside you has to come out and heal. Therefore you can heal.

Now they have all kinds of help that they didn’t have before, toll free numbers even, confidential. Before, there was no confidentiality. If you tried to talk to a teacher they would just talk behind you and then you would be branded a little troublemaker, you know. No. There was no where to go and no one to turn to.

I find it is getting better. And I know it can get even better. Because they’re just lenient right now. They can get better and better. Start healing sessions in different communities and talk shows and stuff like that. Because most of us are raised to forgive and forget, but some things are not so easy to forgive and forget. You have to let them out because they are going to affect your life all the way, and if you’re affected then the people around you are affected too.

We don’t have healing sessions and stuff like that in our communities. There’s a group that travels and they’re helping a lot but there’s so much more people that need healing and lots of people, even if they hear that these healing sessions are available, they are too ashamed or it’s been too long or I’ve been okay so far so I can still survive. That’s how some people think. To be truly at peace with yourself and to learn how to love yourself and love your culture let it out. That’s what I would like to see.

I have hope for everybody to heal, to let it out. Don’t keep it bottled up any more because although you don’t think so, it is still affecting your life. Let it out because it is still affecting your life and those that are around you. I think it helped me because now I can talk without crying. Before I couldn’t even talk. I would just burst into tears.

I was going to pinch one person when I grew up. “I’m going to go and pinch that person!” Instead, I just shook her hand. I said, “You know what, you used to pinch me every day, every day, in the back, eh!” She remembered. Then she said, “I’m scared of you now because you’re bigger than me!” I said, “I don’t fight back.” Just don’t have your kids pinching my kids!

(Speaking Inuktitut)

I talked to the kids and also the teachers. In my language. I just told them to come and let it out. I can repeat it because I was talking to the teachers and the students right now, not the former ones. I told them to keep going to school. They can achieve anything they want and be anything they want to be. I also told the teachers: don’t put your students down, don’t abuse them; give them confidence, encourage them. The child in there has to come out. The abused child.

Me, I had parents until they died when I was twelve. But for twelve years I was very well protected. But some of these kids I’m calling the lost boys, they didn’t have parents so they couldn’t even go home to their mom and say “I got spanked by mister ‘this’ today”.

And there have been a lot of suicides. Because, not only was physical assault introduced, but sexual assault too. There’s this teacher that used to —

We used to take showers in school. He would just leave the girls alone and hang around with the boys, the teacher. Well, he was a teacher first. And when he was the principal he started going to their homes, going inside the house, go to their bedrooms and touch them, you know. There are a few homeless people in Montreal because of that teacher, that principal. I’m sure if he sees this he’ll know I’m talking about him. You, you ruined a lot of students. I hate you. I hate that man.

My cousin is homeless because of him. He’s too ashamed to go up north now, so he’s homeless in Montreal because of that teacher, that teacher who came to our community to give us education, to better our lives, he ruined lots of boys.

I still hurt over my cousin, and a few other people. These boys are ashamed because boys are not supposed to be touched by a man and they’re ashamed to come forward. I can see that it affects their lives, their way of life, their way of raising their children.

I do want them to come forward, or even if they don’t come forward, they can heal. There are lots of places now, Natives, Inuit and Cree, you have places to heal now, places to talk, people to call, confidentially. There are caring people out there now.