The residential school experience in Arctic Québec and Labrador
This volume has so far focused on the residential schools that operated in Yukon and the Northwest Territories (including the portion that later became Nunavut). The residential school experience in Arctic Québec (Nunavik) and Labrador await further research and investigation. The following pages are meant as an outline of a story still to be told.
Arctic Québec: Nunavik residential schools
In 1939 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Inuit people of Canada were a federal, not a provincial, responsibility, even when the Inuit were living in a Canadian province.1 The only Canadian province at that time with a significant Inuit population was Québec, where they lived along the eastern coast of Hudson Bay and the northern coasts of the Ungava Peninsula. This territory is often referred to as Arctic Québec or Nunavik. From 1939 to the early 1960s, successive Québec governments paid little attention to the Inuit or to northern Québec.2 Following the federal government’s decision to expand schooling in the North in the mid-1950s, four hostels were built in northern Québec. They were located in Kangiqsualujjuaq (George River), Kuujjuaraapik (Great Whale River), Kangirsuk (Payne Bay), and Inukjuak (Port Harrison).3 The education provided in these schools was in English.4 When the Churchill Vocational Centre opened, students from Nunavik were also sent there for training. In 1970, for example, a third of the students in the Churchill facility were from Arctic Québec.5 In addition, a small number of students went to southern Canada for secondary education.6
From 1960 on, the Québec government attempted to play a larger role in the delivery of a variety of services in Nunavik. Starting in 1963, the province began funding and operating its own system of day schools for Inuit children throughout Nunavik.7 Enrolment in the federal schools remained significantly higher than in the provincial schools throughout this period; when parents had a choice, they clearly preferred federal schools, although some Inuit families were known to alternate between the two systems.8
The last federal hostel in northern Québec, at Inukjuak, closed in 1971, and the Churchill Vocational Centre closed at the end of the 1972–73 school year.9 The need to send children out of the region would decline as grade extension was introduced under a new, Inuit-controlled education system.
The 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement among the Cree and Inuit of Québec, the federal and provincial governments, and Hydro-Québec brought this system of federal and provincial schools to an end. Under the agreement, all schools in Nunavik were to be controlled by an Inuit-run school board, called the Kativik School Board. (The Cree would have their own school board.10) In 1978, the Kativik board assumed control of all Inuit schools in Nunavik. With a locally elected education committee in each community, and a centralized executive committee, the school board system marked a significant departure from the federal and provincial schools. Responsible for over 2,000 Inuit students and 150 teachers in several isolated communities across Nunavik, the board was in charge of designing curriculum to meet the needs of the Inuit communities and of training teachers from the North to deliver the curriculum.11 The Kativik board established a residential school near Montréal in 1978 but closed it after six months of operation, concluding that there were too many adjustments for the students to make all at once.12 By the mid-1980s, the board was offering schooling up to Secondary III (Grade Nine) in all communities. Secondary IV and Secondary V (the equivalent of Grades Ten and Eleven) were also offered in some northern communities. The trend was to increase the number of trips home for students outside their home community at the secondary level.13
The Labrador schools
The history of residential schooling for Aboriginal people in Labrador differs from that in the rest of the country, primarily because the British colony of Newfoundland, to which Labrador belonged, did not join Canada until 1949.
There were two major groupings of Aboriginal peoples in Labrador. The Inuit lived in the northern part, in what is now called Nunatsiavut.14 The Innu First Nation lived to the south, hunting caribou in the interior and harvesting fish on the coast.15 As in the rest of Canada, missionary organizations played a central role in establishing residential schooling in Labrador. The two key organizations were the Moravian Mission and the International Grenfell Association.
The official name of the Moravian Mission is the Unitas Fratrem, or United Brotherhood. One of the earliest Protestant churches it founded was in Moravia, in what is now the Czech Republic. In the early eighteenth century, it established a base in Saxony, in what is now Germany. The Moravians developed a strong missionary tradition, sending missionaries to the Americas, Africa, and Asia. In 1733, the Moravians established a mission in Greenland. In 1752, a missionary expedition to Labrador ended in a conflict with the Inuit that left seven members of the Moravian expedition dead. In 1764, Newfoundland’s British colonial governor, Sir Hugh Palliser, endorsed a second Moravian expedition to northern Labrador. After two exploratory journeys, a mission was established in 1771 at Amitok Island, near what is now the community of Nain.16
Owing to their experience in Greenland, the Moravians came to Labrador able to speak Inuktitut. Between 1771 and 1905, they established eight missions there. The British had granted the Moravians the right to expel anyone from these extensive mission holdings if they did not obey the mission’s rules. As late as the 1940s, private traders needed the Moravians’ permission to operate at the missions, and a Moravian trading company handled most trade.17 As a result, the Moravians were a dominant force in every aspect of mission life in northern Labrador.18
The Moravians established boarding schools early on at two of their missions in Labrador. They taught children how to read and write in Inuktitut, using the Roman alphabet. As a result, most Inuit in Labrador were literate in Inuktitut.19 Inuit cultural practices were suppressed as ‘heathen.’ So little value did the Moravians attach to these practices that, in their extensive diaries and accounts, they neglected to document or describe them.20
The International Grenfell Association was an outgrowth of the work of Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, a British doctor and Protestant evangelist whose work with the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen in the late nineteenth century brought him to Labrador.21 He was struck by the desperate living conditions of the approximately 25,000 men, women, and children who migrated to Labrador annually to work the shore fishery and of the permanent settlers who lived there year round.22 His work among these non-Aboriginal people eventually gained international attention. Grenfell Associations were established in England, the United States, and Canada to raise funds to support his missionary and medical aid work in Labrador.23 By 1909 he had established a hospital and an orphanage in Labrador.24 At a time when much missionary work in Canada focused on Aboriginal people or on eastern European immigrants, Grenfell directed his efforts toward people of Anglo-Saxon descent.25
The role of boarding schools and orphanages in Labrador was expanded in the wake of the 1918 influenza epidemic. The high death rate, and lack of government support led the Grenfell Mission to raise money for a dormitory school at Muddy River, to house children orphaned by the epidemic.26 By the mid-1920s, the Grenfell Mission had established four hospitals, two orphanages, and three public schools.27 The International Grenfell Association, organized to carry on Grenfell’s work, was operating three boarding schools by 1935.28 Many of the teachers in the Grenfell schools were unpaid volunteers, who were expected not only to pay their own transportation to Labrador but also to bring their own school supplies.29
Starting in the 1950s and up to the 1970s, the Grenfell schools accepted Inuit children who were attending high school.30 When Newfoundland and Labrador joined Canada in 1949, education and social services in Labrador were left largely to the missionary organizations.31 Under a 1954 federal-provincial agreement, the Grenfell Association had responsibility for health in northern Labrador. The services were provided under provincial authority, but the funding came from Ottawa.32
The federal government did not extend its network of hostels and federal day schools for Aboriginal people into Labrador in the 1950s. This decision appears to have been due to the fact that the terms of union between Canada and Newfoundland and Labrador made no mention of Aboriginal people.33 The federal government took the position that Aboriginal people in Newfoundland and Labrador were a provincial responsibility. The federal government would eventually enter into specific agreements with the province to provide financial assistance to Aboriginal communities, but the amounts provided were less than what similar communities received in the rest of the country.34
The Moravians and the International Grenfell Association continued to operate residential schools.35 Some of these schools, in Cartwright, Nain, Makkovik, North West River, and St. Anthony, operated into the 1970s.36
The experiences of the students who attended the Labrador schools are similar to those of other residential school students. Rose Oliver grew up in Rigolet, Labrador. She told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada that for her first fourteen years, she lived in “a big happy family with traditional foods, and mom ... was teaching me how to be a Inuit woman; how to clean seal skins and that kind of a thing.” When she was fourteen, her father insisted that she go to the boarding school at North West River. Her mother was opposed to the decision. “Every time I left she would cry her heart out. And I would cry too.”
At the school, students were not allowed to speak their Inuit language, except in secret: “Only at night time when we had to whisper it.” Oliver also missed the foods that she ate at home. She found the rules and regulations oppressive. In particular, there were “a lot of chores to do for a young girl. Make a great big bed for the whole dorm. Wash huge sheets in the morning; and iron them before school started. And it seemed like we had no social life anymore; there was no time spent with us, like, to help us to be young women. The house mothers were cold and they were from England; I don’t think they understood our ways.” Christmas was a particularly hard time: “It was very lonely in the dormitory. There was ... it wasn’t like home. Home was where we had stockings hung up and there was food on the table and there was laughter and Santa Claus came to the school. But here it was just a cold environment.”37
Rosalie Webber, an Inuit woman, attended a Grenfell Mission school in Cartwright in the 1940s. The children travelled to the school by boat, and she remembered
all the people, especially the younger ones crying, all of the way; being very seasick. ’Cause this boat was confined and we were used to being in the boat with our dad, in the open boat.
So when we arrived there, everybody was taken off and deloused; kerosene. Everybody crying and tired and then our hair was cut, our clothes was taken from us and we were given a bibbed, farmer’s blue jeans and the lumberjack shirts, two items of underwear and two socks and two shirts ... and gumboots, which was our—what we wore for the rest of our duration there, winter or summer.
Even though her mother worked at the school, she was not allowed to speak with her: “She had one day off, I think every month and a half. No, she had a half a day off, every month and a half, but she wasn’t allowed to speak with us. It was very, very traumatic as a child, to go from a homey family environment to a sterile, where you were wakened by a bell, cleaned your teeth by a bell, made your bed by a bell.”
Webber found the diet strange and inedible:
So, and then my first meal there I didn’t eat potatoes, well we didn’t have potato peels. Well we didn’t have potatoes in the islands, you know. We didn’t have too much fresh fruit and we ate off the land.
Because I didn’t eat my potatoes then I was refused food and I was sent to my room. And it wasn’t my room, it was everybody’s room. And for three days I didn’t have food. And when my meal time came they presented the potato skins to me again and I’d refuse to eat them, till the third day. And, I guess I must have ate them because I was allowed to go back to classroom, or the dormitory.
It was a limited, regimented life that left her feeling angry and humiliated:
So you grow up, always hungry. You get up by a bell, you ate by a bell, you sat by a bell, you got up by a bell, you went to school by a bell, you come in from outside by a bell, you had your other meal by a bell and you went to bed by a bell. And when that bell rang there was no communication between anyone; very isolating, very lonely. I was filled with anger that you couldn’t express.38
Matilda Lampe attended the boarding school in Nain in the 1970s. When she and her younger sister, Doris, were taken to the school, they thought they were only staying overnight. Matilda recalled comforting her sister on the night of their arrival. “I said, ‘Doris, we go sleep in boarding school overnight. Mom’s going to pick us up tomorrow; must be tomorrow night.’ Doris was happy.” As was the case at many residential schools, the two girls were left in tears when their long hair was cut on their first day at the school. According to Matilda, Doris was punished for speaking Inuktitut at the school. They stayed at the school for three years.39
The treatment they received on arrival left many students feeling humiliated and inferior. Rose Mitsuk attended the North West River school in the 1970s. In her recollection the children were made to feel dirty from the day of their arrival at the school:
After we went in the dorm and put our clothes away and all that, there was a— one of those parents was a Sister. And she took me and brought me into the bathroom and she washed my hair with lice shampoo. And that made me feel that she must’ve felt that I was dirty. But I don’t know if she did that with the other students. I know that she did it with me and I don’t know, it’s ... that I’ll never forget it. ’Cause I think that I was—I wasn’t a dirty person. I think I was a clean person, to me, but that, that thing I’ll never forget.40
Joanna Michel attended the North West River school.
As an Innu person I ... I felt I was dirty all the time. There was always something wrong with me because of these constantly, constantly remarks that were made to us; that we were dirty Indians and we were, should be happy that we are in that place; to look after, to look after us; give us better life. I was one confused little girl. I felt like my parents didn’t want me; that’s why I was in that institution.
On at least one occasion, she got into a fight with the person in charge of the dormitory. “I remember feeling very angry and helpless; there was nothing I could do to protect my little sister. So I jumped on the house mother’s back and I started pulling on her hair; started hitting her. ‘Why you being so bad to my sister!?’”41
Sophie Keelan was born in 1948 and recalled her family’s traditional way of life: “We were Inuit people and we were living like nomadic people of the land. Surviving by hunting and fishing on the land and. . . . And we were living in a tent. I was born in a tent, with two midwives. And I was born in northern part of Labrador; it’s called Saglek Bay on a very small island.” When she was young, her family moved south to the community of Makkovik, where she attended a day school.
In school we had a hard time because we’re Inuit, we’re native and these children—they’re white and we had to mingle with them. And ... after every time after school, they would wait for us outside, outside the school, and wait for us. Then they start throwing rocks at us, calling us names. We would run, run for our lives, and we even had to make a little road up in the trees. We couldn’t go on the road anymore ’cause if we did they gonna run after us. We had to hide, kind of hide and go in the bushes and trees, and the rocks were at us. They were throwing rocks at us.42
Many former students also spoke of being bullied. Marjorie Goudie briefly attended the North West River school in the 1960s. As she recalled, “Not real long after we got to North West River me and my sister got beat up by the other children, just because. I didn’t want to be there, and I hated being there.” When she went home for Christmas, she announced that she was not going back to school. “I didn’t even care what my parents was going to say to me because they wanted me to get an education. But I really didn’t care because I didn’t want to be in that dormitory. So I just stayed home.”43
Abraham Nochasak attended the Hopedale Mission Home in Labrador in the 1960s. He recalled being punished for speaking Inuktitut: “I still couldn’t speak English, although it was Grade Two; I used to speak little bit English. So once in a while when I used to talk Inuktitut, and when I got caught talking Inuktitut, they used to put me in the corner. Stand in the corner until our lessons was over. I stand in the corner lots of times for trying to talk Inuktitut.”44
Samuel Nui, who was born in Davis Inlet, Labrador, attended the North West River school for one year in the early 1950s. He recalled that he was made to strip naked in front of male and female students for wetting his bed. He was also punished with a belt for bedwetting. Sometimes he was denied food or water for a day. When his mother came to the community for medical treatment, he was not allowed to see her.45
Patricia Kemuksiak recalled being taken by force from her grandmother’s house to the school in North West River:
We hung onto our grandmother and we wouldn’t let go and they tore us out of her arms and brought us to North West River into the foreign dorm.
My sister who was about a year old went into the infants’ home and me and my brother went to the junior dorm in North West River; however, we were in the same dorm but we were separated and hardly saw each other because we were separated by boys and girls.
She found school life to be highly regimented: “We were scheduled and scheduled and scheduled to death. Everything went on a schedule and a bell. And if people didn’t like the food we ate, because the food was really bad there, food was shoved down their throat until they threw up.” She recalled it as an austere and loveless institution: “We were fed, clothed and had a bed, but there was no love, no caring, and no support. I had a lot of anger for being put there in the dorm or the orphanage, some people called it, and I felt abandoned. I tried to maintain contact with my brother and sister, but it was difficult. I prayed a lot to go home, constantly prayed.”46
From the students’ perspective, there was little to distinguish life in the Labrador residential schools from life in the residential schools that operated in the rest of the country. Nevertheless, residential schools in Labrador were excluded from the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. That did not preclude the trc from hearing from former students of Labrador residential schools who had relevant experiences to share with the Commission in its efforts to “tell the complete history” and legacy of residential schools in Canada.
In 2010, the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal certified a class action suit launched by former students of the Labrador schools for abuses that occurred in the schools. The Newfoundland Court of Appeal upheld that decision in 2011.47 In January 2015, it was announced that the parties had agreed to submit the case to mediation.48