Nunavik survivors gather to grieve and let it all go

Close to a hundred Nunavimmiut attended the reunion, which was coordinated by staff at the Nunavik regional board of health and social services. The event, held earlier this month in Inukjuak, was identified as part of a needs assessment done in 2009. (PHOTO COURTESY NRBHSS)

It’s time to move on, they said.

Nearly 100 of Nunavik’s former residential school students gathered in Inukjuak earlier this month for the first reunion of its kind.

They came to grieve, to heal and ultimately, to let go at the gathering, held March 1 to 6 at the Innalik School.

“This needed to happen, it’s been a long time coming,” said Martha Grieg, a former residential school student who is now a Kuujjuaq counsellor. “People are ready to talk about things.”

The “things” Grieg talks about would leave a hole in most people’s lives, but Grieg said she has decided to rise above her pain.

A former student of the Churchill Vocation Centre in the late 1960s, Grieg witnessed the prejudice, isolation and abuse that have become the legacy of the residential school system.

From 1950s to the 1970s, about 350 Nunavimmiut were separated from their families to attend these schools.

In addition to the Churchill vocational school, federal day schools and adjoining hostels operated in four Nunavik communities, which are now known as Inukjuak, Kuujjuaraapik, Kangiqsualujjuaq and Kangirsuk.

During a needs assessment last year carried out by Nunavik’s regional board of health and social services, Grieg and other former students expressed their desire to reunite with Nunavik’s surviving students and have a chance to heal, supported by people who understand best.

Many years later, Grieg said she has.

But, although she might be farther ahead in that process than others, Greig said the reunion allowed a lot of people to release resentment and pain.

“I received a lot of prejudice from my own people, that I had never seen until I went to school there,” said Grieg, a green-eyed Inuk. “But it’s something I’ve been able to let go of. We’ll never forget, but we can get to the point where we can forgive,” she said.

The reunion’s speakers, events and workshops were aimed to help that process.

One exercise called From Darkness to Vision, led by therapist Jane Middleton-Moz, was designed to teach the former students empathy.

Grieg said participants played the role of children, parents and grandparents sitting behind each other.

“It really gave (the group) a chance to feel what it was like to be taken away from their parents,” Greig said. “There were a lot of tears.”

Mary Simon, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, was invited to the reunion as a keynote speaker. In her speech, Simon described the residential school experience as having “shook our belief in ourselves.”

“There was still a tremendous amount of pain that I could see while I was (at the reunion), just from listening to people speak about their experiences,” Simon told Nunatsiaq News. “But this was a good example of an event that can help people move ahead.”

In Inukjuak, Simon heard an elder husband and wife speak to the survivors, their children among them. The couple apologized, on behalf of all parents, for allowing their children to be taken away to the schools.

“Although I don’t think they felt like they had any authority at the time,” Simon reflected.

Simon, who represented Inuit from across the country in 2008 when the federal government apologized for its legacy of residential schools, said a reunion of former students plays a very different role in the healing process.

“(The government apology) signified the beginning of a process for the healing and reconciliation to begin,” Simon said. “This reunion is a much more personal journey for individuals than the apology would have been.”

More personal perhaps, but empowering through the shared experience.

“Just to be in the room together was something; people cried together, people laughed together,” said Lisa Mesher, director of Inuit values and practices at the Nunavik regional health board and one of the event organizers.

“You could see by the end of the reunion that people felt lighter,” Mesher said. “One woman told me: I feel so light that I’m almost flying.”

It was a huge undertaking to co-ordinate a week-long event for over a 100 people, but the host community of Inukjuak did a great job welcoming everyone, Mesher said.

‘We were really pleased with the turnout,” she said.

The Inukjuak reunion was funded through the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, money destined for projects to help former residential school students.

But the foundation’s mandate expires at the end of the month, so Mesher saidthe coordination of a future reunion will hinge on what other funding might be available.

“It would be nice to have another reunion,” Grieg said. “It’s important for all these students to speak out. We need support to step away from all the negative stuff…and find our inner strength.”

In the coming years, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission will bring survivors’ stories together in a public acknowledgement of what happened at the many residential schools attended by aboriginal people across Canada.

The commission, which is set to re-group shortly after relocating from Ottawa to Winnipeg, will operate with the input of an Inuit sub-committee. Appointments to the committee have yet to be made.

As the commission aims to create a public record of residential school history, the Inukjuak reunion has begun this process in Nunavik.

With very limited information of residential school survivors in the region, reunion organizers had to contact individual municipalities for names. From that, a regional database will grow.

Following the Inukjuak reunion, there could be more compensation claims filed by Inuit survivors under the federal government’s residential school settlement.

Makivik Corp. manages the residential school file and offers support for Nunavimmiut looking to file for compensation.

Makivik sent a lawyer to the Inukjuak reunion to answer inquiries. There were a number of questions about claims some wanted to pursue, said Makivik’s corporate secretary Andy Moorhouse, as well requests for information on pending claims.