'I still live here': Mary Ann Nui's memories of Davis Inlet

As Mary Ann Nui sets foot in her childhood community of Davis Inlet, she takes deep breaths of the fresh air and smiles.

"It's always good to come back here, because this is home," she said.

Nobody has lived in Davis Inlet for two decades, and the wear and tear show in the former Mushuau Innu community, on an island off Labrador's northern coast. What was the main wharf is now rotting timbers, but for Nui those logs come to life as her childhood playground, where kids would hang out and jump and swim in the water.

"This is my safe place, I guess. The memories that you have with your family and your friends here, there [was] so much closeness and so much unity," she said.

With no running water in houses, that unity came as people worked together, she said, to get water, do laundry, and chop wood to stay warm.

Listen to Mary Ann Nui's memories of Davis Inlet on Atlantic Voice:

Memories abound as Nui checks out the weathered structures. There's her grandparents' house, which doubled as a childhood hangout. Trails and walkways, now overgrown with shrubs. A yearling black bear appears, which Nui considers good luck, and a continuation of life in Davis Inlet.

She stops by the church, where her parents worshipped devoutly, a faith Nui didn't inherit. Instead she recalled the missionaries' punishments for not praying, or for speaking in Innu-aimun.

"I just never felt connected to it. I'm still questioning myself today. Why wasn't I connected to it?" she said.

While she never found room for Christianity, Davis Inlet itself is different.

"I was probably the last one that moved from Davis Inlet. I knew how historic it was and I didn't wanna leave Davis Inlet, so I didn't," she said.

"I wasn't in a hurry to move, even though I had a new house. I just wasn't ready to move."

Nui did end up leaving, along with everyone else, in 2002, ending decades of life there. The provincial government had settled the formerly nomadic Mushuau Innu there in the 1960s. There were few services — Innu homes had no running water, even though the school and church did — and poverty, mental health crises and substance abuse followed. 

In the early 1990s, images of children in the midst of solvent abuse turned a national spotlight onto the crisis. Nui herself said she used solvents at times and struggled to stay away from them.