New book documents harms — and resistance — at Northern residential schools
CBC
A new book chronicles the experiences of Northern Indigenous people at residential schools with a particular look at Grollier Hall and Stringer Hall in Inuvik, N.W.T.
Crystal Gail Fraser, author of By Strength, We Are Still Here: Indigenous Peoples and Indian Residential Schooling in Inuvik, is Gwichyà Gwich'in and originally from Inuvik.
Fraser, an associate professor in history and Native studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, says she hopes the book will help demystify the experiences of survivors and lead to more nation building and sovereignty.
"We are still learning how to live well as people," Fraser said.
Fraser conducted 75 interviews with survivors to help guide her work but the issues of northern residential schools were also personal.
"Having my own mother and my own grandmother go to residential school, but at the time still not really knowing a lot about it, I was a little bit nervous," she said.
"But I also knew that it could really make a difference to understand this in the broader context of our healing."
The issue of Northern peoples' experiences of residential schools has been understudied, Fraser said. She hopes her book will encourage more discussion of the issues affecting survivors.
Fraser will be at Audrey's Books in Edmonton on Jan. 11 for a book launch.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued a report specifically on the Inuit and Northern experience of residential schools in 2015. It said at first the federal government had been uninterested in opening schools in the North because there were limited opportunities for economic development in the region.
"Were it not for the work of Roman Catholic and Anglican missionaries, residential schooling would have no history north of the sixtieth parallel before 1950," the report says.
The report also noted that due to the high percentage of Indigenous Peoples in the North, there is a higher percentage of survivors in the region and it feels the legacy of the schools "strongly."
Fraser said survivors are "still on the healing journey, particularly in the North because Grollier Hall was one of the last institutions to close."
Grollier Hall closed in 1997.
