A Stranger at Home
Page 6
The SCHOOLS
AS EUROPEANS SPREAD throughout North America, their quest to expand into new territories led them to seek ways to remove the people who already inhabited the land. One way of doing this was to send Aboriginal children to live at church-run schools, where their traditional skills were replaced by those that would equip them to function in menial jobs. Like many parents, Margaret’s parents were torn as they wondered if sending their children to the schools might be necessary in order to prepare them for the rapidly changing world. Most children, however, were forcibly taken, some, even kidnapped by government agents and church authorities.
The schools were extremely effective in attaining their main goal, which was to strip Aboriginal children of their roots. Most suffered upon rejoining their communities, just as Margaret did when she returned from Aklavik. They could no longer speak to even their mothers and fathers, and they had lost the knowledge of the old ways, which was so essential for survival in the North. They came home to the place of their people, but they still had a great distance to cover before they could return to a place of belonging. Those who had not been to the schools couldn’t understand the hurdles facing the returning children. They often shunned them and treated them as outsiders, seeing no value in what they had been taught.
Meeting with ostracism when they were expecting a return to safety only added to the wounds that many of the children carried from having been abused at the schools. Some children, like Margaret, fought hard to reclaim their place among their people, while others learned to cope within the margins of their communities. Still others left to find work in the outside world, because they believed it would be easier for them to live there.
Today, many Aboriginal people seek to reclaim their lost ways as a means of unifying and healing their communities. Traditional languages are being offered for study in some schools, elders are being invited to share their knowledge and stories with the younger generations, and culture is being celebrated through powwows, the creation of traditional art and handicrafts, and athletic events such as the Arctic Winter Games. The feelings of shame that have kept so many survivors on the outside of their own communities are being lifted through Truth and Reconciliation Commission national events, healing circles, and residential school reunions, where experiences can be shared in a supportive setting, and through the work of brave survivors like Margaret who have told their stories in all forms of art and media—including books like this one.
Olemaun’s SCRAPBOOK
I turned around to look at them where they stood, perched like birds of prey at the rail of the Immaculata.
We had all waited for so long to be reunited with our parents in Tuktoyaktuk. The shoreline of Tuktoyaktuk looks quite different today because the waters have risen so much.
Olemaun’s father, Bertram, and mother, Lena.
When we passed the Hudson’s Bay Company store, my mother asked my father to stop and buy me some of the outsiders’ food.
My spirits lifted when we made it to our canvas tent, which was set up on a wooden frame near a small lake a short way past the village. This frame tent is similar to the one that Margaret’s family lived in.
There was also a chill in the tent, so I prepared the cook fire, thinking of what I might be able to make that I could stomach.
This is what the interior of Margaret’s family’s tent would have looked like.
In the distance, the massive barge appeared, a stern-wheeler pushing it down the river across the bay toward the bank.
Most men in the North worked as trappers. The man pictured here is taking his fox pelts to the Hudson’s Bay Company post for trade.
My father was waiting for us at the site of our new home. The first house that Margaret’s father built was bought by the government and torn down. This is the second home he built, which was also bought by the government later and replaced by a school.
My mother took me with her because she could not read and did not trust the clerk at the store.
I saw a picture of Lena Horne when I was at the outsiders’ school and she is dark like that.
Margaret’s younger brother Ernest, who was known for his big, fat cheeks.
An illustration from the book Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, depicting Gulliver and the inhabitants of Lilliput.
I passed the weeks that followed in solitude, or playing with the dogs. Families relied heavily on their dogs when dogsleds were the only available means of rapid land transportation. Today they use snowmobiles.
On the day the outsiders’ boat came back to gather up children, I hid under my parents’ bed. The journey to school was a long one, which meant the children could not return home during the school year.
One of [Father’s] jobs in the winter was to cut chunks of ice from a local lake, to supply drinking water for the missionaries.
The RCMP hired men like my father, men who knew the land well and were skilled at surviving the dark days and harsh climate, as special constables. This man, like Margaret’s father, used his traditional knowledge about coping in the extreme environment to aid the RCMP, who were not as well equipped for it.
Then I pulled up the anchor from the snow, tossed it on the sled, and raced around our cabin under the blue-green fronds of the northern lights. The northern lights are moving curtains of light, often green or greenish blue, that appear in the sky near the magnetic North Pole. Most often seen in March and September, their scientific name is aurora borealis.
Near the end of February, when light began popping its head up from the darkness for a brief moment each day like a sik-sik, my father told us to pack for a hunting trip to the Husky Lakes. Margaret’s family also traveled across land by dogsled.
The geese disappeared and the mouth of the Mackenzie River Delta swallowed up us weeping children.
Margaret’s family. From left to right are her father, holding Boogie; Molly; her mother, holding Frank, with Samantha in front of her; Margaret; and Elizabeth.
Mabel at school in Aklavik.
Acknowledgments
THE AUTHOR WISHES TO thank everyone who helped bring this story to print, including Elizabeth Pokiak-Pertschy, James Pokiak, and Mindy Willet, for their book Proud to Be Inuvialuit (Fifth House, 2010), Maggie de Vries, Pam Robertson, and Gillian Watts. Thank you also to Annick Press.
Photo CREDITS
Note: page numbers refer to print edition
vi: (Margaret and her mother and sisters) courtesy of Elizabeth Pokiak-Pertschy
2: basic map outlines by Map Resources. Additions by Lisa Hemingway.
12: (muktuk) NWT Archives/Dept. of Public Works and Services/G-1995-001: 0540
18: (Delta braid) courtesy of Christy Jordan-Fenton
24: (bannock) © istockphoto.com/Falk Kienas
29: (kamik) courtesy of Christy Jordan-Fenton
40: (sik-sik) © istockphoto.com/Harry Kolenbrander
60 (ulu) © istockphoto.com/choicegraphx
93: (tuk-tu) © istockphoto.com/Andrew Coleman
110: (the Immaculata) Library and Archives Canada/PA-101292; (Tuktoyaktuk) Fleming/NWT Archives/N-1979-050-1082
111: (Margaret’s father and mother) courtesy of Margaret Pokiak-Fenton; (Hudson’s Bay store exterior) NWT Archives/Terrance Hunt fonds/N-1979-062: 0011
112: (tent exterior) R. Knights/NWT Archives/N-1991-073-0013; (tent interior) R. Knights/NWT Archives/N-1993-002-0192
113: (stern-wheeler) NWT Archives/Edmonton Air Museum Committee Collection/N-1979-003: 0539; (trapper) NWT Archives/Northwest Territories. Dept. of Information fonds/G-1979-023: 1793
114: (second home built by Margaret’s father) courtesy of Elizabeth Pokiak-Pertschy; (Hudson’s Bay store interior) NWT Archives/Douglas Wilkinson fonds/N-1979-051: 1074
115: (Lena Horne) The Kobal Collection; (Ernest) courtesy of Margaret Pokiak-Fenton
116: (from Gulliver’s Travels) The Art Archive/Kharbine-Tapabor; (dogs) NWT Archives/Douglas Wilkinson fonds/N-1979-051: 0857S
1
17: (leaving for school) NWT Archives/Terrance Hunt fonds/N-1979-062: 0072; (cutting ice) NWT Archives/Northwest Territories. Dept. of Information fonds/G-1979-023: 0927
118: (RCMP special constable) NWT Archives/Northwest Territories. Dept. of Information fonds/G-1979-023: 2292; (northern lights) NWT Archives/Northwest Territories. Dept. of Public Works and Services fonds/G-1995-001: 8015
119: (dogsled) R. Knights/NWT Archives/N-1993-002-0223; (Mackenzie Delta) NWT Archives/Northwest Territories. Dept. of Information fonds/G-1979-023: 2405
120: (Mabel in Aklavik) courtesy of Margaret Pokiak-Fenton; (Pokiak family) NWT Archives/Holman Photohistorical and Oral History Research Committee/N-1990-004: 0068
110-120: (photo background) © istockphoto.com/Peter Zelei
CHRISTY JORDAN-FENTON has been an infantry soldier, a pipeline laborer, a survival instructor, and a bareback bronco rider. Christy has also worked with street children. She was born just outside of Rimbey, Alberta, and has lived in Australia, South Africa, and the United States. Christy now lives on a farm near Fort St. John, British Columbia, where she and her husband are raising three small children, a few chickens, three dogs, a llama, two rabbits, and enough horses to outfit an entire town. Christy worked with her mother-in-law, Margaret Pokiak-Fenton, to write this story. This is the second story that they’ve written together.
Margaret and her husband, Lyle, 1962.
MARGARET POKIAK-FENTON was born on a tiny island far north of the Arctic Circle. She spent her early years on Banks Island; when she was eight years old she traveled to the mainland to attend the Catholic residential school in Aklavik, Northwest Territories. In her early twenties, while working for the Hudson’s Bay Company in Tuktoyaktuk, she met her husband-to-be, Lyle, who was working on the DEW Line project. She followed him south to Fort St. John and together they raised eight children. Margaret can be found most Saturdays at the local farmers’ market, where she sells traditional Inuit crafts and the best bread and bannock in the North Peace.
Liz at 10 years old
LIZ AMINI-HOLMES was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area. Liz painted and drew as a child, but she was also interested in becoming an archeologist, a paranormal researcher, an astronaut, and a detective with Scotland Yard. However, she decided that working as an artist was way more fun than any of those jobs and required a lot less math. Liz creates illustrations for books, editorial, advertising, merchandising, and multimedia. In her spare time she reads several books at once, writes fiction, cooks up new recipes, and gets into mischief. She is very ticklish, laughs in the face of danger, and prides herself on not taking anything too seriously!
(text) © 2011 Christy Jordan-Fenton
(artwork) © 2011 Liz Amini-Holmes
Photography credits appearhere.
Edited by Maggie de Vries
Copyedited by Pam Robertson
Proofread by Gillian Watts
Cover and interior design by Lisa Hemingway
Cover and interior illustrations by Liz Amini-Holmes
Annick Press Ltd.
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This edition published in 2013 by
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Cataloging in Publication
Jordan-Fenton, Christy
A stranger at home: a true story / Christy Jordan-Fenton & Margaret Pokiak-Fenton ; artwork by Liz Amini-Holmes.
Sequel to: Fatty legs.
ISBN 978-1-55451-362-8 (bound).—ISBN 978-1-55451-361-1 (pbk.)
1. Pokiak-Fenton, Margaret—Childhood and youth—Juvenile literature. 2. Inuit—Canada—Residential schools—Juvenile literature. 3. Inuit women—Biography—Juvenile literature. I. Pokiak-Fenton, Margaret II. Amini-Holmes, Liz III. Title.
E96.5.J652 2011 J371.829‘9712071 C2011-902079-3
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.
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