Innu survivor wants former Labrador residential school building turned into a museum

The former Yale School junior dormitory in North West River, Labrador. November 2024. Photo by Heidi Atter. Yumna Iftikhar, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

By Yumna Iftikhar, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Independent

December 23, 2024

To get to the post office in North West River, for years Joanna Michel would pass the residential school where she spent eight years in  the 1970s.

“It’s a bad reminder of what happened, what took place there,” she  says, sitting in an empty conference room at the Innu Round Table  Secretariat office in Sheshatshiu.

Having to walk by the school’s junior dormitory, with its boarded windows and chipped paint, led Michel to call for the building’s destruction in 2021.

Now she’s had a change of heart and would rather see the building turned into a museum.

Last year, Michel made the proposal to North West River’s town  council, she told The Independent, in order to “have people’s stories in  there so people can know what took place there, as bad as it is, and  how it needs to be told.”

There’s just one problem. According to the town’s manager, the municipality doesn’t own the building, or the land it’s on. 

The building was previously owned by the North West River Industrial  Association (NWRIA), which was created in 1999 to help create jobs in  the community. Town Manager Wendy Hillier told The Independent that the  Association ceased operating in 2006, at which time ownership of the  property went into “limbo.” 

The Association was revived in 2023 after years of work by the Town  to resolve the land and building’s ownership issues. Hillier said the  Town and the Association recently received a deed for the building, and  that the building is now under ownership of the Association. The  municipality, she said, will soon be able to decide the former  dormitory’s future.

“We don’t want an eyesore in our town anymore,” she said, adding the  Town and the Association have yet to meet and discuss plans for the  dorm. The Independent requested documentation regarding the building and  land’s current ownership but has not heard back from the Town.  Likewise, a request to the provincial government regarding ownership has  not yet been returned.

No consensus on what to do with buildings

In 2018, the Town surveyed its residents about the building’s future.  Of the 250 surveys sent out, 47 were filled and returned, according to  documents obtained by The Independent through an access to information  request.

Thirty-eight per cent of the 47 respondents said they wanted the  building torn down, while 34 per cent said they would prefer to see it  renovated. One respondent called the building a “stain on the community”  and wanted something positive built in its place. The questionnaire did  not have the option of turning the building into a museum. 

In 2021, the Town found that most residents on Facebook supported  tearing down the building because of its history and “its presence  negatively impacted upon the image of North West River community.”

Michel, now 60, still remembers the day in 1973 when two social  workers came to her home in Sheshatshiu and promised to take her to a  better place. She says she spent decades trying to heal from the trauma  she faced in the school’s junior dorm. 

“I was physically, sexually and psychologically abused in the dorm, and I was only eight years old,” she says.

The International Grenfell Association operated the school and dorms in North West River, which were open from 1952 until 1980.

Michel says she lost her language and culture because the school made  her feel ashamed of being Innu. The workers would tell her that she was  “dirty, lousy and no good,” she recalls, adding she was “ashamed [of]  having brown skin.”

“Today I’m Indigenous, and I got brown skin, and I’m really proud.”

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended in its  calls to action that the federal government lead efforts to commemorate  residential school sites and the history and legacy of residential  schools. 

A few other residential schools across the country have been converted into museums. The White Elephant Museum in the Nunatsiavut community of Makkovik was a boarding school in 1913. In 1996, it was transformed into a museum. 

The former Portage Indian Residential School in Manitoba was  transitioned into the National Indigenous Residential School Museum of  Canada.

Survivors across the country have different views on whether  residential school buildings that remain standing should be demolished  or preserved as a reminder of the federal and provincial governments’  roles in the atrocities committed against Indigenous Peoples.

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The ripple effects of residential schools

Michel says her father blamed her mother after social workers took  her and her siblings. “You’re the reason why our children got taken  away,” her father would say to her mother.

“And when I think about that today, it just breaks my heart. I was this young girl,” she says.

“My mother and my dad never heard my story because I never wanted to  hurt my mom and dad, because they already felt, you know, responsible  for what happened to me.”

Michel says the shame and guilt she felt prevented her from healing.  “I couldn’t really tell anybody, because I always thought it was my  fault that this was happening to me. I deserved it.” 

After leaving the dormitory as a teenager, she was angry and often  acted out. That anger later landed her in prison at Her Majesty’s  Penitentiary in St. John’s.

“I was incarcerated for the things I’ve done trying to cope. I had nobody, nobody to help me,” she said.

Sister Joan Coffey, a nun who Michel knew personally, visited Michel in prison to express her disappointment. “I couldn’t tell her what was  going on inside of me because I had a lot of anger. I had a bad temper,  and this is all the result of residential school.”

Coffey then encouraged Michel to complete her education. But Michel  says the pain didn’t go away, and she became suicidal. “I was suffering  from depression, and I had a nervous breakdown.”

Michel says she first opened up about her experience in the  residential school system at a conference organized by the Labrador  Inuit Association in the 1990s. “I had the courage to tell my story for  the first time. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was  somebody. I was important,” she said.

She keeps a CD of her testimony in a china cabinet in her family  home. She says it is for her adult children in case they ever want to  hear about her experience with residential schools — but they’ve never  had the courage to listen to it.

With the help of her family, in the 1990s Michel started treatment  and completed her education. Her parents helped raise her first child.  But the healing process was long and difficult and she found herself  relapsing from time to time.

Michel sobs as she says her biggest regret is hurting her children.  “I think it’s the ripple effects of residential school, and I’m really  sorry that I hurt my children. This is what I got to live with for the  rest of my life; I got to live with what I did to my children.”

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Helping her community

Michel wanted to help children in her community in a way she wasn’t  helped, so she started working with the provincial government’s  Department of Children, Seniors Social Development’s social services  team in Sheshatshiu.

But that work, she says, further triggered her trauma.

“I was apprehending kids, and I used to go home and cry.”

Today, Michel is a receptionist with the Innu Round Table Secretariat, where she can be healthy while helping her community.

In June, she testified at the Inquiry into the Treatment, Experiences  and Outcomes of Innu in the Child Protection System. The inquiry  started in 2022 after years of lobbying by Innu following the deaths of  Innu children in provincial custody and those recently released from  care.

There is an overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the provincial child welfare system. In 2021, 35 per cent  of children in provincial care were Indigenous, even though Indigenous  children make up just 13 per cent of the province’s child population.

Michel wants to continue telling her story to let other residential  school survivors know they aren’t alone, they don’t have to feel  ashamed, and those responsible for the trauma the Innu community has  faced must be held accountable.

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“[My story] will wake up the community, the people, the government,”  she says. “You just can’t brush it off and throw anything under the  carpet because there is pain in this community, and there’s a lot of  hurting.”

“The Innu have suffered so much, so much suffering, and a lot of the  survivors, they’re no longer here; some of them committed suicide. And  I’m glad I’m here today to tell my story.”

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