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February 15, 2013
My preparation for Lent this week included spending Shrove Tuesday in Ottawa at a meeting with Truth and Reconciliation Commissioners, senior federal officials, other church leaders, and leadership from the Assembly of First Nations and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is about two-thirds of the way through its mandate, with a lot of work yet to be done. The United Church is one of the parties to the settlement agreement, along with the Anglican, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic churches. The other parties are the federal government and the national organizations representing First Nations and Inuit. As I see the purpose of these meetings of leaders, it is to keep the commitments of our organizations front and centre for each of us, and to keep up the pressure to deliver on the details, not just the grand statements.
There are a lot of details! Isn’t that the way: living up to big commitments so often requires carrying out a multitude of small steps. Right now, a lot of the discussion centres around technical issues about production of archival material, thousands and thousands of documents that the government and the churches have which will help tell the story of the children who lived – and those who died – in the residential schools.
In a long day of discussion about the details, I often found myself thinking of a former colleague from Nunavut who passed away before Christmas.
I first got to know Marius Tungilik in the days before the formation of the Government of Nunavut, when I was working with the Government of the Northwest Territories in Yellowknife, and he was brought over from the eastern Arctic to work alongside senior officials in the NWT government as he prepared to assume a leadership role in the Nunavut public service. He was bright, funny, and compassionate, and he was fragile.
Marius was a survivor of the Joseph Bernier Federal Day School and Turquetil Hall residence in Chesterfield Inlet. He and the other children there were taken from their families in outpost camps and communities to live in Turquetil Hall and attend the school. They were cut off from family contact, (or contact with the Inuit who lived in Chesterfield Inlet), punished for speaking their first language, (Inuktitut), fed unfamiliar foods, and introduced to a strict regime of manners and customs foreign to their culture. Beyond that, many of the children suffered physical and sexual abuse from teachers and residence supervisors. Marius was the first survivor to come forward with complaints about abuse he suffered there as a little boy, giving courage to others to do the same. I will never forget the press conference the RCMP held in Yellowknife after concluding their investigation of complaints about the Chesterfield Inlet school, where it was stated that if certain staff members had still been living, there would have been well over a hundred criminal charges laid.
This school and residence were run by the Oblates, and during the work I did with Marius and other survivors that led to an apology by the Roman Catholic Bishop of the Arctic, I suppose I took some small comfort in knowing that this was the Catholic Church, not our church. I don’t think I really understood then about the United Church-run schools in other parts of the country.
During my years in the Government of Nunavut, Marius and others from that school were prominent leaders and valued colleagues. The academic side of their school experience gave them the educational basis to serve in senior government positions, and the personal side of their school experiences haunted them. I saw how Marius struggled, and how his former schoolmates sought to support him.
I saw Marius last time I was in Iqaluit, and it was during one of his low moments. He seemed both glad to see me, and embarrassed at the condition he was in. My heart went out to him.
In the end, the support of friends and family was not enough for Marius. He died alone at home, in circumstances not fully explained, in December.
As I sat at that table of senior officials on Tuesday, talking about legal obligations and document production, my mind kept drifting away from the details of the conversation. I was thinking of Marius, and of all those who survive and embrace life despite the memories. This work is for them, for their children and grandchildren, and for all of us.
Nora
