This post is part of a series entitled “Land, Memory, and Schooling: Environmental Histories of Colonial Education.” You can find the introduction here.
This post and series discuss Indian residential and day schools. Please take care as you read. If you are a Survivor or intergenerational Survivor of residential or day school and you need help, there’s a free 24-hour support line. Call 1-866-925-4419. Additional resources are available here.
Inuuvik (Inuvik), Northwest Territories, sits on the edge of the Mackenzie Delta, above the Arctic Circle. Winters here stretch long and dark, with temperatures plunging to –50°C. For thousands of years, Dinjii Zhuh (Gwich’in) and Inuvialuit families adapted to this sub-Arctic climate through seasonal rounds of hunting, trapping, and fishing, passing bush skills and Indigenous knowledge from one generation to the next.
When Inuuvik was built in the 1950s as part of Canada’s strategy to create a new modern administrative centre in the Mackenzie District, it was also the site of two massive residential schools: Grollier Hall (Roman Catholic) and Stringer Hall (Anglican).
“For Indigenous children, climate and schooling were inseparable, shaping daily life, loss, and survivance.”
For Indigenous children, climate and schooling were inseparable, shaping daily life, loss, and survivance. Survivor Antoine Mountain reflected that “the difference between our small town of Radelie Koe and Inuvik, where we went to residential school, was just as drastic. The Mackenzie Delta was certainly physically colder, and there was a new kind of coldness awaiting us young and innocent children.”1 Mountain’s words speak to a reality shared by many. Thousands of Indigenous children from across the North and Canada went to Inuuvik’s residential schools, where they encountered both the physical cold of the Mackenzie Delta and the emotional coldness of the institutions themselves.
Federal officials boasted that Inuuvik was “the first real place we have built from scratch.”2 Unlike older mission schools in Akłarvik (Aklavik), Inuuvik featured “ultra-modern” residential schools with electric heating, plumbing, and utilidors carrying water and sewage through raised, insulated pipes.3 These amenities spared students from some of the heavy chores common at the earlier Arctic residential schools, like hauling water and wood.4 Yet the stark new infrastructure also distanced them from the Land. These “ultra-modern” facilities did not make Inuuvik’s schools better or safer than other residential schools operating in Canada at the same time; they simply restructured how control and disconnection were imposed on Indigenous children.
The rhythm of Delta life had always been seasonal, and continues to be today. Families travelled together to fall camps for moose hunting, winter camps for trapping, spring camps for muskrat, and summer fish and whale camps. Residential schooling did not only interrupt cultural transmission, but it also disrupted children’s ability to safely and skillfully inhabit their homelands.
With Inuuvik’s schools, those cycles were broken. A Dinjii Zhuh Elder recalled:
They could only join the fish camp when school was out. For the rest of the year, the children were under the influence of non-natives. It was almost impossible for the Loucheux [Dinjii Zhuh] to teach their children the traditional lifestyle. These children began to lose the bush skills needed to survive in a harsh arctic winter.5
The loss of time on the Land was not just cultural but environmental. Without seasonal knowledge, children’s ability to read ice, prepare for cold, develop relationships with the animals, and live sustainably in the North was disrupted. Residential schooling replaced ancient forms of Indigenous environmental education with regimented classroom learning, leaving many children less prepared for life in their own homelands.
“Without seasonal knowledge, children’s ability to read ice, prepare for cold, develop relationships with the animals, and live sustainably in the North was disrupted.”
The cold was never far away. Survivors remembered drafty dormitories and clothing that offered little protection against Arctic temperatures. Hunger magnified the feeling of cold; children were routinely underfed, and meals often lacked the calories and nutrients needed to withstand sub-zero temperatures. Outdoors, children were required to walk to the nearby Indian day school (Sir Alexander Mackenzie School) or undertake chores in temperatures of –40 or –50°C. The cold shaped every aspect of children’s days, from waking to walking to school, to the regulated forms of activity the institutions prescribed.
Recreation, too, was structured and compulsory—another way churches and government sought to control and reform Indigenous bodies. Moreover, unlike today, there was no temperature below which children were kept inside for recess or training. Elite skier Fred Kelly (nicknamed “The Express”) was one of several students who were hospitalized for cold-related injuries, in his case frostbitten hands.6
Yet, recreation brought both harm and strength.7 Survivors like Sharon Firth remembered skiing as a rare space of joy and freedom: “It was a different story when we skied because it was freedom out there. We could express ourselves on skis and enjoy the freedom we had and the playfulness within our whole ski program because we were kids. At least that part wasn’t taken away from us. We could have fun and laugh.”8 This tension between suffering and strength is a hallmark of northern schooling. The same environment that isolated and endangered children also underscored their resilience.
Despite institutional attempts to sever ties, the Land remained a teacher. Children learned to walk in darkness, to cover exposed skin against frostbite, and to endure. Even short opportunities to leave the residential schools—to fish, to hunt, to be with family, or when children ran away from Grollier or Stringer Hall—reaffirmed the Land as strength and healing. Survivors described country food, time on the Land, and laughter with kin as anchors that helped them survive residential school. For some, though, leaving the institution carried unbearable risks: when three boys fled Stringer Hall in 1972 and attempted to walk to Tuktuuyaqtuuq (Tuktoyaktuk), two perished on the Land and one survived—a stark reminder of how the northern environment could both sustain and take life.
Events like this underscore that the environment was not a neutral backdrop but an active force—sometimes protecting children, sometimes endangering them, and always shaping the possibilities of survival.
The privilege of being on the Land and with family was usually only available to Delta kids with families who lived in the region; others, such as Inuit students from the Eastern Arctic, were thousands of kilometers away from their families and were only permitted to return home once a year. These uneven experiences remind us that while some children were able to maintain connections with Land, environment, and culture, many others—especially those sent far from home—were further isolated, with little or no opportunity to draw on the strength of their homelands.
“Residential school history is environmental history.”
Residential school history is environmental history. In Inuuvik, climate shaped every aspect of children’s experiences: it kept families apart for months, intensified daily routines, exposed inequalities in housing and infrastructure, and tested endurance through cold and darkness. Yet the environment also remained a source of survivance. Survivors drew strength from their northern homelands, even when institutions tried to cut those ties.
Telling these stories as environmental history expands our understanding of colonial schooling. It shows how schools did not exist apart from the Land but were deeply embedded in it—built in ways that separated children from their families and Lands, shaped by climate extremes, and resisted through Indigenous relationships to Land and season.
This year marks ten years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its 94 Calls to Action. As Allyson Stevenson and I argued in the Canadian Historical Review in 2021, truth must come before reconciliation.9 Historians and academics have a responsibility to deepen our understanding of these histories, including how climate and environment shaped schooling in the North. Marking the tenth anniversary of the Calls to Action requires recognizing that reconciliation is not only about policy or apology, but also about telling the truth of how the Land itself was drawn into the project of residential schooling.
Adapted from Crystal Gail Fraser, By Strength, We Are Still Here: Indigenous Peoples and Indian Residential Schooling in Inuvik, Northwest Territories (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2024).
Author’s Note: I write as a Gwichya Gwich’in scholar, originally from the Northwest Territories. My research and relationships are rooted in the Lands and histories of the Mackenzie Delta, and have been shaped by listening to Survivors, Elders, and intergenerational Survivors who have shared their stories with courage and generosity. This work carries responsibilities to community, to the Land, and to the memories of those who did not return home.
Feature Image: Looking west from Inuuvik (Inuvik). Students at Grollier and Stringer Halls would have seen this view—some gazing toward their home in Akłarvik (Aklavik), others toward the mountains where their families had travelled, hunted, and lived for generations. Image courtesy of Eighty One Images.
Notes
1 Antoine Mountain, From Bear Rock Mountain: The Life and Times of a Dene Residential School Survivor (Victoria: Brindle and Glass, 2019), 48.
2 Crystal Gail Fraser, By Strength, We Are Still Here: Indigenous Peoples and Indian Residential Schooling in Inuvik, Northwest Territories (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2024), 68.
3 Fraser, 68.
4 These institutions include All Saints and Immaculate Conception Indian Residential Schools in Akłarvik, and St. John’s Eskimo Residential School at Tapqaq (Shingle Point).
5 Fraser, 90.
6 Fraser, 191.
7 For more on the history of recreation and sport at northern day and residential schools, see the How I Survived Podcast at https://www.howisurvived.ca/.
8 Fraser, 205.
9 Crystal Gail Fraser and Allyson Stevenson, “Reflecting on the Foundations of Our Discipline Inspired by the TRC: A Duty to Respond During This Age of Reconciliation,” The Canadian Historical Review 103, no. 1 (March 2022): 1-31.
Crystal Gail Fraser