Finding Inuvialuit children lost in the residential school system – Factbook

This factbook provides information about plans for locating, documenting and memorializing burial sites of Inuit children lost in Canada’s residential school system.

The publication also serves as an educational tool about some of the history of the residential school system, its impacts and the ongoing reconciliation efforts in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Northwest Territories and Canada.

The project

This factbook is part of a larger initiative. Addressing the harms suffered by survivors, their families and communities is at the heart of reconciliation and is essential to renewing and building relationships with Indigenous Peoples, governments and all Canadians. Across the Beaufort Delta, there are many people who tell stories of relatives who left home on a boat to go to a residential school, never to return.

Inuvialuit Regional Corporation (IRC) is planning to find those children and mark their resting places. Locating unmarked graves at former residential school sites across Canada is a tragic reminder of the abuse that many Indigenous children suffered in these institutions.

Read the book

Click the image below to read ‘Finding Inuvialuit children lost in the residential school system – Factbook.’

Download a PDF of the factbook here.

To request more information or a copy of the book, contact Beverly Lennie, Nanilavut project manager and Inuvialuit Residential Schools Missing Children project manager, Inuvialuit Regional Corporation. Email: blennie@inuvialuit.com

Taking Care

We recognize this publication contains information that may be difficult for many to read, and that our efforts to honour the lost as well as the survivors may act as an unwelcome reminder of the hardships suffered by generations of Inuvialuit.

A national residential school crisis line offers emotional support and crisis referral services for residential school survivors and their families. Call toll-free 1-866-925-4419. This service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Photo: The Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Hospital and Residential School was established in 1929 and closed in 1959. It operated in Aklavik, NT, and served Inuit and First Nations People.