How I Survived Podcast

A Brief History of Education and Schooling in the Northwest Territories

By: Drs. Crystal Gail Fraser and Jessica Dunkin

Here, we provide listeners with a brief overview of the history of education and schooling in the NWT. This is necessary context for our research project about recreation at residential and day schools in Canada's North. It is also a little-known history, one that not many people have published on. 

When thinking, researching, or writing about teaching and learning in the NWT, we must distinguish between education and schooling as both concepts and practices. Anthropologist Mwalimu J. Shujaa explains that for Black children in the United States, attending school is not “always thought to be consistent with getting an education,” although he notes that the two can certainly overlap.^[i] This, too, is the case in Canada.

We know Indigenous Peoples in the North have their own structures and practices of educating children and adults, which are very different from historical and contemporary colonial schooling systems. When government officials created day and residential schools, part of the broader system of what they called “Indian education,” they did not consider how Indigenous Peoples learn and pass on knowledge and skills through their cultures and languages, and how important these practices are to Indigenous Peoples.^[ii]

Indigenous Education

While it is not possible here to fully describe the diverse and long-standing practices of teaching, demonstrating, learning, practicing, and mentorship among northern Indigenous Peoples before the establishment of day and residential schools, it is nevertheless helpful to briefly summarize some of the key similarities in the ways Indigenous societies in what is now called the NWT have educated their citizens.

Left photo: Alestine Andre and Lisa Andre work on a large sruh (coney) at Alestine’s fish camp at Dachan Choo Gę̀hnjik (Tree River). Credit: NWT Archives/James Jerome fonds/N-1987-017: 1484. Right photo: Edward Doctor showing Lexie Larocque-Murphy how to pluck a duck, 2019. Credit: Judy Whitford.

Northern Indigenous education is intergenerational and reflects how Indigenous northerners have always lived as extended families. Children learn by observing, listening, practicing alongside others, and receiving feedback. Elders and other identified Knowledge Keepers play a particularly important role in sharing knowledge with children and young people.

Stories and storytelling are both vital methods of teaching and learning in northern Indigenous cultures. Indigenous northerners are connected to ancestors through stories, raised with stories, learn to make sense of the world through stories, and then use those stories to teach the next generation. From birth, stories are told in different places and situations, by different community members, and to different people. Land is always connected to story, too.

In northern Indigenous cultures, children are immensely loved and valued. Steering committee member Sharon Firth, upon reading a draft of this piece, reminded us that families were also very affectionate with children and each other before colonial schooling.

Despite the experiences and legacies of Indian day and residential schooling, northern Indigenous forms of education outlined here are still practiced, and, with decolonial approaches currently underway, are even surging.

Colonial Schooling

​​For many northern Indigenous families, church- and government-operated day, residential, hospital, and seasonal schools interrupted these educational practices and traditions that stretched back millennia. In this overview of colonial schooling in the NWT, we focus on residential and day schools because these were the most common types of “schools.” (We have documented forty-five mission, federal, and territorial residential and day schools in communities that are part of the present-day NWT.)

Briefly, though, hospital schools formalized the delivery of “education” to sick children after World War II. We know of hospital schools that operated in Akłarvik (Aklavik), Behchokǫ̀, Denınu Kúę́ (Fort Resolution), Łíídlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ (Fort Simpson), and Tthebacha (Fort Smith).^[iii] Seasonal schools were also an artifact of the postwar period. Operated by the federal government, they brought colonial schooling and social services to small communities for two to four months in the summer. Formal seasonal schools operated in Whatı̀, Pehdzéh Kı̨́ (Wrigley), Tthennáágó (Nahanni Butte), Łútsël K’é, and Enǫ̀ǫ̀da (Trout Rock).

Left photo: St. Ann's Hospital, Tthebacha, NWT, 195?. Credit: NWT Archives/Northwest Territories. Department of Health and Social Services fonds/G-2008-021: 0001. Right photo: In 1957, the seasonal school in Pedzéh Kı̨́ (then Fort Wrigley) operated out of a tent. Credit: NWT Archives/Erik Watt fonds/N-1990-005: 0584.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) calls the time period before 1960 the “mission school era” because prior to the 1950s, the majority of residential and day schools in the NWT were built and operated by Christian churches.^[iv] The first day schools were established by Anglican missionaries in Łíídlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ and Tulít’a in 1860 and 1866, respectively.^[v] In 1867, the Grey Nuns started the first Indian residential school, Sacred Heart Mission School, in Zhatıe Kųę (Fort Providence). The Catholic and Anglican churches opened additional residential schools in the decades that followed: St. Peter’s (Anglican) in Xátł'odehchee (Hay River) in 1895; St. Joseph’s (Catholic) in Denınu Kúę́ in 1903; and All Saints (Anglican) and Immaculate Conception (Catholic) in Akłarvik in 1919 and 1925, respectively. There continue to be questions about some institutions in the North, including the years they operated and in what capacity.

Left photo: St. Peter's Mission Indian Boarding School, Xátł'odehchee, 1899. Credit: NWT Archives/Thomas Marsh fonds/N-1988-039: 0009. Right photo: Roman Catholic hospital and residential school, Akłarvik, 193?. Credit: NWT Archives/Canada. Department of the Interior fonds/G-1989-006: 0046.

Not all Indigenous children in the NWT were institutionalized at schools; many remained on the Land with their families, as they had done since time immemorial, and received an enlightened education from their parents, Elders, and other Knowledge Keepers. Families who lived in close proximity to missionaries, Indian Agents, and police were most often subjected to oppressive church and state policies (such as the Indian Act) that mandated school attendance.^[vi]

NWT schools began receiving state funding, though sporadically, in 1905, and there were provisions in Treaty 11, signed in 1921, for the payment of teachers’ salaries. Otherwise, schooling in the territory remained largely unchanged from the 1860s until the 1940s.

After World War II, the federal government, in partnership with the NWT Council (the governing body for the North, now the Legislative Assembly), began to play a greater role in northern schooling, part of a broader project of northern modernization motivated by a demand for resources, concerns about Arctic sovereignty, and ongoing racialized assumptions about Indigenous Peoples.^[vii]

Schools were at the centre of this new approach. Fourteen day schools were opened across what was known as the Mackenzie District.^[viii] While supposedly making schooling more accessible, day schools were also designed to remove Indigenous Peoples from their Lands by promoting permanent settlement in communities with state oversight.

In smaller communities, such as Whatì and Tuktuyaaqtuuq (Tuktoyaktuk), the vast majority of students at the new day schools were Indigenous. Day schools in larger centres like Tthebacha, Sǫǫ̀mbak'è (Yellowknife), and Inuuvik (Inuvik) had a mix of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.^[ix]

Left photo: Lac La Martre Federal Day School in Whatì, 1957. Credit: NWT Archives/Joan Ryan fonds/N-1991-073: 0020; Right photo: Sir Alexander Mackenzie School in Inuuvik, 1972. Credit: NWT Archives/Native Communications Society fonds - Native Press photograph collection/N-2018-010: 00914.

To “accommodate” children who lived at a distance from day schools, the federal government also built “modern” Indian residential schools near day schools in larger centres. These institutions were deliberately called “hostels,” “halls,” or “residences” to distance them from the Indian residential schools of an earlier era, though the TRC called them Indian residential schools.^[x]

Large hostels were located in Tthebacha, Sǫǫ̀mbak'è, Inuuvik, and Łíídlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́. There were also small or cottage hostels in Délı̨nę, Echaotı’ı̨ı̨ Kųę (Fort Liard), Rádeyı̨lı̨kǫ́ę́ (Fort Good Hope), and Tulı́t’a. The residences were primarily operated by the Catholic and Anglican churches and later the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT).^[xi]

Lapointe Hall, the Roman Catholic hostel in Łíídlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́, 1963. Credit: NWT Archives/Emile Gautreau photograph collection/N-2015-009: 0129.

Most “hostel kids” were from outside the community; for example, children from as far away as ᐊᐅᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅ (Aujuittuq) and nistawâyâw/Ełídlį Kuę́ (Fort McMurray) were sent to stay at Grollier Hall (Catholic) and Stringer Hall (Anglican) and attend Sir Alexander Mackenzie School (SAMS) and, later, Samuel Hearne Secondary School (SHSS) in Inuuvik.^[xii] However, children who were deemed wards of the state or removed from their families due to “social circumstances” were also institutionalized either at these hostels or in group homes. While the majority of children in these hostels were Indigenous, occasionally non-Indigenous students stayed in residence.^[xiii]

It is important to note that the developments in Indian education in the North diverged from policy in southern Canada. As the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources (DNANR) was building day schools and residences in the North, the Department of Indian Affairs was beginning to close Indian residential schools in the South and integrate Indigenous children into provincial public schools.^[xiv]

In 1969, the federal government transferred responsibility for northern schooling in the Western Arctic to the territorial government.^[xv] Much remained the same at Indian residential and day schools in the years after 1969, including staff, buildings, policies, and curriculum,^[xvi] though change was afoot.

A number of important developments from the 1960s through to the 1990s greatly contributed to Indigenous northerners exercising more control over their children’s schooling and their affairs more generally. These include: Indigenous Peoples being elected into settler politics; the formation of the Indigenous political organizations, including the Committee for Original Peoples’ Entitlement (COPE) the Indian Brotherhood of the NWT (the Dene Nation after 1975), and the Northwest Territory Métis Nation; self-government and modern land claim negotiations; and the inquiry into the Canadian Arctic Gas Pipeline project overseen by Justice Thomas Berger. There are many more examples.

Photo: Grollier Hall in Inuuvik, 1975. Credit: NWT Archives/Native Communications Society fonds - Native Press photograph collection/N-2018-010: 02765.

Grollier Hall, which was constructed by the federal government’s DNANR in 1959 and managed by the Oblates for Indigenous students who attended the federal day school in Inuuvik, was among the last Indian residential schools in Canada to close, though as Survivor testimony makes clear, the legacies of the residential era persist.

Furthermore, the end of the residential school era did not halt the practice of removing children from their homes and communities for schooling, in particular secondary schooling. In some cases, this is because their local school does not offer high school courses. In other cases, it is a reflection of the quality of education in their community.^[xvii]

Throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the federal system of Indian education, whether it involved removing children from their families and Lands for institutionalization at residential school or compelling attendance at a day school, was intended to “undermine Indigenous lifeways and facilitate settler capitalism and nation building.”^[xviii]

The TRC called the residential school system “cultural genocide,” but the Commission’s own report suggests there is no need for the qualifier “cultural.”^[xix] Indeed, on July 1, 2021, the Canadian Historical Association-Société historique du Canada “recognize[d] that this history fully warrants our use of the word genocide,” although some scholars were already referring to it as such.^[xx]

We acknowledge that over 150 years from coast-to-coast-to-coast, the system of Indian education administered by church and state operated in different ways, with violence against and the deaths of Indigenous children being more common at particular institutions in different time periods. It remains unclear how many student casualties there were at NWT institutions, though work is underway on this topic.

To date, the only ground-truthing work undertaken at a former Indian residential school site in the NWT was on the grounds of the Sacred Heart Mission School in Zhatıe Kųę, which operated from 1867 to 1960. Ground-penetrating radar detected subsurface voids that could account for the burials of approximately 161 Indigenous children who were institutionalized there.^[xxi]

Left photo: Sacred Heart Indian Residential School in Zhatıe Kųę, 1946. Credit: NWT Archives/Northwest Territories. Department of the Executive fonds/G-1988-004: 0003. Right photo: A memorial erected in Zhatıe Kųę to remember the 298 children buried in an unmarked cemetery, including 161 children who were institutionalized at Sacred Heart. Credit: Jess Dunkin.

There are some organizations, though, that have begun this work in other contexts. For example, the Nanilavut Initiative seeks to provide information about the untimely deaths of Inuit from tuberculosis from the 1940s to 1960s.

Additional research on school graves is being planned in the NWT.

If you are a Survivor or intergenerational Survivor of residential school or day school and need help, there's a free 24-hour support line. Call 1-800-695-4419. 

Notes

^[i] Mwalimu J. Shujaa, “Education and Schooling: You Can Have One Without the Other,” Urban Education 27, no. 4 (January 1993): 328–9.

^[ii] “Indian education” is a term the federal government used to refer to the genocidal system of institutions, practices, and curricula targeting Indigenous children and their families. Historian Sean Carleton writes about “inventing Indian education” in Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2022), 110–40.

^[iii] It’s possible that there was also a hospital school in Tulı́t’a.

^[iv] See, in particular, chapters 2–4 in Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), Canada’s Residential Schools: ­The Inuit and Northern Experience (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 13–44.

^[v] Neither operated continuously. Norman John Macpherson and Roderick Duncan Macpherson, Dreams and Visions: Education in the Northwest Territories from Early Days to 1984 (Yellowknife, NT: GNWT Department of Education, 1991), 15–16.

^[vi] Mandatory school attendance was introduced into the federal Indian Act in 1894. The 1920 amendments to the act further enshrined compulsory schooling. The passage of the federal Family Allowance Act in 1944 further entrenched mandatory school attendance for Indigenous children. In 1952, the NWT Council passed the NWT School Ordinance, which required children aged seven to twelve to attend school for at least sixteen weeks per year. An Ordinance Respecting Schools, 10 July 1952, File 1/25-1-5-1, Pt. 2, Vol. 7184, RG 10, Library and Archives Canada (LAC).

^[vii] Crystal Gail Fraser, “T’aih k’ìighe’ tth’aih zhit dìidìch’ùh (By Strength, We Are Still Here): Indigenous Northerners Confronting Hierarchies of Power at Day and Residential Schools in Nanhkak Thak (the Inuvik Region, Northwest Territories), 1959 to 1982” (PhD Dissertation: University of Alberta, 2019), 142–59.

^[viii] Macpherson, Dreams and Visions, 17.

^[ix] As John Milloy has observed, the north system of “universal education” was inspired by both efficiency and ideology. See John Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986, forward by Mary Jane Logan McCallum (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017), 242–3. See also Fraser, “T’aih k’ìighe’ tth’aih zhit dìidìch’ùh,” 157–58.

^[x] Fraser, “T’aih k’ìighe’ tth’aih zhit dìidìch’ùh,” xxvii.

^[xi] Akaitcho Hall in Sǫǫ̀mbak'è was one exception. It was operated by the federal government.

^[xii] Sir Alexander Mackenzie School (SAMS) and Samuel Hearne High School (SHSS) opened in 1959 and 1968 respectively, as part of the federal government’s new approach to northern education. Constructed to replace the Indian residential schools in Akłarvik, Grollier and Stringer Halls were completed in 1959.

^[xiii] Non-Indigenous students who resided at hostels in the NWT during the post-war period generally did so because their parents were working in locations that did not have a day school. The GNWT reserved two percent of available hostel beds for settler children. These beds were rarely filled because settler parents chose to either home school their children or send them to boarding schools in southern Canada. Fraser, “T’aih k’ìighe’ tth’aih zhit dìidìch’ùh,” 15.

^[xiv] Milloy, A National Crime, 189. There were exceptions. For example, the Assiniboia Indian Residential School opened in urban Winnipeg in 1958. Survivors of the Assiniboia Indian Residential School with Andrew Woolford, editor, Did You See Us? Reunion, Remembrance, and Reclamation at an Urban Indian Residential School (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2021).

^[xv] TRC, ­The Inuit and Northern Experience, 74.

^[xvi] Fraser, “T’aih k’ìighe’ tth’aih zhit dìidìch’ùh,” 371–2.

^[xvii] “‘I was really homesick’: Some Northern Students Travel Far from Home for High School,” CBC News, 3 October 2022.

^[xviii] Carleton, Lessons in Legitimacy, 111–2.

^[xix] TRC, Canada’s Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015).

^[xx] Canadian Historical Association-Société historique du Canada, “Canada Day Statement: The History of Violence Against Indigenous Peoples Fully Warrants the Use of The Word ‘Genocide,’” 1 July 2021; Andrew Woolford, This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the United States (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2015); Rob Innes, “Historians and Indigenous Genocide in Saskatchewan,” Shekon Neechie: An Indigenous History Site, 1 June 2018.

^[xxi] “NWT Community Built Memorial to Name its Residential School Victims. It Was Just a Start,” CBC News, 4 July 2021.