Iqaluit (Oct 16/06) - Asunaa Qilabakg remembers the RCMP making escalating threats against his family while on the land in Ward Inlet.

First the police warned that they would take away the Qilabakg's family allowance, he said. The next year, they threatened they would take Qilabakg's grandfather to jail, all to get the young Qilabakg in school, he recalled.

Only when threatened with jail time did Asunaa Qilabakg's grandfather send him to residential school. Qilabakg is one of many Inuit caught between the world of elders and the "white man" as a result of being forced into the church-run institutions. Brown's story MLA and Minister of Community and Government Services Levinia Brown was at last week's judicial review of the residential school settlement. She wasn't there as an elected representative, she was there as a victim. For many years, I had blocked it out, until I went for counselling. Hopefully, it will help others. It was important for me to find out that I am not alone. Brown attended the residential school in Chesterfield Inlet, and was quick to demonstrate the pulling motion that the teachers used on her ear. It looked like she was trying to take her ear off her head. I spoke to friends first, and they had similar experiences. I know that a lot of us were ashamed.

In 1955, when he was eight years old, he was finally sent off.

"I was starting to learn from my grandfather, but we were taken away," he said. "We had to sit there for years before we learned a word of English, and (the teacher) didn't learn one word in Inuktitut."

Qilabakg is proud he mustered the courage to take the stand to tell of his painful past in the Nunavut Court of Justice last week.

He was one of those who testified at the residential school hearings held in Iqaluit Oct. 10-11.

The residential schools were supposed to change the children into southern kids, but the result was somewhere in between. Neither completely qallunaat nor Inuk, this transitional generation was, in many ways, left adrift.

"I didn't know how to hunt. I didn't know my father's way, my grandfather's way. Then, when I turned 18, they threw me out," Qilabakg said.

Koalie Nowdluk went to the hearings as an observer. He never imagined himself testifying, but decided to add his name to the list after all.

"It just came to me when I was sitting there, the things I remembered from school," said Nowdluk.

As a youth, Nowdluk knew more English than most of his peers, because his older brothers and sisters had already attended school. That seeming advantage was turned against him.

"We were ridiculed by our peers for learning English so fast. When you learn English at such a young age, you lose your culture," said Nowdluk, who attended Sir Martin Frobisher school in Iqaluit from 1971-'74.

That school no longer stands - it used to be near the current post office in the city. Yet the memory of the school burns in the minds of many Iqalummiut, including Nowdluk.

He has had battles with drugs and alcohol, which he attributes in part to his school days. Now sober for 10 years, he still remembers school like it was yesterday.

"Learning English was tough. In English, one word can have 100 different meanings. Cent/scent can mean money or a smell. We would be ridiculed by the teachers if we didn't know the proper meaning," Nowdluk recalled.

"They would sit you in the corner with one of those stupid hats (a dunce cap) on, until you figured it out. You would have to sit there while the rest of the class learned," he said.

That was the way they were taught: punishment hurt more.

"Put a hair on your palm, and smack it with a ruler. I can tell you, that is very painful. You will see a long thin line, like a paper cut, but worse," said Nowdluk.

His recollections are far from the worst examples of abuse under the residential school system, stories that include horrifying accounts of sexual assault.

The federal government's residential school settlement package was proposed in November 2005. Hearings have been held around the country, giving survivors their say.

The compensation package for Inuit and First Nations students would include $10,000 for the first year of attendance at residential school and $3,000 for each year thereafter. Those who can prove loss of income due to abuse could be in line for additional compensation.

It is hoped that a decision will be reached in November, but it could take five years to get the payments out, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said. Whatever the outcome, Qilabakg feels there are still problems with the school system.

"It is still happening now. Not one white man or white woman tried to learn our way of teaching children," he said.