Residential school survivors confused by rules
Tuktoyaktuk women upset money meant for healing can only be spent at a handful of stores
John McFadden
Northern News Services
Monday, November 23, 2015
TUKTOYAKTUK
A residential schools survivor from Tuktoyaktuk said she feels like she has been victimized again over the way a compensation payout to her has been handled.
Eileen Gruben, 66, said she was abused when she attended residential schools in Inuvik and Yellowknife throughout the 1960s.
The money in question is a sum of $3,500 from what is known as the Independent Assessment Process, (IAP), a branch of the Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat.
Gruben said she was awarded the compensation after giving testimony about her residential school experience at a hearing in Whitehorse a couple of years ago. The settlement was separate from the Common Experience Payment, which was paid to most living residential school survivors. In order to be eligible for the $3,500 payment, survivors had to testify to the abuse that they received.
However, funding for the abuse survivors, $45,500 in total, did not go directly to them. It went to the Tuktoyaktuk Community Corporation (TCC), which had successfully applied for funding for four projects under what is known as the Group IAP program, according to IAP spokesperson Michael Tansey, who works in Gatineau, Quebec.
"The four projects in Tuktoyaktuk will support 13 former students of residential schools. TCC has received a one-time contribution of $45,500 in funding to support their healing journey during 2015-16," Tansey stated.
According to an e-mail from Tansey, the Group IAP program provides funding to established groups to support healing and reconciliation for group members, their families and communities.
Gruben conceded that she probably signed a document to agree to these terms but added it was not properly explained to her. She said that she has received no counselling, so support, no healing help at all whatsoever from the TCC.
What she has been told, she said, is that she can only spend her money at six different stores, only two of which are located in Tuktoyaktuk.
It is essentially a voucher program, Gruben said,
"I'm upset about the fact that there is all this residential school money given under the guise of putting up programs. There is no goddamn programs. There is no healing programs," Gruben said angrily. "There is no money to go out on the land. We can't use the money for guns. We can't use it for gas. How are we going to go out on the land for healing? They want to dictate where we spend the money. They never said it was for healing purposes. The residential school stuff was difficult enough and now this. I am being victimized again. Pretty soon they are going to tell us how much toilet paper we can use. That's what they did in residential schools. We were only allowed to use two little squares. That's what this feels like."
Gruben's sister Agnes White is also a residential school survivor. She said she did not have the agreement explained to her properly either. White said she would like to use some of the money for airfare to fly from Alberta, where she lives, back to Tuktoyaktuk to visit with friends and family, something she said would help in her healing process.
"I still have $1,131 in a voucher at the craft shop attached to the Innuvaluit Regional Corporation office in Inuvik. I could use it, but I can't take it out," White said. "The money is supposed to be mine but I can't even get my hands on it."
White said no amount of programming will allow her to get over the trauma of her residential schools experience.
Both women said they are not keen on relating and replaying their residential school experience anymore. Both had to live through it and then decades later, testify at a hearing in order to receive compensation.
The women say the only two stores where they are able to use their money at in Tuktoyaktuk are the Northern Store and Stanton's. Another one of the stores is Cabela's, a U.S.-based, high end outfitter with its closest stores in Edmonton. Vince Teddy, chair of the TCC, said he is surprised that any of the residential school survivors in Tuk are now complaining about a program and an agreement that they signed on to.
"These clients were the ones who approved the budget and the allocation to whichever store where they wanted to spend their $3,500. That's what they agreed to," Teddy said.
He added that these stores involved, like hardware stores and outfitters, sell goods that would help the former residential school students to go out on the land and try to heal themselves and each other.
"We just facilitated that process. It is what they agreed to. They sat down with our community corporation manager, set their own budget and submitted it. From our perspective the agreement is set in stone," Teddy said.
