"My brother was waiting, my father was waiting and I was too young to know, but when I grew up I knew that I was still attached to my mother."

At 44, Kanayuk finds it difficult today to describe her mom's death without breaking into tears. That's because after nearly two decades, she's still waiting to see her mother laid to rest in her home community of Pangnirtung. Her body is somewhere in Quebec.

"I had to go through a kind of healing to get the pain out. That helped, but I still ... it's like it's not finished. It's like the whole story is not finished. I need to go down and see the burial site," said Kanayuk.

Kanayuk's mother, Mary, was sent down south in August 1953.

Each summer, a coast guard ship -- usually the C.D. Howe -- would be sent to the Baffin and Northern Quebec to pick up patients and take them for treatment to Montreal, Toronto or Hamilton, Ont.

Mary, who did not have a last name, and dozens of other Inuit were shipped down south for tuberculous treatment during the 1950s and 1960s.

"I was maybe five months old or six months old when that happened to my mother," said Kanayuk.

"The bad thing about it was that she was breastfeeding me and she had to leave me with my grandparents. My father and my grandparents knew that she was sick. But apparently after a month they sent her on the C.D. Howe."

By Sept. 23, 1953, the family got a message informing them she had died.

Kanayuk was told her mother had something wrong with her heart as "they told me in a letter that she died on the operating table. Apparently they touched the heart accidentally and she died," said Kanayak with a pause.

"I have been thinking about getting compensation for that, but it has been too painful."

After 37 years, Kanayuk has finally built up the courage to talk about her mom's passing and find out where she died.

"I started searching for my mother's grave in 1986 and finally I got an answer this August that the burial site is in Quebec. But they cannot identify the person. All Eskimos were buried in one place and maybe on top of each other, without markers," said Kanayuk.

"I've tried to get some help to have the body brought to Pang because it will help us to heal better. They are not doing anything to identify the body. I guess there's no money to do that."

Kanayuk is hopeful she can at least one day visit her mother's grave.

"If the government is not going to help us I'm thinking about getting some help from local people, raise some money to go down."

Neither Kanayuk, her brother, Adamie, or her father, Simo Veevee, are working.

It would cost roughly $5,000 for the three to go down and try to find the site.