INUVIK - When Charlie "Punch" Elias was alive, he never mentioned his time in residential school except when he was drinking.

Lillian Elias, an elder support worker in Inuvik, was one of eight residential school survivors from the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Nunavut, Labrador and Quebec to share their stories in a curatorial exhibit by the Legacy of Hope Foundation. Images from the exhibit have been on display in Fort Smith and were shown in Inuvik April 7. - Katie May/NNSL photo

Living with him, his wife Lillian Elias learned from the silence surrounding this shameful part of Canada's history, and now she's ready to put her own experiences on display, literally.

"That made me strong," she said. "The only way you're going to heal is if you let it out."

Elias, an elder support worker in Inuvik, is one of eight residential school survivors from the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Nunavut, Labrador and Quebec to share their stories in a curatorial exhibit developed by the Legacy of Hope Foundation called "We Were So Far Away: The Inuit Experience of Residential Schools." Images from the exhibit have been on display in Fort Smith and were shown in Inuvik April 7. Elias went to residential school in Aklavik when she was about eight years old, the only one of 12 children in her family to attend. Some of her memories and old photographs from the time are now immortalized as part of the exhibit and Elias said she hopes it encourages others to share their memories, no matter how painful they may be.

"I want to help other people," she said. "My hope is that they come out and tell their own stories."

About 40 people, including federal health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, who spoke to the crowd in her aboriginal language, gathered for the exhibit opening at the Aurora College building in Inuvik, many of them wiping away tears when John Banksland got up to speak.

Banksland, a 68-year-old member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's residential school survivor committee, spent 15 years at Immaculate Conception school in Aklavik, which he said was one of the strictest residential schools in Canada.

"Some of these communities are impacted 100 per cent by the legacy of these residential schools," he said. "It was really something to see the minister speaking her own language today. My language was beaten out of me. My children and my grandchildren – now that's a different story. They will not have to go through what I went through, what we went through."

The exhibit featured videos and text interviews with participants – including Abraham Ruben, formerly of Paulatuk – and is meant to be portable so it can travel to schools and museums across Canada.

Inuvialuit Regional Corporation chair Nellie Cournoyea, who attended the opening, said it's important for all residential school survivors to talk about their experiences – if not to everyone, then to someone.

"One of the things people are learning is to talk about things and not keep it to themselves," she said. "In my own heart I still wonder why. Why were our children and parents put in such a situation?"