How My Residential School Experience Affected My Identity

Monica Ittusardjuat

Monica Ittusardjuat begins her autoethnography with the story of a teacher who raged at the worthlessness of his Inuit students. Monica describes how her residential school experience affected her identity very clearly: “I think I lost myself.” When Monica returned to a culture she hardly knew, her parents selected a husband for her. Abused in residential school, her husband “had lost his identity, his self-respect and self-worth. He couldn’t trust anyone… and I wasn’t any better.” During their painful and turbulent marriage, Monica’s baby daughter was given in traditional ‘custom adoption’ against her will. She now cares for her grand-daughter and concludes with hope and pain, “I think I know who I am now but I don’t know who I was at the age of seven-eight. Just let me grieve for my lost childhood for a while.”