Reflections from Them Days: A Residential School Memoir from Nunatsiavut

Reflections from Them Days: A Residential School Memoir from Nunatsiavut is the life of Nellie Winters when she was a child in Labrador. This memoir is a series of stories and drawings from Nellie Winters, edited by Erica Oberndorfer. The first stories are from her life with her family in Okak Bay on the north coast of Labrador. Most of the stories are from her two years, beginning when she was 11, at a residential school in Nain, 400 kilometres south of Okak Bay.

Nellie Winters was born in 1938 and went to residential school from 1949-1951. Before 1949, Inuit children received a traditional education from their families, although there was pressure to send the children to residential schools. After Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949, school attendance was mandatory for families to receive the Canadian family allowance payment. The Nain Boarding School was the closest school to Nellie Winters’ family.

Accompanying the text are a series of inukuluk drawings done by Nellie Winters. She is a well-known artist and drew scenes from her life with her family and her life in the residential school in order to pass the stories on to others. This book grew out of those drawings, from Nellie Winters telling Erica Oberndorfer the “stories that lived in each of these drawings.”

Winters said:

“It’s good for children to learn the stories from long ago, how we lived back them days, when we had no TV, no phones, nothing. Back them days, work and learning was our pastime. In boarding school, it wasn’t always good, but whatever we went through we learned a lot. Others had it worse than us. If I don’t share my memories, my own children won’t know the stories.”

Reflections from Them Days has both happy and unhappy times in it. The contrast between Nellie’s life with her family and her life at the residential school is quite strong, and it is clear to readers that the school was a hard time in her life. There are a few points where Winters alludes to worse things happening than what she describes in her stories, such as punishments for misbehaving and the work the children had to do at the school.

Reflections from Them Days offers a good look at what life was like for Inuit children in residential schools as well as with their life with their families. Winters’ drawings and stories are a great way for children to learn how people and children lived back in them days.