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    A Stranger At Home: A True Story
    A Stranger At Home: A True Story
    A Stranger At Home: A True Story
    Ebook118 pages1 hour

    A Stranger At Home: A True Story

    By Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton

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    About this ebook

    Traveling to be reunited with her family in the arctic, 10-year-old Margaret Pokiak can hardly contain her excitement. It’s been two years since her parents delivered her to the school run by the dark-cloaked nuns and brothers.

    Coming ashore, Margaret spots her family, but her mother barely recognizes her, screaming, “Not my girl.” Margaret realizes she is now marked as an outsider. And Margaret is an outsider: she has forgotten the language and stories of her people, and she can’t even stomach the food her mother prepares. However, Margaret gradually relearns her language and her family’s way of living. Along the way, she discovers how important it is to remain true to the ways of her people — and to herself.

    Highlighted by archival photos and striking artwork, this first-person account of a young girl’s struggle to find her place will inspire young readers to ask what it means to belong.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAnnick Press
    Release dateSep 1, 2011
    ISBN9781554515936
    Author

    Christy Jordan-Fenton

    Christy Jordan-Fenton lives in Fort St. John, British Columbia. Margaret Pokiak-Fenton is her children’s grandmother. Jordan-Fenton practices traditional ceremonies with the Kainai Blackfoot.

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    • 5/5
      This book is the life of author, Margaret Pokiak-Fenton, the sequel to "Fatty Legs" by the same authors. It is also the life of Canada's shame, the story of how the government took the children away from all aboriginal nations and sent them to Catholic residential schools. "A Stranger at Home" tells the true story of Margaret's return to her parents in Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories and how she was snubbed by family, friends, and townspeople. I have not read "Fatty Legs", but must because it will take me into her years in school.The boat bringing home the children is arriving in Tuktoyaktuk, or Tuk as they call it. Parents and siblings are waiting for the arrival, but when Margaret approaches her mother, she says "Not my daughter!" Margaret's hair has been cut, she is in clothing supplied by the school, and all tradition is gone. She can not even remember how to speak her language, Invialuktun. She is unable to understand her mother and her mother does not understand her. Her siblings look at Margaret as though she were an alien. She is now an "outsider" and is devastated. The book is well named because Margaret is indeed "a stranger at home". Her father does speak English, fortunately, and he is her only strength.Margaret can no longer eat the food her mother prepares. She can't eat and loses weight. Even the food at the Hudson Bay store doesn't appeal to her. She is horrified when the family eats without saying grace, and is terrified that her family will go to Hell. This is what she has been taught, and that it is her responsibility to convert her family. Margaret's best friend Agnes can no longer play with or see her, because she only knows English. Agnes kept her language by telling herself stories in her mind and occasionally naming things in her room, but she is punished when she is caught. Margaret's only happiness is playing with the dogs and reading. She particularly likes "Gulliver's Travels", relating to it in a way.Through her father's attention and help, and her mother trying to find communication, Margaret finally finds a way to be a part of her family again. She is once again Olemaun Pokiak, her Inuvialuit, or Inuit name. She is able to eat the food her mother prepares. She remembers how to skin caribou, and she is able to drive a team and sled. But still she misses her home on Banks Island where she was so happy growing up. Tuktoyaktuk still seems like a stopover, and soon it will prove to be just that when the government people come and tell them that the children must go to the school, and that includes Margaret's siblings.This is a book everyone should read. It is written for school-age, but I feel it should be read and explained by adults who can remember this time, or who understand this time, so the children and young adults will understand what happened, how it affected the families, and how so many languages almost went extinct.Kudos to those who have worked hard to restore the languages, beliefs and teach their children of the old ways. That is not the whole story, though. Through the efforts of people like Margaret, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the aboriginal renewal has been underway for the past several years and now many languages have been retrieved and spoken, old customs have been returned, although now updated.
    • 4/5
      "A Stranger at Home", continues the story of Olemaun (Margaret) Pokiak, an 8 year old Inuvialuit girl we first met in “Fatty Legs” when she attended a residential school in Canada’s far north. After two years at a Catholic run, government mandated, residential school, Olemaun returns to her family as an outsider who no longer knows her aboriginal language or culture. “A Stranger at Home” details her struggles to reintegrate with her cultural traditions and language after being stripped of these at the school.It is prophetic that Olemaun was “named for a stone that sharpens a knife, and thus could not be worn down,” as it was that resolve that helped her survive residential school and enabled her to share her story with us so many years later. For many of Canada’s aboriginal people, the residential school experience had devastating lifelong and multigenerational impacts. These effects are currently being redressed by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation commission.

    Book preview

    A Stranger At Home - Christy Jordan-Fenton

    FOR MY THREE LITTLE INSPIRATIONS—Qugyuk, Aklak, and Paniktuaq—and their loving father, my husband, Garth: without your patience yet again, this book would not have been possible. For Margaret: your courage continues to be an inspiration to all who know you. And for Keith, a keeper of the fire: thank you for sharing a flame of inspiration with me. Megwich.

    — Christy

    TO CHRISTY: I am so grateful for all the time and care you have put into these books. To my children, and everyone else who has stood behind me in this: thank you for all the support you have given me. And, as always, to my late husband, Lyle, whose love and never-ending support helped me to overcome. He was a great man.

    — Margaret

    FOR MY MOST WONDROUS CREATIONS, Alek and Max, and my loving and talented husband, Mark, all of whom are my wellspring of inspiration, strength, and encouragement. To Diana, now the brightest star among the Northern Lights. And to Christy, Margaret, and Annick Press, who paid me the highest compliment by allowing me illustrate these tender and important stories.

    — Liz

    Margaret with her sisters Mabel and Bessie and their mother, sitting in front of the smokehouse.

    Contents

    Introduction

    Chapter One

    Chapter Two

    Chapter Three

    Chapter Four

    Chapter Five

    Chapter Six

    Chapter Seven

    Chapter Eight

    After The Story

    The Schools

    Olemaun’s Scrapbook

    Acknowledgments

    Photo Credits

    Introduction

    MY NAME IS OLEMAUN Pokiak—that’s OO-lee-mawn. Such a name probably sounds strange to you. I can understand, because there was a time in my life when it sounded strange to me, too. Would you believe that at one point I could scarcely remember my own name or even speak the same language as my mother? Well, it’s true. The outsiders had locked my tongue with the spell of their education. But I was named for a stone that sharpens a knife, and I was strong. I could not be worn down.

    Chapter ONE

    THE BOAT CRUNCHED to a stop against the shore. My fingers gripped into the side of it as I propelled my body over the edge. No, I heard my friend Agnes call with a restrained cry. The shore was packed with people, though Tuktoyaktuk was very small. I pushed through the crowd, my canvas shoes rolling on the tiny pebbles as I searched for my family. It had been so long since I had seen them.

    I HEARD A VOICE I recognized—it was my mother’s. She was speaking to my siblings. I turned and followed it, making my way through the throng to where she stood, with my two-year-old brother Ernest tied to her back and my sisters Mabel and Elizabeth still looking up at the boat for me to disembark. I wondered why my father had not run to meet me the minute my feet hit the shore, but he was not with them. I stood proudly before my mother and siblings and waited for them to rush toward me.

    My mother gave me a strange look, as if to question why I was standing before her. I smiled, but she crossed her arms and shook her head. "Not my girl. Not my girl," she shouted up to the dark-cloaked brothers in the only English I had ever heard her speak.

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    I turned around to look at them where they stood, perched like birds of prey at the rail of the Immaculata. Their beady eyes studied me. If my mother didn’t recognize me, I was certain that at any moment they would pounce on me and carry me back to their outsiders’ nest up the Mackenzie Delta.

    I could not understand how this could be happening. After days of being cramped aboard the small Roman Catholic boat, going ashore to stretch our legs only when we stopped to drop my classmates at their various Arctic settlements, this could not be my welcome. I had seen many mothers cry, and several fathers turn their heads to hide their own tears, as they welcomed back their children. After being gone for two years myself, I had all but lost hope that this day would come for me. But as each child left the boat on our way farther and farther north, my optimism grew. It grew until we reached the mouth of the Mackenzie River and then the hope inside of me erupted. The boat could barely contain the overwhelming anticipation I shared with my classmates. We had all waited for so long to be reunited with our parents in Tuktoyaktuk. Only my friend Agnes did not seem to be excited.

    See larger photo

    When the shore came into view, its long, thin peninsula stretching out to meet us, I felt so happy I was sure I could walk on water like Jesus had in the nuns’ stories. Not even Agnes’s reluctance or the brothers’ glares were enough to suppress the loud cheers that rose from the rest of us. The banks swelled with people, perhaps double the hundred or so who lived in Tuk most of the time. Like mine, other families had come from afar to collect their children. The trapper’s daughter saw her father in the crowd and hugged her older brother, crying for joy. They had been gone just as long as I had been—two years. A short summer the year before had left many of us locked in by the ocean ice, with our parents unable to make it all the way to Aklavik to pick us up, or to arrange to get us from Tuk. The two older Gwich’in girls jumped up and down and waved to

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