'I am sorry': Andrew Furey apologizes to Inuit in northern Labrador for harms of residential schools

Newfoundland and Labrador’s provincial government failed to protect Indigenous children from the harms of residential schools, Premier Andrew Furey said in official apologies this week to survivors in Labrador.

The premier is travelling throughout Inuit communities along Labrador’s north coast this week, offering apologies to residential school survivors and their families during each of his six stops.

“The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador allowed this to happen and did not step in to protect the children who needed to be protected,” Furey wrote in an official apology statement that was also translated into Inuktitut.

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“We turned a blind eye and neglected our responsibility and duty as a Government.”

Toby Andersen, a residential school survivor, listened to the apology in Makkovik on Thursday.

“This is the first step, the first small step towards reconciliation,” he said.

Andersen said he wanted the apology to be followed up by concrete actions by Newfoundland and Labrador’s provincial government.

“There’s a lot that needs to be done, there are so many outstanding issues,” he said. “Our standard of life is not up to par with the rest of the province.”

He said he’s asked the premier for more medical resources, noting that his community, Makkovik, has only seen three visits by a doctor in four years.

“Our people don’t know what a family doctor is.”

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey hugs Rigolet Mayor Charlotte Wolfrey during an official apology in Rigolet, N.L., on Wednesday.

School-aged children were separated from their families and communities, Furey acknowledged in his statement, and sent to so-called boarding schools where their connections to their culture, language and families were degraded.

Five schools were established by the Morovian Mission and the International Grenfell Association in the communities of Nain, Makkovik, North West River, Cartwright and St. Anthony.

Survivors of those residential schools shared stories of sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect.

“I am sorry,” Furey told a group assembled in the Inuit community of Rigolet on Wednesday.

“We have to truly understand the history of residential schools if we ever hope to advance reconciliation with Labrador Inuit.”

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This week’s apologies to Inuit have been years in the making.

In 2017, on the eve of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s apology to survivors in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, then-Premier Dwight Ball promised an apology of his own.

But that apology wasn’t delivered before he left office in 2020. Ball’s office said in a statement that the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted plans.

Indigenous families in Newfoundland and Labrador were also made to wait for an apology from the federal government. Former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper expressly excluded Newfoundlanders and Labradorians from his apology in 2008, contending the five schools established in the region weren’t run by the federal government.

After a class-action lawsuit was settled in 2016, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau changed course.

In Rigolet on Wednesday, Mayor Charlotte Wolfrey accepted Andrew Furey’s apology.

“It is important that residential school survivors continue to prioritize their healing and wellness,” she said.

Premier Andrew Furey, alongside Nunatsiavut President Johannes Lampe, meets with residential school survivors in Postville, N.L.

Wolfrey is a survivor of the Yale School that was established in North West River in Labrador.

When she testified in front of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, she said that she ran away from the dorms of the school and hitchhiked some 30 kilometres to Happy Valley-Goose Bay to be reunited with her family.

“We accept this apology on behalf of those who forgive and solemnly pledge to ensure that these tragic events will never be forgotten.”

Prior to his tour of northern Labrador communities, Furey also offered apologies to Nunatukavut members in communities in southern Labrador. He will speak in Nain and Happy Valley-Goose Bay on Friday.