Nain's silenced majority: An anthropological examination of schooling in northern Labrador

Abstract

In our society difference is the antecedent of division. That formula has underpinned the provincial government's approach to governing northern Labrador and, ultimately, forms the ideological foundation of its schools. My intent here is to illustrate that the severe problems of schooling in Nain are not the consequence of administrators,' educators,' parents,' or students,' lack of character or initiative; but rather, this research sets out to reveal the opposite. That is, as all things Inuit in Nain are either undermined or subsumed by the state and the language of power, English, this constructed reality is profoundly translated into the classrooms and local people's subjectivities. Schooling then, its legacy and contemporary reality, is contextually and historically examined to provide the greatest insight into the profound systemic inequality that continues to underpin life in Nain, Labrador.