The Scarf and The Butterfly: a graphic memoir of hope and healing by Monica Ittusardjuat

The Scarf and The Butterfly is a short graphic memoir of Monica Ittusardjuat's life, exploring how the residential school experience impacted her life and her identity as Inuit.

The memoir opens with a memory of Monica and her friends, Umik, Ilupaalik, and Akittiq out for a walk to catch butterflies. Monica is wearing a beautiful scarf her mother gave her before going into the hospital. During their walk, Monica lost her scarf but she was able to find it. This was Monica's life before she was taken away to attend the residential school at Chesterfield Inlet.

Monica was born prematurely in an iglu at her family's winter camp at Akkimaniq on the western side of Baffin Island. Because her mother was very ill and in danger of dying, Monica's aunt took her for a time. Her mother recovered and Monica was reunited with her family.

Monica's family lived a subsistence way of life along with her two uncles, Mamattiaq and Tattiggat and their families. The evening was a time to relax and listen to hunting stories and legends, and play traditional games. In the spring, they traveled from one camp to the next, hunting and fishing. Summer saw the families hunt caribou, walrus, beluga, and seal.

Monica was sent to residential schools beginning in 1958, entering the Qallunaaq world. She returned home in the spring of 1969 after having attended three residential schools in Chesterfield, NWT, and in Churchill and Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her experiences at these residential schools changed Monica.

She married a residential school survivor and the marriage was violent and dysfunctional. Their children witnessed many horrible things. Later on, Monica would discover that her husband had been abused. Like her, he has also experienced "the loss of culture and spirituality." So like many other Inuit, Monica set out on a personal journey to reclaim her culture and her identity, a process that continues today.

Discussion

The Scarf and the Butterfly focuses on the effects of the residential school experience, rather than the actual events that took place during the author's time at the various schools. It is memoir of the journey to healing and hope. Monica writes that her healing journey began when her granddaughter, Grace turned six-years-old. Witnessing Grace's free spirit and happiness, made Monica remember that she was once like this before attending school. She realized some of what she had lost and this caused her to grieve.

Monica explains how being sent to a residential school, far away from her family, affected her mother and their relationship. Each fall, as her children were sent back to the school, her mother noticed the silence in their home, making it as though "...someone had died." And in a way, the residential schools were killing the relationship between Indigenous children and their parents and elders. When Monica's mother became ill later in life, she wanted to know what had made them so emotionally distant. Monica explained that the bond between them was broken because of her being at the residential school. She learned to stop crying and accept this loss.

In the residential school, Monica witnessed abusive behaviour by a teacher towards students. These events brought about a deep sense of guilt and shame as she questioned whether she was to blame in some way. Even bringing a claim forward years later was devastating to Monica as it was traumatic to admit that she had been "damaged" by her experiences. She experienced feelings of "...self-hatred, shame, guilt, helplessness, and despair..." that led to reviving old addictions.

When reflecting back on her experiences at a retreat in 2002, Monica came to realize that she was "stripped of my identity and there was nothing of my culture left in me." Some of her earliest memories were of sleeping next to her parents in the deep cold of the Far North and feeling safe, and of watching her father in the early morning darkness prepare for the day's hunt. These early memories reminded Monica of her Inuit identity.

Through her difficult personal journey, Monica has been able to reclaim some of her Inuit culture: she can make Inuit clothing and jewelry, cook country food, drum dance and sing ajaajaa songs. She continues to struggle to understand what has happened to Inuit culture and her place in that culture. The process of reclaiming her own identity continues and is an ongoing one. This includes self-forgiveness, self-affirmation and forgiving those who harmed her.

The Scarf and The Butterfly portrays to readers just how complex and difficult this process has been and continues to be for residential survivors like Monica Ittusardjuat. Despite this difficult journey, Monica's memoir is one filled with hope, faith, acceptance and perseverance. She writes, 

"I am who I am, and I've become comfortable with that. I am Inuk and I have had a Qallunaaq upbringing, and I accept a bit from each. I am not the same as my Inuit friends or family, and I offer no apology for that. I have fought to become who I was meant to be. Adversities have not broken me; they have made me, and the victory is sweeter when you have fought for it than when it has been given to you."

The rich illustrations in this memoir by artists, Coco Apunnguaq Lynge and Scott Plumbe capture the beauty of Canada's Far North and our Inuit brothers and sisters, and accentuate Monica's message of healing and hope. Highly recommended for adults, teens and older children.

Book Details:

The Scarf and The Butterfly by Monica Ittusardjuat

Toronto: Inhabit Education Books Inc.    2023

67 pp.

A Brush Full of Color: The World of Ted Harrison by Margriet Ruurs & Katherine Gibson

A Brush Full of Color is the picture-book biography of artist, teacher and author, Ted Harrison. Edward (Ted) Hardy Harrison was born in 1926 in Wingate, County Durham, England. Ted was a twin, sharing his birthday with sister Mary Algar (Olga). Ted's father was a coal miner, a dangerous job that did not pay well and which he did not like. Despite the black, drab countryside, the Harrison home was a happy one, that was clean and warm. Ted's mother cooked good meals and they were kept well dressed.

Ted's father enjoyed sketching and he encouraged Ted to draw as did his Latin and English teacher, when he was older. Because Ted's father had quit school when he was twelve to work in the mines, he was determined his children would receive more of an education than he had. Ted and his twin sister Olga loved the encyclopedia set their father gifted them and Ted loved to read.

During World War II, Ted first saw a crate of apples that had been sent to County Durham from British Columbia, Canada in his uncle's store. During the war, Olga became a nurse while Ted enrolled in the Hartlepool College of Art. After the war, in 1946, Ted sailed to Bombay, India as part of British military intelligence. There he spent time drawing the rich culture of India. He also travelled to Egypt, Kenya in East Africa before returning home to England. These travels showed him both the happy and sad side of life.

Ted next took a position as an art teacher in Malaysia where he found the rich colours of flowers, waterfalls and tea plantations. In Malaysia, Ted met his wife Nicky who was from Scotland and was the administrator at the school where he taught. When Ted's mother died in 1965, he and Nicky, and their adopted son Charles moved back to England. But teaching at Wingate wasn't rewarding, so Ted and his family moved to Wabasca, Alberta where he was a teacher.

In Alberta, Ted enjoyed teaching his Cree students who often brought him unique gifts like a bird's egg. Ted would draw pictures for them and tell them funny stories. He found the Dick and Jane readers used to teach students to read were not relatable to the young Cree students so he made his own book filled with his drawings.

Ted and Nicky moved to Carcross, Yukon where he taught mathematics, science and reading to elementary students and Nicky became a kindergarten teacher. In the Yukon, Ted's style of painting changed from the strict rules he had been taught in England. Instead he decided, "I'm going to paint my Yukon!" Using the styles and techniques he had encountered in his many travels to Africa, Asia and New Zealand, Ted began to paint in the way that he felt captured Canada's North. In 1981, Ted retired from teaching to become a full-time painter. Ted was asked to illustrate the Robert Service poem, "The Cremation of Sam McGee", he designed the Yukon Pavillion for Expo '86 in Vancouver and had his art exhibited in galleries and in many private collections.

Discussion

A Brush Full of Color is a colourful, engaging book about British-Canadian artist and author, Ted Harrison. Ruurs and Gibson provide readers with Harrison's life story, showing how his love of learning saved him from work in the mins, and portrays how his life experiences ultimately influenced his art.

Although his experiences living in Africa and Asia would come to influence how he would paint the Canadian North, it was Harrison's experience living and teaching in northern Canada that had the most profound effect. His life experience in the North compelled him to change his style in order to capture the landscape and life in the Yukon. The impetus for this change seems to have been triggered by his recognition that the old style readers written for children who lived a very different life  simply did not reflect life in northern Alberta and the Yukon. These readers did not reflect life in the North and the style of painting Harrison was taught in England did not allow him to capture the beauty of life in northern Canada. 

A Brush Full of Color portrays Harrison's artistic transition by offering readers plenty of images of Harrison's art prior to coming to Canada, his work when he first came to Canada and then many images of his paintings after living and working in the Canadian north for a time. His paintings are filled with unique colours for houses, sky, clouds, the sea and the sun. Ordinary, everyday items like houses have unusual shapes. His flowing freestyle of painting captures the wind, the movement of the sea, the sun and the people. Harrison's paintings offer a vibrant perspective to northern life that many who live in Canada's south may never have realized.

The strength of this picture book is the portrayal of Ted Harrison's artistic journey, and the numerous pictures of  the artist's artwork, allowing readers to become very familiar with his unique style. Author Katherine Gibson spent four years interviewing Harrison for her biography, Ted Harrison: Painting Paradise. It's obvious she knows her subject well and this is conveyed to readers, young and old.

Book Details:

A Brush Full of Color: The World of Ted Harrison by Margriet Ruurs
Toronto: Pajama Press     2014

40 pp.