592 Polar Record 53 (6): 592–602 (2017). © Cambridge University Press 2018. doi:10.1017/S0032247417000584 The comforting power of Christianity: Genevieve Aupidlak’s correspondence with Father A. Thibert (OMI) in the Brandon Sanatorium (1954–1957) Frédéric B. Laugrand Department of Anthropology, Université Laval, Québec, Canada (Frederic.Laugrand@ant.ulaval.ca) Received February 2017 ABSTRACT. In 2010, after many interviews by the Qikiqtani Truth Commission (QTC), the Qikiqtani Inuit Association released a report to help the public understand the impact of tuberculosis on the Inuit and thereby promote reconciliation, a goal shared by this study. In this paper, I discuss a corpus of about 28 letters by an Inuit patient named Genevieve Aupidlak who was treated at the Brandon Sanatorium from 1954 to 1957. The letters have been transcribed from old syllabics and translated. Aupidlak’s story shows not only the suffering of Inuit in southern sanatoria but also the role of Christianity and that of some missionaries—such as Father Thibert—in supporting Inuit resilience. Aupidlak’s letters illustrate how Inuit used their Christian faith to survive and how they ascribed healing power to Christian prayer and confession, in keeping with a much older shamanic pattern. Introduction Tuberculosis (TB) epidemics among Canadian Inuit have been extensively described (see Grygier, 1994; Vanast, 1991), and many Inuit today have parents and grand- parents who lived in southern sanatoria. This aspect of social history, still poorly known, has been attracting the interest of scholars. In 1991, Robin McGrath published a rich corpus of letters, short stories, poems and songs by Inuit about their sanatorium experiences during the 1960s. In 2001, Frank Tester, Paule McNicoll and Peter Irniq (2001) published a paper based on 54 letters written by these patients in syllabics and addressed to Leo Manning, a translator employed in the mid-1950s by Northern Affairs. From this corpus, 41 letters written in 1956 tell the experiences of Inuit in southern sanatoria. Analysis revealed three main themes: (1) ‘homesickness’ (that is, the anxiety of ‘being away’ and far from home); (2) cross- cultural misunderstandings and loss of self-esteem; and (3) loss of control of one’s health. This paper is about Genevieve Aupidlak, a patient at the Brandon Sanatorium, and takes an ethnohistorical approach that combines written and oral sources. Both types of source material are incomplete and fragmentary, but her letters nonetheless offer an interesting angle. They constitute a historical record and bring an Inuk woman’s thoughts and experiences out into the open. For Aupidlak, writing remained a substitute for oral communication, and in her letters she seems to talk more than write, the spoken word coming strongly through. Many of them are quite long, and she speaks her mind repeatedly and in detail. Her case might not be representative of the entire corpus, but it does offer an original voice. It shows not only how much an Inuk could suffer when sent south to a hospital, but also the degree to which Christianity and some Oblate missionaries contributed to Inuit resilience. Her case is all the more poignant because many Inuit patients died alone, far from their families and friends in institutions they did not even really understand. Now, for the first time, we can see how Inuit used their Christian faith to survive. Aupidlak found solace in Christianity and its strong comforting power, although her faith retained some ambiguous elements of shamanism. Her case illustrates how missionaries provided patients with help or comfort, often being the only end-of-life caregivers. They would listen to patients and write letters on their behalf, helping them to connect with family members in the north, or record messages from the latter and bring these back to them, thus playing a role of social and cultural mediation. In this paper, I will first briefly describe the extent and seriousness of TB for earlier generations of Inuit in northern Canada and then present Genevieve Aupidlak and the corpus of letters I collected from Father Thibert’s archives. In the second part of the paper I will present most of her letters, as they provide a fascinating narrative. Finally, I will conclude with remarks on their religiousness, with reference to some oral accounts by Inuit elders and to the residual presence of shamanism. Tuberculosis in the Canadian North An everlasting plague that deeply affected the Inuit According to Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (https://www.itk. ca/publication/inuit-specific-tuberculosis-strategy, con- sulted on 2 January 2016), the rate of TB has always been higher in Inuit Nunangat (Inuit lands) than elsewhere in Canada. In 2011, Inuit had a reported rate [A]lmost 254 times the rate reported for Canadian- born non-Aboriginals and roughly 38 times the rate reported for Canada overall. Although this excess risk is not new, it has increased since the 1930s, when TB reached its first peak in Canada, and when Aboriginal patients had no access to sanatorium treatment and often died at home. Whereas for Canada as a whole the death rate for TB of the respiratory system