‘We have to get this out’: Why Innu musician David Hart is telling his story of abuse and survival

The teacher had video games, snacks, and tools to fix bicycles at his home in Sheshatshiu. 

He’d often invite the boys over—students from the primary and elementary classes at Peenamin McKenzie School. 

The school was named for a revered Innu elder. Thinking back on it now, David Hart says putting the elder’s name on that institution was disrespectful, considering the harm done to Innu inside its walls. 

Hart is a popular Innu musician from Sheshatshiu, now based in Quebec City. When he performs in Labrador, young fans scream with delight and line up for photos. He has a following in Indigenous communities across the country. 

He has never spoken publicly about the abuse he suffered as a small child. 

“These are the wounds that nobody hears about,” Hart said. 

“Nobody in the community knew.”

Innu Musician David Hart is bringing his story of abuse — and survival — into the spotlight

Hart says his teacher’s offers of video games and bike tools were ploys to get children away from their parents. 

“I am a survivor of a child pornographer that came to our community to destroy.”

Hart spent much of his early childhood in the wilderness with his grandparents. They divided their time between a small cabin near Mud Lake, Labrador, and a canvas tent in the Mealy Mountains. 

Hart’s grandfather hunted and trapped, his grandmother made snowshoes. They spoke Innu-aimun and regaled the little boy with stories of the old days. 

“That was my daycare, in the bush,” Hart said. 

“That lifestyle, it’s so peaceful. You didn’t really worry about anything.”

As his grandparents got older, they spent more time in Sheshatshiu. Around age eight, David began attending school more regularly. 

“That’s when my life kind of shifted,” he said. 

Even as a child, Hart could see that life in the community was taking its toll on Innu. 

Shehatshiu was settled in the early 1960s. Before then, Innu lived nomadic lifestyles; moving with the seasons like his grandparents did. 

Sheshatshiu was a community with houses, streets, church and school. Government officials promised Innu a better life. Those who weren’t enticed were threatened with cuts to family allowances, or the removal of children from their parents’ care.

Cleaved from their way of life, many turned to alcohol to cope. Hart says he’s lost many relatives to alcohol abuse and suicide.

“Things that came to destroy our community, ” he said, describing his childhood impression of the forces at work in Sheshatshiu. “That’s when I found out how powerful it was.” 

For years, Hart didn’t talk about what happened to him. Even as other boys came forward, he stayed quiet. The teacher died before he could face justice and Hart turned to the same coping mechanisms his relatives had used.

“I was a heavy drinker, a closet drinker,” he said. 

“I held onto it, I locked it up. And I didn’t want to talk about it.”

Four decades later, Hart is ready to talk. He wants people to know what he went through.

He says the teacher took pornagraphic pictures of the boys in his bathtub, and developed the photos in his own dark room. 

Hart is haunted by questions about the man’s motivations. Was he working alone? Did he share pictures with others?

“It always made me wonder—who is this guy?”

Hart remembers the other boys at the teacher’s house and he knows he’s not alone. He remembers another teacher, one who was eventually charged, and he has heard similar stories from fellow Innu in Natuashish. 

The Innu Nation is seeking certification of a class-action lawsuit against the government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the government of Canada. 

Innu Nation alleges “Innu children suffered physical, sexual, emotional and cultural abuse in these schools,” and estimates there are some 2,000 victims. 

“The pain and the torment in these communities is extreme, the trauma is widespread,” Innu Nation lawyer Will Hiscock told reporters at a hearing in March. 

“When people wonder, ‘Where do the addictions issues come from? Where do the suicides come from?’ We know where they come from. This is not a mystery.”

Hart says hearing Innu elders George Rich and Prote Poker share their allegations of abuse in court, as part of the certification hearing, encouraged him to go public. 

“It really touched me,” he said. 

“We have to break the silence. We have to get this out and be heard.”

Hart understands acutely why so many fellow Innu struggle with addictions and mental illness.

He thinks about the encampments in the woods around Happy Valley-Goose Bay, a town 35 kilometres away from Sheshatshiu. He knows what residents think of the people who spend their nights in the bush.

“Oh, they don’t want to work, they’re lazy, they’re savages,” Hart scoffs, mimicking a common refrain from concerned citizens.

“That person went through something in his life. He was hurt.”

Hart hopes that other Innu will hear his story, and feel empowered to share their own, just as Rich and Poker motivated him. 

“What I’m seeing and what I’m hearing right now, this is only the tip of the iceberg,” he said.  

“Innu: tell about it, talk about it, and tell the world about it.”

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