I’m not going to belabour the frozen-in-time approach and how flipping bizarre it is to read about people telling us not to haul game home in pick-up trucks, or use kitchen appliances to make frybread, or use gasoline in our motorboats, because once you think about it, the weirdness should be self-evident. I do want you to think about this conversation the next time you think to yourself, “Oh, hey, that can’t be traditional because they used [insert some new technology].”
We are just as capable of adapting to new technology and using it according to traditional beliefs and philosophies as you are. It’d be cool if you thought of a few ways in which your culture has used new technologies in a traditional way so you really get what I’m saying here.
And if you’re still sticking to the whole, “Nope, you’ve got to do it the way your ancestors did way back when,” then I’d like you to name a specific date after which any technological innovation renders our traditions invalid. Then we can both agree that from now on, all peoples living in Canada will only be allowed to do things the way they did it before that date, and we’ll see how that works, okay?
NOTES
1.Ralph Klein, Progressive Conservative Premier of Alberta from 1992–2006. The nickname is a reference to his style of governing, and how long he stayed in office. He passed in 2013.
2.“Interim Métis Harvesting Agreement,” University of Alberta (PDF), September 31, 2004, http://www.ualberta.ca/~walld/gciha.pdf.
3.Lee Parsons, “Canada: Alberta Premier Berates Homeless in Visit to Shelter,” wows.org, last modified December 22, 2001, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2001/12/can-d22.html.
4.R. v. Powley, 2003, SCC 43, [2003] 2 SCR 207.
5.Ed Stelmach took over as Premier of Alberta in 2006 when Ralph Klein resigned. He got his nickname from his low-key style.
PART 4
State Violence
20
Monster
The Residential-School Legacy
I hate you residential school, I hate you.
You’re a monster.
A huge hungry monster.
Built with steel bones. Built with cement flesh.
You’re a monster.
Built to devour innocent Native children.
—Dennis Saddleman1
Numbers; I deal best with numbers:
150 years of operation
150 000 children who attended
6000 children (at least) who died while in the system
67 percent of schools run by the Roman Catholic Church, 20 percent by the Anglicans, 10 percent by the United Church, 3 percent by the Presbyterian Church2
1996 – the year the last school closed
7000 interviews with survivors
6 volumes in the final Truth and Reconciliation report3
This is as dispassionate as I can get, but even broken down into numbers, this hurts.
Of all the topics I have covered in this book, none is more difficult for me to give voice to than this one. In fact, although I have tried to write about the residential-school system, I have never been able to bring myself to do more than skirt around the topic; I need to focus on what we can do to change things. I feel like someone who, after long exposure, has become so raw that the barest whisper feels like acid on my spirit. Rather than developing calluses, I am a flayed nerve.
I never attended residential school. My experiences are all secondhand. Mine is the first generation to be schooled entirely outside of that system, and yet I cannot think of any Indigenous people of my generation who have not been touched by it, one way or another.
A term was coined in the 1980s for this impact: historic trauma transmission. It refers to the “cumulative emotional and psychological wounding across generations.”4 There is no one response to this, no one way of feeling or expressing it. For me, it has meant being utterly incapable of thinking about residential schools without imagining my own children being forcibly removed from me and put into such situations. The residential-school system is gone, but my fear never leaves me. This was legal. This was acceptable. This happened.
And so I apologize if this chapter ends up being unsatisfying. I will do my best, but if you want details of what children endured in those schools, you should hear it from survivors, not from me. There is now a large, publicly accessible record that exists that can fill in any gaps you are left with after I am drained of my words here.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was established in 2008 to look into the legacy of the residential-school system. It issued an executive summary in the summer of 2015, and released all six volumes of its final report on December 15th of the same year.5 Its work has now been transferred to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation housed at the University of Manitoba, which will be a permanent home for all statements, documents, and materials gathered by the TRC.
Over the last few years, it has become common to hear former students of residential schools telling their stories. These former students are called “survivors,” and this is not just some trite label. Many did not survive, either because they died in the system or the trauma they experienced eventually ended in their deaths years later. Those who remain survived.
It is important to understand that the outpouring of survivor testimonies is a very recent phenomenon. For so long, survivors often did not discuss their experiences. In the 1980s, there was some limited recognition of how deeply these experiences had impacted both survivors and their families, and slowly people started talking about it.
Between 1986 and 1994, various churches issued apologies for their role in residential schools. In 1996, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) released its final report, addressing residential schools in volume one, chapter 10. In 1998, the Canadian government made a Statement of Reconciliation and established the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF) to manage a healing fund of $350 million.6
Throughout this time, survivor stories began to trickle in, at first during AHF-funded healing circles. After a while, it became common for survivors to publicly relate some of their experiences at almost any Indigenous conference or gathering. These testimonials were often spontaneous, provided not by panelists, but, more often, by people in the audience. You never really knew when it was going to come up, but as I got older, it came up more and more. Survivors were breaking their silence, many of them for the first time. There was no dedicated forum to tell these stories, so they could spill out anywhere. A trickle became a steady flow.
Because I have heard so many accounts over the years, I often forget that, up until recently, most Canadians knew next to nothing about residential schools. In 2005, a miniseries called Into the West was produced in the United States, and was fairly popular in Canada.7 Episode 5 introduced viewers to the infamous Carlisle Indian Industrial School in the United States.
All of a sudden, through television, residential schools entered the public consciousness in a way that official reports and statements hadn’t been able to accomplish. The experiences portrayed in that episode were being discussed in cafes, online in debate forums – everywhere. It was in 2005 that I realized just how hidden these experiences had remained, despite the fact Indigenous people had been telling their painful stories for decades by that point.
I certainly wasn’t the only one who entered these discussions and pointed out the same had been done in Canada. I must have given an overview of residential-school history hundreds of times in the next few months. It still boggles my mind to remember the shock on people’s faces. Non-Indigenous faces, mind you. I silently asked so many times, “How did you not know this?!” But, of course, they didn’t. This was still three years before Canada’s official apology.8
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m overstating the impact of a television series. But for me, it marked the beginning of a wider awareness that has only continued to gain momentum with the 2008 apology, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s work.9
For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada. The establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as “cultural genocide.”10
The above quote is the first paragraph of the TRC’s executive summary. Many people have found the inclusion of the term cultural genocide to be off-putting; some object to it because they feel it unnecessarily modifies the word genocide, while others insist genocide must only be used to refer to the mass killing of a specific group. The TRC certainly makes a thorough case for its inclusion of this term, and I do not feel the intent is to either inflate the circumstances or downplay them.
After the release of the TRC executive report, Zoe Todd (Métis), Erica Violet Lee (First Nations, nêhiyaw), and Joseph Murdoch-Flowers (Inuk) created the “Read the TRC Report” project, organizing volunteers to read excerpts from the summary report in a series of videos available online.11 All across Canada, there has been an incredible surge of interaction with the final report, both on social media and in communities, as Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples commit to reading the report and, more important, try to find ways to further the TRC’s 94 Calls to Action.
If you commit to anything, please commit to reading at least the summary. There are five sections, all well worth reading. The Introduction explains why the TRC was necessary and, more important, it defines how it is using the controversial term reconciliation. The Commission Activities section lays out exactly what lengths the TRC went to in order to gather survivors’ stories, and how it began laying the groundwork for wider education on the topic. I personally had no idea so many events were held across the country! This section also discusses how the Canadian government had to be taken to court repeatedly in order to force the disclosure of documents essential to the TRC’s mandate.
The History section does an amazing job of laying out global colonial history as a backdrop to the development of the residential-school system, as well as providing concrete details about the way these schools were designed and operated. In particular, the Imperial Context subsection (which begins on page 47) should be essential reading for everyone. While many of us have learned this history in fits and starts, this section brings together the history of global colonialism in a way I’ve never quite seen before: clearly, succinctly, and briefly. It provides an excellent counter narrative to the one of colonial superiority, which so many of us have been inculcated with over our many years of schooling in the Canadian system. The utility of this section goes far beyond the issue of residential schools, and should be used in all educational settings. It is followed by the Assimilation Policy subsection, about which all Canadians should no longer remain ignorant.
When I began reading the History section, I was worried I would not be able to handle the excerpts from survivor testimonies that are included. To be honest, sometimes I couldn’t. I needed to take many breaks to go hug my kids and just think of less awful things. If you undertake to read this summary, treat yourself kindly. Take the breaks you need; take the time you need.
If you have ever asked, “What does all this have to do with the present?” then the Legacy section will provide you with clarity. The impact of residential schools on those of us living right now is fleshed out and clarified for all who have been confused by this. The TRC also begins its recommendations in this section, nesting those recommendations in the exploration of the issues. You will find the first five recommendations deal with the child-welfare system as it exists today. Huh? Why? Well, you’ll have to read to understand; and, please do.
The final section is The Challenge of Reconciliation. This section further lays out a path to follow, with more concrete recommendations and reasons for those recommendations being given.
So often we, as Indigenous people, are asked, “What is it you people want?” Well, this summary gives concrete answers to that question. We are not asking that money simply be thrown at us, as is frequently claimed. We are explaining what is wrong, why it happened/happens, and what has to be done in order to create real change. There is no need for further confusion, no need to keep asking what we want. Many of the recommendations echo what Indigenous peoples have been asking for on many levels, for decades and, in some cases, centuries.
Justin Trudeau has committed his government to full federal action on the TRC final report.12 Whether this promise is ever fully realized or not, it is a fact that the TRC’s 94 Calls to Action are something all Canadians need to become more familiar with. Already, these Calls to Action are having a profound impact on Canada, particularly in terms of the TRC’s call for systemic educational inclusion of Indigenous topics in K–12 and post-secondary curricula. Predictably, there has been some backlash against making any of these changes mandatory.
Education for reconciliation
Much of the current state of troubled relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians is attributable to education institutions and what they have taught, or failed to teach, over many generations. Despite that history, or, perhaps more correctly, because of its potential, the Commission believes education is also the key to reconciliation.13
The Commission does an excellent job of reviewing the ways in which Indigenous peoples have been taught about (or excluded) in Canadian schools over the last few decades. A number of Calls to Action address the need to ensure all people living in Canada learn substantially more about Indigenous peoples, with the goal of creating a population educated enough on the issues that a respectful relationship can be formed between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.
Not long after the executive summary was released, Lakehead University and the University of Winnipeg announced they would be creating a requirement, as of the 2016–2017 year, that all students, regardless of their program of study, must take one Indigenous studies course in order to graduate.14 A number of other postsecondary institutions have openly discussed doing the same. As you can imagine, not everyone is thrilled with the idea of having to learn Indigenous topics.
Don’t we learn enough about Indigenous peoples in elementary and secondary school?
Whenever there is talk about the need for systemic changes to ensure Canadians learn about Indigenous peoples, a veritable tsunami of anecdotes pour in. To hear some tell it, Canadians are already experts on Indigenous cultures, history, and contemporary realities.15
One person, for example, insists, “Indigenous issues were the primary focus of [his] social science and history classes from kindergarten to graduate school at UBC.”16 Wow! The primary focus! Sounds amazing! So, what did this person learn? In fourth grade he filled out a linguistic map, the next year he made bannock, and the year after that a residential-school survivor spoke to his class. He even learned about Louis Riel in high school! Poor guy wasn’t “allowed to even consider anyone else’s history until his second year of University.” Someone, please give this guy the degree in Indigenous Studies he has so clearly earned!
On my Twitter feed, another person claims she didn’t learn European history in high school because “Indigenous studies [were] mandatory and WW2 was not.”17 That this is provably untrue doesn’t really matter if the purpose of such claims is merely to bolster a rhetorical point: forcing people to learn more than they already apparently know about Indigenous peoples is akin to “brainwashing,” “fascism,” and any number of other less repeatable terms.18
There is much to unpack here, but I want to focus specifically on what Canadians are actually learning about Indigenous peoples. Is it enough? Are the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s educational Calls to Action unnecessary?
Well, the TRC’s Call to Action 62.1 exhorts governments in Canada:
…in consultation and c
ollaboration with Survivors, Aboriginal peoples, and educators, to make age-appropriate curriculum on residential schools, Treaties, and Aboriginal peoples’ historical and contemporary contributions to Canada a mandatory education requirement for Kindergarten to Grade Twelve students.19
According to claims like those above, this happened years ago; job done!
Since the current debate centres around mandatory courses at the postsecondary level, such as those recently announced at the University of Winnipeg, I thought it made sense to look at what Canadians are learning before they get to that point.20 Perhaps we will discover, after all, that these kinds of courses are not needed!
Educational curricula are provincial concerns, so what is taught in Canada varies greatly. To know what elementary- and secondary-level students in any given province or territory are learning about Indigenous peoples, you need to access Ministry of Education sites and look through the curricula. When it comes to elective courses, you also have to look at each school board to see which schools actually offer those courses.
In most of Canada, there are no mandatory Indigenous Studies courses, meaning one can graduate from high school without ever having to take such a class. Only six provinces even offer elective Indigenous Studies courses, and there is no guarantee these elective courses will be available in any given school. Interested students in Manitoba, Quebec, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island cannot even choose to take an Indigenous Studies course. Seven provinces have developed curricula to teach an Indigenous language, but these courses tend to be even less available due to lack of qualified language teachers.21
Indigenous Writes Page 22