Chapter 3: A Historical Overview of Education in Canada pp. 54 - 87
This chapter provided a great deal of background information on the development of education in Canada, as well, it supplied short blurbs regarding many issues that took place pertaining to race, segregation and assimilation.
My discussion post will focus on the one topic that I continue to find so very interesting and at the same time absolutely disgusting--this is the topic of the residential school systems.
I want to focus on this topic because many people still have mixed views on the topic, or many are just unaware or uneducated on the topic. This "system" was put in place to "educate" the First Nations children. Teachers taught these children English, punished them for speaking in their own tongue and forced them to abandon all of their traditional cultural ways and abused, beat, and even purposely exposed them to tuberculosis leaving them to die (72 & 73).
I am ashamed to admit that until a few years ago, I was very much unaware of these disease-filled, abuse-inflicting, culture-stripping so called "schools". These residential schools housed about one-third of Aboriginal children, who spent a large portion of their childhood in these schools (73). These "schools" were built with the intentions of taking an "aggressive civilization" (the Aboriginal people) and assimilating them into a system of European living that embraced European Christian values and stripping them of their culture, language and beliefs, on the assumptions that their own culture was not worth preserving or knowing (72 &73). One thing I find pretty outrageous is the fact that all this had occurred and so many people were affected by this deliberate and systematic destruction of culture and race and yet it is not something that is really talked. As I said above, I did not learn about the residential school system in high school and my family never told me anything about it as I was growing up. It wasn't until University that I actually learned and understood what had occurred a very short time ago in my own country and province. I find it so hard to believe that something that has caused so much pain and psychological problems was so "hush hush". Karen Robson explains that the residential school system did so much damage, not only to the children involved but to their families and now to the generations that follow as the long-term psychological damage is being passed down from generation to generation due to psychological stress incurred from the residential schools (73).
When many think of the term genocide, they think of the holocaust and the Jews, but the residential school system doesn't always come to mind. I looked up the term Genocide in Merriam-Webster's online dictionary and it states, "the deliberate killing of people who belong to a particular racial, political, or cultural group" (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genocide). In my opinion the residential school system fully and totally fits that description, but it appears that many either disagree, or just will not acknowledge it in that way. This issue is one that very recently made headlines in our local news. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights opened up in Winnipeg this fall and one band that was scheduled to perform at the opening festivities pulled out because they were unhappy with the representations of the Indigenous people in the museum. The band is called A Tribe Called Red, and they released the following statement,
"Human rights are great for society. We appreciate the work the
museum has been doing to bring attention to global issues.
Unfortunately, we feel it was necessary to cancel our performance
because of the museum's misrepresentation and downplay of the genocide
that was experienced by Indigenous people in Canada by refusing to name
it genocide. Until this is rectified, we'll support the museum from a
distance" (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/a-tribe-called-red-cancels-performance-at-human-rights-museum-1.2771222).
I have not been to the museum yet, and so I can not give my first hand knowledge on the subject, but I believe that the attitude that the museum is taking is not uncommon. Now it doesn't mean that people don't believe the residential school systems were destructive and awful, it just means that the term "genocide" is not commonly used to describe it.
Discussion Question: Have you been to the Human Rights Museum, and if so what is your stance on them "downplaying the genocide" and not using the term genocide to describe the residential school system situation?
-Jill
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