COLONIALISM IS ALIVE AND WELL IN THE SCHOOL SYSTEMS OF CANADA

BILL LEE

November 30, 2020

There has been an unpleasant story making the rounds on a lot of media sources, the ones to which I have access anyway. It is about an Abbotsford First Nations mother, Krista MacInnis (Pictured here). She became righteously enraged that her daughter received a school assignment asking students to list “five positive stories” about residential schools. She told the local newspaper that she found out about the assignment when her 11-year-old daughter, who is in Grade 6 at an Abbotsford Middle School, came to her for some help with it. (Hopes, 2020) At first, I was stunned. In this day and age, after the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Report, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the ‘apology’ rendered by then Prime Minister Steven Harper, which was applauded by all and sundry of the Whitestream class, including the opposition parties, the idea of asking any child to come up with positive stories on a signature event of the original colonial project in Canada seemed shockingly inappropriate, even obscene. It struck me as being worthy only of the likes of Conservative (still) Senator Lynn Beyak, the notoriously retrograde residential school apologist, or the dregs of humanity who troll social media and heap vile comments on Indigenous people or their allies. The only kind of positive stories I could think of were those of Indigenous families who managed to save their children from the clutches of the authorities by hiding; or of the kids who made heroic escapes from those damnable institutions. I have gathered, however that the teacher was not looking for those kinds of positives.

My wife and I had our challenges with the school system, and othersi, on almost the very same issue. Some years ago, 1970 to be exact, we became the proud parents of an Indigenous (Anishnawbe) child (now a man of course). His mom and I are white. About thirty-seven years ago now, when he was thirteen years old, he was given a school assignment that was clearly colonial, racist, and definitely hurtful. I had to go over to my son’s school to wrangle with his grade eight teacher who had given the assignment, which clearly contained colonial, racist language. I cannot remember much of the exact text, but do remember, vividly that there were references to “fierce savages” and that “the settlers” feared that they would be “tortured and scalped”. I thought I could explain things to her. It soon became obvious however, that she was either oblivious, obdurate, or she just didn’t care; she kept trying to tell me that it was an ok assignment because it was not for history but English. I tried to be calm and reasonable and to talk to her about the message this kind of thing sends, the kind of hurt it could cause Indigenous children and their parents particularly. I also pointed out that given the brutal, colonial manner in which the governmentii and settlers had treated Indigenous people, having an assignment that referred to them as “savages” was more than a bit hypocritical. The teacher however, continued to reject that there was a problem and, to be fair to her, pointed out that it was part of a resource made available by the board of education, at that time, for teaching grade eight English. To make a long story short, I finally felt that I had to tell her that if she didn’t immediately scrap the assignment, and promise she would never foist another racist project on her unsuspecting students, I’d have to call the principal and ask for a meeting with the three of us. This seemed to have the desired effect and she immediately gave in. So, I won a small victory for our family, but not much in the interests of changing anything for the better. The point is that the sad and infuriating story of Ms. MacInnis and her daughter, reminds me that things clearly have not changed. Colonialism is alive and functioning among some members in our educational systems in this country.

Hats off, of course, to the mom Ms. MacInnis, she did something important in drawing public attention to the downright ignorance that is a product of systemic colonialism. I wish I had done the same. But I have strong doubts that this kind of systemic racism (different in specifics but not in the pain caused for black families) is a one off now, any more than it was in the 1980’s. I wonder how many parents of Indigenous kids still have to wrestle with unaware people like that teacher with those colonial resources still at hand. It has been almost forty years since our run-in with overt colonialism in the school system. This story shows that things haven’t changed enough to address Indigenous People’s history and the ravages of colonialism. Indeed, it confirms my contention that systemic colonial racism remains alive and well in Canada.

Resources

Hopes, V. (2020). “Abbotsford mom angry that students asked to list positive stories about residential schools.” The Abbotsford News, Nov. 25, 2020. https://www.abbynews.com/news/abbotsford-mom-angry-that-students-asked-to-list-positive-stories-about-residential-schools/

i For example, it took the two of us over two years of slogging and the help of a determined adoption worker at the CCAS of Toronto, to have our son recognized by our government as “an Indian under the Act” with the rights that should have been his right by birth. 

ii At that time, we did not know of the involvement of John A. MacDonald and others in the “clearing of the plains” though we had more than inkling that residential schools were a terrible thing to inflict on children, and of course we knew that the execution of Louis Riel had a very unpleasant odour to it. See, James Daschuk’s, (2013) excellent, Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life.