Residential schools and the Truth About Stories
(I posted this earlier tonight on the blog for my English 182 course, which wraps up tomorrow. I thought it would be of interest to the regular readers of this blog as well.)
Over the last week or so, the Globe and Mail has published an important series of stories about the history of the residential school system in Canada. In particular, the stories have focused on what to my mind is an unfathomable, unforgiveable neglect of the Canadian government as it ignored the vast numbers of native children who died of tuberculosis while attending these schools:
“A Globe and Mail examination of documents in the National Archives reveals that children continued to die from tuberculosis at alarming rates for at least four decades after a senior official at the Department of Indian Affairs initially warned in 1907 that schools were making no effort to separate healthy children from those sick with the highly contagious disease.
Peter Bryce, the department’s chief medical officer, visited 15 Western Canadian residential schools and found at least 24 per cent of students had died from tuberculosis over a 14-year period. The report suggested the numbers could be higher, noting that in one school alone, the death toll reached 69 per cent.” (Globe and Mail, “Natives died in droves as Ottawa ignored warnings; Tuberculosis took the lives of students for at least 40 years.” April 24, 2007. I would link directly to all of these articles, but I’m sorry to say that most of them are restricted to Globe subscribers).
On top of everything else that we’ve already talked about in our class with regard to the history of these schools, we learned this week of how many thousands of young children died in this system, which chose not to separate sick children from the regular student body, resulting in an infection rate more dramatic than perhaps we’ve ever seen anywhere else: “How many aboriginal children died from tuberculosis at the schools? Health Canada’s website reports a death rate as high as 8,000 per 100,000 during the 1930s and 1940s — decades after Dr. Bryce’s warnings. To put that in context, the death rates from tuberculosis on native reserves were, says Health Canada, among “the highest ever reported in a human population†— and at 700 per 100,000 people, they were less than 10 per cent of the rate afflicting children in the residential schools during the 1930s and 1940s.” (Globe and Mail, “The Lost Children of Our Schools.” April 28, 2007.)
In the discussions that have gone on about these revelations, we see a number of things of which we need to take notice.
First, if you factor in tuberculosis to what we already know about the physical and sexual abuse many of these students suffered, the systematic and deliberate destruction of culture, language and identity in the guise of “education,” the forced removal of thousands of children from their families, communities, and all that they knew, we’re reminded once again of how devastating this system was to the First Nations peoples of North America. Genocide is not an inappropriate word to use to describe what happened
Second, one of the other things that the Conservative government’s response to the discussion of these issues reveals is the nature of some of the stories Canadians still tell themselves about what Canada did to the first peoples of that land. Quoted in the Globe and Mail’s editorial on this topic over the weekend, “Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice said he will not apologize to aboriginals for the government’s role in overseeing the largely church-run residential schools because ‘fundamentally, the underlying objective had been to try and provide an education to aboriginal children.’â€
In The Truth About Stories, Tom King reminds us that “the truth about stories is that’s all that we are” and that we can learn a lot from looking more carefully at the stories we tell ourselves, at the narratives we allow to shape our perceptions of the world. The Globe runs with this idea in its Saturday editorial and reminds us of many of the myths some Canadians still hold on to with respect to how Canada has treated Native peoples in the past and in the present:
The myth of Canada’s residential schools for native children holds that the schools had a paternalistic purpose, and that even after all is revealed about them — the physical and sexual abuse, the forced relocation of children, the ban on speaking native languages — Canada meant well. The country was simply limited by the assimilative vision of the times.
That myth may at last fall when Canadians take a close look at the abysmally high death rates among children, from tuberculosis and other causes, at the schools. They did not die in one great epidemic; they died over many years — at least 40 — as the federal government ignored warnings from its own medical advisers.
The full story of those deaths has not entered the Canadian consciousness. The Canadian Encyclopedia says nothing about tuberculosis under “residential schools†or “native education.†When the Canadian government apologized in 1998 for sexual and physical abuse at the schools, it said nothing about the deaths of children. (Globe and Mail, “The Lost Children of Our Schools.” April 28, 2007.)
For what it’s worth, Jim Prentice has stated in the last day or so that Canada will launch a new effort to learn more about this sad chapter of Canada’s past that remains fresh for many people across the country:
“As for a government apology, the minister said it is better to wait until a new Truth and Reconciliation Commission completes its five-year mandate to tour the country and issue a definitive report on the history of residential schools. Mr. Prentice told the House that his decision to attach “enormous significance†to such a commission dates back to his experience working as a constitutional adviser in South Africa in the early 1990s as the country worked to dismantle its apartheid structure.”
While this is a noble and likely important project, it’s not enough for right now. The Liberal opposition today spearheaded a largely symbolic vote that passed unanimously in Parliament today. It calls for the House of Commons to apologize to First Nations peoples for what the residential school system did to them.
As these recent revelations — “reminders” is perhaps a more appropriate word here, as these details were never forgotten by the First Nations — show us, the effect of what Canada did to the First Nations through the residential schools alone are still an everyday part of life for those people:
“In his opening speech, Saskatchewan Liberal MP Gary Merasty, a former Cree Grand Chief who moved yesterday’s motion, painted a dark picture of the residential schools experience.
‘I stand here for numerous victims whose stories will never be told, whose remains are scattered across our land in unmarked graves, scars on the land and even larger scars on our nation’s psyche,†he said. “According to some reports, students in the early to middle part of the last century often had to help bury their classmates, their friends, their relatives. Yes, children buried children.'”
Reading words like that, like many of the words we’ve read this semester are hard, painful, depressing, devastating even. But they’re also important and words that I hope we all try to remember and not forget. We’ve seen this semester the power that stories can have. Stories are not simply entertainment. They are fundamental to who we are, how we see the world, and to the decisions we make about how we live our lives and what we demand of the leaders and representatives we elect. We’ve seen what can happen when we change the stories we tell ourselves. As King tells us, we can change reality by changing the stories we tell ourselves. Changing those stories is hard, but necessary work.
4 comments
Thank you for addressing this topic. Canadians have a distance to go before they accept the realities of lives and deaths of children in the schools. We must continue to educate and inform. Now is a time of great change in Canada’s relations with Indigenous Nations.
The tragedy of the genocide that displaced children from their loved ones and decultured, abused and too often killed them is a raw wound for the Traditional Nations. Some have recently expressed a need to bring the remains of the children home. Other voices are joining in this now.
I hope Canada and the churches can respond to this heartfelt request in a humane way.
I would like to bring up a few points about this subject.
1.These children had to be educated.What was the alternative-private tutors? One room school houses for each tiny community.
2.What is the difinition of abuse? I am sure that there were few cases of gross abuse like sexual,regular severe beatings. The people in charge were men of God and meant well.
3. I attended a Catholic run schoool in the sixties.I got the strap at least once a month.
I have no ‘issues’.
Those that had real instances of regular abuse should be compensated.For some, however,its just
free money.
And the federal government is correct to not apologise.They did not have jurisdiction over education.Its the churches that should pay but the government is bailing them out.
I’d like to take the time to say thanks for the attention that you’ve given to the issue of Canada’s residential schools. I too have been affected by the residential school experience. Albeit, the way I’ve been affected is inter-generationally.
I am a Saddle Lake Cree Nation band member who is currently studying at the University of Lethbridge. Both my parents were made to attend residential schools. And, both maintain that much more went on in those institutions than we will ever hear about. My dad won’t speak of his experiences unlike my mom. However, his silence is testament to the horrors he must have witnessed. I say this because he is a very articulate man and does not shy away from contentious issues, with the exception of the residential schools experience.
What I have been told about those places is that they were definitely not places where education on par with the dominant society took place. They were labor farms: where students got hooked up to plows like animals; where girls were instructed on things like sewing & housekeeping; where boys learned things like janitorial and labor work; where students were made to stand up all night long as clotheslines when they wet the bed; where pedophile rings were actively arranged between the priests, nuns and surrounding white communities; and the list goes on.
The Government is made up of miserable, snivelling cowards because of their ignorance and self-righteous behavior regarding the “morality” of these institutions, and the criminals running them. However, as ‘Barry’ seems to delude himself: these “men of God” are apparently somehow incorruptible. Need I point out that the Church has always been ripe with corruption? Or, does the Protestant Reformation not factor on his radar screen? What are his views on how the Church at that time sought payment for indulgences and how one could essentially buy their way out of sin?
Anyways, the sins of those criminals that ran the residential schools are too old to face charges now. Their asses have been too well protected by the law, the government and the church. The only humane thing now is for them to at least include themselves in the human race and own up to what they did.
Thanks for your comment on my blog. I really appreciate hearing your story.
I talk a lot in my classes, albeit from an outsider’s perspective, about the tragic legacy of the residential school system back in Canada. It’s something that my American students here know absolutely nothing about before they come to my class. Even back when I was teaching at the U of Alberta, it was something about which my students there hardly knew enough.
I routinely teach a course here at the University of Vermont on recent fiction by First Nations writers from Canada and this is a topic that comes up a lot. Being a non-Native and teaching what is usually an entirely non-Native body of students, I’m always going out of my way to remind my students that we can never truly understand the impact of the residential schools on a personal level. These are not our stories, and yet at the same time they are. They’re the stories of what white society did (and continues to do) to the first peoples of this continent and those are stories that we need to own up to. It’s by trying to understand and making sure that the past does not get forgotten or swept under the rug that we can help to change things. So, I really appreciate you taking the time to share your story with me.
Speaking of sharing stories, I’ve added your great blog to my list of feeds that I follow, so I’ll be continuing to read your take on these things and others. I think blogs have become a great way for people from around the world to connect to each other’s stories in ways we’ve never been able to do before.
Paul
P.S. I somehow didn’t notice Barry’s comment on this blog from back in September until you mentioned it. I don’t think there’s a valid point in the whole comment, which is not the most academic thing for me to say but let’s take a quick run through those main points:
1) “These children had to be educated.” By whom? and for what? Who’s to say that they weren’t already being educated by their own communities? The premise here is that “education” is only what you can learn in a school environment that teaches you how to cope in a white society. The residential school system was not about “education” but about assimilation. Actually that’s too mild a word. It was a process of cultural genocide that aimed not to give students a Western education to complement their own traditional knowledge; its aim was to eradicate all forms of traditional knowledge, cultures, and languages.
2. Good question: how about being beaten or otherwise punished for daring to speak your own language? how about being taken away from your parents involuntarily and placed in a “school” for your entire childhood? I think abuse includes the deliberate and systematic traumatization of any individual and not just sexual abuse or “regular severe beatings.” I’d also take issue with the assertion that “The people in charge were men of God” and that they “meant well.” I’m sure there were some good people who did what they could to help Native youth in these schools, but I don’t think we can ever really consider those others who inflicted the physical and sexual abuse in particular to be “men of god.” Second, I really have to wonder how those people who “meant well” could have had the arrogance to assume that they knew what was best for Native people in Canada?
3) I don’t think getting the strap once a month compares in any way at all to what we’re talking about.
Finally, the federal government bears a great deal of responsibility here. They allowed all of this to occur. It’s cowardly of them not to apologize. The compensation that has been given out is anything but “free money” for anyone involved and true reparation or reconciliation needs to involve much, much more than this. It begins with truth and honesty, two things I think we’ve yet to see the federal government (Liberal or Conservative) fully demonstrate.