Several
weeks of national mainstream news media coverage has been focused on
Gabby Petito, a 22-year-old white woman who recently was reported
missing and subsequently found murdered. We offer our sincere
condolences to her family. No one should have to experience this kind of
tragedy exacerbated by noted indicators of domestic violence.
We are national Indigenous organizations dedicated to ending the cycle of violence that adversely affects 84% of Indigenous women (Rosay, André B.) during their lifetime. Indigenous women are murdered at a rate 10 times higher (Bachman, Ronet) than other races in some communities. More than half have been physically abused by an intimate partner, according to the National Institute of Justice.
The
loss of an Indigenous woman’s life is all too familiar in our
communities. Hundreds of Indigenous people go missing every year. Many
of them vanish without a trace, never to be seen or heard from again.
Too many of them are found murdered with their cases often left
uninvestigated and unresolved by local, state and/or federal
authorities.
Yet,
none of our relatives to date have received much, if any, attention
from the news media, concentrated efforts by law enforcement
departments, or an outpouring of financial contributions from ordinary
citizens. Indian tribes, communities and family members don’t have
unlimited financial resources to help us locate our missing relatives.
Up until recently, our missing relatives have not amassed social media
followings to galvanize searches. The contrast that we are witnessing
regarding this particular case is heartbreaking to the many Indigenous
families and communities dealing with the daily pain of losing their
loved ones. The contrast sends the message that society has little
regard for Indigenous lives.
We
are not alone in seeing systemic and law enforcement bias when it comes
to the lack of coverage of and case resolutions of missing and murdered
Indigenous relatives (MMIR). In 2004 this lack of attention and bias
was given a title — “Missing White Woman Syndrome” — by the late
American news anchor Gwen Ifill. Moreover, American news outlets
continue to be less demographically diverse, with staffing consisting of
primarily white male journalists, according to the Pew Research Center.
The lack of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) journalists
in the mainstream contributes to additional challenges that Indigenous
people face when it comes to equal coverage of MMIR and other related
issues.
It
is truly devastating to lose another life to violence. There are no
words to fully express the pain of a parent losing a child in a violent
way. As Indigenous peoples, we understand too well the ugly, ongoing
nature of violence across this land and upon our people through our
lived experiences. It’s been happening since the advent of colonization.
Missing
and murdered Indigenous relatives deserve the same attention and
resources that society, the media and the justice system have given to
Gabby Petito’s case. Their lives are important. As partner organizations
in the effort to provide support and advocate for Indigenous women and
peoples impacted by domestic violence, intimate partner violence, dating
violence, and sexual violence, we honor all individuals, families and
communities impacted by MMIR and all those working so diligently to end
this crisis of violence.
What you can do to help:
For Individuals
●Educate
yourself on the high rates of violence in our Indigenous communities
and other communities of color, as well as community-based solutions
●Engage with media about MMIR
○Send emails, make phone calls, comment on articles, send letters to editors, etc.
●Learn about and share the stories of MMIR in your area, including their names, and the circumstances of their cases, etc.
●Learn who your law enforcement are in your community and educate yourself on cross-jurisdictional issues
●Donate to organizations advocating for justice for MMIR and ending domestic violence
●Raise
awareness on social media: like, follow and share the organizations
listed below that are focused on domestic violence and MMIR at the
national, regional and local levels
○StrongHearts Native Helpline
○National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center
○Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center
○National Congress of American Indians
○Sovereign Bodies Institute
○Alliance of Tribal Coalitions to End Violence
○Indian Law Resource Center
○Urban Indian Health Institute
○Rising Hearts Coalition
●Learn how to support loved one, friend or colleague struggling against intimate partner
●Learn about and practice bystander intervention
●Learn how to hold batters, predators and other offenders accountable
●Volunteer at organizations working to respond to and end domestic violence
●Attend,
support or organize a socially distanced community event in your area
to raise awareness of MMIR. Organizers can plan a community walk or run,
vigil or any type of fundraiser/awareness event they choose.
For Organizations
●Center BIPOC voices on your platforms
●Practice unbiased, equitable attention on all missing and murdered people
●Uplift Indigenous organizations and coalitions advocating for MMIR
●Support May 5th annually as the National Day of Awareness for MMIW
Bachman,
Ronet; Zaykowski, Heather; Kallmyer, Rachel; Poteyeva, Margarita;
Lanier, Christina, “Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native
Women and the Criminal Justice Response: What is Known”, NIJ (2008):
223691, available at https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/223691.pdf
Dear People who Care about First Nations kids, Tomorrow is my birthday and I am so honoured to share it with Orange Shirt day. I have a wish- please tag @JustinTrudeau - demand he stop fighting kids and survivors in court, obey the law and get to work on the TRC Calls to Action https://t.co/NWjnH0ADqb
(EAGAN, Minn., 2021) — During Domestic Violence Awareness Month in
October, StrongHearts Native Helpline joins advocates, sister organizations and
communities throughout Indian Country to raise awareness about domestic
violence and to support and honor survivors and victims. This year,
StrongHearts calls on everyone — advocates, tribal leaders, reservation and
urban Indian community members, service providers and Native organizations — to
support and strengthen the movement to prevent and end domestic violence.
According to the National Institute of Justice,
domestic violence disproportionately impacts Native Americans and Alaska
Natives, with more than 1.5 million Native women and 1.4 million Native men
experiencing violence during their lifetime, often by non-Native perpetrators.
Domestic violence has several faces: physical, sexual, emotional, cultural,
financial and digital. Children, elders and LGBTQ2S+ individuals can experience
domestic violence.
Domestic violence among Native Americans is not
natural or traditional. The domination and subjugation of Native Americans
began with colonization and continues today. Colonization was responsible for
the theft, occupation, pollution and exploitation of Indigenous lands. Today,
Native Americans who are living in tribal communities on or near lands that are
exploited by extractive industries face the highest rates of domestic and
sexual violence.
“There is a viable connection between the
violence that has been inflicted on the land through colonization and violence
brought on Native peoples,” says Lori Jump (Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa
Indians), director, StrongHearts Native Helpline. “When the value of the land
is lost, the value of Indigenous peoples of the land is lost and violence
follows.”
“StrongHearts Native Helpline is doing its part
to raise awareness about this critical issue in our Native communities and to
promote healing,” says Jump. “No matter where Native Americans live in the U.S.
— on a reservation, in a small town, a rural area, or in a major U.S. city — we
are here for you. Please join StrongHearts in believing survivors and victims.
Let’s bring our voices together, and take action. Let’s collectively put an end
to domestic violence once and for all.”
StrongHearts
Native Helpline is a 24/7 culturally-appropriate domestic, dating and sexual
violence helpline for Native Americans and Alaska Natives, available by calling
or texting 1-844-762-8483 or clicking on the chat icon at strongheartshelpline.org.
Advocates offer peer support, crisis intervention, safety planning and
referrals to Native-centered services. StrongHearts Native Helpline is a proud
partner of the National Domestic Violence Hotline and the National Indigenous
Women’s Resource Center.
On
June 12, in the second week of the Premier Lacrosse League season, one
of the greatest players of the game’s modern era darted around Fifth
Third Bank Stadium in Atlanta, just as he has done so often across his
seven-year career. Cannons attackman Lyle Thompson fired home four
goals, all from a variety of angles, on a PLL-season-high 14 shots—and
while, yes, the Whipsnakes threw everything they had at him on defense,
Thompson found himself weighed down less that afternoon by the body
checks and poke checks than he was by the orange ribbon weaved through
the bottom of his long, black braid. And by all that it represented.
Thompson,
a member of the Onondaga Nation, took the field in Atlanta grieving
200-plus Indigenous children whose unmarked graves had been discovered a
month earlier at the site of what was once the Kamloops Indian
Residential School in British Columbia. By wearing the ribbon he aimed
to channel his sporting spirit toward those who’d gone without a proper
burial, and who’d never been acknowledged. And that energy, he says,
“played a toll on my body. It played a toll on my mind.”
Kevin D. Liles/Sports Illustrated
Canada’s
so-called residential schools first opened in the late 19th century,
and as recently as the late 1990s they remained a place where Indigenous
youths—more than 150,000 of them, some as young as 3—were taken to be
culturally indoctrinated. So far, 139 such institutions have been
identified, the majority of them run by the Catholic Church, and there
Indigenous children were systematically stripped of their Native
culture, language and spirit.
In 2015, Canada’s Truth and
Reconciliation Committee produced a report alleging that children in
those schools faced sexual, physical and emotional abuse and violence.
They lived in unsanitary, cramped quarters and were often underfed. At
least 4,100 students died, the committee estimated—but that number is
likely higher given the spotty record keeping of the time. This summer
alone, Indigenous nations released reports of some 1,300 unmarked graves
found across the country, at Kamloops and at three other sites—and
these recent findings have sparked an intense response, as an increased
awareness of Canada’s often-exploitive past has forced a reckoning. (The
United States is not innocent of such mass mistreatment, having opened
350-plus similar boarding schools, operated with a similar purpose.)
For
Thompson, and other allies across the PLL, that reckoning is focused
largely on the ways in which their sport was leveraged in what the
committee called “cultural genocide.”
Lacrosse, a game invented some
1,000 years ago by Native peoples, became an assimilative tool used at
residential schools—“which is extraordinary,” says Allan Downey, an
associate professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and the
author of The Creator’s Game,
which explores Indigenous identify formation as it relates to the
sport. “They [used] an Indigenous element—an Indigenous game that has
deep connections to the epistemologies of Indigenous peoples—and they
[used] it to assimilate Indigenous youth.”
Throughout the PLL
season, to draw awareness to the subject and inspire education, Thompson
and other players wore—and the league sold—orange helmet chinstraps,
with proceeds going to the National Native American Boarding School
Healing Coalition. Indigenous players emphasize that acknowledging
lacrosse’s origins is key to the future of a game that today is widely
perceived as white and upper-middle-class. “Our ancestors, they deserve
the recognition,” says Zed Williams, who grew up on the Cattaraugus
Reservation, just south of Buffalo, and who will lead the Whipsnakes
into the PLL championship game against the Chaos this Sunday. “They
deserve the voice they never had.”
“Right now,” says Thompson, “our ghosts—our ancestors—aren’t even being learned.”
Thompson, the 2019 Major League Lacrosse MVP, is doing his best to create transparency about Canada's past.
John McCreary/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images
Just
more than a century ago, Canada’s deputy minister of Indian affairs,
Duncan Campbell Scott, spelled out to a parliamentary committee the
intentions behind an amendment to the nation’s Indian Act—a bill that
itself determined the legal status of Indigenous peoples. “Our object,”
he said, “is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada
that has not been absorbed into the body politic.”
That bit of
Canadian legislation marked the latest in a decades-long string of
restrictive measures used by the government to strengthen its control
over an Indigenous population that at the time numbered more than
113,000. Often, upon arriving at a residential school, Indigenous
students were assigned new names. Native languages were suppressed, as
were cultural and spiritual practices. Even recreation was viewed as an
instrument for assimilation, as games like cricket and baseball,
lacrosse and ice hockey were taught in hopes of “ ‘civilizing’
residential school students,” the Truth and Reconciliation Committee
reported in 2015. Another investigation, the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, observed of sport’s role in it all: “Recreation was re-creation.”
What
stands out about lacrosse here—what makes its weaponizing especially
devious—is its preexisting place in the Indigenous population. The
Haudenosaunee, for one, have long considered the game a gift from the
Creator. In various Indigenous populations it is incorporated into
religious ceremonies and used to teach ideals of respect and peace. Some
ascribe the sport healing powers, referring to it as a medicine game.
In
its original form, lacrosse was played with a wide number of rule sets,
which could be laid out before any given contest, but the simple
concept of joy was central to its creation. “Where it originated
from—and where the heart and soul of lacrosse is—is on reservations,”
says Williams. “These people live for lacrosse. They’re so passionate
about it.”
But the style of lacrosse commonly seen today looks
vastly different from what was conceived by Native peoples. Toward the
end of the 19th century, a Montreal dentist named William George Beers
codified a version of the sport that much more closely reflects today’s
game. Beers, who as a teenager competed recreationally, standardized the
use of a rubber ball, the length of a field and the size of a goal. In
1979, more than 100 years after he published a pamphlet outlining a
number of the game’s basic procedures, he was posthumously inducted into
Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame. For his efforts, Beers is traditionally
regarded as the “Father of Modern Lacrosse.”
But
Beers, Downey says, should instead be known as the “architect of the
colonization of the game.” Downey, who is Dakelh, Nak’azdli Whut’en, and
who was drafted by the National Lacrosse League’s Arizona Sting in
2007, deems Beers responsible for lacrosse’s role in residential schools
“because he’s the one that created this rhetoric that it was Canada’s
national sport”—and that it was “white, civilized enough and masculine
enough to be used in the assimilation of Indigenous youths.”
Beers’s
framework redefined lacrosse in a Westernized manner, with little to no
spiritual value. There was variety to the way the game was played
across Indigenous nations, but lacrosse taught at residential schools
stuck rigidly to the structures Beers mapped out.
“You assimilate
the game, and the byproduct of that is you’re assimilating the people
who made it,” says Frank Brown, who was raised on the Allegany
Reservation, and who played for the Whipsnakes at their training camp
this spring. That assimilation was put on display on the occasions that
residential schools were pitted against non-Indigenous teams from public
institutions. These games, Downey points out, were set up to
demonstrate “how much progress [school administrators] had made in the
civility cause they were undertaking—as a way to showcase [Indigenous
students] in this kind of ethnographic zoo, as if they were on display
for the public to see.”
As culture is stripped away, identity loss
can take any number of forms. Williams, the Whipsnakes star, was raised
outside of Buffalo by a father, Daniel, who attended the Thomas Indian
School, a boarding school that operated on the Cattaraugus Reservation
between 1875 and 1957. Later, on the reservation, Daniel’s parents both
became pastors, running a Christian church. Williams never talked in
depth with his father about the school, or about his father’s childhood,
but Williams believes he had mixed feelings about his Indigenous
heritage. “Some days he would be really traditional in Native ways; some
days, not so much,” Williams says of his father, who died in 2017. The
Thomas Indian School, he says, “definitely [was] a big factor in how our
dad raised us.”
That meant: Zed and five of his six siblings were
named after figures from the Christian Bible. At meals, they prayed in
English, not in their ancestors’ language of Seneca. And as Williams
gravitated toward lacrosse throughout his youth, he did so largely
uninformed of the game’s spiritual associations. His father never played
the game; he took instead to football and wrestling. When Zed learned
the game, winning was prioritized ove anything else—in conflict,
broadly, with Indigenous values.
As Williams has aged, though, he
has come to better understand “the medicine and power that lacrosse
has,” in large part through conversations with Indigenous teammates.
Still, he says, “so much was erased and forgotten. ... I’m still
learning.”
Williams's (left) own father attended a boarding school on the Cattaraugus Reservation.
Courtesy of Premier Lacrosse League
Thompson,
the Cannons star, grew up on the Onondaga Reservation outside of
Syracuse, always feeling a kinship with his lacrosse stick. As a child,
he shared a twin-sized mattress with an older brother—and still made
room for his stick in bed every night. He’d take it to the grocery
store, to the laundromat …
Unlike Williams’s father, Thompson’s
dad, Jerome—who didn’t attend a residential or boarding school
himself—made sure that his five children understood the cultural and
spiritual implications of the medicine game. “[My father] taught me how
to respect my stick, care for my stick, treat my stick nice,” Thompson
says, “and know that you get something in return for that respect.”
Indigenous
players such as Thompson see it as paramount to their sport’s future
that these roots and cultural origins are recognized, especially as
lacrosse grows globally. In July, the International Olympic Committee
endorsed full recognition of the game, a decision seen across the
lacrosse community as a precursor, potentially, for upcoming Olympic
inclusion. And an indicator of its popularity. At the same time,
Thompson sees a pastime in which the vast majority of players are
white—83% across both sexes, in all collegiate divisions, according to the NCAA.
Lacrosse
is “a part of our culture and a part of our history,” says Randy
Staats, an attackman for the Chrome who grew up on the Six Nations
Reservation in Ontario. “To leave that unknown is completely wrong.
People [must] know where this game comes from. … It’s in our ceremonies;
it’s in our teachings.”
With that in mind, Staats started a
nonprofit last September built around clinics for Indigenous and
non-Indigenous children, teaching the game’s fundamentals and history.
But he’s looking to start broader conversations in his professional
realm as well. On June 6, two weeks after the discovery of the unmarked
graves at Kamloops, Staats walked into Gillette Stadium for the PLL’s
opening weekend wearing an orange T-shirt with “EVERY CHILD MATTERS”
plastered across the front. Staats had torn his ACL in training camp
earlier in the spring, but he still had a platform, and he used it that
afternoon to “get somebody to ask a question.”
Kamloops was the
first of several similar findings across Canada that was shared this
summer. In July, after 160 more unmarked graves were located at the site
of the former Kuper Island Indian Industrial School, Canadian Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau was compelled to speak, saying his “heart
breaks” for those impacted. And by mid-August, the Canadian government
had announced it would commit some $320 million toward searching for
more grave sites and providing mental support for Indigenous survivors
still recovering from the trauma.
A June vigil on the Cowessess First Nation reservation, in Saskatchewan, near another unmarked grave site.
Geoff Robins/AFP/Getty Images
Staats,
with multiple relatives who attended residential schools, hopes that
both the Canadian and U.S. governments take further ownership of that
trauma by ensuring residential schools and their effects are more
directly addressed in history books. Players like Thompson, meanwhile,
have done their best, too, to make sure the story stays front and
center.
On the day he first weaved an orange ribbon into his
braid, the Cannons attackman was so committed to sending energy to those
who’d died that he says he overexerted himself, sustaining a Grade-2
pull in his right groin. He wore the ribbon for three more games, each
outing further straining himself physically and mentally. And while the
pain in his groin subsided by season’s end, the hurt from decades of
mistreatment—“the untold truths”—lingers, he says.
“I want there
to be healing,” he says. “But the healing doesn’t happen until the
United States and Canada acknowledge this part of their history, whether
that history hurts or not. It has to be told.”
Unearthing the unmarked children’s graves on or near former
Canadian Indigenous residential schools could well be the tipping point.
Since the June 2021 revelations at Kamloops Indian Residential School,
the broader public has finally been engaged and it has injected a sense of urgency into the movement to integrate that shameful legacy into social studies K-12 curricula from province-to-province across Canada.
Newly awakened citizens are now realizing that their education never included curriculum or discussion about residential schools
and their horrible legacy. That was definitely true 25 years ago, but
less common today because of gradual, incremental changes in provincial
social studies curricula. The massive Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada (TRC) report in 2015 made teaching this history one
of its highest-priority calls to action
– a move that inspired a wave of First Nations, Métis and Inuit (FNMI)
curriculum initiatives. Gauging the actual reach and effect of such
projects is worthy of much closer scrutiny.
Mandating curriculum change does not necessarily lead to effective,
consistent or discernable modifications in teaching practice.
Implementation challenges can thwart policy guidelines and directives
(as Michael Fullan’s book illustrates) and it’s critical to assess the
gaps between the official curricula, the recently commissioned teaching
resources, compulsory course offerings and the actual received
curricula. The Ontario experience in integrating First Nation, Métis and
Inuit (FNMI) perspectives and content into the curriculum is a case in
point.
Since the TRC report, provincial and territorial governments have
been entrusted with a very specific mandate – to make the history of
residential schools, treaties, and historical and contemporary
contributions of First Nations, Métis and Inuit a mandatory educational
requirement for all kindergarten to Grade 12 students. While it emanated
from the TRC, the whole idea of teaching independent, elective
FNMI-focused courses and cross-curricular perspectives was hardly new to
most people familiar with social studies curricula.
The Ontario Ministry of Education has invested considerable time,
energy and resources into the creation and implementation of a native
studies high school curriculum from the early 1970s onward. Its initial
iteration, the 1975 People of Native Ancestry (PONA) curriculum guide
and documents, was largely part of the Indigenous cultural revival that
swept Canada after the first wave of closures of the residential
schools. That curriculum was also created after the passage of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in collaboration with Indigenous advisers and educators.
The fundamental shortcoming of Ontario’s PONA initiative was that it
was entirely focused on creating and implementing a self-standing set of
optional social studies courses. It was never a required component of
the curricula and it was never mandatory and never integrated with other
parts of Canadian history. By the fall of 1999, the provincial
curricula had expanded to a suite of 10 individual native studies courses
spanning grades 9 to 12. While the initial native studies courses were
innovative at the time, they were offered in only 39 Ontario high
schools and in significant numbers of actual courses in only four of
those schools between 1999 and 2006. Furthermore, proposals to offer
several of the courses, in part, in the Indigenous language were
essentially shot down by federal authorities in Indian and Northern
Affairs Canada (INAC), which was more committed to advancing English
literacy and raising graduation rates.
Faced with growing public demand in Ontario for improved Indigenous
education, the Ministry of Education responded in 2006 with a new,
broader strategy known as the Ontario First Nation, Métis and Inuit (FNMI) Policy Framework
intended to expand native studies content in schools across the
province. It proposed the implementation of “quality Native Studies
education,” to Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, with the
aspirational goal of raising the awareness of all Ontarians of
Indigenous perspectives, histories and cultures.
Indigenous residential schools began to pop up in Ontario classroom
resources. From 2000 onward, Ontario’s core history textbooks such as The Canadian Challenge started to include short references to the Indigenous residential schools, and that expanded following then-prime minister Stephen Harper’s 2008 formal apology for the abuses that students suffered in Canada’s residential schools.
One of the most widely used textbooks,Creating Canada: A History of Canada – 1914 to the Present,
identified the abuses, referenced the 2006 financial compensation
package, featured Harper’s apology and gave expression to rising demands
for further initiatives addressing unresolved problems affecting
Canada’s Indigenous peoples.
Yet Ontario’s 2007 FNMI curriculum initiative fell short of achieving its rather lofty objectives. No target dates were set for implementation in all schools and critics
pounced on the policy’s more-explicit commitment to raising Indigenous
student outcomes and graduation rates. Nurturing of the revitalization
of Indigenous cultures took a back seat to what were labelled
“neo-liberal” educational goals for FNMI students. The policy’s stated
key priority lent credence to such claims. That was to, in the words of
the document, “close the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
students in the areas of literacy and numeracy, retention of students in
school, graduation rates, and advancement to postsecondary studies” by
the year 2016.
Educating students about Indigenous concerns and fostering cultural
sensitivity may have been goals of the FMNI curriculum, but there was no
explicit commitment nor benchmarks for assessing progress. Greater
funding from 2006 to 2010 did increase the number of schools offering
native studies courses to 267 from 51, with course offerings jumping to
478 from 75, and more school boards providing the courses. The number of
students enrolled in the courses rose from slightly more than 2,200 in
2007-08 (or 0.31 per cent of all high school students) to 716,103 or
1.14 per cent by 2009-10. But that’s still less than the proportion of
Ontarians of Indigenous origins, which is estimated at 2 per cent.
Training teachers to work collaboratively with Indigenous communities
also became a problem. Small enrolment courses did not prove
financially sustainable, so in 2011 the minimum number of enrolled
students per course was doubled to 12 from six. Even academic allies
such as Queen’s University researcher and Métis scholar P.J.A. Chaput
mused about whether the courses were still too dependent on provincial
funding to be sustainable long term in Ontario.
The pattern of implementation and uptake was remarkably similar in
Alberta. The Alberta Education Department made the teaching of
Indigenous perspectives a key pillar of the 2005 social studies curriculum. Provincial mandates like this are often met with teacher ambivalence, if not passive resistance. One 2013 small-sample study of the FNMI initiative,
conducted by University of Calgary education professor David Scott and
involving five teachers, demonstrated that they had mostly brushed aside
the mandate.
The Edmonton Indian Residential School, St. Albert, Alberta, date unknown. Credit: Library and Archives Canada.
No perspectives can be identified because of the highly diverse nature of Indigenous Peoples and their communities;
Only educators who are Indigenous can authentically offer insights into or teach Aboriginal perspectives;
Prioritizing Indigenous perspectives is problematic because “all perspectives deserve equal treatment.”
Such explanations, according to Scott and Gani, actually masked a
more-encompassing explanation and that is that most social studies
educators embrace worldviews and apply curricular frameworks that
preclude integrating FNMI perspectives. If and when the history of
Indigenous residential schools is taught, it is in isolation or simply
in passing because it is not central to the theme or prevailing
narrative in social studies curricula.
Ontario’s latest curriculum revision in 2018 put renewed focus on implementing the TRC calls to action through a revamped First Nations, Métis and Inuit (FNMI) Studies curriculum.
Beginning in 2019, native studies was supplanted by the FNMI curriculum
with an emphasis on a broader range of learning outcomes, tilting more
to social and emotional well-being. A new youth development framework, Stepping Stones,
was adopted that de-emphasized improved academic outcomes.
Appropriating such models from modern social psychology and youth
development may well prove equally problematic because they are drawn
from outside the realm of Indigenous wisdom and experience.
Indigenous education researchers Lindsay Morcom and Kate Freeman of
Queen’s University’s faculty of education would likely prefer a model encompassing a more unique Indigenous philosophy, worldview, culture, and spirituality.
One such model drawn from Anishinaabe tradition is known as the
“Medicine Wheel and the Seven Grandfather Teachings.” Those seven
grandfather teachings are a set of characteristics that guide us on how
we can live a good life, or mino-bimaadiziwin, and embrace a set of core values: honesty, humility, respect, bravery, wisdom, truth and love.
They are also intimately connected to the medicine wheel, a
three-dimensional sacred cosmology involving the four directions, the
sky, the earth and the centre. The curriculum initiatives, however
well-intended, can exemplify teaching that runs counter to Indigenous
knowledge and ways of knowing.
Teaching units including FNMI topics and perspectives are now more
common in mainstream courses in the latest Ontario curriculum from
grades one to 10. Ontario’s new FNMI curriculum (grades nine to 12),
revised in 2019, is, in many ways exemplary because it offers a
comprehensive, detailed, historically sound and fairly challenging set
of 10 high school social studies and English courses. The introductory
course, First Nations, Métis and Inuit in Canada, focusing on historical
inquiry and skill development, delves into the history of Indigenous
peoples from pre-contact to the present day, including residential
schools. The program culminates in a very rigorous and up-to-date set of
courses focusing on Indigenous issues and perspectives and a more
civics-oriented sequel on Indigenous governance in Canada.
There’s one big problem – none of the new courses is mandatory for
Ontario high school students.
While that was the original intention of
the previous Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne, incoming Conservative
Education Minister Lisa Thompson reversed that commitment
in May 2019. While three of the courses may be substituted for
compulsory credits, those decisions are left up to regional school
boards.
Two decades after the advent of the initial Ontario native studies
courses, the status quo still prevails in Indigenous education. While
residential schools are in the current curriculum, it is still entirely
possible for students to graduate from high school in Ontario without
exposure to a more-detailed analysis of the residential school tragedy
and its enduring impact.
Opinion: It may further embolden those who, regardless of official policies,
already won't provide health or police services to Indigenous people in
English.
Nakuset • Special to Montreal Gazette | Sep 17, 2021
Nakuset,
executive director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal, says that
regardless of what the official policies may be, English-speaking
Indigenous people are already getting services refused because they
can’t speak French, and she says she fears Bill 96 will make things
worse.Photo by Pierre Obendrauf /Montreal Gazette
An Indigenous woman is raped.
She
summons the courage to report her assault to Montreal police, but they
won’t let her recount it in English. Adding to this humiliating
experience, she doesn’t understand that the police have to process the
crime scene at her apartment.
So
when the police show up at her door unannounced, she has to pack up her
things and spend the night at a friend’s house, unsure exactly what’s
going on. The experience left her shattered.
This
happened to someone I know and it’s one example of how access to English
services is crucial for Indigenous people living in Quebec. So when I testified about Bill 96 Tuesday at the Quebec Community Groups Network hearings, I expressed my fears that the new language law will have dire consequences for Indigenous people in life-or-death situations.
To Lagacé, who claims I’m fear-mongering, I would simply say this:
As a Cree woman, whose mother is a residential school survivor, and who was subsequently stolen from her family and community during the ’60s scoop, much of my life has been defined by a loss of culture and language.
Subjected
to aggressive assimilationist policies, I have seen much damage and
suffering to Indigenous people who have moved to urban areas and tried
to make a better life. I watch how they fall through the cracks. It was
this awareness that led me to seek an education and dedicate my life to
improving the situation.
In the early days of residential schools, children had to learn English
and were told that their language was evil, the devil’s language. The
language was beaten out of them. Upon returning from residential
schools, they had difficulty communicating with their parents, as they
lost their Indigenous language, further alienating them from their
family, community and culture.
While
many of the laws that were created to explicitly deny rights to
Indigenous people have since been repealed, we still live in a society
whose foundation was built on our oppression. The result is that we live
with systemic racism and racial profiling. Here in Quebec, few of the
142 Viens Commission recommendations have been implemented and Indigenous youth in care are still denied the right to use their traditional languages.
And so, Indigenous people are struggling. Most were sent to English residential schools
and have had difficulty accessing services in the only language they
speak. Regardless of what the official policies may be, they are already
getting services refused because they can’t speak French. I know this
because I run a women’s shelter where Indigenous women routinely report
these kinds of incidents to me.
Now
imagine what it would be like if you’re homeless, have been assaulted,
raped or are otherwise in crisis and Bill 96 further emboldens those who
already think they don’t need to bother to speak English to Indigenous
people. How will you explain your predicament if you can’t express it in
French?
Indigenous people, be they English-speaking or French-speaking, are still afraid of entering hospitals since the death of Joyce Echaquan. As systemic racism is still rampant in institutions,
we now have to worry about the way we communicate our emergencies and
whether they will be understood. In her documentary Indecently Exposed,
diversity educator Jane Elliott says “If you make the situation
uncomfortable enough, people will refuse to tolerate it, and they will
leave.”
Indigenous
people will continue to experience emergency situations, but if the
climate of the institutions is oppressive, they will not subject
themselves to this treatment. It is far too painful.
In 2008,
Brian Sinclair arrived at the Health Sciences Centre ER in Winnipeg.
When he passed out in a wheelchair, staff assumed he was drunk, when in
fact he had died. I was outspoken when the government announced the
COVID-19 curfew and had stated at a protest that someone could die
because of the failure to acknowledge the realities of homeless people.
Unfortunately, Raphaël André was collateral damage, and therefore, I spearheaded the establishment of the Raphaël André Memorial tent, in the hope of keeping others safe.
My testimony at the hearings was meant to demonstrate our reality and no, we are not fearful, we are terrified.
Nakuset
is executive director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal and the
director of development and philanthropy for the day shelter Resilience Montreal.
The Bi-Giwen exhibit is advertised as the “first of its kind” by The Legacy of Hope Foundation. (David Prisciak/CTV News)
REGINA --
A new travelling art exhibit focuses on the stories of 12 ‘60s Scoop
survivors and their individual experiences during a dark chapter of
Canadian history.
“Bi-Giwen: Coming Home, Truth Telling from the Sixties Scoop” was on
display at the Regina Public Library on Wednesday and features artwork
created by some of the survivors that reflects their experiences.
“Their pain, loss, and courage are apparent on each canvas,” said
Sandra Relling, the Vice President of the Sixties Scoop Indigenous
Society of Alberta, whose organization is partnered with The Legacy of
Hope Foundation for this project.
The exhibit was created by The Legacy of Hope Foundation, a national,
Indigenous charitable organization with a mandate to educate and create
awareness on Indigenous issues.
Adam North Peigan is the president of the foundation, and believes that
exhibits like this one are fundamental in the effort to combat systemic
racism.
“The importance is really creating that awareness,” he said. “We all
know that racism, systemic racism is alive and well in Canada. And I
think if mainstream Canadians can take a step back and take the
opportunity to learn a little bit more about the history of our people
that it will impact those unhealthy attitudes that fuel racism towards
our people.”
Peigan, a sixties scoop survivor himself, explained the deep meaning behind unveiling the exhibit in a public library.
“Where I went and where a lot of Sixties Scoop survivors went to find
some sanctuary and some peace was to the public libraries, he said.
“That’s the only place we felt safe.”
Relling explained that the exhibit gives insight to the trauma inflicted on the survivors.
“It gives us a better understanding of the impacts of child removal
policies within the child welfare system and the ongoing effects as well
as the long term effects that it has on people who have gone through
those systems,” she said.
After moving on from Regina after its one day showing at the Regina
Public Library the exhibit will continue its tour across Saskatchewan.
Visiting North Battleford, Swift Current, Prince Albert, and Saskatoon
beginning in October.
You can see testimonies from the 12 survivors featured in the exhibit
by visiting The Legacy of Hope’s website at:
https://legacyofhope.ca/bigiwen/
