High-school students should be required to study the history of residential schools, but only as a chapter in a much-larger history of sa国际传媒鈥檚 aboriginal peoples.
The sa国际传媒 School Trustees Association has passed a resolution to lobby the provincial government to include in the high-school curriculum a mandatory 25-hour course on the 100-year period in which thousands of First Nations children were forced to attend church- and government-operated residential schools.
Edith Loring-Kuhanga, the Greater Victoria School District trustee who championed the motion at the BCSTA鈥檚 annual meeting in April, said the course is needed to address the lack of knowledge about the residential school experience and how it affects people even today.
鈥淚f we start to create an understanding, then we can create respect and a sense of belonging,鈥� says Loring-Kuhanga. She is correct 鈥� the present cannot be understood without studying the past, and the past is not particularly glorious in this case.
The residential-school system was key to the Canadian government鈥檚 efforts to address the 鈥淚ndian problem鈥� by attempting to assimilate aboriginal peoples and erasing their cultures, languages and traditions. More than 150,000 children were taken from their homes, often forcibly, and thrust into boarding schools where they were forbidden to speak their languages or to have contact with their parents. Many were abused 鈥� emotionally, sexually and physically 鈥� and many died of malnutrition and disease, particularly tuberculosis.
This isn鈥檛 distant history 鈥� the last residential school closed in 1996, and survivors of the system are still dealing with the wounds and scars today. All Canadians 鈥� not just students 鈥� should have the opportunity to better understand this chapter of history.
But there鈥檚 much more to the story than this one chapter, important though it is. The residential-school plan was a symptom of a greater ill 鈥� the narrow, bigoted, anglo-centric attitude that directed almost all dealings between colonists and the original peoples of sa国际传媒.
With a few notable exceptions, the British colonists regarded aboriginals as an inferior race, without culture and of low intelligence. Ironically, as Europeans were 鈥渄iscovering鈥� the West Coast, its inhabitants generally lived a more abundant, cleaner, safer life than most peasants in Europe. They had strong communities, a good diet, rich artistic expression and a deep respect for their natural environment.
Yet the British saw them not as sovereign nations to be dealt with in mutual respect, but as heathens and barbarians, to be directed and commanded. Potlatches 鈥� an effective way to redistribute wealth 鈥� were outlawed. Official policy was designed to erase their way of life.
The highly touted British standard of justice was not applied with the same diligence to aboriginals as it was to people of European 鈥� particularly British 鈥� origin.
Elsewhere in sa国际传媒, First Nations were confined to reserves, but at least were assigned lands through treaties. In sa国际传媒, First Nations lands were simply taken from them, leaving a tangled mess still being sorted out today.
First Nations people lived at the whim of Indian agents, bureaucrats who often had great power and little accountability. Aboriginals could not vote until sa国际传媒 granted them that right in 1949, with sa国际传媒 extending the universal franchise in 1960.
The residential school experience is a recent chapter of a long history, one that is still unfolding. It needs to be understood, and to do that, we need to look beyond it and around it. To understand the loss, we need to know what was lost.
History is not a place in the past, but a continuum. Studying only a piece of it will produce an incomplete understanding of the present.
