YouTube channel, Vox, takes a look at the treatment of Indigenous Peoples by the United States government and their attempts to absorb and assimilate the Indigenous Peoples for the purpose of taking over the land. Part 1 talks about boarding schools and the government program’s motto at the time was to “kill the Indian and save the man”. The story raises many comparisons and similarities to what happened in Residential Schools in Canada. Part 2 talks about The Adoption Era which was something that I have not heard of before. The stories shared are shocking and talk about how the government promoted this program to further assimilate Indigenous children. What is crazy is that the adoptive families, through the propaganda promoted by the government, thought that they were doing these children a favor and that getting adopted to their family was the best thing that could have happened to these children who were ripped away from their original families.
This would be an interesting video to watch and discuss as a class to compare the US government and the Canadian government’s treatment of the Indigenous Peoples and the systems that forced the assimilation of the Indigenous Peoples to rip them from their families and strip them of their identity and culture.
My research statement has me looking at Indigenous knowledge closely. As a middle-aged, white educator, when I think back on going through the school system, I had relatively few problems. As I research and learn about Indigenous experiences with the school system, it is clear that they did not have the same experience. Many (all) Indigenous students experience racism as it is built into the system (Lanson-Billings and Tate, 1995) and that a lot of the racism is invisible so it is difficult to bring it to the surface and address it (Hogarth and Fletcher, 2018). This is why my experience in school when I was younger was a pleasant experience, I did not know I was in a system that oppressed Indigenous people. I was in a system that legitimized the exclusion and segregation of Indigenous people into horrible institutions such as residential schools. Therefore, that horrible truth lived in the background until it was “found” by the news stories that are revealing the truths about residential schools. “We cannot begin to right a wrong, or grieve a loss, or mend a system, without first acknowledging the wrong that has been done, the loss that has occurred and the system that is broken (Hogarth and Fletcher, 2018).”
When I saw Manitoba’s new Indigenous relations minister’s comments about residential schools, I was a bit shocked! Is he a product of the same education system that I experienced? Does he really believe that residential schools had good intentions?
“Residential schooling was intended to root out and destroy Indigenous knowledge, languages, and relationships with the natural family to replace them with Eurocentric values, identities, and beliefs that ultimately were aimed at destroying children’s self-esteem, self-concept, and healthy relationships with each other and their families (Battiste, 2017, p.56).”
Therefore, I am validated in the importance of reworking my practice to be inclusive of Indigenous knowledge. I would like to expand my practice to be more inclusive to all my students. Historically, teachers are the ones that have been used to try to assimilate Indigenous peoples (Jones Brayboy & Maughan, 2009) so we can be the ones to make a change in a positive direction, one that is more inclusive.
References:
Battiste, M. (2017). Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit. Purich Publishing.
Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate IV, W. F. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. Teachers College Record, 97, 47–68.
Hogarth, K., & Fletcher, W. L. (2018). A space for race: Decoding racism, multiculturalism, and post-colonialism in the quest for belonging in Canada and beyond. Oxford University Press. (Read Chapter 1- Race, racism and antiracism in Canada– pp. 1-23).
Jones Brayboy, B. M., & Maughan, E. (2009). Indigenous knowledges and the story of the bean. Harvard Educational Review, 79(1), 1-21.