Something that resonated with me in the past weeks activities was the story in Nancy Turner’s video about the Grouse. It got me thinking about the importance of storytelling and the protocols in aboriginal communities.

The oral traditions and storytelling culture are still central to aboriginal personal and community identity, and provide major means of remembering and conveying personal and community experience with university researchers. These stories describe stark accounts of betrayal and upset, as well as descriptions of positive experiences. They provide dramatic reminders to researchers of the importance of respectful and collaborative relationships with traditional community leaders and their members.

Given the history of education and research in aboriginal communities, trust is critical in engaging native people in partnerships for education and research. I read a very good article outlying the very importance of story telling and how negative experiences can effect First Nations attitudes toward researchers and education in general for generations. The Article gives examples of negative experiences and suggests that negative stories contribute to a lack of trust and motivation for educational research. Aboriginal people in Canada are still underrepresented in terms of their participation in post-secondary education, and as researchers of their own people. They are overrepresented in terms of poverty, and incidence of certain diseases such as type 2 diabetes, AIDs, and tuberculosis. They are disproportionately overrepresented in prison populations and, in the Western provinces in Canada, are the largest growing demographic group. The importance of good stories of research-community experiences should not be ignored.

Source:

The Importance of Story-Telling: Research Protocols in Aboriginal Communities

Deborah C. Poff

Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics: An International Journal
Vol. 1, No. 3 (September 2006), pp. 27-28

Published by: University of California Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jer.2006.1.3.27

I wanted to share the whole article since I had to access it through the EZproxy login it will be difficult to provide a working link. The Tobique First Nation took an interesting step in honouring the Tobique survivors of the residential school system. They made and unveiled an 8 foot tall public monument to commemorate the perilous journey of abduction, bondage and abandonment encountered by every student.

The article is below:

“So hear me brothers and sister, be not afraid to speak. They tried to keep us silent, they thought that we were weak.”

A 2003 poem composed by the late Wendell Perley is engraved in the back the of the new Tobique First Nation monument unveiled Saturday, honouring the Tobique survivors of the residential school system.

The notorious residential school system was set up to take First Nations children far away from their homes and force them to give up their language and culture.

On Saturday Tobique First Nation residents and their guests unveiled a monument to honour those who suffered and endured abuse at the residential schools. The new eight-foot high monument is located on the school grounds.

Residential school survivor and Tobique Coun. Wayne Nicholas told the crowd that the resilient Atlantic Salmon was a suitable symbol for the new monument.

“This monument commemorates the perilous journey of abduction, bondage and abandonment encountered by every student,” he said. “Our relatives, the Atlantic salmon, are an appropriate symbol of Indian residential schools.”

He said salmon encounter many dangers when they are young and finally make the difficult journey home.

Wendall Nicholas was MC for the event that took place in a large tent set up between the Health Centre and Mah-Sos School.

Tobique Elder Edward Perley spoke a prayer in Maliseet to open the ceremony as people sat at tables. As the speakers addressed the audience, volunteer servers brought dinner from the nearby school cafeteria.

Laurie Nicholas sang the opening song and Tobique First Nation Chief Brenda Perley welcomed everyone to the solemn ceremony of dedication.

“As community leaders we were humbled and honoured when we learned of your experiences at the Shubenacadie Residential School,” she said. “We truly respect your strength and determination to make Negootkuk strong.”

She paid tribute to the late Wendell Perley, a Tobique Elder who died last summer. He had made great efforts to work with residential school survivors who, like himself, had seen the experience damage his life and relationships.

The chief then asked the 15 or so survivors to stand so that she and band council members could go and embrace them.

Other guest speakers were MP Mike Allen, MLA Wes McLean, Barb Martin of the Mi’kmaq Maliseet Healing Centre, Health Centre director Roxanne Sappier, William Nevin, Chief of the White Eagle Sundance, (New Brunswick), Mike Torch, a survivor clinician, and a Shubenacadie survivor Wayne Nicholas.

“One can only imagine the strength of character for the survivors to go through what they did and come back and continue to tell their stories,” said Allen.

“The monument to be unveiled will be a testament to what happened during a sad and tragic chapter in our history,” said McLean. “We can learn the lessons of history to make sure that such a thing never happens again.”

Martin, who has been working on a project for several years to help the survivors, said that she had recently attended two similar ceremonies on June 11 and June 21.

Speaking to the survivors, she said: “It’s hard to be honoured, right? But we need to honour you; we need to say thank you for surviving and thank you for being here with us today. As part of your healing, we’re healing ourselves.”

She went on to say that Wendell Perley, as well as his family, had been important as things led up to the July 13 ceremony. His mother, Henrietta, had supported him, as did his brothers Gib, Leon, and Bernie. Bernie had been the main designer of the monument about to be unveiled. Martin also gave kudos to Gary Sappier, Allan Tremblay and the company Outreach Productions, which made a DVD about the residential schools.

Roxanne Sappier said she had spent a lot of time thinking about what the residential school survivors endured.

“Many of you are husbands, wives, grandmothers, grandfathers, mums and dads, but look how far you have come,” she said. “The resilience that you all possess and the hope and love that you give to us all – you’ve paved the way for our healing and wellness for our families and our community.”

William Nevin, Chief of the White Eagle Sundance, spoke of the “collateral damage” residential schools wrought.

“On Wednesday, I took a day off and I went to the residential school site,” he said. “I took pictures and picked up some earth and asked it to give back the spirit of our old ways.”

He said that the schools had taken away the ability of parents to hug their children and tell them they loved them because they were not there.

“That is collateral damage,” Nevin said. “I took the bowl of earth to the Sundancers and had them pray on i t… I brought the residential school to you – that earth. Your missing childhood and adulthood, I give it back to you.”

He asked survivor and Coun. Vaughn Nicholas to come up and receive some of that earth, along with other survivors.

Source:

LaFrance, R. (2013, Jul 17). Residential school survivors honoured12. The Victoria Star. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/1400382536?accountid=14656

The Common Experience Payment (CEP) is one element of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. The court-approved Settlement Agreement was implemented on September 19, 2007, and was negotiated by representatives from various Aboriginal organizations, church entities, legal representatives for former students, and the Government of Canada. The CEP is paid to eligible former students who resided at a listed Indian Residential School. Eligible former students receive $10,000 for their first year (or part thereof) of their attendance at a listed Indian Residential School plus $3,000 for each additional year (or part thereof).

There are survivors who were able to take advantage of this settlement. However, I am left to wonder what was the aim or purpose of remunerating survivors with cash? It seems like a blanket fix for the government to provide compensation for something they finally admit was wrong. According to the Settlement Agreement, Canada is the trustee for the $1.9 billion set aside for the CEP and accountable to the parties of the Settlement Agreement and to the courts. It is up to the survivors to come forward and provide proof in order to be approved. How much of this money is being spent on courts and administration where it could have been better spent? Why couldn’t specific First Nations be the trustees of the money for their own people? The settlement is definitely a step forward when compared to previous actions but is it the right direction?

Affairs and Northern Development Canada. (n.d.). Common Experience Payments. Affaires autochtones et Développement du Nord Canada / Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. Retrieved October 14, 2013, from http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015594/1100100015595

Below is the abstract from a Journal Article written in 2012.

Building on a cultural studies framework, this article addresses the implementation of the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement by cataloguing specific reconciliatory events, public forums, and media coverage that occurred in 2010. Revealing the contradictory nature of Canada’s reconciliation project, the author situates the IRSSA within a larger infrastructure of policies and procedures that have limited Indigenous nationhood and autonomy in the Canadian settler society. Specifically, this article identifies a need to trouble categories of trauma and victimhood that may engender outcomes of cure , which ultimately constitute a foreclosure on the past in Canada’s reconciliation process. While therapeutic language is less apparent in the IRSSA, the author suggests, it is still deployed under the guise of closure and “settlement.”

The article demonstrates that the implementation of the IRSSA has generated inequitable access to compensation and health supports (and, ultimately, health outcomes) as a result of the omission of particular schools from the official list. The author suggestes that the reconciliation process in Canada warrants further decolonization, since First Nations, Inuit, and Métis control over service provision has receded (thus minimizing the diversity of approaches to healing) with the closure of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. The IRSSA’s focus on individualized trauma experiences undermines efforts to decolonize political, legal, and educational institutions and disavows any discussion surrounding restitution. Left unacknowledged, these elisions may ultimately compromise the efficacy of the IRSSA and of the reconciliation process writ large.

Green, R.(2012). Unsettling Cures: Exploring the Limits of the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement. Canadian Journal of Law and Society 27(1), 129-148. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved October 14, 2013, from Project MUSE database.