“Reconciliation Education”- Part 7

Indigenous Genocide?

Image for NCTR - Murray Sinclair poses with TRC Final Report

For new Woke Watch Canada readers: Welcome! This series is easy to get through, each installment takes only a few minutes to read. Start at Part 1. (And here’s Part 2 & Part 3 & Part 4 & Part 5 & Part 6).

By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher, commentator)

In the first six parts of this series I have identified some of the simplistic, misleading, and patently false information students are learning in Ontario schools about Indigenous people with respect to everything from Indigenous pre-contact ways of life right up to the present day situation, not discussed much, in which we find so many Indigenous people suffering from a long list of social ills: Poverty, substance abuse, violence of all kinds including domestic and child abuse, not to mention incompetent and corrupt leadership. 

The mainstream narrative which students are being told to accept without question is that this is all the result of “oppression” and “colonialism” and the only way to elevate the Indigenous peoples’ quality of life is to establish a kind of apartheid system, in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous people co-exist side by side and govern themselves according to separate laws and institutions. This, in a nutshell, was the conclusion of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People (RCAP), and the final report of the TRC essentially concurs with that conclusion as well as proposing a long list of Calls to Action.

The arguments for advocating this parallelist strategy in the massive TRC report are distinctly unconvincing. There should be a reasoned debate in classrooms as to how best to proceed in grappling with social ills generally and the disproportionate extent to which these problems exist among Indigenous people specifically, but there is not. To suggest that the cause is anything other than colonialism or oppression is considered “harmful” and even “hateful”. 

The focus of Indigenous grievance studies in high schools is around the Indian Residential Schools, so I am going to limit my brief discussion to that part of the TRC report- Volume 1, chapter 10 to be specific. Due to its large size (over 3500 pages) few, if any, teachers have read any of it. Most rely on the Summary Report, and that is a major problem, because any details in the full report that do not reinforce the Indigenous-as-victim narrative were generally not included in the summary report. 

Schools present the IRS system as genocidal. Why wouldn’t they when our own government declared them so back in 2021, spurred on by the discovery of “mass graves” at the Kamloops IRS?  As you know, they are now referred to as “probable graves” and absolutely no evidence of human remains has been found, certainly no evidence of murdered IRS kids. But most people don’t know that and assume something sinister happened there. To suggest otherwise is “denialism”, soon to be a crime, apparently.

Not all experiences were negative. Several of the writers went on to careers in religious ministry. Others had successful careers that built on the skills they acquired in school. -TRC final report page 169

As a teacher in Ontario in 2024, saying “not everything that happened at the IRS was bad” will get you disciplined, even though there are plenty of examples of people who thrived at the schools and went on to be leading citizens like Tomson Highway. 

The quotation below is from the story of Shingwauk which details the determination of many Indigenous people to build schools for the children of their communities.

…from the outset of the residential school system, some Aboriginal leaders and parents were committed to ensuring that their children received the schooling they would need to make an ongoing contribution to the life of their communities… -TRC final report page 171

What follows is the first few examples of the experiences of kids at the IRS according to the TRC final report. I used these examples so as to avoid the appearance of “cherry picking” but if you read on further yourself you will see there is a definite pattern. Yes, many kids had an experience that was, overall, positive. 

1. Charles Nowell (born Tlalis which means “stranded whale”) ended up at the mission boarding school run by the Anglican James Hall at Alert Bay at the age of six when his mother died and his father lost his vision. Students are told that Indigenous languages were prohibited at IRS and that all aspects of Indigeneity were suppressed. This is false. Of course, English had to be spoken in classes and other official school functions. Thanks to learning a common language (and all that wonderful “colonial” technology) Indigenous people today can connect and communicate with one another to speak together in support of their rights. 

…Charles came to have fond memories of Rev. Hall, recording that he spoke Aboriginal languages, and ate and fed the children “Indian food” at the school. And, when Charles’s brother Student accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939 • 173 fetched him away from the school to visit their ailing father before he died, Hall raised no objections… -TRC final report page 172-173

2. Daniel Kennedy (born Ochankuga’he, meaning “pathmaker”) was forcibly taken to the IRS Government School at Lebret in 1886 at the age of 12. The TRC report does not say what circumstances led to his having been taken there. The school was a major culture shock for the boy who nevertheless ultimately benefited from the experience and went on to great things.

…Kennedy was a successful student who came to enjoy positive relations with Qu’Appelle principal Joseph Hugonnard. In Kennedy’s opinion, Hugonnard’s “genial and engaging personality won for him a host of friends in all ranks of our Canadian nation. His tact and diplomacy commanded the respect and admiration of all who came in contact with him.” He also credited Hugonnard and High River principal Albert Lacombe with making it possible for him and a number of other students to pursue their education after leaving residential school. Kennedy, for example, attended St. Boniface College. He did not, however, become a priest. By 1899, he was back in the Northwest, serving as an assistant to an Indian Affairs farming instructor. By 1901, he was an interpreter and general assistant for the Assiniboine Indian agency. Two years later, he received an engineering certificate…-TRC final report page 174

3. In 1893, six-year-old Mike Mountain Horse, a member of the Blood (Kainai) First Nation in what is now southern Alberta, was enrolled in the Anglican boarding school on the Blood Reserve. His older brother was a student there and helped Mike adapt to the strange new environment. Once again, we hear that Indigenous languages were not only permitted but officially used. 

…The education at the school was conducted in English, but, Mountain Horse recalled, the church services were held in Siksika (Blackfoot)...Mountain Horse went on to attend the Calgary industrial school. After graduating, he went to work for the Mounted Police, served in the First World War, returned to work for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, wrote the manuscript of his book on the Bloods, and ended his career as a railway labourer…-TRC final report page 175

4. Peter Kelly was born in 1885 in Skidegate, on Haida Gwaii, British Columbia where his parents had converted to Methodism shortly before his birth. In 1897, his mother and stepfather attended a Methodist revival meeting in Mission City on the Fraser River. There, they were persuaded to send their son to the Coqualeetza Institute in Chilliwack, British Columbia.

…It was quickly recognized that Kelly was an excellent student. As a result, soon he was exempted from the rigours of the half-day system. At the end of three years, he and one other student were the first Coqualeetza students to write and pass the provincial high school entrance examinations. Rather than attending high school, however, he returned to Skidegate, where he became a day school teacher. He held that position for ²ve years. He later served as a lay preacher in the Methodist Church, a United Church minister, president of the Allied Tribes of British Columbia, and president of the Conference of the United Church in British Columbia…-TRC final report page 178

I could go on, but you can read the report for yourself. I urge you to do so. Don’t let its size intimidate you. You can digest it in small pieces over a long period of time.

Do these stories sound anything like genocide to you? Yes, if you read the full report, you will hear that the IRS experience was initially traumatising for many, probably most of the kids. And there certainly was abuse and neglect at times. The system was far from ideal, was chronically underfunded, and lacked the level of amenities that would be considered basic or essential by 21st century Canadian standards. 

It is worth mentioning, though, that towards the end of the IRS era, the schools were better funded, largely run by Indigenous people themselves, and that disease rates had plummeted to near average Canadian levels thanks to the miracle of modern medicine. Some of the IRS had swimming pools and sent kids overseas on trips. We’re talking about experiences many non-Indigenous kids could only dream of.

How can we find reconciliation when the truth about the IRS system is not being told to our school kids? They are instead told lies, such as that IRS kids were murdered by IRS staff and then buried on the school grounds in the dead of night by other IRS students and that there are thousands of “missing children” from the IRS era, and many, many more other even more absurd, baseless stories. 

Kids in school today will have to work towards solutions for the social problems in our country, most of which disproportionately impact Indigenous people. This task will be impossible without a firm grasp of what has happened in the past.  

___

Thanks for reading. For more on indigenous issues, read The Kamloops Guilt Trip, Three Years On by Brian Giesbrecht

BREAKING NEWS:

1. A new long-form essay by Dr. M - Fulcrum and Pivot: The New Left Remaking of Toronto School Policy

2. James Pew has contributed a chapter to the new book Grave Error: How The Media Misled us (And the Truth about Residential Schools). You can read about it here - The Rise of Independent Canadian Researchers

Also, for more evidence of the ideological indoctrination in Canadian education, read Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids! And also, Yes, The University is an Indoctrination Camp!

There are now two ways to support Woke Watch Canada through donations:

1) By subscribing to the paid version of the Woke Watch Canada Newsletter for - $7 Cdn/month or $70 Cdn/year

2) By making a contribution to the Investigating Wokeism In Canada Initiative, which raises the funds necessary to maintain and expand Woke Watch Canada’s research and investigation into Dysfunctional Canadian School Boards, Education, Indigenous Issues, Free Speech, and other areas of Illiberal Subversion and the Canadian Culture Wars.