Manic Reparation

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-12
Author(s):  
Barbara Greenberg
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
School System ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
United Church Of Canada ◽  
Residential School ◽  
Manic Reparation ◽  
Past Injustices

The Canadian public has heard many apologies from various governments and church institutions over the last 20 years. In June 2008 Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized to First Nations for the federal government’s role in the residential school system. First Nations have also received apologies from the United Church of Canada (UCC) for its participation in these schools. Much of the work being done on the process of apology assesses the apology in order to judge if it is convincing and worthwhile.My work asks the question: are apologies effective in their attempt to make amends for past injustices, or are they examples of what Klein calls “manic reparation”?

scholarly journals The Inuit presence at the first Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission national event

2011 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Pierre Gadoua
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Sense Of Community ◽  
School System ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Residential School ◽  
Cultural Group ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Residential Schooling

This paper addresses various forms of healing and reconciliation among Canadian Inuit and First Nations, in regards to the Indian residential school system and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Stemming from fieldwork at the TRC’s first national event in Winnipeg (June 2010), I present observations that are supplemented by previous studies on Aboriginal healing methods in Canada. Although Inuit and First Nations healing and reconciliation strategies are based on common themes—tradition and community—in practice they diverge notably, both in their principles and in their applications. First Nations seek healing by activating a sense of community that often transcends their specific cultural group or nation, using pan-Indian spiritual traditions and ceremonies. In contrast, the Inuit most commonly seek to preserve and promote specific Inuit traditions and identity as tools in their healing practices. This divergence could be seen in Inuit and First Nations’ participation in the TRC. The creation of the Inuit sub-commission within the TRC in March 2010, resulting from intense lobbying by Inuit leaders, was a first sign of the group’s distinctive approach to healing. But the unfolding of the TRC’s first national event in Winnipeg showed again how these differences materialise in practice and contribute to a better understanding of Inuit responses to the repercussions of their colonial past and strategies for healing from the legacy of residential schooling.

scholarly journals "For the Good of the Child": The Colonial Machinations of Child Welfare in Canada

INvoke ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Sunday
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
First Nations ◽  
School System ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Residential Schools ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Residential School ◽  
School Project ◽  
The Past

Although residential schools no longer exist today, the systems of oppression which allowed them to operate continue. These systems have existed non-linearly throughout time, as the past, present, and future effects of colonialism intersect in the lives of First Nations. The spiritual successor of the residential school project can be viewed in many contemporary structures; specifically, in the institutionalized violence accumulated within the child welfare system. In this paper, I argue that the contemporary child welfare system in Canada, as it relates to both on- and off-reserve First Nations children, is the modern-day successor of the Indian Residential School System. Specifically, the strategies of racialization and subalternation underpinning the colonial machine, and exemplified within the residential school system, have surreptitiously reformed into the child welfare system.

Indian Residential Schools

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-456
Author(s):  
Jennifer Reid
Keyword(s):  
School System ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Residential Schools ◽  
Freedom Of Religion ◽  
Residential School ◽  
Indian Residential Schools ◽  
Dominant Society ◽  
Aboriginal Religion ◽  
Aboriginal Children

In 2008 Canada’s Prime Minister apologized to survivors of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools, which had operated for almost a century, and were intended to assimilate Aboriginal children into the dominant society. Some survivors appreciated the gesture. Others were critical, especially of the Prime Minister’s description of the schools as a “mistake” rather than a crime, which they convincingly argue they were, with respect to the crime of genocide. I will suggest in this essay that this was not the only omission—that the school system also profoundly violated religious freedom. By exploring dominant Canadian narratives concerning religious freedom, I will highlight the way in which: (i) the system was intended to be a religious assault; (ii) the system contravened dominant understandings of freedom of religion; and (iii) dominant understandings of religion have marginalized Aboriginal religion, such that the profoundly religious character of the residential school assault has yet to be fully confronted.

scholarly journals Truth and reconciliation cinema: an ethico-political study of residential school imagery in contemporary Indigenous film

2021 ◽  
pp. 117718012110124
Author(s):  
Tyson Stewart
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
School System ◽  
Residential School ◽  
Unanswered Question ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Historical Archive ◽  
The Way

This article explores an important facet of the New Wave of Indigenous filmmaking in Canada: residential school system history and imagery, its place in the historical archive, and the way it is being retold and reclaimed in films like Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013), Savage (2009), Sisters & Brothers (2015), Indian Horse (2017), and The Grizzlies (2018). While researching this topic, one unanswered question has left me feeling sometimes frustrated and often troubled: Is there a risk of producing pan-Indigenous readings, or worse, repeating the original propagandistic intentions of the original residential school photographs when they are used in new media?

scholarly journals Listening for More (Hi)Stories from the Arctic’s Dispersed and Diverse Educational Past

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather E. McGregor
Keyword(s):  
School System ◽  
Student Experience ◽  
Educational Policies ◽  
School Systems ◽  
Residential School ◽  
Regional Variability ◽  
The Past ◽  
Canadian North ◽  
The North ◽  
Educational Histories

RésuméAlors que les marques profondes laissées par le système d’écoles résiduelles du Nord canadien refont surface, il est important de poursuivre l’étude des politiques en matière d’éducation en parallèle avec les expériences vécues par les élèves dans des lieux et des contextes d’instruction variés. Dans le cas des Inuits, cette recherche fut incomplète. L’auteure avance qu’il faut approfondir les études sur l’implication du gouvernement fédéral dans les premiers systèmes d’éducation dans les Territoires. Ces travaux devraient prendre en compte les disparités locales et régionales ainsi que les expériences des élèves. En mettant l’accent sur les contradictions et les différents impacts causés par l’éducation dans ces communautés dans le passé, et notamment sur les enseignants sans expérience de la vie nordique, cela permettrait de trouver des manières pour décoloniser l’éducation de nos jours.   AbstractAs the widespread and deep impressions left on the Canadian North by the residential school system come to light, it is also important to continue examining educational policies alongside the experiences of students throughout a range of schooling sites and forms. Such research on Inuit schooling has been insufficient. I argue that more detailed educational histories of the federal and early territorial school systems should feature local and regional variability in implementation of policy and in student experience. Illuminating the inconsistent and multifaceted ways education affected communities in the past, particularly for teachers new to the North, serves to illustrate the ways education in the present necessitates decolonizing.

Counterweight: Helen Samuels, Archival Decolonization, and Social License

2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 420-444
Author(s):  
Greg Bak
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
School System ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Residential School ◽  
Archival Appraisal ◽  
Social License ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

ABSTRACT Helen Samuels sought to document institutions in society by adding to official archives counterweights of private records and archivist-created records such as oral histories. In this way, she recognized and sought to mitigate biases that arise from institution-centric application of archival functionalism. Samuels's thinking emerged from a late-twentieth-century consensus on the social license for archival appraisal, which formed around the work of West German archivist Hans Booms, who wrote, “If there is indeed anything or anyone qualified to lend legitimacy to archival appraisal, it is society itself.” Today, archivists require renewed social license in light of acknowledgment that North American governments and institutions sought to open lands for settlement and for exploitation of natural resources by removing or eliminating Indigenous peoples. Can a society be said to “lend legitimacy” to archival appraisal when it has grossly violated human, civil, and Indigenous rights? Starting from the question of how to create an adequate archives of Canada's Indigenous residential school system, the author locates Samuels's work amid other late-twentieth-century work on appraisal and asks how far her thinking can take us in pursuit of archival decolonization.

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