This blog is a backup for American Indian Adopteesblog
There might be some duplicate posts prior to 2020. I am trying to delete them when I find them. Sorry!
SURVEY FOR ALL FIRST NATIONS ADOPTEES
ADOPTEES - we are doing a COUNT
If you need support
Support Info: If you are a Survivor and need emotional support, a national crisis line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week: Residential School Survivor Support Line: 1-866-925-4419. Additional Health Support Information: Emotional, cultural, and professional support services are also available to Survivors and their families through the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program. Services can be accessed on an individual, family, or group basis.” These & regional support phone numbers are found at https://nctr.ca/contact/survivors/ .
MY EMAIL: tracelara@pm.me
Several weeks of national mainstream news media coverage has been focused on Gabby Petito, a 22-year-old white woman who recently was reported missing and subsequently found murdered. We offer our sincere condolences to her family. No one should have to experience this kind of tragedy exacerbated by noted indicators of domestic violence.
We are national Indigenous organizations dedicated to ending the cycle of violence that adversely affects 84% of Indigenous women (Rosay, André B.) during their lifetime. Indigenous women are murdered at a rate 10 times higher (Bachman, Ronet) than other races in some communities. More than half have been physically abused by an intimate partner, according to the National Institute of Justice.
The loss of an Indigenous woman’s life is all too familiar in our communities. Hundreds of Indigenous people go missing every year. Many of them vanish without a trace, never to be seen or heard from again. Too many of them are found murdered with their cases often left uninvestigated and unresolved by local, state and/or federal authorities.
Yet, none of our relatives to date have received much, if any, attention from the news media, concentrated efforts by law enforcement departments, or an outpouring of financial contributions from ordinary citizens. Indian tribes, communities and family members don’t have unlimited financial resources to help us locate our missing relatives. Up until recently, our missing relatives have not amassed social media followings to galvanize searches. The contrast that we are witnessing regarding this particular case is heartbreaking to the many Indigenous families and communities dealing with the daily pain of losing their loved ones. The contrast sends the message that society has little regard for Indigenous lives.
We are not alone in seeing systemic and law enforcement bias when it comes to the lack of coverage of and case resolutions of missing and murdered Indigenous relatives (MMIR). In 2004 this lack of attention and bias was given a title — “Missing White Woman Syndrome” — by the late American news anchor Gwen Ifill. Moreover, American news outlets continue to be less demographically diverse, with staffing consisting of primarily white male journalists, according to the Pew Research Center. The lack of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) journalists in the mainstream contributes to additional challenges that Indigenous people face when it comes to equal coverage of MMIR and other related issues.
It is truly devastating to lose another life to violence. There are no words to fully express the pain of a parent losing a child in a violent way. As Indigenous peoples, we understand too well the ugly, ongoing nature of violence across this land and upon our people through our lived experiences. It’s been happening since the advent of colonization.
Missing and murdered Indigenous relatives deserve the same attention and resources that society, the media and the justice system have given to Gabby Petito’s case. Their lives are important. As partner organizations in the effort to provide support and advocate for Indigenous women and peoples impacted by domestic violence, intimate partner violence, dating violence, and sexual violence, we honor all individuals, families and communities impacted by MMIR and all those working so diligently to end this crisis of violence.
What you can do to help:
For Individuals
●Educate yourself on the high rates of violence in our Indigenous communities and other communities of color, as well as community-based solutions
●Engage with media about MMIR
○Send emails, make phone calls, comment on articles, send letters to editors, etc.
●Learn about and share the stories of MMIR in your area, including their names, and the circumstances of their cases, etc.
●Learn who your law enforcement are in your community and educate yourself on cross-jurisdictional issues
●Donate to organizations advocating for justice for MMIR and ending domestic violence
●Raise awareness on social media: like, follow and share the organizations listed below that are focused on domestic violence and MMIR at the national, regional and local levels
○StrongHearts Native Helpline
○National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center
○Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center
○National Congress of American Indians
○Sovereign Bodies Institute
○Alliance of Tribal Coalitions to End Violence
○Indian Law Resource Center
○Urban Indian Health Institute
○Rising Hearts Coalition
●Learn how to support loved one, friend or colleague struggling against intimate partner
●Learn about and practice bystander intervention
●Learn how to hold batters, predators and other offenders accountable
●Volunteer at organizations working to respond to and end domestic violence
●Attend, support or organize a socially distanced community event in your area to raise awareness of MMIR. Organizers can plan a community walk or run, vigil or any type of fundraiser/awareness event they choose.
For Organizations
●Center BIPOC voices on your platforms
●Practice unbiased, equitable attention on all missing and murdered people
●Uplift Indigenous organizations and coalitions advocating for MMIR
●Support May 5th annually as the National Day of Awareness for MMIW
Bachman, Ronet; Zaykowski, Heather; Kallmyer, Rachel; Poteyeva, Margarita; Lanier, Christina, “Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and the Criminal Justice Response: What is Known”, NIJ (2008): 223691, available at https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/223691.pdf
Dear People who Care about First Nations kids, Tomorrow is my birthday and I am so honoured to share it with Orange Shirt day. I have a wish- please tag @JustinTrudeau - demand he stop fighting kids and survivors in court, obey the law and get to work on the TRC Calls to Action https://t.co/NWjnH0ADqb
(EAGAN, Minn., 2021) — During Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October, StrongHearts Native Helpline joins advocates, sister organizations and communities throughout Indian Country to raise awareness about domestic violence and to support and honor survivors and victims. This year, StrongHearts calls on everyone — advocates, tribal leaders, reservation and urban Indian community members, service providers and Native organizations — to support and strengthen the movement to prevent and end domestic violence.
According to the National Institute of Justice, domestic violence disproportionately impacts Native Americans and Alaska Natives, with more than 1.5 million Native women and 1.4 million Native men experiencing violence during their lifetime, often by non-Native perpetrators. Domestic violence has several faces: physical, sexual, emotional, cultural, financial and digital. Children, elders and LGBTQ2S+ individuals can experience domestic violence.
Domestic violence among Native Americans is not natural or traditional. The domination and subjugation of Native Americans began with colonization and continues today. Colonization was responsible for the theft, occupation, pollution and exploitation of Indigenous lands. Today, Native Americans who are living in tribal communities on or near lands that are exploited by extractive industries face the highest rates of domestic and sexual violence.
“There is a viable connection between the violence that has been inflicted on the land through colonization and violence brought on Native peoples,” says Lori Jump (Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians), director, StrongHearts Native Helpline. “When the value of the land is lost, the value of Indigenous peoples of the land is lost and violence follows.”
“StrongHearts Native Helpline is doing its part to raise awareness about this critical issue in our Native communities and to promote healing,” says Jump. “No matter where Native Americans live in the U.S. — on a reservation, in a small town, a rural area, or in a major U.S. city — we are here for you. Please join StrongHearts in believing survivors and victims. Let’s bring our voices together, and take action. Let’s collectively put an end to domestic violence once and for all.”
StrongHearts Native Helpline is a 24/7 culturally-appropriate domestic, dating and sexual violence helpline for Native Americans and Alaska Natives, available by calling or texting 1-844-762-8483 or clicking on the chat icon at strongheartshelpline.org. Advocates offer peer support, crisis intervention, safety planning and referrals to Native-centered services. StrongHearts Native Helpline is a proud partner of the National Domestic Violence Hotline and the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center.
On June 12, in the second week of the Premier Lacrosse League season, one of the greatest players of the game’s modern era darted around Fifth Third Bank Stadium in Atlanta, just as he has done so often across his seven-year career. Cannons attackman Lyle Thompson fired home four goals, all from a variety of angles, on a PLL-season-high 14 shots—and while, yes, the Whipsnakes threw everything they had at him on defense, Thompson found himself weighed down less that afternoon by the body checks and poke checks than he was by the orange ribbon weaved through the bottom of his long, black braid. And by all that it represented.
Thompson, a member of the Onondaga Nation, took the field in Atlanta grieving 200-plus Indigenous children whose unmarked graves had been discovered a month earlier at the site of what was once the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. By wearing the ribbon he aimed to channel his sporting spirit toward those who’d gone without a proper burial, and who’d never been acknowledged. And that energy, he says, “played a toll on my body. It played a toll on my mind.”
Canada’s so-called residential schools first opened in the late 19th century, and as recently as the late 1990s they remained a place where Indigenous youths—more than 150,000 of them, some as young as 3—were taken to be culturally indoctrinated. So far, 139 such institutions have been identified, the majority of them run by the Catholic Church, and there Indigenous children were systematically stripped of their Native culture, language and spirit.
In 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee produced a report alleging that children in those schools faced sexual, physical and emotional abuse and violence. They lived in unsanitary, cramped quarters and were often underfed. At least 4,100 students died, the committee estimated—but that number is likely higher given the spotty record keeping of the time. This summer alone, Indigenous nations released reports of some 1,300 unmarked graves found across the country, at Kamloops and at three other sites—and these recent findings have sparked an intense response, as an increased awareness of Canada’s often-exploitive past has forced a reckoning. (The United States is not innocent of such mass mistreatment, having opened 350-plus similar boarding schools, operated with a similar purpose.)
For Thompson, and other allies across the PLL, that reckoning is focused largely on the ways in which their sport was leveraged in what the committee called “cultural genocide.”
Lacrosse, a game invented some 1,000 years ago by Native peoples, became an assimilative tool used at residential schools—“which is extraordinary,” says Allan Downey, an associate professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and the author of The Creator’s Game, which explores Indigenous identify formation as it relates to the sport. “They [used] an Indigenous element—an Indigenous game that has deep connections to the epistemologies of Indigenous peoples—and they [used] it to assimilate Indigenous youth.”
Throughout the PLL season, to draw awareness to the subject and inspire education, Thompson and other players wore—and the league sold—orange helmet chinstraps, with proceeds going to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. Indigenous players emphasize that acknowledging lacrosse’s origins is key to the future of a game that today is widely perceived as white and upper-middle-class. “Our ancestors, they deserve the recognition,” says Zed Williams, who grew up on the Cattaraugus Reservation, just south of Buffalo, and who will lead the Whipsnakes into the PLL championship game against the Chaos this Sunday. “They deserve the voice they never had.”
“Right now,” says Thompson, “our ghosts—our ancestors—aren’t even being learned.”
Just more than a century ago, Canada’s deputy minister of Indian affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott, spelled out to a parliamentary committee the intentions behind an amendment to the nation’s Indian Act—a bill that itself determined the legal status of Indigenous peoples. “Our object,” he said, “is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic.”
That bit of Canadian legislation marked the latest in a decades-long string of restrictive measures used by the government to strengthen its control over an Indigenous population that at the time numbered more than 113,000. Often, upon arriving at a residential school, Indigenous students were assigned new names. Native languages were suppressed, as were cultural and spiritual practices. Even recreation was viewed as an instrument for assimilation, as games like cricket and baseball, lacrosse and ice hockey were taught in hopes of “ ‘civilizing’ residential school students,” the Truth and Reconciliation Committee reported in 2015. Another investigation, the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, observed of sport’s role in it all: “Recreation was re-creation.”
What stands out about lacrosse here—what makes its weaponizing especially devious—is its preexisting place in the Indigenous population. The Haudenosaunee, for one, have long considered the game a gift from the Creator. In various Indigenous populations it is incorporated into religious ceremonies and used to teach ideals of respect and peace. Some ascribe the sport healing powers, referring to it as a medicine game.
In its original form, lacrosse was played with a wide number of rule sets, which could be laid out before any given contest, but the simple concept of joy was central to its creation. “Where it originated from—and where the heart and soul of lacrosse is—is on reservations,” says Williams. “These people live for lacrosse. They’re so passionate about it.”
But the style of lacrosse commonly seen today looks vastly different from what was conceived by Native peoples. Toward the end of the 19th century, a Montreal dentist named William George Beers codified a version of the sport that much more closely reflects today’s game. Beers, who as a teenager competed recreationally, standardized the use of a rubber ball, the length of a field and the size of a goal. In 1979, more than 100 years after he published a pamphlet outlining a number of the game’s basic procedures, he was posthumously inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame. For his efforts, Beers is traditionally regarded as the “Father of Modern Lacrosse.”
But Beers, Downey says, should instead be known as the “architect of the colonization of the game.” Downey, who is Dakelh, Nak’azdli Whut’en, and who was drafted by the National Lacrosse League’s Arizona Sting in 2007, deems Beers responsible for lacrosse’s role in residential schools “because he’s the one that created this rhetoric that it was Canada’s national sport”—and that it was “white, civilized enough and masculine enough to be used in the assimilation of Indigenous youths.”
Beers’s framework redefined lacrosse in a Westernized manner, with little to no spiritual value. There was variety to the way the game was played across Indigenous nations, but lacrosse taught at residential schools stuck rigidly to the structures Beers mapped out.
“You assimilate the game, and the byproduct of that is you’re assimilating the people who made it,” says Frank Brown, who was raised on the Allegany Reservation, and who played for the Whipsnakes at their training camp this spring. That assimilation was put on display on the occasions that residential schools were pitted against non-Indigenous teams from public institutions. These games, Downey points out, were set up to demonstrate “how much progress [school administrators] had made in the civility cause they were undertaking—as a way to showcase [Indigenous students] in this kind of ethnographic zoo, as if they were on display for the public to see.”
As culture is stripped away, identity loss can take any number of forms. Williams, the Whipsnakes star, was raised outside of Buffalo by a father, Daniel, who attended the Thomas Indian School, a boarding school that operated on the Cattaraugus Reservation between 1875 and 1957. Later, on the reservation, Daniel’s parents both became pastors, running a Christian church. Williams never talked in depth with his father about the school, or about his father’s childhood, but Williams believes he had mixed feelings about his Indigenous heritage. “Some days he would be really traditional in Native ways; some days, not so much,” Williams says of his father, who died in 2017. The Thomas Indian School, he says, “definitely [was] a big factor in how our dad raised us.”
That meant: Zed and five of his six siblings were named after figures from the Christian Bible. At meals, they prayed in English, not in their ancestors’ language of Seneca. And as Williams gravitated toward lacrosse throughout his youth, he did so largely uninformed of the game’s spiritual associations. His father never played the game; he took instead to football and wrestling. When Zed learned the game, winning was prioritized ove anything else—in conflict, broadly, with Indigenous values.
As Williams has aged, though, he has come to better understand “the medicine and power that lacrosse has,” in large part through conversations with Indigenous teammates. Still, he says, “so much was erased and forgotten. ... I’m still learning.”
Thompson, the Cannons star, grew up on the Onondaga Reservation outside of Syracuse, always feeling a kinship with his lacrosse stick. As a child, he shared a twin-sized mattress with an older brother—and still made room for his stick in bed every night. He’d take it to the grocery store, to the laundromat …
Unlike Williams’s father, Thompson’s dad, Jerome—who didn’t attend a residential or boarding school himself—made sure that his five children understood the cultural and spiritual implications of the medicine game. “[My father] taught me how to respect my stick, care for my stick, treat my stick nice,” Thompson says, “and know that you get something in return for that respect.”
Indigenous players such as Thompson see it as paramount to their sport’s future that these roots and cultural origins are recognized, especially as lacrosse grows globally. In July, the International Olympic Committee endorsed full recognition of the game, a decision seen across the lacrosse community as a precursor, potentially, for upcoming Olympic inclusion. And an indicator of its popularity. At the same time, Thompson sees a pastime in which the vast majority of players are white—83% across both sexes, in all collegiate divisions, according to the NCAA.
Lacrosse is “a part of our culture and a part of our history,” says Randy Staats, an attackman for the Chrome who grew up on the Six Nations Reservation in Ontario. “To leave that unknown is completely wrong. People [must] know where this game comes from. … It’s in our ceremonies; it’s in our teachings.”
With that in mind, Staats started a nonprofit last September built around clinics for Indigenous and non-Indigenous children, teaching the game’s fundamentals and history. But he’s looking to start broader conversations in his professional realm as well. On June 6, two weeks after the discovery of the unmarked graves at Kamloops, Staats walked into Gillette Stadium for the PLL’s opening weekend wearing an orange T-shirt with “EVERY CHILD MATTERS” plastered across the front. Staats had torn his ACL in training camp earlier in the spring, but he still had a platform, and he used it that afternoon to “get somebody to ask a question.”
Kamloops was the first of several similar findings across Canada that was shared this summer. In July, after 160 more unmarked graves were located at the site of the former Kuper Island Indian Industrial School, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was compelled to speak, saying his “heart breaks” for those impacted. And by mid-August, the Canadian government had announced it would commit some $320 million toward searching for more grave sites and providing mental support for Indigenous survivors still recovering from the trauma.
Staats, with multiple relatives who attended residential schools, hopes that both the Canadian and U.S. governments take further ownership of that trauma by ensuring residential schools and their effects are more directly addressed in history books. Players like Thompson, meanwhile, have done their best, too, to make sure the story stays front and center.
On the day he first weaved an orange ribbon into his braid, the Cannons attackman was so committed to sending energy to those who’d died that he says he overexerted himself, sustaining a Grade-2 pull in his right groin. He wore the ribbon for three more games, each outing further straining himself physically and mentally. And while the pain in his groin subsided by season’s end, the hurt from decades of mistreatment—“the untold truths”—lingers, he says.
“I want there to be healing,” he says. “But the healing doesn’t happen until the United States and Canada acknowledge this part of their history, whether that history hurts or not. It has to be told.”
Unearthing the unmarked children’s graves on or near former Canadian Indigenous residential schools could well be the tipping point. Since the June 2021 revelations at Kamloops Indian Residential School, the broader public has finally been engaged and it has injected a sense of urgency into the movement to integrate that shameful legacy into social studies K-12 curricula from province-to-province across Canada.
Newly awakened citizens are now realizing that their education never included curriculum or discussion about residential schools and their horrible legacy. That was definitely true 25 years ago, but less common today because of gradual, incremental changes in provincial social studies curricula. The massive Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) report in 2015 made teaching this history one of its highest-priority calls to action – a move that inspired a wave of First Nations, Métis and Inuit (FNMI) curriculum initiatives. Gauging the actual reach and effect of such projects is worthy of much closer scrutiny.
Mandating curriculum change does not necessarily lead to effective, consistent or discernable modifications in teaching practice. Implementation challenges can thwart policy guidelines and directives (as Michael Fullan’s book illustrates) and it’s critical to assess the gaps between the official curricula, the recently commissioned teaching resources, compulsory course offerings and the actual received curricula. The Ontario experience in integrating First Nation, Métis and Inuit (FNMI) perspectives and content into the curriculum is a case in point.
Since the TRC report, provincial and territorial governments have been entrusted with a very specific mandate – to make the history of residential schools, treaties, and historical and contemporary contributions of First Nations, Métis and Inuit a mandatory educational requirement for all kindergarten to Grade 12 students. While it emanated from the TRC, the whole idea of teaching independent, elective FNMI-focused courses and cross-curricular perspectives was hardly new to most people familiar with social studies curricula.
The Ontario Ministry of Education has invested considerable time, energy and resources into the creation and implementation of a native studies high school curriculum from the early 1970s onward. Its initial iteration, the 1975 People of Native Ancestry (PONA) curriculum guide and documents, was largely part of the Indigenous cultural revival that swept Canada after the first wave of closures of the residential schools. That curriculum was also created after the passage of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in collaboration with Indigenous advisers and educators.
The fundamental shortcoming of Ontario’s PONA initiative was that it was entirely focused on creating and implementing a self-standing set of optional social studies courses. It was never a required component of the curricula and it was never mandatory and never integrated with other parts of Canadian history. By the fall of 1999, the provincial curricula had expanded to a suite of 10 individual native studies courses spanning grades 9 to 12. While the initial native studies courses were innovative at the time, they were offered in only 39 Ontario high schools and in significant numbers of actual courses in only four of those schools between 1999 and 2006. Furthermore, proposals to offer several of the courses, in part, in the Indigenous language were essentially shot down by federal authorities in Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC), which was more committed to advancing English literacy and raising graduation rates.
Faced with growing public demand in Ontario for improved Indigenous education, the Ministry of Education responded in 2006 with a new, broader strategy known as the Ontario First Nation, Métis and Inuit (FNMI) Policy Framework intended to expand native studies content in schools across the province. It proposed the implementation of “quality Native Studies education,” to Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, with the aspirational goal of raising the awareness of all Ontarians of Indigenous perspectives, histories and cultures.
Indigenous residential schools began to pop up in Ontario classroom resources. From 2000 onward, Ontario’s core history textbooks such as The Canadian Challenge started to include short references to the Indigenous residential schools, and that expanded following then-prime minister Stephen Harper’s 2008 formal apology for the abuses that students suffered in Canada’s residential schools.
One of the most widely used textbooks,Creating Canada: A History of Canada – 1914 to the Present, identified the abuses, referenced the 2006 financial compensation package, featured Harper’s apology and gave expression to rising demands for further initiatives addressing unresolved problems affecting Canada’s Indigenous peoples.
Yet Ontario’s 2007 FNMI curriculum initiative fell short of achieving its rather lofty objectives. No target dates were set for implementation in all schools and critics pounced on the policy’s more-explicit commitment to raising Indigenous student outcomes and graduation rates. Nurturing of the revitalization of Indigenous cultures took a back seat to what were labelled “neo-liberal” educational goals for FNMI students. The policy’s stated key priority lent credence to such claims. That was to, in the words of the document, “close the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students in the areas of literacy and numeracy, retention of students in school, graduation rates, and advancement to postsecondary studies” by the year 2016.
Educating students about Indigenous concerns and fostering cultural sensitivity may have been goals of the FMNI curriculum, but there was no explicit commitment nor benchmarks for assessing progress. Greater funding from 2006 to 2010 did increase the number of schools offering native studies courses to 267 from 51, with course offerings jumping to 478 from 75, and more school boards providing the courses. The number of students enrolled in the courses rose from slightly more than 2,200 in 2007-08 (or 0.31 per cent of all high school students) to 716,103 or 1.14 per cent by 2009-10. But that’s still less than the proportion of Ontarians of Indigenous origins, which is estimated at 2 per cent.
Training teachers to work collaboratively with Indigenous communities also became a problem. Small enrolment courses did not prove financially sustainable, so in 2011 the minimum number of enrolled students per course was doubled to 12 from six. Even academic allies such as Queen’s University researcher and Métis scholar P.J.A. Chaput mused about whether the courses were still too dependent on provincial funding to be sustainable long term in Ontario.
The pattern of implementation and uptake was remarkably similar in Alberta. The Alberta Education Department made the teaching of Indigenous perspectives a key pillar of the 2005 social studies curriculum. Provincial mandates like this are often met with teacher ambivalence, if not passive resistance. One 2013 small-sample study of the FNMI initiative, conducted by University of Calgary education professor David Scott and involving five teachers, demonstrated that they had mostly brushed aside the mandate.
No perspectives can be identified because of the highly diverse nature of Indigenous Peoples and their communities;
Only educators who are Indigenous can authentically offer insights into or teach Aboriginal perspectives;
Prioritizing Indigenous perspectives is problematic because “all perspectives deserve equal treatment.”
Such explanations, according to Scott and Gani, actually masked a more-encompassing explanation and that is that most social studies educators embrace worldviews and apply curricular frameworks that preclude integrating FNMI perspectives. If and when the history of Indigenous residential schools is taught, it is in isolation or simply in passing because it is not central to the theme or prevailing narrative in social studies curricula.
Ontario’s latest curriculum revision in 2018 put renewed focus on implementing the TRC calls to action through a revamped First Nations, Métis and Inuit (FNMI) Studies curriculum. Beginning in 2019, native studies was supplanted by the FNMI curriculum with an emphasis on a broader range of learning outcomes, tilting more to social and emotional well-being. A new youth development framework, Stepping Stones, was adopted that de-emphasized improved academic outcomes. Appropriating such models from modern social psychology and youth development may well prove equally problematic because they are drawn from outside the realm of Indigenous wisdom and experience.
Indigenous education researchers Lindsay Morcom and Kate Freeman of Queen’s University’s faculty of education would likely prefer a model encompassing a more unique Indigenous philosophy, worldview, culture, and spirituality. One such model drawn from Anishinaabe tradition is known as the “Medicine Wheel and the Seven Grandfather Teachings.” Those seven grandfather teachings are a set of characteristics that guide us on how we can live a good life, or mino-bimaadiziwin, and embrace a set of core values: honesty, humility, respect, bravery, wisdom, truth and love.
They are also intimately connected to the medicine wheel, a three-dimensional sacred cosmology involving the four directions, the sky, the earth and the centre. The curriculum initiatives, however well-intended, can exemplify teaching that runs counter to Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing.
Teaching units including FNMI topics and perspectives are now more common in mainstream courses in the latest Ontario curriculum from grades one to 10. Ontario’s new FNMI curriculum (grades nine to 12), revised in 2019, is, in many ways exemplary because it offers a comprehensive, detailed, historically sound and fairly challenging set of 10 high school social studies and English courses. The introductory course, First Nations, Métis and Inuit in Canada, focusing on historical inquiry and skill development, delves into the history of Indigenous peoples from pre-contact to the present day, including residential schools. The program culminates in a very rigorous and up-to-date set of courses focusing on Indigenous issues and perspectives and a more civics-oriented sequel on Indigenous governance in Canada.
There’s one big problem – none of the new courses is mandatory for Ontario high school students.
While that was the original intention of the previous Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne, incoming Conservative Education Minister Lisa Thompson reversed that commitment in May 2019. While three of the courses may be substituted for compulsory credits, those decisions are left up to regional school boards.
Two decades after the advent of the initial Ontario native studies courses, the status quo still prevails in Indigenous education. While residential schools are in the current curriculum, it is still entirely possible for students to graduate from high school in Ontario without exposure to a more-detailed analysis of the residential school tragedy and its enduring impact.
Opinion: It may further embolden those who, regardless of official policies, already won't provide health or police services to Indigenous people in English.
Nakuset • Special to Montreal Gazette | Sep 17, 2021
An Indigenous woman is raped.
She summons the courage to report her assault to Montreal police, but they won’t let her recount it in English. Adding to this humiliating experience, she doesn’t understand that the police have to process the crime scene at her apartment.
So when the police show up at her door unannounced, she has to pack up her things and spend the night at a friend’s house, unsure exactly what’s going on. The experience left her shattered.
This happened to someone I know and it’s one example of how access to English services is crucial for Indigenous people living in Quebec. So when I testified about Bill 96 Tuesday at the Quebec Community Groups Network hearings, I expressed my fears that the new language law will have dire consequences for Indigenous people in life-or-death situations.
To Lagacé, who claims I’m fear-mongering, I would simply say this:
As a Cree woman, whose mother is a residential school survivor, and who was subsequently stolen from her family and community during the ’60s scoop, much of my life has been defined by a loss of culture and language.
Subjected to aggressive assimilationist policies, I have seen much damage and suffering to Indigenous people who have moved to urban areas and tried to make a better life. I watch how they fall through the cracks. It was this awareness that led me to seek an education and dedicate my life to improving the situation.
In the early days of residential schools, children had to learn English and were told that their language was evil, the devil’s language. The language was beaten out of them. Upon returning from residential schools, they had difficulty communicating with their parents, as they lost their Indigenous language, further alienating them from their family, community and culture.
While many of the laws that were created to explicitly deny rights to Indigenous people have since been repealed, we still live in a society whose foundation was built on our oppression. The result is that we live with systemic racism and racial profiling. Here in Quebec, few of the 142 Viens Commission recommendations have been implemented and Indigenous youth in care are still denied the right to use their traditional languages.
And so, Indigenous people are struggling. Most were sent to English residential schools and have had difficulty accessing services in the only language they speak. Regardless of what the official policies may be, they are already getting services refused because they can’t speak French. I know this because I run a women’s shelter where Indigenous women routinely report these kinds of incidents to me.
Now imagine what it would be like if you’re homeless, have been assaulted, raped or are otherwise in crisis and Bill 96 further emboldens those who already think they don’t need to bother to speak English to Indigenous people. How will you explain your predicament if you can’t express it in French?
Indigenous people, be they English-speaking or French-speaking, are still afraid of entering hospitals since the death of Joyce Echaquan. As systemic racism is still rampant in institutions, we now have to worry about the way we communicate our emergencies and whether they will be understood. In her documentary Indecently Exposed, diversity educator Jane Elliott says “If you make the situation uncomfortable enough, people will refuse to tolerate it, and they will leave.”
Indigenous people will continue to experience emergency situations, but if the climate of the institutions is oppressive, they will not subject themselves to this treatment. It is far too painful.
In 2008, Brian Sinclair arrived at the Health Sciences Centre ER in Winnipeg. When he passed out in a wheelchair, staff assumed he was drunk, when in fact he had died. I was outspoken when the government announced the COVID-19 curfew and had stated at a protest that someone could die because of the failure to acknowledge the realities of homeless people.
Unfortunately, Raphaël André was collateral damage, and therefore, I spearheaded the establishment of the Raphaël André Memorial tent, in the hope of keeping others safe.
My testimony at the hearings was meant to demonstrate our reality and no, we are not fearful, we are terrified.
Nakuset is executive director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal and the director of development and philanthropy for the day shelter Resilience Montreal.
The Bi-Giwen exhibit is advertised as the “first of its kind” by The Legacy of Hope Foundation. (David Prisciak/CTV News)
REGINA -- A new travelling art exhibit focuses on the stories of 12 ‘60s Scoop survivors and their individual experiences during a dark chapter of Canadian history.
“Bi-Giwen: Coming Home, Truth Telling from the Sixties Scoop” was on display at the Regina Public Library on Wednesday and features artwork created by some of the survivors that reflects their experiences.
“Their pain, loss, and courage are apparent on each canvas,” said Sandra Relling, the Vice President of the Sixties Scoop Indigenous Society of Alberta, whose organization is partnered with The Legacy of Hope Foundation for this project.
The exhibit was created by The Legacy of Hope Foundation, a national, Indigenous charitable organization with a mandate to educate and create awareness on Indigenous issues.
Adam North Peigan is the president of the foundation, and believes that exhibits like this one are fundamental in the effort to combat systemic racism.
“The importance is really creating that awareness,” he said. “We all know that racism, systemic racism is alive and well in Canada. And I think if mainstream Canadians can take a step back and take the opportunity to learn a little bit more about the history of our people that it will impact those unhealthy attitudes that fuel racism towards our people.”
Peigan, a sixties scoop survivor himself, explained the deep meaning behind unveiling the exhibit in a public library.
“Where I went and where a lot of Sixties Scoop survivors went to find some sanctuary and some peace was to the public libraries, he said. “That’s the only place we felt safe.”
Relling explained that the exhibit gives insight to the trauma inflicted on the survivors.
“It gives us a better understanding of the impacts of child removal policies within the child welfare system and the ongoing effects as well as the long term effects that it has on people who have gone through those systems,” she said.
After moving on from Regina after its one day showing at the Regina Public Library the exhibit will continue its tour across Saskatchewan. Visiting North Battleford, Swift Current, Prince Albert, and Saskatoon beginning in October.
You can see testimonies from the 12 survivors featured in the exhibit by visiting The Legacy of Hope’s website at: https://legacyofhope.ca/bigiwen/
T he Métis National Council and the Government of Canada will be working collaboratively, Nation-to-Nation, to develop a process to engag...
To Veronica Brown
Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.
OUR HISTORY
BOOK 5: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects