A s the kindergarten to Grade 12 students head back to school today across the Prince George area, their teachers are faced with passing on new knowledge that didn't appear in history textbooks when they were kids.
Back in June, the B.C. Teachers Federation issued a guide to its members for teaching about residential schools. Part of that guide features Gladys Chapman, taken from her Spuzzum Nation family to the Kamloops Indian Residential School, where she died of tuberculosis when she was just 12.
This is obviously difficult territory for a non-indigenous teacher with limited or no experience with aboriginal people, never mind their language, culture or history.
Those who complain about political correctness or historical revision would whitewash (pun intentional) Canadian history into a tale of the two founding nations - English and French - with that rebel Louis Riel, a Metis from Manitoba, being one of the few mentions of Canada's original inhabitants, the ones that were here in this country long before the Europeans arrived.
They would also absolve Canada of its genocide. The whole point of residential schools was to beat the brown out of First Nations children, by involuntarily taking them away from their territory and their families, imprisoning them in dormitories to learn English and the "Canadian" way of life. Speaking their language or celebrating any aspect of their culture was severely punished. That sustained attempt over more than a century by the Canadian government to eradicate First Nations identity meets the definition of genocide as set out by the United Nations.
This is not about guilt or shame. This is about doing the right thing, by telling an honest and fact-based history of Canada, featuring both its high and low points.
So it falls on the current generation of teachers to share this "new" history of Canada.
Along with the challenges comes an incredible opportunity.
For non-indigenous teachers, the conversation can start with a frank admission that learning is a lifelong endeavour. Teachers and all responsible adults need to continuously upgrade their knowledge, which not only includes acquiring new information and skills but also adapting beliefs based on new information. From there, teachers can then confess that this is not a history they were taught when they were in grade school and explain why. Finally, teachers and students can dive into the material together, recognizing that they are exploring an aspect of Canadian history that continues to be grow and expand.
It's never too early to start talking to young people about racism, as well, and non-aboriginal teachers have to bluntly inform their students that the story of residential schools is not their story to tell. Ideally, those teachers and school districts will also invite elders and other members of their area First Nations into their classrooms, to share their background and their stories.
For non-indigenous students, seeing First Nations people at the front of their classroom will show that indigenous people have knowledge that matters and they are deserving of respect. Furthermore, the students will see the direct connection between the past they are learning about and the present in the form of the person in front of them.
For indigenous students, this will be a proud moment because, for possibly the first time in their formal academic career, an adult that shares their ancestry will be standing before the class, sharing their history from a position of authority.
Fortunately for B.C. teachers, they are not alone in facing these kinds of challenges. Last year, Christopher Emdin, a professor at the teachers' college at Columbia University in New York, published a book with the provocative title For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood ... and the Rest of Y'all Too.
Whether the white teacher is in Queens, Kitsilano or the Hart, regardless of whether the topic is the enslavement of African Americans or the forced containment of indigenous children in residential schools, expanding on a shared history is a worthy enterprise. Those teachers are then blessed with the opportunity to journey together with their students to show how that past fostered the problems with race, discrimination, poverty and incarceration today.
From there, the non-indigenous teachers and students can start to gain an appreciation for how they have benefited from the white privilege so prevalent in their lives that they have been able to completely take it for granted.
Good luck, teachers, in the upcoming school year. Thank you for your commitment to learning and for your willingness to teach new topics and issues to our young people, even when they make you uncomfortable and force you to learn more in the process.
-- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
