Gitksan professor Cindy Blackstock, for example, asks of residential schools: “ Did they really close or just morph into child welfare?”Īnd Mi’kmaq lawyer and professor Pam Palmater suggests that “the abuse did not end with the closing of the last residential school in 1996.
The policies of assimilation that governed the schools in the past, however, remain in operation today, although in different forms. 15, 2016.įormer prime minister Stephen Harper, in his 2008 apology on behalf of Canadians for the Indian residential schools system, put residential schooling firmly in the past by calling it a “ sad chapter in our history.” This narrative of pastness allowed Harper to swagger to the aspirational conclusion that “ there is no place in Canada for the attitudes that inspired the Indian residential schools system to ever again prevail.” Cindy Blackstock speaks at Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Sept. Rather than view residential school literature as primarily concerned with past history, I want to advocate for the importance of teaching these narratives as stories that probe our colonial present and the possibility of a more just future. The ethical teaching of residential school narratives can be thought of as a relational process that requires consultation and accountability. There is a growing body of literature - novels, memoirs, poetry, graphic novels, picture books - through which Indigenous writers are giving voice and agency to the experiences and histories of Indian residential schooling in Canada. (House of Anansi Press/’Seven Fallen Feathers,’ book cover art by Christian Morrisseau) A detail of the book cover for ‘Seven Fallen Feathers’ by Tanya Talaga.
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