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Unsettling the Settler Within: Chapter 3
Photo Credit: Bittermilk.com
Regan dives more into the “Peacemaker Myth” in chapter 3 of Unsettling the Settler Within. She discusses how Canada is built on this faulty notion that we are peacemakers and peacekeepers, and always have been. She uses example after example to prove that this is not the case. She explains how a lot of people tend to compare the colonization in Canada to colonization in the USA, and how they think Canada’s is less violent because of treaty making. She proves them wrong by showing how government officials and policy makers like Alexander Morris, Duncan Campbell Scott, and David Laird used policy to impart cultural and societal violence towards Canada’s Indigenous people. She even reveals how the Royal Canadian Mounted Police managed to secure a peacemaker reputation from Canada’s early days. “For the most part, the celebatory legend persists. A nation of peacemakers emerged from this popular literature, particularly the valorization of the North West Mounted Police in poetry and pulp fiction produced from the 1880’s to the 1940’s” (Regan, 2010, p. 103).
I was shocked when Regan reminded me of the popular series that played on television in the early 2000’s called Canada: A People’s History. I completely remember watching these shows on CBC. She quotes some astounding lines from an episode titled, “Pioneers Head West: Can Ottawa Settle the Frontier Without Bloodshed?”
“Canada’s answer to the western dilemma; bring peace and order to the West before the settlers arrive. This was established through the NWMP who developed good relations with the natives and encouraged them to negotiate with the Canadian government. During the 1870’s, the natives signed a series of treaties, which transferred land to the Canadian government and transferred Plains Indians onto reserves… by 1880, the frontier had peace and order and was ready for white settlement” (Regan, 2010, p. 104).
Photo Credit: CBC
Regan describes how time and time again, Canada has built up this peacekeeper myth until it has become Canada’s truth. It perpetuates the idea that there were these ‘Great White Man’ heroes who must overcome enormous obstacles to fulfill their national dream” (Regan, 2010, p. 105). These popular myths and their idolized heroes are explaining and justifying the actions of Canada’s past and present. I can definitely see how these myths become the inherent foundation of our country, and how after a while, no one even questions this identity, but rather simply believes it all to be true.
“Mountie” Photo Credit: Sean via Flickr
When looking at how this concept will be reflected in my Treaty 4 Reconciliation re-telling project, I have decided that I would like to emphasize the fact that First Nations people deeply valued the ceremonial customs and spiritual practices around treaty making. They were entering into these treaties with an understanding of human connection, and they desired to establish trust and respect with the Queen’s representatives. On the other hand, the treaty negotiators spoke a language of peace while offering lies.
“They gave chiefs the treaty pen to touch and thus signal their acceptance, these representatives of the settler government needed no weapons except their false words. Indigenous diplomats who had brought their own diplomatic principles and ceremonial practices to the negotiations had no way of knowing that peacemaking as they understood it had been perverted into an act of symbolic violence” (Regan, 2010, p. 101-102).
“Treaty Medal” Photo Credit: Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada
I have tried looking for video clips of a re-enactment of the signing of Treaty 4, and I haven’t found any good ones. I am worried about how big this project is getting as I would really like some videos to be a part of my project. If I must, I am going to try and get some filmmakers help in re-creating parts of this re-telling, although I also understand that as I move forward, I want to be extremely sensitive to video taping and re-creating the ceremonial and spiritual practices of First Nation’s culture. I will be looking for guidance from my First Nation’s elders and allies in this way.
That said, if anyone reading this knows of anyone who is in the film industry who would like to help me create some short video clips, I would be happy to get in touch with them!
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Unsettling The Settler Within: Chapter 2
In chapter 2, Paulette Regan discusses the issues around denial and myth when it comes to Settlers attitudes about Canadian history. Many people have bought into the colonial re-telling of Canada’s history, and therefore, are in denial of what actually happened. She unpacks the “peacekeeping myth” in which Canadians are led to believe that our country is and always has been a peacekeeping country. She challenges her readers to take responsibility for their own part in Canada’s shameful history.
I just had to…
“Taking full responsibility for the policies and practices that flourished in Indian residential schools entails truth telling. What is truth? Challenging the peacemaker myth and critiquing reconciliation discourse requires us to be honest with ourselves about the actual impacts of colonial policies and practices upon the lives of Indigenous people” (Regan, 2010, p. 62).
Regan goes on to challenge the idea of “truth,” and whose truth we are telling when our education system teaches of the “conquering settler/farmer” while leaving out the violent interactions Settlers had with Canada’s Indigenous people. She looks at how Whites need to engage in their own truth-telling surrounding their historical past, and how they shouldn’t “simply intellectualize and compartmentalize their newfound knowledge and do nothing” (Regan, 2010, p. 65).
“Truth” Photo Credit: Victoria Landon via Flickr.
I really liked Regan’s challenge around what reconciliation could and should look like. She affirms that it is not useful to have arguments over who is guilty and who is innocent. She pushes her readers to work towards a shared history in light of a Settler’s new understanding of truth. The goal is to not create a monolithic history but a joint history that focuses on the relationship of perpetrators and victims in a new form of political negotiation (Regan, 2010, p. 67). It hasn’t been until this class that I am really starting to dial into how political this entire conversation is. It’s not just racism and colonial thinking. Most of the violence is committed in a deeply political way, and I am trying to learn how to rectify that within my own political thoughts and beliefs.
“If the current quest for reconciliation is no different from settler practices of the past – a new colonial tool of oppression – it has now become imperative to challenge Canada’s peacekeeper myth. Peeling back the layers of myth reveals that we must confront our own repressed and unscrutinized past as part of our own truth telling” (Regan, 2010, p. 67).
As I look at helping to create a re-telling of Treaty 4 history, I am consistently reminded of the need for a shared history. I initially thought I was going to be coming in and supporting and helping First Nations allies re-tell history from a First Nations point of view. That is still the case, but I am learning how important it is to use this project to unsettle settlers as well. Regan quotes a Canadian historian, John Lutz, who reminds readers of tensions in historical recounts. He asks how the European can be removed from the centre of contact stories. He proposes that the mythology and history are embedded into stories that come from both Indigenous and European contact accounts. In this way both will be equally credible and incredible (Regan, 2010, p. 69). I need to be willing to confront the “European truth” myth and move towards questioning my project’s participants on their once received “truths.” How can I help them unlearn Canada’s typical national story?
“Implements of Yesterday” Photo Credit: Wayne Stadler via Flickr.com
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Unsettling the Settler Within: Chapter 1
Chapter 1:
Paulette Regan introduces her readers to the idea that being “unsettled” around Indigenous-settler relations is a good thing. She exposes non-Aboriginal people’s ignorance when it comes to the violence that lies at the core of Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal relationships. Her first chapter is dedicated to giving reasons of why Settler Canadians need to start looking at their own history and identity rather than putting First Nations people under the microscope consistently and repeatedly. She really fleshes out the notion of identity and story-telling. Regan believes its not always the residential school survivors and First Nations men and women who should have their stories repeated over and over as they are being re-victimized every time. She also doesn’t believe these are her stories to tell. Regan believes that Settlers have a moral and ethical responsibility to share their stories. In this way she is honouring “Indigenous pedagogy in which stories are teachings, and the storyteller has a responsibility to ‘give away’- to share with others what he or she has learned” (Regan, 2010, p. 31).
The idea that the gaze should shift from the Aboriginal stories to Settler ones is an interesting one for me. As a White female settler, I thought my job was to learn about First Nations history and be more aware of the continued relationship between Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal people. This isn’t necessarily untrue, but Regan has opened my eyes to how my job as a Settler-Canadian might look different than someone who is an Indigenous person. Throughout my research into colonization and its effect on Canada, I feel like there has been a strong focus on Aboriginal stories and content. I wasn’t aware of the ways that this might position Aboriginal people to consistently be under the microscope of society. It is another colonial way of “Othering” First Nations people. Regan describes how part of decolonizing work can/should be hearing certain Aboriginal people’s stories and experiences, but she has also had enough experience to understand that sometimes it does more harm than good;
“Although the strong emotions engendered by listening to residential school survivors’ stories are potentially decolonizing, they might also create a backlash of settler denial or, conversely, generate an empathetic response that, though well intentioned, is still colonial in nature. Reframing reconciliation as a decolonizing place of encounter between settlers and Indigenous people mitigates these possibilities by making space for collective critical dialogue” (Regan, 2010, p. 12).
When looking at my Treaty 4 Reconciliation project, Regan has sparked my interest in how I can allow for critical dialogue to take place whether the participants in my project are Aboriginal or not. I know that I still want my project to re-tell the Treaty 4 history, and I know I still want the re-telling to be from a First Nations point of view. That said, Regan has inspired me to try and find ways to question participants to look critically at their own stories and identities, whether that is an Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal one. Regan’s thoughts on identity and personal history also make me think that perhaps somewhere in this project I need to blog about the story and journey I have taken to get where I am today working on this Treaty 4 Reconciliation project. I am excited to continue reading chapter 2 and beyond to find out if she expands on how Settlers can be most effective in their activism, and sensitive to best practice when it comes to decolonization.
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Braiding Histories Chapter 7
Background: Braiding Histories is a phenomenal book about how an Aboriginal teacher/daughter/mother/citizen went on a journey of taking up what it means to re-tell Aboriginal stories from the past and present. Her goal was to see her Braiding History stories used as a resource for teachers in the classroom. This book is about her journey creating and using the Braiding History stories.
Chapter 7:
Chapter 7 is Susan Dion’s reflection on her whole Braiding Histories project. Though her goal was to equip teachers to investigate and learn from the lived experiences of Aboriginal people, she found that the project drew “attention to the structures of teaching and how those structures work on and through teachers, enabling an approach that, rather than disrupting, supports the reproduction of dominant ways of knowing” (Dion, 2009, p. 177). It was clear that the project did not go exactly the way she had hoped. She found that the teachers who were using the stories still found ways to reproduce a Eurocentric outlook on Aboriginal stories. As she reflects on these outcomes, Dion suggests that before teachers use these stories in the future, it may be necessary for them to engage in “a more specific investigation of their relationship with Aboriginal people” (Dion, 2009, p. 179). She really encourages teachers to know their own history, understand where they are coming from, and what cultural traditions/mindsets they inherited.
What I really liked about Dion’s reflection is that she didn’t just look at what went wrong with the experience and give up. She critically looks at the pedagogy surrounding and supporting what happened and she challenges how she and the teachers could have done better. Since her project, she has realized that her “intention is to construct a teaching practice that enables students to ‘call into question existing truths and imposed limits on what they know, while simultaneously envisioning new possibilities for both themselves’ and their ways of teaching… This practice calls on the students not to live in the past but in relation with the past, acknowledging the claim that the past has on the present” (Dion, 2009, p. 180). I love that Dion is not concerned with students learning about historical or cultural events. She really wants to cultivate a recognition of difference and what implications those differences might have. If we are not digging deeper, we end up with mere multicultural education, which is what I spoke about in my last post.
Chapter 7 is the final chapter of Braiding Histories and I am so glad I read this novel before entering into the practical next steps of my Treaty 4 Reconciliation Project. There are many things that I learned from the two teachers, Diane and Jenna, and I am so glad that Dion was able to unpack the negatives and positives of what COULD happen with a project like this. I feel like my Treaty 4 project is very similar to Dion’s Braiding Histories project in that we are both are using re-telling as our main teaching method. To summarize, these are the things I have learned from Dion about what TO DO, and NOT TO DO with my own project.
- Storytelling is so important. The power of story transcends time in its ability to re-tell history from a first person point of view. It allows listeners to dive into the reality of the characters. I don’t want this project to be cheesy, so I want to use real storytellers, elders, and even actors to help re-tell the story of Treaty 4.
- I don’t want to develop a “discourse of sympathy.” I want to find a balance between sharing the harsh realities Aboriginal people faced around the signing of Treaty 4, but also the resilience, power and strength of these men and women throughout this time.
- Questioning is so important! Not only do I want to question participants throughout the project to help them disrupt their own colonial ways of understanding, but I need to begin with questions of what I am looking for with this project. How will I evaluate its success?
- I want this project to be more than a multicultural resource for teachers and students. If it is just another way to re-tell a “colonial success story,” I might as well stop now. I am striving to have this project be more than an artifactual Treaty Ed lesson.
I look forward to moving on to some other readings that can help me grow my knowledge base around these matters. I still feel very incompetent when it comes to knowing how to proceed appropriately. Thanks for following my experience thus far. Stay tuned for more ramblings of a teacher on this journey of anti-oppressive education! 🙂
“Journey” Photo credit Kasia via Flickr.com
Braiding Histories Chapter 6
Background: Braiding Histories is a phenomenal book about how an Aboriginal teacher/daughter/mother/citizen went on a journey of taking up what it means to re-tell Aboriginal stories from the past and present. Her goal was to see her Braiding History stories used as a resource for teachers in the classroom. This book is about her journey creating and using the Braiding History stories.
Chapter 6:
Dion gets personal in chapter 6 when she takes up her own mother, Audrey’s story. It was clear she had dual commitments when re-telling this story as she wanted to honour her mother, explore her own position as an Aboriginal person, and unpack what forced assimilation looks like in Canada. It became extra personal for the authors, Susan and Michael because the retelling was “interwoven with a lifetime of experiences” (Dion, 2009, p. 138).
As the teachers began to take up Audrey’s story in the classroom, Dion noticed that the teachers relied “on a version of the golden rule, they attended to Audrey’s suffering. Knowing that students would not like to be treated as Audrey was, they used her narrative to show students how to be ‘good’ and ‘moral’ citizens” (Dion, 2009, p.139). Just like with Shanawdithit’s story, the teachers tried to personalize the story for the students by having them connect with their own personalized versions of suffering. They believed that for the students to truly connect with Audrey’s story, they needed to “generate sympathy for Audrey” (Dion, 2009, p. 143).
“The Golden Rule” Photo Credit: Burkazoid via Flickr.com
This tension is fresh as I just had a short conversation with a friend this morning around Regina’s Mosaic Multicultural celebration. In the last year, I have read many critiques around the use of multiculturalism as a teaching tool. Before starting my Masters work, I would have completely agreed with celebrations like this, and I even brought mini versions of this into my own classroom. The problem is that when we idolize multiculturalism, we create a sense of pride in our “Canadian mosaic.” We start thinking that we are doing ok with the whole race thing, and we aren’t racist after all. Like Dion suggests, we don’t start to question our colonial responsibilities, but rather, we celebrate the diversity we see today. This causes a removed sense of sympathy for First Nations people, either past or present, and we end up with well meaning teachers who take stories of strong, resilient Aboriginal people and turn them into pity parties. I’m not saying that there isn’t value in Mosaic’s multicultural celebration, I just think we really need to question what outcomes we have for celebrations like this, and if they are moving us to action in fighting systematic oppression.
Photo Credit via Tourism Regina
62. We call upon the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, in consultation and collaboration with Survivors, Aboriginal peoples, and educators, to:
- Make age-appropriate curriculum on residential schools, Treaties, and Aboriginal peoples’ historical and contemporary contributions to Canada a mandatory education requirement for Kindergarten to Grade Twelve students.
- We call upon the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada to maintain an annual commitment to Aboriginal education issues, including:i. Developing and implementing Kindergarten to Grade Twelve curriculum and learning resources on Aboriginal peoples in Canadian history, and the history and legacy of residential schools.
“TRC” Photo Credit via The Media Project
My next and last post on Braiding Histories is on Chapter 7. It discusses Dion’s reflections on the experience as a whole and her current work with teachers on these subject matters.
Braiding Histories Chapter 5
Background: Braiding Histories is a phenomenal novel about how an Aboriginal teacher/daughter/mother/citizen went on a journey of taking up what it means to re-tell Aboriginal stories from the past and present. Her goal was to see her Braiding History stories used as a resource for teachers in the classroom. This novel is about her journey creating and using the Braiding History stories.
Chapter 5:
Chapter 5 is about the teaching and learning that happens around Shanawdithit’s story. The classroom teachers, Diane and Jenna, who used the Braiding Histories stories in their classroom both structured Shanawdithit’s story as a story of loss. They both tried very hard to have this story become relevant for their students. They did this by trying to connect their students to a sense of loss themselves. As Dion writes about what she sees the teachers doing in chapter 5, you can tell she becomes increasingly more frustrated with how this story is being taken up:
“In our re-telling, Michael and I purposefully refrained from writing the story of Shanawdhithit’s last days in St. John’s. Wanting to tell the story of her response to the events that made her the last known survivor, we did not want Shanawdithit’s position as ‘the last’ to become the focus of her story. Jenna, acting on her limited knowledge of Shanawdhithit’s story and her understanding of her responsibilities as history teacher, assigned students a research project grounded in the very terms we had wanted to avoid” (Dion, 2009, 112).
“Shanawdithit” Photo credit via Library and Archives Canada
The rest of Chapter 5 is dialogue between Dion and the two teachers in how they took up the story. Dion challenges a lot of the pedagogy of “teacher” surrounding the classroom interactions. She points out different ways that teacher responsibilities got in the way of going to those tension points that students were navigating through.
I was convicted by the challenges Dion poses to the teachers around how they discuss and take up Aboriginal stories. I too am guilty of trying to teach First Nations content with a “victim” mentality. This quote from Dion really resonated with me:
“Diane’s approach worked to foreclose engagement with the story as a testimony of loss, pain, and agency, and tended, therefore, to avoid questions of responsibility in the present or the past. Shanawdithit became fixed in the past as a victim. Her actions vanished, and the acts of white colonial settlers were not investigated” (Dion, 2009, p. 109).
I am thinking critically about my own teaching practice, and I feel like I haven’t done a good job at creating balance between teaching the oppression and suffering of the past, and taking up the past and current responsibility of colonial settlers. I’m afraid I have created a space where past settlers/government can be easily blamed, though past Aboriginal people are easily victimized. I also think I may have created a space where current settlers/government are absolved and current Aboriginal people are ignored.
“Finding balance” Photo credit: woodlywonderworks via Flickr
The only way I can move forward in this understanding is by taking Dion’s advice around hope:
“The story offers more than a depressing litany of loss… Unable to hear beyond the pain and suffering, she could not hear the story of Shanwdithit’s power, strength, and wisdom… Although this is distressing work, it is not to be done in the absence of hope – hope for a new and better relationship between Aboriginal people and Canadians is exactly what motivates me” (Dion, 2009, p. 113).
It really is this hope and passion that has spurred me on to take up this Treaty 4 Reconciliation Project. I think a lot of understanding can come when education around our Canadian history can be taught appropriately. As I prepare to move forward with my project’s script, I am continually thinking about ways that I can question the participants wisely. As they see the story of Treaty 4 unpacked before their eyes, how can I, like Dion, emphasize the power, strength, and wisdom of the First Nation’s people within that story? How can I foster an environment where the acts of colonial settlers can be investigated and questions of responsibility can be taken up?
After each chapter’s blog post, I feel like I end up with way more questions than I started with! That said, I am getting excited to start having more in person conversations around these topics. I am feeling like I need as much advice as possible! Got any? Send it my way!
My next post is on Chapter 6 of Braiding Histories which discusses the teachers taking up Dion’s mother’s story. I look at the faults with a “multicultural” perspective on race.
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