Learning Outcomes: • Demonstrate empathy for Aboriginal peoples in Canada • Define assimilate and civilize • Explain the negative impacts that Residential Schools had on Aboriginal peoples • Describe the impact that the policy of “assimilation” had on First Nations’ identity and culture

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiFqjah_L0o (4 min)

Imagine you are playing in your backyard when a group of odd-looking men dressed in strange clothes walk into your yard. They look dirty and hungry, and are shouting and gesturing in a strange language. They try hard to communicate with you, but you can’t understand them. You can tell, though, that what they are saying is very important. Not knowing what else to do you get your parents. After your parents try to understand them without success, your family invites them into your house and gives them some cake and tea. Soon, you are able to communicate with them using hand signals and gestures. You still don’t know what they want, but you begin to understand that they are from a faraway land called Eporue. They really like your town and they want to stay here. 1. How would you feel if this happened to you? Scared? Flattered?

Angry? Friendly? Annoyed? Curious? Excited?

2. What would you do? Would you help them out or ask them to leave?

Imagine you decide to welcome the Eporuvians. After all ,you want to be helpful, and they seem so lost. You let them stay in your house, and keep feeding them. You show them around the town and introduce them to you friends. However, you begin to notice that they have a bad habit of taking your things. All in all, they don’t seem to be very considerate. You begin to wonder whether making friends with them was such a good idea. You also start to wonder if these house guests will ever leave. After a while, you begin to realize that they want to keep living in your house and using your things. In fact, they think they own the place and the land it’s on too. They stick the Eporuvian flag in the ground in your front yard and claim your land for their leader. 1. How would you feel? Scared? Angry? Puzzled? Disappointed?

2. What would you do? Would you organize your friends to get rid of them?

Try to explain to them that they can’t stay and ask them to leave? Or let them stay and hope it gets better?

By now, they don’t bother talking to you much anymore, except when they want something from you. They bring their relatives – and lots of other Eporuvians – to live in your town. Eventually, they tell you and your family that you have to leave, and they give you a broken-down shack to live in, with no yard, no running water and lots of other people crowded into it (who have all been forced off their land as well). You never get your land back. For 200 years, the story of how the Eporuvians forced you off your land is handed down from generation to generation. You tell your children, who tell their children, and so on, for ten generations. 1. How will your descendants feel about the Eporuvians?

2. If you were a descendant of the Eporuvians how would you feel about

what your ancestors did?

3. Can you make a connection with this story to what you know about the history of Canada?

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmYu-Wppp3c (2 min)

• How were relations between settlers and Aboriginals at first?

In general, “Indians” were

viewed as savages (violent,

uncontrolled, etc.)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlzuWbDHZrU (00:35)

• Identity & Expression activity:

– How would you feel if you were told that you could not express the most important aspects of your identity?

– What would you do? Move? Leave? Refuse? Rebel?

– What if you couldn’t move? What if you were only 7 years old? What if refusing/rebelling meant possibly death or violence?

– How would you feel?

– What could this lead to?

• Goal: to Assimilate & Civilize

Assimilate: to cause a person or group to become part of a different society and adopt the ways of another culture

Civilize: to bring people to a stage of social, cultural, and moral development considered to be more advanced

To make Canada’s First Nations cultures disappear...

• Created “status” Indians

• Wards (“children”) of the government

• Not a “person”: fewer rights, could not vote

• Government controlled

– Education

– Land

– Their governance

– Outlawed ceremonies

• Land set aside for the use of Status Indians

• Property of the Government

• Had to give up traditional territories

• Meant to be temporary

• Could give up their land, language and culture for Canadian citizenship, to “live as a white”

• Meant cutting themselves off from their reserve communities, culture, identity, etc.

• Minister of Indian Affairs still has legal ability to interfere in many aspects of First Nations’ lives

• Act does give some benefits... BUT they are outweighed by discrimination & oppression embedded in it.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnfITZOIaO4 (1:45)

A DARK CHAPTER IN CANADIAN HISTORY

• You are a 7 year old student. You are separated from your parents for most of the year. You are placed in a school where no one speaks your language. The language spoken to you is written very differently from your native tongue. Your teachers don't understand many of the things that are very important to you, such as hockey, snowboarding, skateboarding, the foods you enjoy, music videos, and computer games.

• How would you feel?

IMAGINE...

Thomas Moore before and after his entrance into the Regina Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan in 1874.

Notice any changes?

Where were these schools located?

Who exactly went to these schools?

• Every Aboriginal child between the ages of 5 to 15 years old.

• Over the decades, thousands of Aboriginal children across Canada [First Nation, Métis and Inuit] passed through these schools.

What did these children do there?

They learned “useful”

skills such as farming,

carpentry and domestic

skills.

The purpose?

To “teach” them white Euro-Canadian skills instead of hunting and gathering.

• For failing a test - no food for a day; • For not working hard enough - 4 hours of extra work (in school or garden); • For disobedience, and rude or disorderly conduct - no food or water for a day, a beating (with a stick on the back), extra garden work; • For speaking native language - (first offence) no supper - (second offence) no supper and beating - (third offence) considered disobedience and punished as such; • For going off by yourself (without another student present) - several hours of kneeling alone on a rock floor where all can see.

The children suffered years of excessive physical, emotional and sexual abuse in the schools.

• BEFORE READING: (Individual)

– Consider the title. Predict what the poem is about

• DURING: (Individual)

– Make notes, underline, highlight things that stand out or that you

don’t understand. Re-read for better understanding.

• AFTER READING: (Individual and then pair)

– Look at questions 1-4. Think about them, discuss them with your

neighbour, then answer them.

• Weakening of identity:

– Separated children from family and community

– Disrupted traditional education: passing beliefs, skills, knowledge on

– Unhealthy conditions: for mind, body, and soul

– Abuse

– Taught to suppress their culture

– Deprived of parental role models

"Figure it this way, over sixty thousand natives were processed through those schools since they started, and you got generation on generation just piled on top and now we're trying to figure out, "What is love?"

How in the hell are you supposed to know how to f---in' love when you're not given love for ten months out of every year?

The question is not, "Why do we drink?" Ask first the question, "Do you know how to love?" And you'll find a very thin line between them because they come from each other. You booze because you can't love and you booze under the guise of pretending that you can."

• In 2008 the Government of Canada delivered a Statement of Reconciliation to all Aboriginal peoples that included an apology to those who had experienced sexual and physical abuse while attending a residential school.

• In particular, it mentioned that the Canadian government regretted the treatment of Aboriginal People:

"As a country, we are burdened by past actions that resulted in weakening the identity of Aboriginal Peoples, suppressing their languages and cultures, and outlawing spiritual practices."

• 8th Fire: http://www.cbc.ca/8thfire//2011/11/its-time.html

• Surviving Residential Schools http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPX9a5r6uAQ (7:45)