{"id":28524,"date":"2022-09-29T14:32:48","date_gmt":"2022-09-29T18:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indianz.com\/News\/?p=28524"},"modified":"2022-09-29T14:51:45","modified_gmt":"2022-09-29T18:51:45","slug":"the-conversation-reckoning-with-the-history-of-public-schooling-and-settler-colonialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2022\/09\/29\/the-conversation-reckoning-with-the-history-of-public-schooling-and-settler-colonialism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Conversation: Reckoning with the history of public schooling and settler\u00a0colonialism"},"content":{"rendered":" \"South<\/a>
Alex Bird (second from left) and his siblings from the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation were among the first students to attend this public school, near Prince George, British Columbia, in the early 1910s. Photo: Royal B.C. Museum, Image B-00342, British Columbia Archives<\/a><\/figcaption>\r\n
Reckoning with the history of public schooling and settler\u00a0colonialism<\/div>\r\n
Thursday, September 29, 2022<\/div>\r\n
By Sean Carleton<\/a> (University of Manitoba<\/a>)<\/div>\r\n
The Conversation<\/div>\r\n
theconversation.com<\/A><\/div>\r\n

<\/p>\r\nIn light of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), many Canadians are coming to terms with Canada\u2019s history of schooling and settler colonialism.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nThe TRC\u2019s findings, along with revelations about locating unmarked graves<\/a> at many former residential school sites and the recent conclusion of<\/a> the Indian Day Schools<\/a> settlement claim deadline, have challenged Canadians to confront a hard truth: their government, in partnership with various churches, devised, deployed and defended genocidal school systems for Indigenous Peoples for more than a century.

<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIndian Residential Schools and Indian Day Schools, however, have not been the only kinds of schooling complicit in colonialism.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nThe TRC stressed that we must have truth before reconciliation. Part of the \u201ccomplex truth<\/a>\u201d is understanding that public schooling has also played an important role in settler colonialism in Canada.

<\/P>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Building a capitalist settler society<\/div>\r\n\r\nIn my new book, Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia<\/a><\/em>, I examine how various kinds of schooling (day and residential schools, yes, but also public schools) supported the creation of a capitalist settler society in Canada\u2019s westernmost province between 1849 and 1930.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nI show how separate, though sometimes overlapping, kinds of schooling for Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous communities imparted similar \u201clessons in legitimacy\u201d \u2014 the formal and informal teachings that justified colonialism and normalized the unequal social relations of settler capitalism.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nSchools served as laboratories for learning colonial legitimacy and training students to contribute to the capitalist economy in British Columbia, throughout Canada<\/a> and across the British Empire<\/a>.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nThere are a number of ways in which public schooling, in addition to day and residential schooling, was implicated.

<\/P>\r\n \"Capilano<\/a>

Students at the Capilano public school in North Vancouver, circa 1920s. Photo: Archives of North Vancouver, Image 6490<\/figcaption>\r\n

<\/P>\r\n

Land and taxes<\/div>\r\n\r\nIn British Columbia, public schooling was largely paid for by dispossessing Indigenous Peoples of their land.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nIn the 1850s, Britain simply asserted sovereignty over what became the colony of British Columbia. Then, the province of British Columbia refused to sign treaties<\/a> with Indigenous Nations.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nAs a result, much of British Columbia\u2019s land base was \u2014 and remains \u2014 stolen, unceded land<\/a>. During the early period of colonial settlement<\/a>, and in an effort to attract and retain colonists and their families, state officials often reserved \u201cfree\u201d plots of land to be used for the construction of schools.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nProperty taxes were then introduced<\/a> to help pay for increasing schooling costs.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nThus, stolen Indigenous land underwrote the expansion and maintenance of the public school system in British Columbia, as elsewhere.

<\/P>\r\n\r\n

Overlapping officials<\/div>\r\n\r\n \r\nMany school officials in British Columbia moved between different educational spheres. Residential school principals sat on public school boards and their students became teachers in day and residential schools. Public school graduates also taught in day and residential schools.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nIsrael Wood Powell, a doctor and early public school advocate in 1860s Victoria, served as the first Superintendent of Indian Affairs for British Columbia in the 1870s and 1880s. Powell used his position to lobby the Department of Indian Affairs<\/a> (DIA) to create new Indian Day Schools and Indian Residential Schools in the province.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nLater, in the early 1900s, R.H. Cairns served as a public school teacher, principal of the Coqualeetza Indian Residential School<\/a>, and then as the DIA\u2019s school inspector for British Columbia.

<\/P>\r\n

\"Israel<\/a><\/div>\r\n
Israel Wood Powell, first Superintendent of Indian Affairs for British Columbia, lobbied the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) to create new Indian Day Schools and Indian Residential Schools in the province. Photo: The Royal BC Museum, Image F-03704, British Columbia Archives<\/a><\/figcaption><\/div><\/div>\r\n

<\/P>\r\n

Similar education materials<\/div>\r\n\r\nThough day, residential, and public schools were supposed to be separate forms of education, they mostly shared the same educational materials.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nIn the 1890s, the DIA instructed day and residential schools to adopt and follow the local provincial public school curriculum. This included assigning history and social studies textbooks<\/a> that disparaged Indigenous Peoples and people of colour through racist representations \u2014 and it normalized colonialism and racism as \u201ccommonsense.\u201d

<\/P>\r\n\r\nMany students in residential schools, however, only received academic instruction for half the day, with the other half being reserved for performing manual labour for the school.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nAs a result, by the 1920s the vast majority of Indigenous students never advanced higher than Grade 1 or 2<\/a>. This is why some historians<\/a>, building on Survivor testimony and Indigenous knowledge<\/a>, have argued that full assimilation into mainstream settler society was never the goal of policy makers.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nInstead, Indigenous students in British Columbia, as elsewhere, were educated for inequality.

<\/P>\r\n\r\n

Indigenous students in public schools<\/div>\r\n\r\nFinally, many Indigenous children and youth attended public schools in British Columbia from the 1840s through to the 1940s and 1950s when integration became an official policy.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nMy research shows that Indigenous students, like those (in the lead image) at the South Fort George School in 1911, near Prince George, B.C., consistently attended public schools in greater numbers than previously thought<\/a>.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nMany Indigenous parents advocated for their children to have the right to attend public schools (instead of day or residential schools). Some settler parents and provincial and federal government officials approved and at times even defended this practice for various reasons, including to keep certain schools open throughout the province.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nThe links between public schooling and settler colonialism thus need more critical attention.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nThe Indian Residential School and Indian Day School systems have now ended. But public schooling continues to support settler colonialism and nation building, as some educators have pointed out<\/a>.

<\/P>\r\n

<\/ins>