Treaty Education in Canada Assignment | Online Assignment

Persuasive essay using 5 sources, 1 already given to us and 2 of those sources have to be published after 2015. In order to move forward with the reconciliation process, treaty-education must take place in all Canadian schools. For an essay of this size, keep your discussion focused on Treaty Five and choose Education and one other treaty promise. Explore whether these promises were kept or broken and how this would affect the reconciliation process Use what, where, when, and why to see critical thinkingThe Possibilities for Reconciliation
Through Difficult Dialogues: Treaty
Education as Peacebuilding
JENNIFER ANNE TUPPER
University of Regina
Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
ABSTRACT
This article discusses the ongoing effects of colonialism on Aboriginal peoples in
Canada and how these might be revealed and disrupted through particular curricular
initiatives, informed by understandings of critical peacebuilding education.
One such initiative, treaty education, has the potential to disturb dominant national
narratives in classrooms, and to invite students to think differently about the history
of Canada as it seeks to acknowledge and challenge epistemologies of ignorance
that often shape relationships with Aboriginal peoples. Throughout the discussion,
it is argued that ignorance is produced and maintained through dominant narratives
of the nation which reinforce colonial dispositions that are inherently antidemocratic
and that (re)produce structural and symbolic forms of violence,
undermining the possibilities for (just) peacebuilding education. Treaty education
may bring to the surface conflict for students in terms of their prior knowledge and
understanding of Aboriginal–Canadian relations: such conflict creates productive
sites of possibility for disrupting ignorance. Specifically, the article describes a high
school–university student inquiry into residential schools undertaken in fall 2012 as
one example of how treaty education might be used to foster the difficult dialogues
necessary for critical peacebuilding education.
Critical approaches in peace education “aim to empower learners as transformative
change agents who critically analyze power dynamics” (Bajaj &
Brantmeier, 2011, p. 221). Such approaches manifest opportunities for
students to engage in difficult dialogues across communities of difference,
with the potential to disrupt foundational bodies of knowledge that shape
particular epistemologies. Through these disruptions, epistemologies may
be repositioned as sites of inquiry (Trifonas & Wright, 2013). The need to
create opportunities for critical peacebuilding education in Canada, specific
to reconciliation between settler populations and Aboriginal peoples,
is urgent in light ongoing processes of colonialism that shape these
relationships.1
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© 2014 by The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto
Curriculum Inquiry 44:4 (2014)
Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road,
Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
doi: 10.1111/curi.12060
Colonialism has “two fundamental and necessary components: an original
displacement and unequal relations” (Veracini, 2011, p. 1). Historically,
it has worked to produce abnormal relationships resulting from “lack of
reciprocity, disequilibrium of power, the use of force by an outside agent,
and the interruption of social, economic, and institutional development”
(Pratt, 2004, p. 447). As a colonial state, Canada has a long and welldocumented
history of displacement and unequal relations with Aboriginal
peoples. The harmful effects of colonialism are not only institutional, but
also emotional, spiritual and physical (Calderón, 2011). These effects make
difficult the possibilities for peacebuilding between settler2 and Aboriginal
peoples, which is essential to the larger hope for reconciliation (Zembylas,
2013).
This article argues that treaty education, as a form of critical
peacebuilding education, can challenge epistemologies of ignorance that
construct the appearance of peaceful colonial relations, while actually
reinforcing exploitation. It creates opportunities for students to consider
the ways in which colonial policies and practices have produced not only
structural (Galtung, 1969) violence based on socio-economic inequities, but
also symbolic violence based on racism and social marginalization
(Bourdieu, 1979), for Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Drawing on Charles
Mills’s work on White normativity and (imagined) innocence, Malewski and
Jaramillo (2011, p. 2) describe epistemologies of ignorance as “the active
production of ‘unknowing’ in order to keep in motion ‘the way things are’
instead of thinking about ‘the ways things could be.’” Gaps and exclusions in
curriculum and pedagogy are all aspects of “unknowing” that contribute to
constructed “truths” about what it means to be Canadian, as well as what it
means to be an Aboriginal person in Canada. As Davies (2005) argues, such
curricular gaps represent a form of violence and a challenge to
peacebuilding. In historical and contemporary relationships with Aboriginal
peoples, settler ignorance is actively maintained through the reinforcement
of colonial dispositions that are inherently anti-democratic and harmful.
In schools, colonial dispositions are typically perpetuated through
“colonial-blind” discourses that deny the continuing harm embedded in
settlers’ historical and contemporary relationships with Aboriginal people
(Calderón, 2011). Colonial discourses include narratives of the nation that
do not account for the foundational importance of Aboriginal peoples or
the ways in which assimilationist government policies have been deeply
harmful to Aboriginal peoples. These discourses are embedded in curriculum
and curricular materials that depict Aboriginal peoples as exotic
others, uniquely spiritual, as historical spectators, and/or as protestors
(Clark, 2007). Colonial discourses can also be reproduced through the
geographies of the classroom, including what teachers choose to display
and what resources they make available to students.
This article explores the ways in which treaty education in Saskatchewan
attempts to counteract colonial thinking in prescribed and lived curricula.
470 JENNIFER ANNE TUPPER
Specifically, I describe the engagement of 26 pre-service teachers, alongside
two grade 12 classes of English Language Arts students, with Project of
Heart, an inquiry project created by teacher and graduate student Sylvia
Smith (www.projectofheart.ca). The content made available in Project of
Heart includes numerous examples of how treaty promises made to
Aboriginal peoples were not fulfilled, particularly promises specific to education.
Because many First Nations initially saw treaties as a bridge to the
future for their children, especially through provisions for on-reserve
schooling, the policy of forcibly assimilating Aboriginal children in residential
schools violently undermined the spirit and intent of the foundational
treaties established between the (British colonial) Canadian government
and aboriginal peoples in central and western Canada, 1871–1921, known
as the numbered treaties. The Project of Heart resource makes these
connections explicit. As such, in this article I suggest that participation in
this curriculum implementation project created opportunities to reveal,
challenge and in some cases disrupt the colonial dispositions of the high
school and university students who participated. Such pedagogical/
epistemological interventions are integral to critical peacebuilding education
in Canada as they create the conditions for complicated conversations
(Pinar, 2011) necessary to peace education.
At the time of writing this article, concerns expressed publicly by the
Mi’kmaq peoples of the Elsipogtog First Nation regarding shale gas exploration
in New Brunswick, along with the (negative) federal government
response to these concerns, is illustrative of colonial tensions in Canada.
The usual depiction and description of these events in most mainstream
media is as contemporary conflict between (individual) Aboriginal peoples,
oil companies, and governments; this avoids deep consideration of the
roots and character of such destructive conflicts experienced by Aboriginal
peoples at the hands of a colonial state (Kinew, 2013). Other recent
examples of colonial tensions include the decision of the federal government
not to launch a national inquiry into the ongoing murders and
disappearances of Aboriginal women, despite requests by Aboriginal organizations
to do so, and the lawsuit filed by the Athabasca Chipewyan First
Nation in Alberta against the government of Canada regarding their
approval of the Jackpine mine expansion in traditional aboriginal territory.
TREATY EDUCATION IN SASKATCHEWAN
Treaty education invites teachers to include, in implemented curriculum,
historical and contemporary stories, knowledge, and experiences of First
Nations people, including those deeply connected to colonialism
(Archibald, 1997; Dillabough, 1996). Treaty education is much more than
teaching the content of the numbered treaties. As a mandatory curriculum
commitment in Saskatchewan since 2008, a central goal is “the
TREATY EDUCATION AS PEACEBUILDING 471
foundational entrenchment of First Nations and Métis ways of knowing,
content and perspectives” (Government of Saskatchewan, 2008) in all
school subjects. Another intent is “to build greater harmony in Saskatchewan
by improving the understanding of the treaties and the treaty relationship”
(Office of the Treaty Commissioner, 2008, p. 8). This is in
alignment with the goals of peacebuilding education (Gould, 2013) and
also serves as an indicator that colonial tensions continue to shape relationships
between Aboriginal peoples and others in the province.
Critical peacebuilding education is “a process that is dynamic and social
and involves transforming relationships” (A. Smith, McCandless, Paulson,
& Wheaton, 2011, p. 13). While existing colonial relations may create the
appearance of “peace” in Canada, this appearance is misleading and needs
to be interrupted. Unlike peacemaking (negotiation to resolve particular
disagreements), peacebuilding refers to initiatives for “redressing injustice,
democratization, and nurturing healthy social relationships” (Bickmore,
2011, p. 1). Critical peacebuilding education is a means through which to
disrupt “the foundations of particular bodies of knowledge,” creating
opportunities to “witness, see, and express found connections in
intersubjectivity that may eventually support the structures of human
futures” (Trifonas & Wright, 2013, p. xiv). It confronts “structures of violence
such as inequitable access and marginalization” (Parker & Bickmore,
2012, p. 29). For example, treaty education may teach about the failures of
the government to uphold the spirit and intent of the treaties, such as
forcing established and agriculturally productive First Nations reserves to
move to alternate locations (Lerat & Ungar, 2005).
The commitments of peacebuilding education are thus found in the
content of treaty education, as students and teachers are invited to know
the past differently (Farley, 2009). Those who had been ignorant of the
emotional, physical, mental and spiritual violence endured by Aboriginal
students in residential schools, or the many other forms of oppression and
violence perpetrated on the Indigenous peoples of Canada, are confronted
with the emotional terrain of learning that is necessary to come to know the
world differently (Tarc, 2013). In turn, learners’ knowledge of the world
may be unsettled which is integral to the anti-colonial (critical democratic
peacebuilding) project.
Reflections on My Settler-Self
I describe myself as a White settler Canadian, recognizing the material
benefits I enjoy every day as a result of this identity position and how they
can be traced to colonization. The settler society that I inhabit has been
“established by Europeans on non-European soil. Its origins lie in the
dispossession and near extermination of Indigenous populations by conquering
Europeans” (Razack, 2002, p. 2). It is “the specific formation of
472 JENNIFER ANNE TUPPER
colonialism in which the colonizer comes to stay, making himself the
sovereign, and the arbiter of citizenship, civility and knowing” (Tuck &
Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013, p. 73).
I use the term settler in my scholarship and teaching in an effort to
challenge how my students and I think about ourselves as Canadian citizens,
encouraging a deeper consideration of our relationships with
Aboriginal peoples. Similarly, my use of the term settler throughout this
article is deliberate in that I am describing the historical foundations of
Canada following European imperialism, and the ways in which colonialism
continues to shape contemporary social, political and economic realities.
I also use the term in an effort to shift my own and my students’
historical thinking—and ultimately our relationship to the known and
unknown—so that we may form new narratives that include
considerations of settler colonialism and the violence done to Aboriginal
peoples.
In my experience, the use of the term settler can evoke negative responses
from students and teachers. Some individuals perceive settlers as people of
the past, living at a time of Canadian expansion and the “opening up” of
the west, not as contemporary Canadians. Barker (2009, p. 328) cautions
that if used as a blanket term to describe non-Indigenous peoples, the term
“ignores the complexity of settler society and culture itself and normalizes
non-Indigenous society, preventing much useful analysis.” As an alternative,
the term settler colonialism describes persistent social and political formations
“in which newcomers/colonizers/settlers come to a place, claim it
as their own, and do whatever it takes to disappear the Indigenous peoples
that are there” (Arvin, Tuck, & Morrill, 2013, p. 12). The deliberate use of
the term settler has the potential to contribute to anti-colonialism and
transformative peacebuilding, as it may “set us on a transformative
decolonizing pathway toward more just and peaceful relations with Indigenous
peoples” (Regan, 2010, p. 2).
The land, valued and disputed, is at the heart of Indigenous–settler
relations. “For settlers to live on and profit from the land, they must
eliminate Indigenous peoples, and extinguish their historical, epistemological,
philosophical, moral and political claims to land” (Tuck &
Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013, p. 74). The land that I live and work on is the
traditional territory of the Cree, Saulteaux and Assiniboine peoples, the
original signatories of Treaty 4 with the Canadian government. The signing
of this historic agreement in 1874 meant that the land became available for
(European) settlement, and my ancestors took advantage of this opportunity.
Yet this was not the story that I was told by my family growing up on the
prairies.
My grandfather, a professor of economics at the University of Saskatchewan
from 1930 until his death in 1966, wrote about the prairie agricultural
economy and the value of farming to the Canadian state. My grandmother
shared stories of her pioneering parents who embodied the values of hard
TREATY EDUCATION AS PEACEBUILDING 473
work and courage. Absent from our family narratives was acknowledgement
that the land we felt deeply connected to came to us because of the
displacement of Aboriginal peoples. While I do not claim to know the
experiences of others, I suspect that the stories I was told growing up mirror
stories told to other children about their family histories, especially in light
of official stories of Canada that have not included Indigenous knowledge
systems, values, and historical perspectives.
It has taken me many years to come to this place of understanding, to
allow for cracks in my curricular common sense (Carlson, 1995; Tupper &
Cappello, 2008) and to acknowledge the extent of my historical ignorance.
Like many well-meaning educators, I have been complicit as a classroom
teacher and teacher educator in reproducing dominant narratives of
Canada as a fair and just nation, as embracing difference and diversity
(Tupper, 2011, 2012, 2013). As Donald (2009, p. 9) has urged, I reread
history “to show that the actual interactions between Aboriginal peoples
and Canadians were, and continue to be, more complex than colonial
binaries can possibly recount.” I am now actively working to disrupt colonialism
in my own teaching, because as Sterzuk (2011, p. 28) argues, “the
racialized spaces of schools and cities continue to be produced by colonialism
and nationalism in settler societies.” Thus, colonialism and my settleridentity
have and continue to influence my pedagogies, my relationships
with Aboriginal and settler students, and my curricular decisions (Tupper,
2013).
My struggle with establishing “an alternative listening position” (Dion,
2009, p. 17) from which to differently hear complexities, and the corresponding
challenges of reconciliation in my own research, scholarship and
teaching is ongoing. At the same time, I find myself hopeful that with some
humility, and through the frame of critical peacebuilding education, a
different future might be imagined and made possible.
COLONIALISM AS VIOLENCE
Colonial discourses enable structural and symbolic forms of violence. Structural
violence (in contrast to direct overt violence) exists when unequal
power is built into social structures, resulting in differential harm to some
people’s life chances (Galtung, 1969). Prevalent meritocratic discourses
ignore or explain away such inequities, suggesting that if any individual
worked hard enough, they could achieve success. In Canada’s context, the
economic prosperity of settler populations has been dependent on vast
tracts of land being made available to them through the displacement of
Aboriginal peoples. As Daschuk (2013) argues, policies of state-supported
starvation of Indigenous peoples on the Canadian prairies allowed for the
realization of Prime Minister John A. MacDonald’s national dream of
dominion from coast to coast. Thus, while the signing of treaties with First
474 JENNIFER ANNE TUPPER
Nations is often described as a peaceful approach to western expansion,
some of what led to (and resulted from) the signing of the treaties exemplifies
and reinforces structural violence.
French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu
(1979, p. 80) used the term symbolic violence to describe the harmful consequences
of social hierarchies, which require that some groups be marginalized
while others maintain dominance: “the power to impose . . .
instruments of knowledge and expressions . . . of social reality that are
arbitrary, but not recognized as such.” Central to symbolic violence are the
ways in which marginalized “others” are constructed by those in power.
Both the subjugated and the dominant come to absorb and understand
these constructions of inferiority as the norm, making it more difficult to
reveal and counter the workings of symbolic violence (Bourdieu &
Passeron, 1990). Canada has depended upon the creation of inequitable
relations with Aboriginal peoples for development and prosperity, and that
has constructed particular ways of “knowing” Aboriginal peoples; thus
symbolic violence persists to the detriment of reconciliation.
The hope that treaty education offers for critical peacebuilding learning,
and ultimately reconciliation, between settlers and Aboriginal peoples
in Canada lies in the possibilities it creates for rethinking colonialism,
which may lead to new understandings of the nation and its citizens,
through examination of specific content about Canada’s past and contemporary
Aboriginal–Canadian issues. By recognizing how forms of violence
structure the experiences of Aboriginal peoples in Canada, learning about
treaties and the treaty relationship invites difficult dialogues about their
“consequences in everyday life” (Zembylas & Bekerman, 2013, p. 205).
While these dialogues may initially create (or surface) conflict for students,
such disruption of the “known” is necessary for critical peacebuilding
education.
NATIONAL NARRATIVES AND SETTLER IDENTITIES
In Canada, dominant historical narratives have failed to make visible the
importance of Aboriginal peoples to the foundation of the country (Saul,
2008). The myth of the empty wilderness, for example, is “produced by
agents of the state” as a means of commemorating “the arrival of early
explores, settlers, missionaries, and industries in the remote regions of
Canada” (Furniss, 1999, p. 53). As Furniss (1999, p. 54) explains, such
frontier histories play a significant role in the construction of partial
“truths” that come to “define conventional historical understandings for
members of a society.” Similarly, Thobani (2007, p. 19) refers to the stillpopularized
national myth of Canadians as “new people building a new
land.” Such discovery narratives underlie presumed property rights in
settler colonial societies (Tuck, 2013).
TREATY EDUCATION AS PEACEBUILDING 475
The power of conscious and unconscious history, memory, and national
narratives to constitute the way individuals develop identities as citizens of
a country have become important considerations in my research and teaching.
Thus I make a pedagogical effort to enable peacebuilding by bringing
learners “into a broken world” by introducing difficult historical knowledge
(Tarc, 2013, p. 389).
In a recent study, Burrows (2013) found that many students of high
school social studies readily subscribed to a belief in Canada as a fair and
just nation, so much so that they often attempted to explain away the
injustices experienced by Aboriginal peoples historically and today (see
also Tupper & Cappello, 2012). The public narrative of Canada as a multicultural
nation, with freedom and equality for all, clearly has the power to
shape consciousness and construct ignorance, making it more difficult for
students to see the realities of racism in Canada as anything more than
individual acts. When people come to believe the narrative that Canada is
fair and just, and can cite many examples of this “fairness” over time, they
may be unable or unwilling to account for narratives that suggest otherwise
(Montgomery, 2013). As Anderson (2012, p. 507) notes, “hegemonic historical
narratives . . . cannot easily be dislodged.”
TRANSFORMING RELATIONSHIPS: LEARNING THE LEGACY OF
RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS IN CANADA
In summer 2012, I was preparing to teach a 14-week social studies curriculum
class (ESST 300) to secondary pre-service teachers at the University of
Regina. Occurring in the third year of the 4-year Bachelor of Education
program, the course objective is to explore mandatory social sciences curriculum
(social studies, history, native studies, law and psychology) for
grades 9–12. Since 2007, I have included treaty education as an integral
component of the course, inviting students to consider how they might
integrate it in their own social science teaching. As my knowledge of
treaties and the treaty relationship expands, and I continue to interrogate
how my own identity has been shaped through particular historical/
colonial narratives, I have become more confident in my abilities to critically
engage teacher candidates with treaty education.
For this iteration of ESST 300, I chose to use a certain curricular initiative,
described below, to explore in depth a specific instance of treaty
education: “The Indian Act of 1876 Was Not a Part of Treaty” (Office of the
Treaty Commissioner, 2008). The Office of the Treaty Commissioner, an
independent body created by the federal government to provide
recommendations in the areas of treaty land entitlement and education,
created a Treaty Resource Guide for this topic, organized into four sections:
The Indian Act of 1876; The First Nations’ Traditional Teachings and
Languages Are Suppressed; The First Nations’ Traditional Lifestyles
476 JENNIFER ANNE TUPPER
Change; and Unfulfilled Treaty Promises. Learning objectives include “the
students will recognize the impact schools had and continue to have on
the cultures and languages of First Nations people in Saskatchewan” and
“the students will realize that First Nations peoples and communities continue
to deal with and heal from the many abuses experienced by First
Nations peoples in residential schools” (Office of the Treaty Commissioner,
2008, p. 25).
A central aspect of the way that I approach treaty education is to provide
students with entry points into counter-narratives regarding past and
present issues and events, as these have been articulated and experienced
by Aboriginal Canadians. For example, course participants spend time
examining the treaty-making process, reading the text of Treaty 4 between
the Canadian government and the Aboriginal peoples then living in the
region where our course is held, and considering how that agreement to
share the land continues to produce economic benefits for settlers (including
ourselves in the classroom). I invite discussion about how Canada’s
Indian Act of 1876 undermined the spirit and intent of the numbered
treaties, which had framed the relationship of the Canadian government
with Aboriginal peoples as “brother to brother” (Miller, 2009), framing the
relationship instead in paternalistic ways.
The teacher candidates are often surprised (as I was, originally) at the
contrast between the texts of the numbered treaties and the Indian Act.
Like other critical peacebuilding education, this inquiry into the Indian Act
helps to “expose the forces that prevent individuals and groups from
shaping the decisions that crucially affect their lives” (Denzin & Lincoln,
2000, as cited in Bajaj & Brantmeier, 2011, p. 221). The Indian Act embodied
the doctrine of assimilation to which the federal government of the day
subscribed, based on the assumption “that Aboriginal peoples were inferior
to Europeans and incapable of governing themselves . . . [and that] it was
the state’s responsibility to civilize them by imposing European values”
(Warry, 2007, p. 53). The act legislated inequality that perpetuates harm to
Aboriginal people.
In effect, the Indian Act paved the way for the creation of forced residential
schooling for Aboriginal children in Canada, in contrast to the
support of education on reserves that was promised in the numbered
treaties. Schools were intended to “civilize the savages” through education
and the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their homes (Milloy,
1999, p. 6). In these sites of symbolic violence, children were not permitted
to speak their languages, were subjected to various forms of abuse, had
limited, if any, contact with their families for 10 months of the year, and
were not permitted to practice their culture. At some schools, medical
experiments were conducted on children and illnesses were left untreated.
There are also examples of students being electrocuted in homemade
electric chairs and being forced to eat their own vomit (Roman, 2014).
Engaging teacher candidates and students with the history and ongoing
TREATY EDUCATION AS PEACEBUILDING 477
painful legacy of residential schools in Canada is an important way critical
peacebuilding education explores the structures through which power is
mediated (Reardon, 2013).
In winter 2012, I had attended a talk given by Sylvia Smith, an Ottawa
teacher and graduate student in the Faculty of Education at the University
of Regina. During her talk, Sylvia spoke about her residential schools
curricular inquiry initiative, Project of Heart (www.projectofheart.ca). I was
struck by her story of coming to understand herself as an uninvited guest
on Aboriginal lands, and her desire to create something tangible that might
be used to facilitate educative discussion among Canadians about our
shared history. As symbolic acts of reconciliation, Project of Heart includes
creating commemorative art, inviting a residential school survivor(s) to
speak about his/her experiences, and finally, participating in a smudging
ceremony. In many respects, Project of Heart opens a space to think
together about the historical and contemporary significance of residential
schools as a part of the larger colonial project. It also invites participants to
extend their learning into some form of social action project, consistent
with Galtung’s (1983, p. 282) call for students in peace education to “make
use of what they have learnt.”
I contacted Helen (pseudonym), a classroom teacher with whom I had
a long-standing relationship, first as an intern I had supervised, then as a
teacher participant in a Social Science and Humanities Research Council
of Canada–funded research project, and now as a graduate student in
Curriculum and Instruction. I approached her specifically because I knew
her to be open to taking risks and as deeply concerned about the effects of
settler colonialism in education. Her response to my invitation was enthusiastic,
so we began to plan how we would meaningfully take up the initiative
with my university teacher candidates and her grade 12 students.
Although she would be teaching language arts and not social studies, we
felt this was not a barrier, especially as the treaty education mandate in
Saskatchewan is meant to be interdisciplinary. To be clear, this curricular
initiative was not part of a formal research project; however, both Helen
and I documented our planning and work with students through reflective
journaling. I also kept more specific notes from each of the ESST classes I
taught, leading up to Project of Heart, in order to remind myself of what
was working, what was challenging, and what learning I was doing in the
midst of teaching my students.
When, prior to the start of the semester, I met with Helen to plan, we
agreed that we would need to be open, fluid and flexible as neither one of
us knew our next-term students, nor had any sense of their knowledge and
understanding of residential schools. To facilitate “the taming of historical
complexity” (den Heyer & Abbott, 2011, p. 612), we decided that I would
need time to do some foundational treaty education work with my teacher
candidates first, and as such, that we would wait until October to come
together with the high school students. We imagined an inquiry spanning
478 JENNIFER ANNE TUPPER
6 weeks, with approximately 12 teacher candidates involved in each visit to
the high school (fitting the 24 candidates in at different times, based on
their university course schedules), during which we would collectively
engage in difficult dialogues about the history of Aboriginal–Canadian
relations.
In preparation, the teacher candidates spent time studying the provisions,
spirit, and intent of the numbered treaties, including their negotiated
terms for on-reserve education. Next, we examined instances in which
treaty promises had been broken. Helen similarly worked with her grade 12
students.3 Thus, the stage was set for Project of Heart. The teacher candidates
and I then worked with a variety of materials including resources
provided by Sylvia Smith, written and oral survivor testimonies, the Legacy
of Hope Foundation 100 Years of Loss Teacher Resource Guide, and
chapters from the books A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the
Residential School System, 1879–1986 (Milloy, 1999), and Resistance and
Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School (Haig-Brown, 1988).
As we read, watched and discussed these materials, I spoke with the
teacher candidates about my own journey to learning about the numbered
treaties and residential schools. Many of them expressed anger that
they had not learned about this aspect of Canadian history in their
schooling, and so we discussed how they had been systematically denied
this opportunity. One of the teacher candidates shared with me that he
had “learned nothing about First Nations peoples, let alone residential
schools” until coming to this class (e-mail correspondence, October 24,
2012). Another teacher candidate shared that her high school social
studies teacher had described residential schools as a positive government
initiative to educate Aboriginal children who would not otherwise have
had the opportunity.
There were tense moments when teacher candidates demonstrated colonial
dispositions through their misunderstandings about the history presented
in the curriculum. In some instances, teacher candidates struggled
to make sense of the inter-generational trauma resulting from the residential
school experiences. They wondered why Aboriginal peoples couldn’t
just “get over” residential schools, especially because a public apology had
been made and many survivors had received settlement claims. Some
wanted to explore the positive experiences of students who attended residential
schools. I responded that although not all students who attended
residential schools were subjected to abuse, overwhelmingly survivor testimonies
reveal trauma and hurt (Milloy, 1999).
The colonial dispositions of many of my teacher candidates mirrored the
beliefs that I have struggled with, revealing the power of dominant historical
narratives to shape our understandings of Canada and our identities as
settler Canadians. Engaging with a destabilizing narrative that challenges
the conceptions of nation-building as relatively peaceful can be difficult.
Warry (2007) argues,
TREATY EDUCATION AS PEACEBUILDING 479
The denial of the destructiveness of colonialism is essential if Aboriginal peoples are
to be blamed for their current problems. . . . If there is nothing in our history to feel
guilty about, then we can ignore Aboriginal peoples’ claims for compensation or
contemporary redress. If the intentions of our ancestors and forefathers were good,
then any harm that was done can be rationalized, and we can start afresh. (p. 55)
As the instructor of the course, I actively worked to address the misunderstandings
and gaps in my own knowledge, as well as those demonstrated by
my teacher candidates, along with the efforts of some candidates to frame
colonialism’s destructiveness as minimal—all the while interrogating with
my students why such beliefs and gaps might exist in the first place. As a
class, we also considered the ways in which teacher candidates would
attempt to translate their learning about residential schools to the high
school setting, cognizant that in many respects they would continue to
learn alongside the grade 12s and would need to do so with humility.
Our first visit to the high school began with a talking circle. My teacher
candidates had prepared an explanation of talking circles and provided an
object (talking piece) to pass in the circle as each person introduced
him-/herself and spoke about what s/he was thinking about our collaboration.
This activity required respectful listening. Next the grade 12 students
were given the opportunity to share their own knowledge of
residential schools and to pose any questions they had, through a graffiti
wall activity: a large ream of paper was laid across the classroom floor, and
students were invited to draw images or write down questions about residential
schools while the teacher candidates circulated. After the activity,
the graffiti wall was hung prominently in the classroom. The questions
asked by students ranged from “What were residential schools?” to “How
could Canadians have allowed for residential schools?” The graffiti wall
demonstrated that the high school students had a range of knowledge,
attitudes and understandings about Aboriginal peoples generally and
about residential schools specifically. In between visits, the teacher candidates
and I continued studying treaties and the treaty relationship, while
the grade 12 students continued studying a novel about racism and colonialism,
In Search of April Rain Tree, by Beatrice Culleton Mosionier (1999).
Thus both the teacher education and the high school class carried out
continuing discussions of racism and colonialism, which were extended
into the Project of Heart inquiry.
The second visit to the high school involved exploring, in small groups
each led by two teacher candidates, some of the questions posed by the
grade 12s on the graffiti wall, to address any misunderstandings that had
been articulated, and to introduce them to the treaty promises and the
Indian Act. Following the lesson, two teacher candidates who had
facilitated a discussion with six of the grade 12s expressed frustration with
themselves, because they felt they had not handled a specific comment very
well. One of the students in their group had reiterated the meritocratic
belief that if Aboriginal people worked harder, they could achieve success.
480 JENNIFER ANNE TUPPER
The teacher candidates shared that they had felt uncomfortable responding
to this comment, because they did not want to “upset” the student or
“shut him out.” As a teacher education class, we brainstormed strategies
they might use in the future that would not let such comments go, but
would not alienate the student either. My teacher candidates decided the
essay on White privilege written by Peggy McIntosh (1990), “White Privilege:
Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” might be a useful pedagogical
tool, applied to a discussion of the disproportionate privileges afforded
settler Canadians.
In the third session, the class watched videos of survivors talking about
their experiences of residential schools to invite the grade 12 students into
a deeper conversation about the historical and contemporary effects of
these experiences on Aboriginal communities. For example, in light of
comments made by one survivor in the video that she did not know how to
parent because of her experiences of residential schooling, one of the
groups of students discussed at length the challenges this might present for
the emotional health of families where one or both parents were survivors.
The fourth session began with a “social supports” activity, whereby
teacher candidates and grade 12 students stood together in a circle with a
ball of yarn and articulated ways in which they had been supported in their
lives. Each time someone spoke, s/he would throw the yarn to someone
else, thus creating an intricate web. Once everyone named a support, one
teacher candidate began to cut the pieces of yarn. With each snip, she
articulated one way that residential schools had denied social supports to
Aboriginal students. Teacher candidates debriefed with the grade 12s in
small groups and then invited them to engage in reflective writing
that considered the social costs of residential schools for Aboriginal
communities.
During the fifth visit, resources from the Legacy of Hope Foundation
100 Years of Loss exhibit were set up around the classroom to provide a
timeline, locating residential schools in relation to other colonial policies
detrimental to Aboriginal peoples in Canada. In our last visit to the school,
my teacher candidates led an activity they had planned to explore the
power of apology, and the class watched a video of the Canadian federal
government’s 2008 apology to Aboriginal peoples for the harmful policy of
residential schooling. All of these visits and corresponding activities were
coordinated by the teacher candidates. I shared all planning details with
Helen, so we could both provide advice and support during and between
lessons.
Not every lesson went as planned—given the difficult nature of the
content, resistance from some of the high school students, the struggles
inexperienced teacher candidates encountered in teaching, and occasionally,
overt expressions of racism. The teacher candidates made adaptations
and adjustments as seemed necessary, debriefing with both Helen and me
after each visit. They sometimes struggled with students who were reluctant
TREATY EDUCATION AS PEACEBUILDING 481
to speak up, who seemed uninterested or who spoke in ways that were
dismissive of the effects of residential schools. In debriefing and planning
sessions in the teacher education class, we talked at length about creating
multiple entry points for students to engage in difficult dialogues. The
grade 12 students wrote reflections on their learning throughout the
project, which they shared with teacher candidates.
For our sixth and final meeting, the grade 12 students spent the day at
the university. We attended a Remembrance Day ceremony at the First
Nations University of Canada in the morning. In the afternoon, we collectively
participated in painting 250 wooden tiles to memorialize the lives lost
at residential schools. This activity began with a Cree knowledge keeper
and survivor sharing some of his experiences at residential schools and
talking with us about the ways in which Aboriginals and Canadians might
heal together. Once the tiles were completed, we all participated in a
smudging ceremony and round dance led by the Cree knowledge keeper,
in which he encouraged us to consider how we might be allies in anticolonialism
and reconciliation. One of the grade 12 students asked him
how he had been able to heal from his experiences of residential schools,
and he responded that it had been very difficult at times, but that through
forgiveness, he had begun the healing journey.
For my teacher candidates, the formal inquiry into residential schools
ended with a talking circle in the ESST 300 class and reflective writing,
through which they could express the learning they took from the experience.
They created learning plans for teaching about residential schools
that they might be able to use in their internship experiences the following
fall, and in their own classrooms upon graduation from teacher education.
In these plans, most were able to make explicit connections between treaty
education (in particular, residential schools) and social studies and history
curricular outcomes. Helen continued working with her students on social
action projects focused on contemporary Aboriginal issues.
Throughout this work, the teacher candidates and I talked at length
about treaty education as a curricular intervention to disrupt the ways
people often view the past in relation to present Aboriginal–Canadian
relations. One teacher candidate commented that “this was the most powerful
teaching and learning I participated in. I was so amazed with what the
grade 12 students were able to take from Project of Heart” (teaching
journal, November 2012). Another shared, “I have learned a lot about my
viewpoint on First Nations, and have changed the way I think about teaching
for social justice” (course reflection, December 2012).
In our final talking circle and also in their written reflections, teacher
candidates discussed the value of experiencing tensions that “arise when
covering residential schools. While some of the ideas that came up were not
always comfortable, it was useful to learn how to approach some of these
situations” (course reflection, December 2012). Project of Heart helped
many of the teacher candidates to understand that the topic of residential
482 JENNIFER ANNE TUPPER
schools—and by extension, treaty education—meant encountering and
teaching through colonial tensions and resistances, engaging in dialogue
on (previously submerged) sensitive conflictual issues, and being attentive
to their own and their students’ ignorance and gaps in knowledge, respectfully
and with humility.
While I cannot say for certain the lasting effects of Project of Heart on
the grade 12 students, or the extent to which their colonial dispositions
were unsettled, through my conversations with teacher candidates and high
school students and their reflective writing about Project of Heart, I was
heartened that many were questioning their understandings of Canadian
history and of Aboriginal–Canadian relations. One teacher candidate wrote
to me in an e-mail:
I am thankful for having been able to participate in Project of Heart and having
been able to explore residential schools and their impact with the students. While
our lessons did not always run perfectly, I found being able to teach such an
emotionally intense subject as residential schools helped me prepare for future
lessons and classrooms I will be in. Through the process of Project of Heart, I
learned a lot of about residential schools myself as well, and I feel I have a deeper
understanding of the events that occurred with the schools. Project of Heart was a
wonderful way to explore and commemorate the impact of residential schools, and
I would definitely like to use a program like this in the future. (T. M., November 19,
2012)
In their written and oral reflections, many teacher candidates expressed
frustration that they had not previously learned very much, if anything,
about residential schools, or about the treaty relationship between Aboriginal
peoples and settler Canadian governments. Some were able to extend
their learning by making explicit connections to contemporary social issues
facing Aboriginal peoples.
CONCLUSION
Given the challenges presented by Canada’s colonial history, the work of
peacebuilding is difficult. However, it is possible that colonial dispositions
can be mitigated through a variety of interventions—including curriculum.
Helping students make connections to treaties and the treaty relationship,
to see how their lives continue to be shaped by these agreements, to
understand the very real material and psychic implications of dishonouring
the treaties for Aboriginal–Canadian relations, is peacebuilding education.
As Bickmore (2005, p. 3) asserts, “ways of thinking, being and behaving are
not completely autonomous. Rather, individual and collective agency is
shaped and constrained by the currents of power surrounding cultural
patterns, social locations, and education.”
Treaty education contributes to democratic peacebuilding by challenging
epistemologies of ignorance that deny Aboriginal peoples’ daily
TREATY EDUCATION AS PEACEBUILDING 483
experience of colonial oppression. I saw this happen through Project of
Heart, as several high school and university students began to question
their own knowledge and understandings of Aboriginal peoples, historically
and today, and to critically respond to meritocratic discourses they
had been socialized into, that assume a level playing field for all Canadians,
positioning Aboriginal peoples as responsible for their own social and
economic circumstances.
The learning experiences that my teacher candidates and I shared
alongside the grade 12 students required difficult conversations about the
experiences of residential school survivors and ongoing colonial legacies.
These conversations often involved probing students’ beliefs about the
past, in an attempt to clarify their thinking in the present. The misunderstandings
expressed by many of the grade 12 students, such as the pervasive
belief that Aboriginal people are exempt from paying federal tax, were
usually corrected in respectful but direct ways by teacher candidates.
During our sixth visit, I spoke at length with one of the grade 12s who had
been particularly resistant and difficult throughout the inquiry. We discussed
the excessive representation of Aboriginal peoples in the prison
system, which he was researching for his social action project. I suggested
that he might want to do some research on the over-policing of Aboriginal
peoples, and he agreed, stating that prior to Project of Heart, he had not
realized the complexities of the issue. He acknowledged that racist thinking
had clouded his knowledge.
The process of coming to know differently is inevitably complex.
Avenues for “contesting, reconfiguring” and “sufficiently [reflecting a]
history that is not only infinitely more complex but marred by violence”
must be actively sought in order to be found (B. Smith, Ng-A-Fook, Berry,
& Spence, 2011, p. 66). As Niyozov (2013, p. 302) suggests, following Paulo
Freire, “Hope and possibilities reside in a different reading of, and acting
on, a reading of the word and the world.” Since its inception, the intent of
treaty education has been to recast the history of Canada in ways that allow
for different readings: this is why learning about the Indian Act and residential
schooling is an integral aspect of this curriculum initiative. As
Regan (2010) explains,
The elders tell us what went wrong in the treaty relationship they established with
Canada, of how treaties that were negotiated according to their diplomatic protocols
were subsequently dishonored as Indian policy and legislation overrode the
spirit and intent of the treaties. (p. 160)
Treaty education attempts to counter the violence that can be perpetrated
through the curricular common sense, by making epistemologies
sites of inquiry (Tupper & Cappello, 2008). It offers hope: hope for disrupting
epistemologies of ignorance by naming and interrupting dominant
historical narratives (Canada as a fair and tolerant country, treaties as
historic rather than living agreements, Aboriginal peoples as responsible
484 JENNIFER ANNE TUPPER
for their own life circumstances), and thereby hope for peacebuilding
between settler communities and Aboriginal peoples. In the context of
Project of Heart, hope emerged as the students were provoked to open
their eyes to the existence of symbolic and structural violence. The teacher
candidates demonstrated awareness of their failures to address racist and
ignorant comments made by some of the grade 12 students in small- or
large-group discussions. Helen and I talked with them about their feelings
of tension, suggesting strategies for how they might respectfully but firmly
address and correct such comments. As such, the conflict experienced by
the teacher candidates as they struggled to teach back to colonial dispositions
opened spaces necessary for moving toward a just peace.
There is much work yet to be done with in-service and pre-service
teachers as they struggle to actualize treaty education in their own classrooms.
I continue to be confronted by how I reproduce my own settler
dispositions in and through my teaching. For these reasons I have come to
deeply value treaty education as a form of critical education that creates
openings for the possibilities of peace “across, within, and through difficult
dialogues” (Trifonas & Wright, 2013, p. xiv). As Regan (2010, p. 241)
suggests, people can learn to live together in relation to difficult histories,
“envisioning reconciliation as a liberatory form of non-violent resistance.”
Thus, as one form of peacebuilding education, treaty education opens such
possibilities.
NOTES
1. Throughout this discussion, I use Aboriginal as an encompassing term to refer to
First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples of Canada. When I use the term First
Nations, it is in the context of specific communities/groups of Aboriginal
peoples, many of whom signed treaties with the federal government, and are
neither Inuit nor Métis.
2. Following Regan (2010), settler in this discussion refers to both the descendents
of Euro-Canadians who arrived in Canada during the colonial period, and the
more recent arrival of diverse immigrants who constitute part of contemporary
settler society.
3. Numbers varied with anywhere between 13–22 student participants during any
given visit.
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