#dfgk

the french catholic school system is really pretty shit about it. in 6th grade i very vividly remember learning about specific first nations tribes in canada. in elementary school cultural appropriation is encouraged in the form of a celebration called “la journée de la sainte catherine” which is a day that celebrates a saint who lured indigenous children into her school with candy to teach them (i’m still not 100% sure about the indigenous people’s view of this, as I was taught it only in its glorified form and my research on the subject from other people’s point of view has been fruitless) and the little white kids at the schools are asked to come to school dressed as one of three options, one of which is a super stereotypical “native american” (I use that word because it’s the closest translation of the french term used and idk about it’s connotations in english when referencing the indigenous people of canada). 

in middle school we were introduced to the residential school system (which was pretty much a system of mass assimilation through which the government would rip first nations kids from their families to make them more european seeming, many of the schools had serious physical and sexual abuse problems, on top of the basic emotional abuse it is to make someone hate their own heritage.) to my recollection, it was very minimized and kinda like “well the gov has apologized since then so it’s fine.” because the high school course i took was canadian history after wwi there wasn’t much mentioned at all.

(also just to add an entirely anecdotal opinion based on my interaction with french people in northern ontario: some french people around here have a HUGE victim complex. that’s not to say that they didn’t get fucked over by british rulers a few times (such as during the acadian deportation), but it’s massively overblown. there;s a huge focus on how ontario hates french people even though bilingualism, around here at least, is very strongly encouraged. we spent all of middle school writing essays about how the french were so poorly treated and were never taught anything about what they did wrong. the residential schools we learned about, for example, started when canada was under british rule.)

anyway cut to my current course and I was SHOCKED when I started it. the first document is a summary of various terms that can be used to speak of the various indigenous groups in canada, their connotations and historical contexts, and the circumstances under which they can be used. there were in depth analyses of the introduction of the reserve system, the indian act, the residential school system, the white paper, and repeated inserts of the indigenous people’s voiced opinions on these events. there was even analyses of the current status of these things, including an activity to understand life on reserves, and articles about the financial state of reserves like attawapiskat.