Narrative, Decolonial Education, and Societal Transformation

Abstract

In 1857, the (then) Province of Canada passed the Gradual Civilization Act with the explicit purpose of assimilating Native peoples into British colonial society. The Act stemmed from an assumption that Indigenous persons were inferior in both spirit and culture, a sentiment exemplified in empire enthusiast Rudyard Kipling’s (1899) depiction of colonized peoples worldwide: ‘Your new-caught, sullen peoples,/ Half-devil and half-child’. By 1920, federal government policy mandated residential school attendance for all Native children aged seven to 15. Children were often forcibly removed from their communities and compelled to reside for ten months a year in institutions wherein Indigenous languages, traditions, and cultural practices were discouraged or suppressed. Living conditions were substandard and students endured physical and emotional abuse. Notably, many Indigenous groups actively sought schooling for their children as part of a cogent strategy for weathering the changes the Europeans brought. However, the schools were orchestrated following Euro-Canadian racist assumptions. Approximately 150,000 Indigenous children attended Canada’s 130 residential schools before 1996 when the last federally run school closed in Saskatchewan (Miller, 1996; International Center, 2014).