Customer Reviews

Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Canadians are not known for hubris, but one thing most Canadians will show some pride about is the belief that Canada is the good guy of the world; an identity that is exhibited in everything from peacekeeping and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to politeness. However, Canada has an ugly not-too-distant past in the treatment of First Nations Peoples that is not commonly acknowledged.

In her book Resistance and Renewal, Celia Haig-Brown compiles first-hand accounts from members of the Shuswap Nation of the west coast, who were forced to attend the Kamloops Indian Residential School. As children, these individuals were taken from their family homes to a giant brick institution operated by nuns and missionaries, where they were subject to all manner of abuse, and punished if they spoke their own language. The mission of these schools was to integrate Native children into white society, or in other words, cultural genocide.

Resistance and Renewal is a cultural and historical study, but Haig-Brown's intentions for the book are to reach beyond the academic world. There is "richness and insight" in the stories her informants tell, and she seeks to reveal to a wide audience the skeletons in Canada's closet. The stories of her informants are organized by common themes and experiences, and lay out a clear portrait of suffering and subversion, the infliction and consequences of deep wounds. Her analysis of the school system elaborates how these injustices originated in the racist notions of Canadian government policy makers who referred to their work as "aggressive civilization."

For the non-Native audience, Haig-Brown gives faces and lives to a particular segment of First Nations people, and attempts to show something of the origins of the social problems those people face today. White Canadian society can easily ignore this tiny percentage of our nation's population, but in ignoring the history of Canada's treatment of indigenous people our national identity as the good guys of human rights becomes a lie.

It is important for all Canadians to bring these issues into their national historical knowledge, and to recognize that they are not in the past, but in contemporary society. The last residential school was only closed in the nineties, and the children of the system are now adults and leaders of their communities.

Since its first publication in 1988, Resistance and Renewal has found a place in the popular realm. Non-Native Canadian readers continue to be educated about the state of the third world within our borders, and Native readers have found their own experiences reflected in its pages, leading to the healing of old wounds suffered by individuals and communities and to the continued fight with the Canadian government for apology and recompense.

I was a little disappointed with what I received. There are numerous instances of underlining throughout the book. I don't remember that being included in the description of the book although the seller may not have had the space to include that

This short book regarding Indian Boarding School experiences in Canada reads like a masters thesis. It was fairly dry and I had to force myself to finish it. However, it did have a "saving grace". The forward to this book was written by Randy Fred, who wrote about his life prior, during and after entering Kamloops Indian Residential School. Ms. Haig-Brown is a professional educator and tried to reinforce that tribes are taking control of the educational systems involving their children now. She did not address the cultural values involved in the meaning and goals of education, which continue to conflict between the mainstream and traditional cultures.