BRENDA ST. GERMAIN M S W , R S W

SOCIAL WORK: TRANSFORMATION

IN THE BEGINNING… PART 1

BEHIND THE COLONIAL WALL :7 PROPHECIES AND COLONIZAT ION

Today’s agenda – June 16

Purpose: Understand Canada Pre-confederation: Defining and describe colonialism & colonization; Doctrine

of Discovery & genocide intentGoal: Awareness of impact from societal valuesReview: contextualize and identify philosophical

values in two different cultures and concept of “colonizer & the colonized” ; white privilege

Discuss: Pictures tell the story; Societal Values, Ideologies and Influences = government & media

* Oral history is re-calling the past into the present – Here’s my story…

*I was attending events where speakers were presenting themes resembling “alarms” in both worlds where I walk: Native & mainstream - Wake up! and Stop! Get up and don’t ignore the destruction anymore – go back to the “old ways”

*But few are moving towards those philosophies in either world and I kept wondering, “Why?”

*If the original Native ontological way of life is valued – “Why weren’t more communities incorporating the philosophies into their own schools?” “Why was mainstream society controlling the destruction but had others who were worried and joining my circles?”

*Discussions (large & small groups) to encourage dialogues

WARNING & DISCLAIMER

• Every Picture Tells a Story: a form of fusion-methodology that blends Indigenous with Western• Pictures capture the history of Aboriginal people in Canada• This workshop will be used as documentation to record

Indigenous perspectives of the history of our people (Aboriginal)while Settlers transformed from visitors to colonizers in a new land

WARNING: THIS WORKSHOP CONTAINS PICTURES OR CONTENT THAT SOME VIEWERS MAY FIND DISTURBING. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS WORKSHOP DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE CASW CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS OR ACSW – please monitor reactions and implement self-care if necessary (breathing, prayer, counselling, de-briefing,etc.)

Pre-Confederation Images to promote - Indians as cruel savages

Reality of colonization

Colonial Language & Propaganda: Tools to maintain racism

CAPTION READS: Physically imposing with a thirst for destruction, the savage indian with his menacing cry will kill, rape, burn down, steal and destroy all in his path. This is what the propaganda would have you believe about Native Americans whether they be provoked or not.

IGNOBLE: not honorable in character or purposesynonyms:: shameful, contemptible, despicable, dastardly, vile, sordid, mean

COLONIAL CLEANSING

• Great Britain & British colonial officials recorded in minute detail the horrors they committed in their cleaning goal with close to 95% of the people (Indigenous) exterminated

• “one gets the impression that they were proud of the barbarous crimes against humanity they were committing while appropriating the properties of sovereign First Nations Peoples” (2006, Paul, “We Were Not the Savages)

• Paul argues, “systemic racism instilled in the majority of Caucasians by colonial demonizing propaganda, which depicts our ancestors as the ultimate sub-human savages, is still widespread…witnessed by the level of discrimination still suffered [today].

• SMALL GROUPS: Discuss whether or not your organization deals with racism or share situations where you have witnessed racism against Aboriginal peoples. Provide a brief description of situation, action/words/ behaviors & reactions – and what was outcome? Feelings?

Reality of ColonizationPre-Confederation Colonial Laws Still Exist

Gov. Cornwallis hated Canada & the Indians. He introduced the “British Scalp Proclamations” in 1749 & 1750 – to solve problem against the Micmac Indians when they were told their land was going to be settled by British

“to all His Majesty’s Subjects..do promise a reward of ten Guineas for every Indian Micmac taken or killed, to be paid upon producing such Savage taken or his scalp (as is the custom of America)… This bounty law remains in effect & Aboriginal chiefs are having hard time getting government to revoke and apologize for it (Foot, 2000, National Post)

Province passed off problem to Ottawa officials – Proclamation is probably a federal matter….

Laws & legislation are never “deleted” – simply revised or amended (repeal is to annul or abrogate an existing law)

COLONIAL LAWS NEVER REVOKED

CANADIAN COLONIAL LAWS

• 1867: British North America Act which gave legislative responsibility for Indigenous peoples to Canada; responsibility was referred to as the “Indian Problem” and policy of assimilation was adopted.

• 1869: Gradual Enfranchisement Act which assumed the inherent superiority of British ways, and the need for Indians to become English-speakers, Christians, and farmers.

• 1876: Indian Act which made Canada responsible for “Indian” education; goal was to educate students to prepare them to function in mainstream society; they would move into mainstream communities and eventually there would be no one left on the reserves.

• 1879: Nicholas Flood Davin Report noted that "the industrial school is the principal feature of the policy known as that of 'aggressive civilization'....Indian culture is a contradiction in terms...they are uncivilized...the aim of education is to destroy the Indian."

• 1883: Canadian federal government begins building Residential Schools far away from reserves to ensure children are educated in European ways

• 2014: Bill C-33 Education Act did not offer long-term funding guarantees, FN control over education and a recognition of their languages and culture in curriculum. • There was never a full consultation and inclusive process with First Nations by the government: only AFN

approval

RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS – ABORIGINAL RECORDS OF HISTORY

• 1827: Excerpt from the Diary of Egerton Ryerson (Known as the Father of Residential Schools): "[I] attended the great annual meeting of the Indians, and opened the Gospel Mission among them. In my first address, I explained to the assembled Indians the cause of their poverty, misery, and wretchedness, as resulting from their having offended the Great Being who created them, but who still loved them so much as to send His Son to save them, and to give them new hearts, that they might forsake their bad ways, be sober and industrious; not quarrel, but love one another,…I contrasted the superiority of the religion we brought to them over that of those who used images…It is of the last importance to perpetuate and extend the impressions which have already been made on the minds of these Indians. The schools and religious instruction must be continued; and the Gospel must be sent to tribes still in a heathen state.”

• 1840’s: The first Residential Schools were set up in Ontario (they were called Industrial Schools initially); the Federal Government became involved in the running of the schools in 1844, after the findings of the Bagot Commission were reported.

• 1842-1844: The Bagot Commission was created to do a two-year review of conditions on reserves. It reported “half-civilized states” and gave several recommendations including residential education.

• 1847: Excerpt from a report on the study of Native education commissioned by the Assistant Superintendent General of Indian Affairs: "There is a need to raise the Indians to the level of the whites...and take control of land out of Indians hands. The Indian must remain under the control of the Federal Crown rather than provincial authority, that effort to Christianize the Indians and settle them in communities be continued,....that schools, preferably manual labour ones, be established under the guidance of missionaries....Their education must consist not merely of training of the mind, but of a weaning from the habits and feelings of their ancestors, and the acquirements of the language, art and customs of civilized life."

• 1857: Passing of the Gradual Civilization Act (Act to Encourage the Gradual Civilization of Indian Tribes in this Province, and to Amend the Laws Relating to Indians) which required enfranchisement of any male Indian over the age of 21

The RCMP in residential schoolsGovernment controls Aboriginal education

Government, Colonial Language & Propaganda: Tools to maintain superiority

The RCMP played a part in the Indian Residential School system which ravaged First Nation communities for more than a century and left once-vibrant cultures to die…”authority figure who takes members of the community away from the reserves or makes arrests” – parents were arrested if they tried to stop their children from being taken away from the families or communities. Children were told their parents died of small pox or vice versa

(Stasyszyn, 2011. Retrieved June 1, 2014 from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/the-rcmp-in-residential-schools)

INTERNMENT OF OUR ABORIGINAL CHILDREN

Foster Care• Involuntary• Removed from

home/community• Loss of culture• No contact parents/family• Monopolizing of perception• Granting occasional

indulgences (motivation for compliance e.g. WEM, etc.)

• Opportunity for “education”

Residential Schools

- Involuntary confinement- Removed from

home/community- Loss of culture- No contact parents/family- Monopolizing of perception- Granting occasional

indulgences e.g. Candy, food

- Opportunity for “school”

Children likely to suffer serious physical & mental health problems• Long-term and intergenerational impacts• Personal loss of culture, language, traditional modes• Deep-rooted feelings of humiliation, shame, abandonment• Communication barriers, inability to express self• Ongoing triggers from sounds & smells• A brief system that denies the value and importance of women

Based on systems with messages 1. YOU ARE DEFICIENT/ I AM PROFICIENT2. I have the right (duty, privilege, responsibility” to perform

prescribed operations upon you with/without your consent

3. These operations are undertaken for your own good

(2007) Richardson &Nelson. A Change of residence: Government schools and foster care homes as sites of forced Aboriginal assimilation – A paper designed to provoke thought and systemic change. First Peoples Child and Family Review 3(2) pp 75-83

FOSTER CARE/RESIDENTIAL

Richard CardinalThe report contained 22 wide-ranging recommendations addressing the courts, the provincial government, schools, hospitals, aboriginal organizations and even the media. It called for child care workers and foster parents to be better trained in aboriginal culture, suicide and depression, and for the government to establish mental health facilities for children. It also called for the recruitment of more aboriginal child welfare workers and foster parents.

The 17-year-old, who had been placed in 28 different homes during his 14 years in the child welfare system, hanged himself from a cross bar he had nailed between two trees near his last foster home in Sangudo, northwest of Edmonton. The documentary, Cry from the Diary of a Métis Child, lamented that he “never got what he needed most — to go home.”

FOSTER CARE SYSTEMS SAME AS RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS

• APTN National News 2013, May (http://aptn.ca/news/2013/05/08/)Of the 30,000 children under 14-years-old in foster care in 2011 nearly half were Aboriginal children despite representing about four per cent of Canada’s population says a report released Wednesday.

• As of 2011, there were 14,225 Aboriginal children who were listed as wards of the state according to the Statistics Canada report Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: First Nations People, Metis and Inuit as part of the National Household Survey.

• READ AND DISCUSS: “ABUSE IN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS – BIDERMAN’S CHART OF COERCION” – AHF, 2005, P.5

Scary images of “Indians” in media & in curriculum

Myths: All Natives drink

Media uses images: justifies superiority

Romanticizing Natives Misconceptions

Stereotyping reflects racism and prejudice

? in “society & culture” website about “squaws”

Answer from a Native woman

I didn't think anyone thought this was a derogatory word until I looked it up on Wikipedia. I find it doubtful that many people have a problem with this word, but I'd like to know the opinions of Native Americans. 

Does this mean people are against the names Squaw Valley and Squaw Bread?

yes. it comes from the word in my language which refers to female genetalia, otsiskwah. the french shortened this to simply skwah or squaw when they wanted to be clear what they were after. it is the equivilant to calling a woman cu**. 

Native people have also been fighting to have place names using the words as well. they succeeded in having Squaw Peak renamed to Piestewa Peak, after the first Native American woman to die in combat while serving in the U.S. military. 

DEROGATORY TOWARDS WOMEN

BEFORE CONTACT Pre/post Confederation

Iroquois: If the clan mothers later found that they did not like their selection, they had the right to revoke a chief’s power and assign it to someone else. Therefore, male chiefs ultimately had to answer to women, who clearly held the balance of power

Cree: okicitaw iskwewak – women warriors; laws of nation or Natural Laws. Clans of 9 women had responsibility to ensure Natural Laws were being followed. Chief & leadership consulted and received approval

Government agents operated from patriarchy system and only obtain signatures from males in nations/tribes: the women were not consulted or included in the signing of the treaties. ?.... Are the treaties legal

Missing/Stolen Sisters: laws & legislation do not protect women e.g. stalking law, domestic violence, unsolved murders

Aboriginal Women

British ideologies towards women

British social values and norms immigrated into the Canadian government when it was created under the British North America Act. These foreign values influenced the foundational beliefs incorporated into the legislative system. The legal system in Canada created laws through the lens of a patriarchal societal structure, which has had a negative impact on Aboriginal women in Canada. Canadian laws and legislative branches encouraged assimilation of Aboriginal women into society and removed Aboriginal status through discriminatory laws applied only to Aboriginal women.

Aboriginal women in Canada have experienced oppression under the domination of a male-centred legal system that devalues the female population and offers little or no protection against domestic violence, rape, or murder. Harry (2009) presents at the Battered Women’s Support Services Aboriginal Program and challenges, “Aboriginal women as a group have been largely ignored in the processes for Aboriginal sovereignty as well as women’s rights/or feminist activism.” Harry (2009) asks, “How can government creating laws, having established women’s rights on a feminist foundation, claim inclusion for Aboriginal women within the established women’s rights when feminism has largely excluded Aboriginal women?”

Pre ConfederationFirst: Indian princesses

Post ConfederationThen: civilized women

To sell the idea that “new land” was exotic and profitable to the Queen

British women were against British males involved with Native women; now called whores, dirty “squaws” …. Has continued to today towards Aboriginal prostitutes

"The dirty squaw emerged, conveniently taking the blame for the increasing poverty on reserves and deflecting attention from government and public complicity in the devastation of Indigenous peoples. If Native women were constructed as "squaws," dirty, lazy, and slovenly, it was easier to cover up the reality of Native women who were merely struggling with the increasingly inhuman conditions on reserve" (Anderson, 2000, p. 103).

Linguistic Manipulation puts “a picture or idea in our heads”

British men were to protect their women & included distancing their relationships with Native women

"The dirty squaw image was also used for racial purity through marginalizing Indigenous women in early settler society" (Anderson, 2000, p. 104). This image was created as a social segregation tool "to erase the acknowledgment of a contemporary existence of Indigenous women" (Pitawanakwat, 2007). This next sentence shook the very ground that I stood upon. "The dirty, dark squaw not only justified the deplorable treatment of Aboriginal peoples, she also created a gauge against which white femininity could be measured and defined" (Anderson, 1000, p. 104).

*The Fur Trade:imperialism & capitalism

* The four-hundred year pattern of genocide in the name of capitalist profit was begun with the search for furs. After dipping their big toes into the waters of the fish trade of the Atlantic Coast, French colonists began to explore the land and offer objects in exchange for beaver pelts. Says one writer,

* In 1534 the Indians along Canada’s eastern coast already knew what the whites sought in North America. Cartier, in that year, described how Indians held up a beaver skin attached to a stick, indicating their willingness to trade. They also kept their women-folk out of sight.

* Along with the colonizers came their ideologues, the Jesuit missionaries. Soon the British too were exploring, and the Hudson’s Bay Company was founded in 1670 and established trading posts up into the eastern Arctic as well as more and more into the plains areas. In 1784 the North-West Company was founded and competed with the Hudson’s Bay Company, but the amalgamation of the two in 1821 ensured the virtual monopoly of the Hudson’s Bay Company over the fur trade right across Canada. On the Prairies it had a legal and official monopoly over all forms of trade, serving in effect as the law itself in that hinterland; in the East, its monopoly was legally limited but those limits were not enforced

* A key tool of the Hudson’s Bay Company thievery of furs was the liquor trade

Malcolm & Paul Saba. (1975). Nationhood or Genocide: The struggle of the Native people against Canadian and American Imperialism. Canadian Revolutions No. 4, Nov/Sept. Retrieved June 13, 2014 from www.marxists.org/history/erol/periodicals/canadian-revolution/19760402.htm

Sports - unacceptableCostumes sexualize, demoralize or devalue

Mascots & Costumes: Regalia linked to culture

Historical influences affecting society Elizabethan Poor Law: deserving / undeserving Euro-centric philosophies: European colonial policies;

empirical science & methodologies (epistemological foundation in academics); Age of Enlightenment, etc.

Societal ideologies Patriarchal and hierarchal ideologies: Colonial policies Chattel Property included women and children

Laws, Legislations, profession, agency policies

Advocacy for social justice: Factors to consider

*Secondary Questions

*Are the 7 Prophecies reflected in the history between Indigenous peoples and Settler populations in Canada (Turtle Island)?

*Is there a transformative change beginning to occur that will unite all people together, as predicted by the 8th Fire?

* and other stories about Rainbow Warriors, Sacred Tree, (foretold the day would come when people would awaken, as if from a long, drugged sleep: they would begin timidly at first, then with urgency to search again for the SACRED TREE)

4TH FIRE: LIGHT SKINNED PEOPLE ARRIVE

5TH FIRE: Our people abandon old teachings & accept promise from light-skinned people – will

struggle for generations

6TH FIRE: Our people turn against teachings & block children from Elders – creates imbalance and

loss of purpose/ will for life

7TH FIRE: new people retrace their steps back to Elders, but some are still sleeping; some lost

knowledge & others keep silent cos no one asks them

8TH FIRE: time of rebirth after people start to “WAKE UP” - all races have time to return to good

path – away from destructive path

*7 Prophecies & 8th Fire

1990 – 2012

DISCUSSION

VIEW: TINA SCOTT video

VIDEOS & SLIDES

• http://deadspin.com/heres-the-anti-redskins-commercial-that-will-run-during-1588597037?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_facebook&utm_source=deadspin_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow• MELLOW STAR CONSULTING WEBSITE –

mellowstar.caorAcademia.edu - https://www.acaDemia.edu (search Brenda St. Germain) will need to create identity to login and access articles