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https://docs.google.com/document/d/11LrfFXSiozPOb-RdLGgLJY1_vGzhcwgltzlu3qK2s8Y/edit?usp=sharing

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Our Topic: What Was The Indian Residential School System?

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Our Topic: What Was The Indian Residential School System?

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The Canadian residential schools are representative of the extremely excruciating, painful and extensive schooling system which was started by the Canadian government and administered by Christian Churches (Anderson et al. 2018). By removing young children from their homes, families and communities, the governments main goal and initiative was to both educate and assimilate. Their aim was to indoctrinate these children into the Eurocentric Canadian and Christian way of life. The results were both disastrous and appalling ...  (Anderson et al. 2018).

Some of the Children on the steps of the school, Round Lake Sask (Mission to Partnership Collection, 2013)

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(Ross et, al 2015)

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Through multiple literature pieces and stories we know that many young people who have attended residential schools were abused and neglected (Ross et al, 2015).

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Table outlining the prevalence of negative experiences encountered through residential schools in the Ross et al. study (2015).

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The Impact of Residential Schooling and of Child Abuse on Substance use Problem in Indigenous Peoples:

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The Impact of Residential Schooling and of Child Abuse on Substance use Problem in Indigenous Peoples:

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-Indigenous Peoples have a higher prevalence of drug and alcohol use than the average Canadian.
- It was shown that individuals who were abused as children are 3.1 times more likely to also abuse drugs.
- There was a correlation found between attending residential schools and alcohol addictions (with 43.5% of participants).
- There was also a correlation between child abuse and drug use problems.
-  78.8% of participants excessively drinking after attending a residential school while only 17% of Canadians engage in high-risk drinking.
- These results help us understand the lasting impacts that residential schools
continue to have even after their closure (Ross et, al 2015).

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Nothing has been finalized. We can make a change! We would like to encourage each of you to take a stand by joining and sharing our petition to ensure that Adriana LaGrange and the UCP understand that we Albertans value our young being educated on residential schools.

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0 have signed. Let's get to 100!

The government of Alberta, the UCP, has been recommended by their curriculum advisers to remove all references to residential schools and "equity" from the curriculums of kindergarten-to-Grade 4 students. We ask the UCP and Adriana LaGrange, Alberta's Education Minister, to strongly oppose this recommendation to remove the education of residential schools from the curriculum.
The reason proposed by the authors was that the learning of residential schools are "too sad" for children that young to cover. This comment is contradictory when you realize that the same children will be learning about the enslavement of women and the assassination of Julius Caesar in ancient Rome.

This removal will go against the previous Alberta government's plan to provide better inclusion in the curriculum and the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions attempts to have students of all ages educated about the treaties and harms of residential schools as an attempt to further reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and Canadians.

Currently this idea is only a proposal made by the curriculum advisers and are not final. If this change goes through it will, without a doubt, place Alberta far behind other provinces in terms of both educating our young about Indigenous peoples history but also how we will continue to reconcile and build our relationships between Canadians and Indigenous peoples.

Join us in asking the UCP and Adriana LaGrange, Alberta's Education Minister, to strongly oppose this recommendation to remove the education of residential schools from the curriculum.

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The government of Alberta, the UCP, has been recommended by their curriculum advisers to remove all references to residential schools and "equity" from the curriculums of kindergarten-to-Grade 4 students. We ask the UCP and Adriana LaGrange, Alberta's Education Minister, to strongly oppose this recommendation to remove the education of residential schools from the curriculum.

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Most, if not all students that attended the Residential Schools suffered tremendously from physical and emotional abuse.
Miller states that some members of the staff were also sexual predators therefore, numerous students suffered from sexual abuse (Miller, 2020). What is most disturbing is the fact that even when sexual assault cases were brought forward, the government and church remained silent (Miller, 2020). On the odd chance that the government and church actually believed the case was probable, they often allowed the sexual predator to continue teaching and educating at the institution (Miller, 2020).
Below Kai bravely opens up about the abuse his mother was put through during her six years at residential schools.

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The Goal of Resdential School (Anderson, 2019)

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(French, 2020).

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(French, 2020).

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This article below discusses the new recommendation as of October 21, 2020 to eliminate ALL reference to residential schools and "equity" (French, 2020).
Kai discusses his concern with this as a first-generation residential school survivor in the previous video.
We need to ensure that Residential Schools remain in Alberta School Curriculum to work towards reconciliation.

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Curriculum advisers hand-picked by the Alberta government are recommending changes to the kindergarten-to-Grade 4 curriculum for fine arts and social studies that would eliminate all references to residential schools and "equity."

The advisers also recommend that seven- and eight-year-olds learn about feudalism, Chinese dynasties and Homer's Odyssey in social studies classes.

The drafts, obtained by CBC News, include lengthy lists of names, landmarks and events for young children to memorize.

They say five- and six-year-olds in Grade 1 should be familiar with the artwork of Claude Monet, Georgia O'Keeffe, Pablo Picasso and Edgar Degas.

They also say first graders should learn Bible and First Nations verses about creation as poetry and fourth graders should learn that most non-white Albertans are Christians.

Curriculum experts familiar with the province's process say the suggestions are a huge departure from where work was heading before the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019.

Some education experts also say the proposed changes are regressive, racist, unsupported by research and would put Alberta's school curriculum vastly out of step with most of North America.

"I would say it would be a laughingstock," said Prof. Keith Barton, a specialist in social studies curriculum and instruction at Indiana University in Bloomington.

"To say that second graders are going to be learning about ancient China and ancient Rome, or in geography, that they're just going to be learning the names of capitals - nobody does this."

Recommendations 'utter nonsense'

Barton reviewed drafts of the social studies K-4 curriculum publicly released in 2018 and documents obtained by CBC containing recommended edits. The recommendations are "utter nonsense," he said.

"It just showed no familiarity with how children think and learn," he said. "And it certainly showed no familiarity with the past 30 or 40 years of research theorizing about what history and social studies education should look like."

Dwayne Donald, an associate professor of education at the University of Alberta, is an expert in Indigenous teaching and curriculum.

He said he felt hopeful about the potential for the previously proposed elementary curriculum to better include Indigenous perspectives. The suggested changes erase all of that work, he said.

"It makes me feel sick, actually, that we're at this point," said Donald, a member of the Papaschase Cree Nation.

Colin Aitchison, press secretary to Education Minister Adriana LaGrange, said the documents only represent advice to the minister, and are not final. He also said curriculum writers are not obliged to include the advisers' recommendations.

He said the proposals will go before hundreds of teachers and experts who serve on curriculum working groups for feedback later this fall before the minister signs off on the curriculum.

In the legislature Wednesday, LaGrange told reporters the new elementary school curriculum will include residential schools, but she would not say in which grade.

"We are absolutely committed to facing reconciliation and to ensuring that the truth about residential schools, about that content, is in our K-6 curriculum," she said. "That is non-negotiable."

She said "advice is advice" and nothing has been finalized.

Promise of curriculum 'without political bias'

In 2016, the former NDP government announced curriculum writers would modernize the K-12 curriculum in every subject at once, simultaneously in English and French - a first for Alberta.

That government promised better inclusion of different cultural and demographic perspectives. It assembled curriculum working groups consisting of 400 teachers and subject experts. Tens of thousands of Albertans gave feedback on curriculum drafts via government surveys.

In opposition, conservatives accused the NDP of smuggling political ideology into the curriculum and claimed it was being written in secret.

Once elected in 2019, the UCP government paused the process and appointed a new panel of advisers to review the work already done.

In August, Education Minister Adriana LaGrange announced a new provincial direction for education based on the panel's advice. She pledged to deliver a social studies curriculum "taught without political bias" that offered an "objective understanding of Albertan, Canadian and world history and civic literacy."

She said lessons would focus on "core knowledge" - a theory that all students should learn the same set of foundational information.

Elementary school curriculum should be ready for classroom testing by next fall, she said, and be in all schools by fall 2022.

She also appointed eight "subject matter experts" to give advice. All were men. The social studies adviser is Chris (C.P.) Champion, a history writer and former staffer for Premier Jason Kenney when he was an MP in Ottawa.

Champion has written that including First Nation perspectives in school is a "fad," which prompted critics to call for his resignation.

Lack of clarity on advisers

LaGrange initially declined an interview request for this story. Her press secretary, Aitchison, said the social studies documents contain advice from multiple people, including Champion.

Aitchison would not say how many people, or who the other advisers were.

Advice for changes to the K-4 fine arts curriculum and K-2 music curriculum was signed by adviser William French, a board member of the Shakespeare Company in Calgary. He has also worked as a lawyer and a translator.

Neither Champion nor French responded to CBC inquiries about this story.

After facing public criticism about the all-male slate, the government brought on nine more advisers for September and October, including four Indigenous elders and seven women.

Pat McCormack, professor emeritus of Native Studies at the University of Alberta, was contracted to provide advice on Indigenous teachings. When contacted by CBC last week, she had not seen any drafts of the curriculum. The other Indigenous advisers did not respond to messages.

Michael Zwaagstra, a Manitoba high school teacher and author who favours traditional education approaches, said he likes the direction Alberta is heading with the proposed changes. He subscribes to the "core knowledge" theory that children need to accumulate a roster of facts before they can comprehend how systems work.

"Getting more knowledge in your head isn't about making it easier to test, that's not the point at all," he said.

"The point is ... ensuring students have enough common knowledge so that they are able to engage with the world around them [and] understand some of the basics of our country."

Professors say proposals untenable

Amy von Heyking, a University of Lethbridge education professor who served on the UCP-appointed curriculum panel last year, said the curriculum proposals are out of step with the panel's recommendations.

"The expectation that students memorize lists of facts is contrary to everything we know about meaningful learning," she said in an email.

She said the social studies suggestions are "untenable," and she hopes the government brings all proposals back before the hundreds of experts in the curriculum working groups.

"To take programs in such a radically different direction would be incredibly disappointing," she wrote.

University of Alberta education Prof. Carla Peck, an expert in social studies curricula, said the proposals would put Alberta so far behind other provinces "it would be embarrassing."

She called it a century-old, "factory line" approach that assumes every child is the same and that their interests don't matter.

The "core knowledge" theory has also been widely discredited by academics, she said.

Residential schools 'too sad' for children, writers say

Several experts said the proposed arts and social studies changes turn their back on Alberta's commitment to the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which say students must learn about the treaties and the harms of residential schools in all grades.

The social studies draft authors propose residential schools be taught in later grades, alongside other examples of "harsh schooling."

The advisers suggest learning about the negative effects of "explorer/settler contact" in Grade 9 or high school.

The authors say residential schools are "too sad" for young children to cover, while at the same time proposing they learn about children in ancient Rome and women living as enslaved persons and hear of Julius Caesar's assassination.

Melissa Purcell, executive staff officer of professional development for Indigenous education at the Alberta Teachers' Association, said the documents removed any allowances for students to hear history from Indigenous perspectives.

It replaced them with token representations that make it sound as if Indigenous people only existed in the past, she said.

"This document is perpetuating systemic racism through whitewashing of the draft K-4 social studies and arts education curriculum," said Purcell, who is Dene and a member of the Smith's Landing First Nation.

She said there is also a mismatch between the proposals and provincial teaching quality standards adopted last year, which require all Alberta teachers to be competent in teaching about treaties and residential schools.
FIND OUT MORE: Don't know the history of the curriculum review process and its controversies? Read more here:
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WATCH | In 2016, the then NDP government announced it was about to launch an overhaul of the education curriculum

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Leaked Alberta school curriculum proposals include cutting references to residential schools, equity | CBC News

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Curriculum advisers hand-picked by the Alberta government are recommending changes to the kindergarten-to-Grade 4 curriculum for fine arts and social studies that would eliminate all references to residential schools and "equity." The advisers also recommend that seven- and eight-year-olds learn about feudalism, Chinese dynasties and Homer's Odyssey in social studies classes.

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The Impact of Residential Schools Affects Us All As Canadians! What can WE do as future educators and teachers? 

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The Impact of Residential Schools Affects Us All As Canadians! What can WE do as future educators and teachers? 

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- Purchasing an "Every Child Matters" Orange T-Shirt for yourself, your family, your co-workers and encouraging students to wear orange annually on September 30th.
- Get together with colleagues to plan school events. (This could include watching a video of Phyllis's story or reading her book aloud to your class.)
- Organizing Indigenous experiential guest speakers within schools.
- Change the conversation; incorporate these discussions into your classroom in ways that students can resonate with.
- Become educated and create a safe classroom environment for student's to understand and acknowledge Indigenous experiences.
- Advocate for implementing Indigenous based classes within schools.
- ACT on your knowledge.
#everychildmatters
Every Child Matters (CupeBC 2020).

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How do you feel about the information presented in this padlet? Please drop your letter in the comments below:

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How do you feel about the information presented in this padlet? Please drop your letter in the comments below:

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A) Angry
B) Hurt
C) Uneducated
D) All the above

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*STOP AND THINK* Educating our future students on Residential Schools is very important.     Share some ideas below on how you would incorporate this learning into your teaching? 

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*STOP AND THINK* Educating our future students on Residential Schools is very important.     Share some ideas below on how you would incorporate this learning into your teaching? 

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How do you feel about this part of the article? Do you feel like Jason Kenney was disregarding the article? Do you think Paul Bunner, who has a huge influence on the Premier of Alberta be a contributing member of politics?

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Kai's family experience in Residential schools

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Kai's family experience in Residential schools

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Kai's family experience in residential schools.

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We interviewed Kai to get a direct perspective on his family's experience with residential schools and how it continues to affect Indigenous peoples today.

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Here is the full interview with Kai if you would like to watch it on your own time!

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Here is the full interview with Kai if you would like to watch it on your own time!

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We think everything Kai said is important and everyone should get a chance to watch it.

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In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Residential Schooling System was the ideal vision in the eyes of both the church and the state. It was perceived that through this experience, children would successfully transform out of their "savage communities and be provided the opportunity to reach a level of higher civilization and full citizenship." (Milloy, 1999, p. 22).

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The Indian Acts of 1876, 1880 and 1884 are all parts of the government that created assimilation through enfranchisement
and, as a consequence, the eradication of First Nations (Milloy, 1999, p. 21).

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Through the Parliament, under the leadership of Macdonald, Indigenous self-government was abolished and replaced their traditional government system with a ’municipal government.’ This gave substantial control of reserves to the Indian Affairs Department under the federal government (Milloy, 1999, p. 21).

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"In the blueprint of Confederation, the British North America Act of 1867, the federal government was assigned, in Section 91:24, the power to legislate for Indians and their property" (Milloy, 1999, p. 20).

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With the transfer of Indian Affairs to the colony in 1860, the civilizing policy’s fundamental principles included the ideologies of reserve development, serviced settlements, and the most crucial element being, residential schools (Milloy, 1999, p. 20).

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Quote from the Governor Head's Advisor, Reverend W. MacMurray: 

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Quote from the Governor Head's Advisor, Reverend W. MacMurray: 

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"Experience has I think abundantly shown, that the longer the Indian is kept in a comparably helpless condition, and treated as a child, the less inclined he will be, to assume the responsibility for or taking care of himself" (Milloy, 1999, p. 20).

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Civilization: Through the Gradual Civilization Act

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Civilization: Through the Gradual Civilization Act

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"The impact of the act was profound. 'Civilization' was redefined. The goal of community self-sufficiency was abandoned in favor of the assimilation of the individual" (Milloy, 1999, p. 19).

Through enfranchisement the government wanted the number of graduates to abandon their communities and be assimilated into the colony (Milloy, 1999, p. 19).

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The commissioners returned to an earlier logic and concluded, "if graduates were to achieve their potential and become 'useful members of their communities,' it was imperative that they receive individual allotments of land" (Milloy, 1999, p. 18).

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The commissioners were exceptionally disappointed with the outcome of the graduates. The blame did not lie within the Residential Schooling System itself, but instead, on the graduates returning to the unwavering reserve conditions (Milloy, 1999, p. 18).

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The Commission concluded that Indigenous Communities would only be successfully achieved through the civilizing system that permeated Indigenous Peoples with industry and knowledge; the primary characteristics of civilization (Milloy, 1999, p. 13).
-The commissioners viewed education as important and crucial because it included all elements of the civilizing system (Milloy, 1999, p. 13).
- The schools were supervised and ran by non-aboriginals, resulting in the Indigenous student's isolation from their parent's influence and thus their culture and identity (Milloy, 1999, p. 13).

Students at St.Annes Residential School (Enberg, 2015)

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Paul Bunner: The speech-writer who thinks Residential Schools are a 'Bogus Genocide Story': 

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Paul Bunner: The speech-writer who thinks Residential Schools are a 'Bogus Genocide Story': 

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The article states, “The bogus genocide story of the Canadian Aboriginal residential schools system is an insult to all of us, Native and non-Native, dead or alive, who are justifiably proud of the peaceful, tolerant, pluralistic history and values of our great country. We should fight like hell to defend it from those who would corrupt it” (Heindenrich, 2020).  This article was written in 2013 under Stephan Harper, however, in 2018 Kenney states "he has not read all parts of the article" (Heindenrich, 2020).

C2C journal Ideas that lead (Paul Bunner, 2013).

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Contemporary Issue: Jason Kenney's speech-writer under fire for 2013 Article: "The 'Genocide' That Failed"

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Contemporary Issue: Jason Kenney's speech-writer under fire for 2013 Article: "The 'Genocide' That Failed"

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Kenney states that both his personal position and that of the government is that Canada is “still coming to terms with the terrible devastation of our Indigenous communities through the regime of Indian residential schools" (Heidenrich, 2020).

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Kenney 'fundamentally disagrees' with past statements by speech writer | Watch News Videos Online

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Watch Kenney 'fundamentally disagrees' with past statements by speech writer Video Online, on GlobalNews.ca