Revisiting My Personal Narratives Regarding Indigenous People

A couple of months ago I participated in a moderated discussion to talk about racism. I served as one of the panelists and discussed my experience with Indigenous racism as a white person. I thought I would put those words into writing and share them here.

I am typing this from my home in Petawawa, Ontario which is the traditional territory of the Algonquin, Huron-Wendat, and Anishinabewaki Peoples. I am a settler on this territory as my parents immigrated from the United Kingdom in 1970.

About Me

I was raised in Newmarket, Ontario about 45 minutes north of Toronto. While growing up, Newmarket was a predominantly white community, although it is much more racially diverse now. There were only a handful of black and Asian students in my high school of 2000 students and I only knew a few First Nations individuals throughout my childhood.

My Relationship with Indigenous Peoples until 2017

I didn’t know many Indigenous Peoples throughout my childhood and most of my early adult life. The public school curriculum in Ontario barely acknowledged Indigenous People aside from the following topics:

• First European contact with Samuel du Champlain and Jacques Cartier
• The Huron and Iroquois and their relationships with the French and British
• War of 1812
• Métis and Red River Rebellion

I obtained three university degrees, two of which were in History and I failed to learn about Indigenous History in any significant way. It’s not the school system’s fault entirely; I had a lot of choice in the courses I took. But I think it says something about our education system as a whole (elementary, secondary, and post-secondary) and that I could get through all of that without learning about:

• The Indian Act;
• Treaties;
• Residential Schools; and,
• The Sixties Scoop.

My Problematic Personal Narrative up to 2017

A “narrative” is a story that we construct around a social issue or person. As we get older, we tend to adopt and hold on to these narratives more tightly. We construct narratives based on the knowledge that we have. We also pass on our narratives to our children and loved ones. These were the main points of my personal narrative prior to 2017:

• First Nations have access to cheap gas on reserve
• They tend to commit more crimes
• They like to drink alcohol
• Some bands have casinos on reserve
• They have a hard time taking advantage of handouts that they are given such as tax breaks, Indigenous scholarships, and post-secondary opportunities)
• Racist policies disabled their ability to get ahead but these policies are a relic of the past

I realize that my narrative is terribly misinformed and lacks essential knowledge to understand First Nation struggles in Canada. What bothers me about this narrative is not that I was ignorant, it’s that I didn’t care. I didn’t care to learn more about why First Nations people were going to jail in large numbers, I didn’t care to learn about why alcoholism is so rampant across on- and off-reserve communities, and I didn’t care that people of my race had such an uneducated and misguided contempt toward First Nation issues. Although I was never vocal about my thoughts on Indigenous people, my silence and unwillingness to learn conspired against them.

My Relationship since 2017

So what changed for me? What woke me up? In January 2017 I started a job at Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) which I accepted for all of the typical reasons a worker accepts a job offer: Good money, matched my skillset and experience. However, I quickly realized I had a massive knowledge deficit due to my own ignorance of the past. Thankfully, an olive branch was extended to me and I got to go on a trip to help with treaty pay events in the remote communities of Kashechewan, Attawapiskat, and Moose Factory which are located on the shores of James Bay in northern Ontario. When arrived in these places, I was particularly struck by how desolate and neglected these places were. They are characterized by dirt roads, poor infrastructure, and isolation. It’s impossible to drive to any of these communities as there are no roads connecting them to other communities. You can only get to them by plane.

Attawapiskat is infamous for its ongoing suicide crisis. From September 2015 to April 2016 there were 101 people that attempted suicide ranging from ages 11 to 71. As I looked into people’s faces I saw the scars drug addiction, abuse, and self-harm.

Kashechewan is infamous for the threat of flooding each spring. The saddest part of this isn’t that it floods. My ISC colleagues from Thunder Bay remarked that many of the residents hope for flooding because that would mean the government would fly them out of the reserve and send them to a community like Timmins or Cochrane, put them up in a hotel, and give them a per diem until the flooding subsides. For me, I cannot imagine a situation where I would celebrate that my home is being flooded. That’s how bad home life is for the residents of Kashechewan.

Revisiting my Personal Narrative

Upon returning from my trip, it caused me to revisit my personal narrative as it was obvious that there were gaping holes in it and it was problematic. Since then, I have taken it upon myself to learn about more about Indigenous history especially since the Confederation of Canada. These are the things that I didn’t know:

• First Nations people signed treaties with Canada that promised them a parcel of land and certain economic and health benefits in exchange for unfettered access to the rest of the land
  • Theses benefits are not handouts. They were purchased.
• Canada had no intention of keeping the treaties and created bureaucratic and legislative traps to remove individuals from treaty, Indian Status, or steal even more land
• Women who married non-status men lost status
  • Some of these men were stripped of status earlier in life
• Children of non-status men lost status
• Non-status women who married status men gained Indian status
• If reserve land was not in use, the government had the right to sell it, and they did
• Canada banned cultural ceremonies and forcibly removed objects used for these ceremonies and gave them away
• Canada forced children up to age 16 to attend residential school hundreds of miles away from their homes for the primary purpose of stripping them of their culture and language and to be assimilated in to white Canadian society
  • Despite scathing reports regarding the health conditions of these schools, the Government believed that the goal of cultural assimilation trumped the health and well-being of the students. In other words, it would be better that a few children die in the attempt to assimilate the rest than to close the schools for a time and improve health conditions. 2800 children died.
  • The last residential school to close was in 1996.
• Provincial child services agents forced themselves into homes and took children away from their homes and placed them up for adoption without any type of legitimate due process or cultural understanding.
  • Many children were stripped from loving homes
  • No attempt was made to adopt these children into other Indigenous homes
  • Some children were adopted by families abroad
• Indigenous people were banned from establishments that served alcohol
  • A discriminatory policy that banned Indigenous veterans from legions which is problematic when there are no mental health supports for returning veterans. At least other veterans could support each other as they adjusted to civilian life as they coped with newly acquired mental health issues.

Why Didn’t First Nations Individuals Fight Back?

Status Indians had no political or legal recourse to right the wrongs inflicted upon them. They lost status if they:

• Hired a lawyer;
• Became a lawyer;
• Attended university;
• Became a doctor; or,
• Registered to vote.

Why Didn’t Status Indians Enfranchise (give up Indian Status)?

• They wanted the government to hold up their end of the treaty
• They didn’t want to leave reserve or their families
• They didn’t want to surrender their identities

What Does All of This Mean?

The culmination of all of these issues described above had resulted in intense trauma for those that experienced these hardships. In the absence of mental health services, survivors of these hardships self-medicate by way of physical abuse, self-harm, alcohol addiction, and drug addiction.

This trauma has been passed down to children and further generations (intergenerational trauma). Children growing up in these households don’t perform well in school, have a hard time obtaining employment, and deal with the trauma they same way their parents did, thus the cycle continues. All of the challenges that Indigenous people face today can be traced back directly to racist and discriminatory policies perpetuated by the Federal Government of Canada. Indigenous people are still suffering today.

Conclusion: What Can You Do?

1. Review and be critical of your personal narrative
   • Check for absolutes such as phrases that start with “All of these people do…” and “No people from this group…”
   • Check the source from which your narrative comes. Is it true? How do you know? Have you learned that from a reliable source?
2. Educate yourself
   • University of Alberta Course – Indigenous Canada;
   • 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph;
   • The Executive Summary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission;
   • Go to an Indigenous-themed museum;
   • Watch a documentary;
   • Listen to a podcast; or
   • Listen to a Sixties Scoop or Residential School survivor
3. If you are in a position of power, see if there is anything you can do within your sphere of influence
   • Educators can insert more Indigenous-themed lessons
   • Donate to an Indigenous charity
   • Employers can bring Indigenous applicants in for a job interview
   • Employers can review their job descriptions to see if there are systemic biases that might prevent an Indigenous person from qualifying for an interview

All of us are in a position of power to create equality and tolerance for all people.

Monuments as Safe Spaces

There has been so much going on over the last 9 months that I have found it overwhelming. Kobe Bryant and Chadwick Boseman’s deaths, Donald Trump’s continued foray into alt-right politics, Black Lives Matter protests including the destruction of monuments, police brutality, all in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. 2020 is going to be one of those historic landmark years for better or for worse. I’ve found this year so challenging to wrap my head around that I have been paralyzed from my ability to write here, but I have a lot of thoughts. Today, I am going to let some of those thoughts leak out of brain starting with some thoughts about monuments as being inclusive and safe spaces. Let’s see what comes out.

Black Lives Matter protests have spurred much illegal destruction of monuments of controversial figures in the United States. This has spurred conversations in Canada regarding our monuments, most notably that of John A. MacDonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister, the pride of Kingston, Ontario, and the father of Canada’s Indigenous Residential School System. On June 22, CBC’s All in a Day radio program had a discussion regarding MacDonald’s statue in Kingston’s town square as well as the Faculty of Law which is named after MacDonald at Queen’s University. Two Indigenous women gave opinions and expressed how MacDonald’s commemoration in these spaces makes them feel unsafe and unwelcome and how something needs to be changed whether it’s a removal of the statue or some sort of modification to additional context. More recently, Mi’kmaq Elder and residential school survivor Marie Knockwood of Abegweit First Nation in Prince Edward Island is campaigning to have MacDonald’s statue removed from Charlottetown’s downtown area by educating people in the streets.

Many people scoff at the idea of the removal MacDonald’s monuments across Canada arguing that he’s the father of confederation and without him there wouldn’t be a Canada, or that we’d be erasing history, or that we should not judge him by a modern lens (i.e. all white people were racists in the late-nineteenth century therefore we can’t judge him for being a racist), or that the act of giving into the demands of minorities is somehow a reverse-racist act toward white people (yeah, I don’t get that one either).

The issue with this debate is that of narrative. For historical figures, multiple narratives surround them coming from different segments of the population. Some of these narratives are positive, and some are negative. Here are some narratives surrounding MacDonald:

• He is the father of the confederation of Canada and founded a country without going to war with Britain
• He initiated the construction of a transnational railroad that connects the provinces from east to west
• He successfully fostered a partnership with the province of Québec despite linguistic, religious, and cultural differences bringing English and French Canada together into one country
• He founded a federal police service, the Northwest Mounted Police (now known as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police), designed to oppress and subjugate Indigenous People
• He founded the Indian Residential School System designed to rid children of their Indigenous culture and language through physical, mental, and emotional abuse which has perpetuated intergenerational trauma that Indigenous people still feel today
• He signed treaties with First Nations of Canada to obtain land in exchange for certain benefits
• He passed The Indian Act designed to disqualify First Nation individuals from receiving treaty benefits and which over time would eliminate any individual being able to claim legal recognition as an Indian
• He charged a head tax on Chinese people to enter the country even though he needed them to build his railroad. Chinese workers were often given the most dangerous roles and many died. Once the railroad was completed and he didn’t need the Chinese workers anymore, he increased the head tax to curb Chinese immigration to Canada

I just thought of these off the top of my head (forgive me for not wanting to do a ton of research for this post). While I might be missing some nuance and details here and there, all of these narratives are true, more or less. What’s interesting about us as a public is that we pick and choose the narratives we want to embrace and dismiss the ones that contradict the persona we’re trying build around a historical figure. In other words, we have a tendency to construct myths around real people and try to sell these myths as the whole truth. The white population of Canada has generally embraced the first three narratives on my list. The perspectives of other segments of the population such as Indigenous people are largely ignored by the majority and they seem to be systemically excluded from the various curricula in Canadian education. This was demonstrated to me by how I went through 13 years (1989-2003) of public education in Canada without learning about Indian Residential Schools. Residential schools were also ignored in my Canadian History survey courses at the University of Ottawa (2007-2008).

My point in saying all of this is that historical figures are complicated and we cannot ignore true and verified narratives that don’t support the myth that we have embraced about a historic figure. We have to embrace and acknowledge all of it. The anti-Indigenous policies and legislation that MacDonald implemented are not false. They’re not debatable. His racism was rather overt. And while anti-Indigenous racism may have been the norm in Canada among whites, I find it bizarre that MacDonald would throw money at churches to open these schools with no federal oversight. I find it challenging that children had to attend schools hundreds of miles away from home when I am sure there were suitable sites much closer to, if not on reserve. Why did the schools have to be boarding schools and children have to sleep there? Why couldn’t parents have regular access to their children? This does not feel like your typical run-of-the-mill racism of that time period. This feels more like a powerful man deciding that certain human lives were not as valuable as his due to their culture, skin colour, and language but decided their lives could increase in value if their morals and values became more aligned with his. As a result 2,800 children died because of this overtly racist attitude and thousands more suffered physical, emotional, and mental pain which has been passed down generation to generation. Noting the intergenerational problems that MacDonald founded, if we added the subsequent suicides and homicides that have resulted due to his legacy, I’m wouldn’t be surprised if that death toll rose higher than 10,000 people.

Knowing this, we need to be OK with marginalized people speaking up every once and while and saying, “I’m not OK with this person, and I don’t think he should be honoured in this way.” We also should not be surprised if they get angry when the majority ignores their legitimate concerns. I am not suggesting that MacDonald not be honoured at all, but I am suggesting that we reassess how we honour him because certainly there is far more to his story that we fail to acknowledge. However, I should say that I am opposed to the illegal destruction or removal of statues. If the mob destroys the statue, it sort of eliminates the opportunity to have a meaningful dialogue about the person since it just escalates the conflict. That being said, keeping the monument without having a meaningful dialogue is equally destructive.

Now, pro-MacDonald monument people will argue that we will erase history if we remove the MacDonald statues. I personally disagree and would argue that the opposite is true. If we remove a monument due to a reassessment of one’s track record, it means that we have learned something new and found a better way to commemorate a person’s legacy and have given voice to more narratives and to more segments of the population. In fact the larger narrative is enriched, truer, and more thoughtful.

Open letter to the BYU Administration: Campus Safety for All

Dear President Worthen,

I am a heterosexual, white Male and alumnus of BYU. Over the last 3 years or so I have been doing some significant soul searching and reflecting upon how I could make the environment around me more safe and inclusive for anyone that is different from me, whether it is differences in race, sexual orientation, religion, sex, etc. This exercise in self-reflection has been difficult as it has caused me to confront overt and covert acts of racism, sexism, homophobia and other problematic behaviours for which I am personally responsible. I have done my best to make changes in the way I speak, the way I act, and to redefine my beliefs and values

I was struck by Déborah Aléxis’s article published in the Salt Lake Tribune regarding the overt and systemic racism prevalent at BYU. As I reflected upon my experience (2009-2011), I cannot say that I was surprised. I had neighbours in BYU-approved housing that hung Confederate flags on the wall and in the window. I had a Bishop that once referred to a young man in our ward as a “colored boy.” I had a professor who once suggested that the reason black members were banned from the priesthood because white members of the church weren’t ready yet. I’ve had a classmate tell me that the Holocaust was God’s revenge on Jews for crucifying the Savior.

In my opinion, BYU needs to confront its racist past as well as the racist past of the Church. The Church has always taught that while the Gospel is perfect, the Church members are not, so why not look to the past and where members, including general authorities, have made missteps and let’s discuss those mistakes.

It’s known that while BYU has always admitted black students, there was a period of time before the priesthood ban was lifted in which the University sent letters to newly admitted black students warning them that the campus may not be so welcoming to them for reasons such as: they may not get dates as they wouldn’t be eligible for a temple marriage, or that the surrounding community may not accept them. It’s not a stretch to say that BYU, The Church, and Utah County have a difficult relationship with racism and took steps to enable that racism rather than quash it.

I would like to make the following recommendations based on my lived experience at BYU and on BYU-approved housing:

1. Explicitly state that racist language and acts are an Honor Code violation, including the display of Confederate flags on campus or in BYU-approved housing.
2. Ban the use of the “n-word” by non-black students and faculty. It’s not their word, nor is it their privilege to use it.
3. Provide racial and cultural sensitivity training for faculty, priesthood, and organization leaders. Train these leaders to act against racism in their classes and church meetings.
4. Create greater stronger means to redress racial administrative issues at BYU.
5. Review the namesakes of the buildings at BYU and rename any buildings who are named after individuals who supported slave ownership or white spiritual superiority. Consider renaming these buildings after faithful black pioneering Latter-day Saints such as Jane Manning James, Elijah Abel, or Helvécio Martins.
6. While I understand that we don’t completely know why Blacks were banned from the Priesthood, the Religion Department needs to be explicit in dispelling myths that we are certain are not true regarding the priesthood ban, such as:

• The spirits of black people were less faithful in keeping the first estate in the premortal life
• That blacks are the seed of Cain
• That blacks not having the Priesthood was an act of mercy on God’s part
• That whites weren’t ready to have black priesthood leaders

On the topic of inclusion and safety of all people, I would also like to see the University formally recognize BYU’s Gay-Straight Alliance and give them a space for discourse and club activities on campus. LGBTQ2+ individuals seriously struggle at BYU and are at a major risk of mental illness and suicide. It would go a long way if BYU could give them a small corner on campus so that they can have a forum and support each other while navigating life at BYU. If an Apostle of the Lord says there is a place for LGBTQ2+ people in the Kingdom, certainly there is a place for them on campus.

As such, an additional recommendation I would make is to remove chastity violations as grounds for expulsion including unchaste behaviours between homosexual students. Expulsion should be reserved for academic and criminal violations only.

Until measures such as the ones I have suggested are implemented at BYU, the University will continue to struggle with issues of inclusion and safety and the student body will wallow in ignorance toward people that aren’t like them. BYU will fail to become a strong, diverse institution. Additionally, I’m not sure how long freedom of religion rights guaranteed by the US Constitution will hold up in a court of law when racial discrimination and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation are being perpetrated on campus every day.

I love BYU, and the 2 years I spent there were a life-changing time and put me on a path for further academic and career success. It pains me that not every student who graduates has had that same experience.

Thank you for reading my letter and seriously considering my opinions and recommendations.

Best regards,
Joel Sherlock (Class of 2011)