Dan Snow's History Hit - Canada Confronts Its Past

Episode Date: August 5, 2021

The discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at former Canadian residential schools have has led to a crisis of identity for the country as it comes to terms with the trauma of the past. For many, these discoveries fit into a pattern of discrimination and demographic replacement with the arrival of European settlers which could be described as genocide. In this episode, Dan speaks to Tracey Bear and Jim Miller about what happened to the indigenous people of Canada at the schools and what this means for modern Canadians if their country is, in fact, the product of Genocide?Tracy Bear Nehiyaw iskwêw is a Cree woman from Montreal Lake First Nation in northern Saskatchewan and the Director of the Indigenous Women’s Resilience Project. She is one of the key authors of Indigenous Canada is a 12-lesson Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) from the Faculty of Native Studies that explores Indigenous histories and contemporary issues in Canada. You can learn more about the course here.Jim Miller is a historian at the University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Miller is a nationally recognized historian who has studied the relationship between Canada's indigenous population and colonial settlers for decades including on the subjects of residential schools, so-called Indian treaties and law as it pertains to the indigenous people of Canada.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Regular listeners to this pod will be aware that as well as being a Brit, I have dual citizenship. I am also a Canadian. Proud passport holder of that wonderful country. I was born in London, England, so I don't sound like it. I was raised predominantly in the UK, but my Canadian mum or mom ensured that we spent as much time as possible in Canada. We were shipped off there every summer to stay on my grandparents' farm. We went on Christmases. It was important enough to my mum to endure a flight with three kids under the age of 10. Before personal screens, folks. Yeah, that's what we're talking about here.

Before adequate in-flight entertainment. I mean, I've got no idea how she coped. After those horrific seven-hour flights, came to an end, I'll never forget landing in the Leicester B Pearson Airport in Toronto and opening those doors and smelling the Canadian smells and the warm air in the summer, the cold air in the winter, and feeling like I was coming home, a different home. I was lucky enough to have two homes. We then get in my old grandpa's station wagon and we drive up Dufferin Street, north of

Toronto, to the family farm that's been the family for a couple of generations. up Dufferin Street, north of Toronto, to the family farm that's been the family for a couple of generations. On the intersection of Major Mackenzie and Dufferin, there were rolling fields, a bit of woodland, a bit of arable. They used to grow soy and corn. And there were some old barns, painted red, silver roofs, a grain silo. From the days when it had been a dairy farm, we used to explore the now abandoned stalls for the cows and other livestock. It was an amazing, amazing place to grow up my grandpa and i would mow paths we could walk around the farm we'd chop firewood to keep the house warm in the winter we would keep bees we'd clear the forest floor of brush have big fires particularly

in the winter and also in the winter we'd skate on our pond shovel the snow off the ice and so when i park and as the British grandson, I was obviously the worst at ice hockey, as my cousins, whirled and twisted around me, showing off their mad skills on the rink. Canada, to me, has always represented such a happy place. I was incredibly privileged to have that life there. And I think that was mirrored by my pride in Canada as a place. Canada was part of peacekeeping operations

around the world. It made the right noises most of the time about the need to combat climate change. It felt like it was a positive influence on the world stage. And that's what's so fascinating about Canada at the moment, because Canada at the moment is locked in a crisis of identity, a crisis of coming to terms with the trauma of the past. Over the last couple of years, a crisis of coming to terms with the trauma of the past. Over the last couple of years, bodies have been exhumed from the cemeteries attached to so-called residential schools in which indigenous people, described as Indians, Canadian Indians, at the time were sent from the 19th century up until the late 20th century.

This has fell into a narrative that actually what happened in Canada, as with the rest of the Americas, was the demographic replacement of one people by another following the arrival of the Europeans in the 15th century. The word genocide has been used by the Canadian government to describe what happened in Canada, and also by the Association of Canadian Historians. I've been thinking what it means for Canadians, what it means for me and other Canadians to know that the country that they admire, they love, has given them so much, could be the product of genocide. What's that mean?

How do we deal with that? It's been a very painful process for many, but I'm finding it a very invigorating process, learning more about the history and trying to come to a better understanding of the past so that we can understand ourselves more in the present and make better decisions, make better decisions into the future. That sure is the point of everything we do as history fans. That's why we're all here. On this podcast, I want to talk

to two people about Canada and its history. The first is Tracy Bear. She is a Cree woman from the Montreal Lake First Nation in northern Saskatchewan. She's the director of the Indigenous Women's Resilience Project. She's an academic and she has launched a MOOC, a massive online open course on Indigenous Canada 12 lesson MOOC from the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. I also talked to a distinguished Canadian historian, Jim Miller. He has been studying Indigenous history. He's been studying residential schools, writing about residential schools for decades, as well as other issues around so-called Indian treaties, as well as enfranchisement, voting, and law as it pertains to the Indigenous people

of Canada. This is an important discussion, and I think one that shows how Canada, a country that is one of the most sought-after countries on earth to move to, to be in, to be born in, if you can seek to be born somewhere. It often tops charts of well-being and quality of life and opportunities from all sorts of different organisations. But how Canada can go through a process of coming to terms with its past that actually enhances that country's present and future as well. If you wish to listen to other episodes of this podcast, we have many on Canadian history, we've got lots on US history, we've got lots on world history, in fact. Please go to history and become a subscriber. You go along to historyhit.tv,

there you'll find the Netflix for history, hundreds of hours of history documentaries, all sorts of documentaries, including the Battle for Quebec, one of our most popular documentaries in 1759, when the British took Quebec, fighting against the French and their indigenous allies. That is all available at historyhit.tv. Just head over there now, you get a month for free, and then for the price of a very smart cocktail, every month you get to the world's best history channel. So please go and check it out. But in the meantime, everyone, here is Tracy Bear and Jim Miller. Tracey Baer and Jim Miller. I started the discussion by asking Jim Miller about residential schools when they first came about and what was the idea behind them. In Canadian history, residential schools have

been around since the early 17th century, but in terms of a real governmental system, century, but in terms of a real governmental system, they really began in 1883. Government needed to provide schooling for Indigenous children because their way of life was changing very dramatically as immigrant non-Natives came into Canada and began to supplant them, basically terminate the hunting and fishing and making it impossible for them to live. As well, the Protestant and Catholic churches favoured being part of that experiment because they, of course, had both humanitarian and evangelical objectives. They wanted to help and they wanted to convert. Some of the language around the schools at the moment is that there were institutions organised

around the deliberate infliction of pain, cruelty, even death upon the students that would attend those schools. That isn't presumably how they were characterized in the 1880s. Well, that's a ridiculous notion, Dan. I mean, why would government and churches do that? Why go to all that bother? In terms of Western Canadian Indians in the 1880s, if the federal government wanted to inflict maximum pain on them, all they had to do was do nothing because their way of life had been destroyed with the collapse of the bison by 1879. So that whole notion is just ridiculous. Government and churches both supported assimilation through the schools. That's certainly very true. But in both cases, it was assimilation as a means,

not an end. For government and church both, they believed that assimilation would facilitate and accelerate the adjustment of indigenous people so they could function effectively in the economy. For government, that meant saving money. For the churches, that meant being helpful, being humanitarian. Tracy Bear sees things very differently indeed. For her, assimilation was not a benevolent attempt to help Indigenous people adjust to a rapidly changing world, but rather an attempt to destroy Native cultures by Canada's colonial leaders. Canada's colonial leaders? Was this malicious intent? 150% it was, absolutely. You can see Duncan Campbell Scott, you can see our first Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald, the statements in the archives are very clear on what the intent of residential schools was. It wasn't to educate

Indigenous children, it was to assimilate them. And in fact, I think it was John A. McDonald or Duncan Campbell Scott that said, the purpose of residential school is to kill the Indian and the child, to kill the savage, to take all their cultural morale out, to take their language away. And the government worked with the churches, all of them, Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, all the churches to create these schools with limited budgets. So we see it wasn't about education. They learned to read and write English, but so much more was taken away. They were sent to school at four years old till 16, when they were kicked out, and it was manual labor. So it wasn't so much about education, kicked out and it was manual labour. So it wasn't so much about education, but trying to, after they put Indigenous people on reserves to take away their way of life, then it was time to separate

the children from the parents because, of course, the parents had a lot of influence, as we do as parents on our children, and influenced them and to assimilate them into Canadian society. If you look back at not just the residential schools, but the whole history of interaction between Indigenous people and Europeans ever since they arrived in the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries, is genocide an appropriate term? Yes, absolutely. A lot of people want to soften the word, the harshness to cultural genocide. But there's growing evidence, and there has been for a while, that it was a concerted effort to destroy, exterminate Indigenous peoples. And so if you look at the actual terminology or the definition of what genocide is, Canada dealing with Indigenous

peoples is exactly that. It's not a cultural genocide. You weren't just trying to kill the culture in us. You were trying to kill us. And the residential schools is a really fine example of that. I mean, what other schools have grave sites beside them? I mean, can you imagine walking down the street today and seeing like a school sitting there and children playing and then a grave site right next to the playground. So instead of playgrounds, they had grave sites, often unmarked graves. So yes, it is a genocide. And you'll see in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Justice Marie Sinclair using the word genocide and also the missing and murdered Indigenous women. Final Report uses the word genocide. And I think UNDRIP also uses the word genocide. But Jim Miller disagrees. He does not think the word genocide is appropriate in this case. No. If you start in the very early decades and centuries, we're not going to be killing Indians and Métis people because we need them, because the early parts of the economy were the fur trade, and you cannot conduct the fur

trade without First Nations people and Métis. Métis viewers might or might not know, Métis people are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry. As you go on in time, things get much, much worse, certainly. But at no point did we have the intent to destroy a people, which is the UN definition of genocide. Most of the Canadians who today are throwing about the term genocide do not apparently know what the UN Convention says that genocide is. do talk about the late 19th century, the Victorian idea of assimilation is a form of cultural genocide because you are trying to untether people from their religious, linguistic and other cultural roots. Do you think there's some strength in that argument? I think yes. The term cultural genocide is an appropriate label for the residential schools. And in fact, our Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which reported in 2015, did call it cultural genocide. Ask Tracy how we're able to reconstruct the past of these

indigenous peoples. And when we are able to get that history, what it tells us about the differences between them and European immigrants. There's oral tradition, as well as well-versed scholars. You can look into the archives, even though they were mostly written by white male anthropologists, so they have their own spin on it. But any sort of eye for reading between the lines, you can tell, you can read between the lines and see that many Indigenous societies were matriarchal. And at that time, of course, European societies, including England, before 1920, women were property, they couldn't own property, they were property of men, the father would hand the woman over to the husband, and so she had no rights. And so when they came over to Canada,

they assumed that all women were like that. Whereas you can read in some of the archives, the Jesuits and other missionaries, they're like shocked, they're flabbergasted that women are in these leadership positions and actually saying, no, you're not going to go and fight the Haudenosaunee. What you're going to do is we need some more fields to plant over here. And so it's really fun to read these Jesuits. They're just like, what's going on in here? What kind of land are we in where the women are the bosses? So we do get some indications through written texts, but also our oral history is extremely important. And we've had many important court cases in Canada have proven strong evidence to show that our oral history is really quite accurate. And it has been proven in

Canadian courts anyway, that it is taken into account in legal situations as well. So yeah, oral history is extremely important to us. And we gain a lot of this knowledge from our ancestry. We have something called the Indian Act that is still in effect in Canada. It's one of the most amended pieces of legislation in Canadian history. And it defines what an Indian is. From cradle to grave, it's very controlling. And within that, it took away a lot of rights. So in 1884, it took away our ceremonial rights. So we weren't allowed to have powwows or pawlatches, which were ceremonies and integral to our societal makeup. But our ancestors found a way to hide that, to have these ceremonies on the down-low. They kept the language, they kept these ceremonies, these stories on the

down-low because if they were caught, they were often imprisoned or fined for it. So I have to give kudos to all those ancestors that kept those stories and ceremonies, language, songs and dances, because some of those are still passed down to us today. Jim, who spent years studying residential schools and meeting many people that went through the system, describes the appalling conditions faced by many students in these schools and what kind of education the students could expect to receive there. Education consisted of two components. One was the academic or classroom work, which was abysmal. And the other was the vocational training. For example, boys working

in the barns and the fields and so forth, girls working in the kitchens, keeping the place clean, serving food, cleaning up afterwards, sewing clothes, those sorts of tasks. So there was both a vocational and an academic. And in both cases, the instruction was not very good because it was horribly underfunded. And obviously, we've been hearing lots recently about the graves. I guess the quality of health care would have been less than their equivalent in urban schools in Toronto and Montreal, for example. They're equivalent in urban schools in Toronto and Montreal, for example. Yes, care in general, you know, from diet to health care, clothing, accommodation,

all those things were very, very poor, much worse than Canadian children in general would have experienced. So the graves are from malnutrition, disease, the side effects of underinvestment and people not caring enough. We don't know for certain because two months into the uncovering of all these depressions in the dirt, we do not yet have the results of a single forensic pathology exam. But I think what we can expect is the overwhelming majority of them would have been death from disease. The death rates in the school were terribly high. Children were confined, they were ill-fed. They came very often from unhealthy backgrounds themselves. So the death rate, particularly from tuberculosis, was very high. Was there an ideological edge to that? Is this just because they were out of sight? Was there a racial ideological edge to that underinvestment?

That's certainly part of it. They're usually well away from areas of settlement by non-Native Canadians. In addition, I'm afraid the blunt fact is that Canadians didn't much care about what was happening to Indigenous people from the late 19th century through to almost the late 20th century. We were indifferent, and that clearly is grounded in racist attitudes. You listen to a discussion in which Canadians debate, think about its past. More after this. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories

that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Indifference, I guess ignorance, may have led to these revelations about residential schools being a shock for many Canadians today. They are not a surprise for Tracy and people in Indigenous communities. Oh, not at all. Some of the revelations, I'm not sure if you're keeping up with Canadian news, is there's been a lot of unmarked graves

discovered at some of these residential schools. And Canada itself as a nation is horrified. But of course, many Indigenous folks who have lived through residential schools are not surprised at all about the amount of children's and babies' bodies that have been found. Whether the terrible conditions within the schools with deliberate policy or just a product of neglect under investment, the trauma experienced by those who attended these schools was profound. Tracy and her family have experienced the pain as it rippled through the generations. Both my grandparents went to residential school, but I didn't find this out until much later because they said, oh, it didn't affect us at all.

And at the time, my grandfather was an amazing man, a builder, creative individual. My grandma was my heart center, raised me to be a strong Indigenous woman. So I never knew the struggles that they had as they were trying to heal from this terror that they had in residential school. And my mother felt it. Of course, my aunties and uncle felt it. But as a grandchild, I didn't. They sort of got over this hurdle. And I was one of the lucky Indigenous people where my grandparents really made a concerted effort to heal from that trauma. So residential school for them was a hellhole. And you can read stories across Canada within the TRC,

the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There's stories online where survivors are coming forward and talking about their experiences, but my grandparents never did. The arrival of Europeans and their diseases in America saw an enormous demographic collapse right across the continent. I asked Jim whether in fact the nadir for the indigenous people of Canada might have been during the 17th and 18th centuries. I think it depends on what part of the hemisphere you look at, Dan. That would be true especially of South Central America and into parts of the US. In Canada, I think the bigger losses were 19th century. But yes, overall, like the other parts

of the Western Hemisphere, there is an enormous die-off. It's credibly estimated that as many as 90% of the original population did not survive over several centuries. You mentioned in Canada, the people like the Cree, the Plains Indians up to the Rockies, it was the extinction almost of the bison. Tell me more about that story and what its effect was. Bison were overhunted by a variety of people from roughly the 1840s to 1879 when the bison collapsed and the bison industry practically disappeared. bison collapsed and the bison industry practically disappeared. And it was all parties were responsible for it. Indigenous people were overhunting bison to supply bird traders, for example. And lots of settlers, particularly in the U.S., there weren't many settlers in the Canadian West until the end of the 19th century. And particularly in the U.S., settlers were killing

bison at a great rate. We almost did to the bison what we did to the passenger pigeon. Passenger pigeon is extinct. The bison came very close. And what impact did that have on the indigenous societies that were dependent on those mighty herds of bison? For the Plains peoples, and that's whom we're talking about, not the Woodsland people, for the plains peoples, and that's whom we're talking about, not the woodsland people. It was just overwhelming. The bison supplied food, it supplied clothing, it supplied tools. You would remake the bones into utensils and tools, for example. And even the bison horns were used in spiritual ceremonies. Bison dung, when dried, could be burned. So it was a fuel. So the bison supplied

all kinds of wants. And when it was no longer there, the want was huge. The suffering was intense. I'm a Canadian citizen. What's it mean for Canada? What's it mean for us to face up to these realities about the past and about the various catastrophes that occurred to Indigenous cultures over the last 400 years. Should it change anything in the present or the future? Or is it just a matter of record that we need to accept? No, I think it matters a great deal. And I think for Canadians in general, the present revelations and controversy provide an opportunity to move beyond merely some people knowing about it and

some Canadians being concerned about it to a much broader engagement of the public. And you notice that the politicians are engaged, and that's a sure sign that the public are becoming engaged. And we really need that final push to move the cause of reconciliation forward. And what's it mean to be aware of these things? In practical policy terms, what do you think in the future? Will it change? Like you look at New Zealand, those very practical things that have changed around New Zealand political culture, other kind of law. What do you think it will mean for Canada to fully embrace the awareness of what has gone before? I don't think we'll go as far as New Zealand did for the simple fact that Indigenous people in Canada are about 5% of the population, whereas in New Zealand, they're about 15% of the population. In New Zealand, you have that

foundational treaty, the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 or 41. And from the beginning, you've had, for example, Maori representation in Parliament. We don't have that. But I think what will mean if Canadians do face their history properly, understand it, and support action toward reconciliation, is that we can do things like solve the roughly 1,000 outstanding land claims that exist, for example. Finally, eliminate the problem of terrible water on reserves. Finally, deal effectively with housing on Indian reserves, for example. In other words,

we can actually join hands and work on problems together, listening to the First Nations and the Métis and Inuit as to what needs to be done. For too long, Canadians would walk in, in true missionary style, say, we know what's best, do it this way, and of course be spectacularly wrong. I think now if we face up to what we've done, we'll have a lot more humility and we'll say, well, we agree with you. It's a terrible thing. We're sorry that we helped to bring this on. What do you think we should do to get you out of it? I think that would be a salutary change in attitude by Canadians. Canada today remains one of the world's most desirable places to live, to raise a family, to start businesses, to thrive. So I asked Tracy what it means for

Canadians and for those wishing to move there or be part of that country story if Canada itself is a product of genocide? Yeah, so this whole idea of nationalism, right, and this truth or this facade that Canada wants to have. We hosted the Olympics in 2010 in Vancouver and we paraded out our people and Canada and we look amazing. We have the second largest freshwater supply in the world. But for many First Nations on reserve, 120 of them are still under boil water advisories. My colleague from Coahuil Nation, they have been under boil water advisory for 20 years in Canada. So this First Nations Reserve can't even wash their hands without getting boils on their skin from the water.

And so Canada doesn't want to show that to the world. It's embarrassing. And so, so many immigrants come to Canada. And if they take our course, Indigenous Canada, they're shocked. They're like, I didn't think we were coming to a country like this. So I think there's a lot of reconcili-action that needs to be done between Canada and its Indigenous peoples. And I think we're working on it. And certainly we're seeing some changes within leadership. So there has been a lot of Indigenous women taking very important leadership roles in Canada. Our first Governor General of Canada is Mary Simon. She's an Inuk Inuit person from up north. She has become the first Indigenous person to, the Assembly of First Nations. So I think Indigenous women are really taking their place in leadership roles in Canada. And I think that's going to make great changes, great strides. You mentioned reconciliate action. Is that what this is about? It's about like

investing into these communities, making sure they have opportunities. Can you right historical wrongs by building better schools and infrastructure and things like that? Is that what this is about? Or is there something deeper that can be achieved? Good question. That's definitely part of it. There is still a huge inequity in the funding that the federal government gives to each student. On reserve, the students get $1,000 less per student, which you get poorer resources and things like that. So there's still huge inequities there. So we're asking for that definitely. But one of the things I think is really important is education of Canadians and more people abroad. We really,

as Indigenous people, we want people to understand this history. And it's easy to be nationalistic and proud of your country. You want to feel those feelings of pride, right? And the connection to your country. You don't want to look at the shameful history. And I think that's what's been opening up more and more lately, especially with these unmarked graves being found. So I guess what I would say to people is don't look away. I know it's hard. It's super uncomfortable. All those feelings of guilt and shame,

disbelief will bubble up for you as you're learning this history, but we need you to go through it. We need you to understand this history of Indigenous peoples in Canada. And like in The Matrix, that old dystopic future movie with Keanu Reeves, he gets that choice to take the red pill and open his eyes to reality of being in The Matrix or take the blue pill and stay in your fantasy. We want you to take the red pill and we know it's going to be tough, but people need to understand what we're going through and the types of histories that we have. There is no blame. We just need you to know. And so when you're looking at the health disparities, we're in the bottom of every socioeconomic index that you can imagine.

Health, there's poverty, incarceration. We have all the lowest indicators. So people are going, oh, well, maybe you're an inferior race, or maybe you're this conquered race, but that's not so. We need people to understand that we had treaties, there were nation to nation discussions with our ancestors and your ancestors, and we need you to honor those treaties. So by not honoring them, by putting in place the Indian Act, by putting our children in residential school for 150 years, generations and generations went to residential school. And to celebrate, my goodness, to celebrate that attempt by the government for me to be here talking with you, having a PhD, being in this privileged position. It's all because my ancestors fought against all of that colonialism and all of that oppression. So for many of us in sort of this privileged position, we want to talk about it. We want to spread the news. We want to be gentle as we can in educating people about this so that they understand this history.

It's not just our history. It's everyone's history. Thanks, folks. You've reached the end of our country, all of our gods, and fish. Thanks, folks. You've reached the end of another episode. Hope you're still awake. Appreciate your loyalty. Sticking through to the end. If you fancied doing us a favor here at History Hit, I would be incredibly grateful if you would go and wherever you get these pods, give it a rating, five stars or its equivalent. A review would be great. Please head over there and do that. It really does make a huge difference. It's one of the funny things the algorithm loves to take into account. So please head over there, do that. Really, really appreciate it.