*Content warning - this blog post discusses residential schools and child death*
On Saturday, May 29, 2021, the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE) hosted “Pedagogy and Residential School Literatures: A Dialogue” at Congress. The conversation was joined by Deanna Reder, Associate Professor and Department Chair of Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University; Michelle Coupal, Canadian Research Chair in Truth, Reconciliation, and Indigenous Literatures and Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Regina; and Aubrey Jean Hanson, Co-President of the Canadian Association for the Study of Indigenous Education (CASIE) and Associate Professor in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary.
To start, Reder provided a disclaimer that this material may be difficult to get through, stressing the importance of both grounding yourself in the present at the beginning and conducting a ‘debrief’ session at the end. Two strategies that Reder suggested to try, should you feel emotionally overwhelmed at any point, were: putting your feet flat on the floor and recognizing that you are connected to the ground, feeling your connection to the apartment, house, or structure of the building, and tapping your feet to remind yourself that you are still in your body; or looking around and identifying five objects out loud by colour and object name, for the purpose of immediately bringing you back into the present, such as “the blue box” or “the grey bag.”
Many of us are likely already aware about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report on the tremendous amounts of harm that had been inflicted on Indigenous peoples from residential schools, the over 4,000 children who never returned home, and the lasting effects that this has had on Indigenous peoples to this day. However, even though the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s tenth and final principle of reconciliation asserts that “reconciliation requires sustained public education and dialogue… about the history and legacies of residential schools” (2015), it is an unfortunate truth that few Departments of English within institutions of higher education in Canada have created new courses solely centered on residential school literature in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.
Coupal opened with a plea to teachers of Indigenous literature in any field to “read and teach published narratives of residential school that have emerged from survivors of the school and their family members.” The subgenre of Indigenous literature, defined by Renate Eigenbrod as “memoirs, poetry, fiction, and plays that recreate the school experience through the literary imagination” (2012), is growing by the day and, with it, the body of residential school literature that teachers can – and should – draw from. Yet, this body of literature is often shied away from by students and teachers alike, seeing as it contradicts “nationalist discourses that propagate the view that Canada is a peaceful multicultural country committed to equity and social justice,” as worded by Coupal. Despite that, there exists an ethical imperative for teachers to stop looking away from these works simply because they are difficult to teach, because teachers don’t feel equipped to teach this material, or because teachers are afraid to do so. It is the responsibility of teachers to equip themselves with enough knowledge in order to be able to teach this body of literature to students. “We owe it to the survivors of the schools,” Coupal says. The two steps that Coupal deems necessary to dismantling the barriers of unconscious, silent, or overt racism include: actively engaging this ‘difficult’ material, rather than being passive consumers of it, by reading and teaching residential school literature; and celebrating the strength and fortitude of survivors of the residential schools, branding them as ‘victors’ over those brutal institutions. “It turns out that the secret path to teaching residential school literature is direct engagement that no one can walk away from, with Indigenous people’s stories and languages,” states Coupal.
In response, Hanson relayed her own experience coming from an education standpoint instead of an English and literature one, as Coupal had. According to Hanson, all students who aspire to be teachers are required to take a full course in Indigenous education, and learning about residential schools undoubtedly constitutes part of said course. Hanson talked about how the initial versions of the course she teaches shifted from being very analytical and content-heavy to one that takes on a far more relational approach that focuses more on “engaging with the future teachers from their own positionality, giving them space to do that reflective work and to be implicated in the learning that they’re doing and in their future professional responsibilities.” She cited this as having resonated with her, stressing how important it is to try to make this content accessible for teachers by encouraging them to relationship-build by “stepping into the relationship and taking on the responsibility that is entailed in that relationship.”