Survey shows Aboriginal colonization shapes history

A survey which included Saskatchewan’s Indigenous people has told a story that academics weren’t expecting: residential schools have shaped the memory of a group of people.

“The results were surprising, because almost everything it told us was new, especially the impact of residential schools,” said Gary Friesen, of the University of Manitoba.
Residential schools were not specified in the questions asked on the survey, but were offered voluntarily as a factor shaping history by those responding.

The paper, “Residential Schools and Saskatchewan Cree Collective Memory,” was presented as part of the academic sessions at the national event hosted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Winnipeg in June. The paper was undertaken by Friesen, Winona Wheeler of the University of Saskatchewan, Mary Jane McCallum of the University of Winnipeg, and Jeremy Wiebe of the University of Waterloo.

It was based on a targeted survey of 100 Aboriginal people, half of whom lived on the reserves of Beardy’s, One Arrow, and Mistawasis, and half of whom resided in Saskatoon. The results were taken from a national survey of over 3,000 Canadians.

“Our survey of Saskatchewan Aboriginal people did not set out to ask about residential schools. But the schools came up with a frequency that was impossible to ignore,” said Friesen. Nearly one-third of respondents referred to residential schools in their responses.

The survey was conducted in 2007-2008 when the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was working with residential school survivors in the province and when court cases were being heard.

Respondents noted that residential schools impacted their lives in two major ways: the loss of traditional knowledge and the source of intergenerational crisis in the family.

“The schools had two kinds of effect: they cast a shadow over twentieth century Aboriginal experience in Canada, thereby making it difficult to talk about other stories such as those dealing with political organization, cultural preservation, and religious survival that also should be acknowledged properly. And they were the sites where Aboriginal children were taught an appalling versions of the past — of their own past, or so it was claimed — as well as the past of the wider world,” said McCallum.

As a result, Aboriginals are less likely than their non-Aboriginal counterparts to view teachers in schools as a reliable historical source.

“Aboriginal people turn to family for history,” said Friesen, another stark difference in how non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal people viewed the past. “There is a strong Aboriginal link to family and they place exceptional interest in grandparents.”

Survey results showed that Aboriginal people are twice as likely as their non-Aboriginal counterparts to say they are interested in history. This interest extends to family history and Aboriginals are more likely than other Saskatchewan residents to have delved into their genealogy and are more likely to trust family stories as a historical source.

Also playing significant roles in how Aboriginals view the past is their connection to the land as well as community-based cultural activities and traditional knowledge. These connections come through stories told by grandparents and spiritual traditions passed down through the generations.

“The schools sit as a giant shadow over these respondents’ view of their groups’ relation with the larger Canadian public during the past 100 years. There is, as a result, no sense of historical continuity between the distant past —  the past of land and spirit — and the present, except through the story of the schools,” said McCallum.

Similar national surveys were carried out in South Dakota and Australia, which also targeted the Aboriginal population.

“There were very similar discrepancies,” said Friesen.