The Summary & Words & Critique #4

Summary

Material: Chapter 5 "Canadian Native Inheritance"
from “CHEE CHEE” by Al Evans, McGill-Queens University Press, 2004


Summary

According to Al Evans in “CHEE CHEE” in 2004, the Canadian government aimed to assimilate the Native people into the white population because they “were considered to be savage, uneducated, and pagan” from the very beginning. (Evans, 2004, p.65) Their lands were preserved for only themselves and schools were built for converting “the Indians from heathen to Christians”, he notes. (Evans, 2004, p.65)
The residential schools, Evans shows, began in 1879. (Evans, 2004, p.70) Children had to live apart from their family for ten months in one year and were deprived of their language because they were forced to speak only English, the author explains. (Evans, 2004, p.70-71) He informs a research done by an expert on sexual abuse that it was widely spread in residential schools and “as many as 80 percent of the Natives had been sexually abused”. (Evans, 2004, p.74) He also informs that the death toll of the children was 24 percent because of tuberculosis. (Evans, 2004, p.75) The most of the students who attempted to escape were found only to get severe punishment in many ways”, the author notes. (Evans, 2004, p.76)
Evans explains the only thing the residential schools had left in the children was “an insult to human dignity”. (Evans, 2004, p.79) After leaving schools, children couldn’t find any bond with their family and they handed their hates and hostility to the next generation by the form of abuse, the author notes, of which the government were aware but did no action at all. (Evans, 2004, p.78-80) The government changed their policy in the mid 1950s, (Evans, 2004, p.81) however, today, “between 80 and 90 percent of native children do not complete grade twelve”, the author reports. (Evans, 2004, p.84)


Words

1.arduous: involving a lot of strength and effort, laborious, burdensome
@Experience from that second culture guaranteed a despairing and arduous life’s journey.
2.conservatively: deliberately lower than the real amount
@The population of the Canadian Natives was conservatively numbered to be about 500,000 when the Europeans arrived some five hundred years ago.
3.abundantly: plentifully, richly
@It is abundantly clear that post-Confederation government policy was to absorb the Aboriginal culture into the dominant white culture.
4.omission: incompleteness, exclusion, negligence, failure, indifference
@There was always one important omission: Canadian natives were not included in the planning and development of their own lives.
5.incarceration: putting sb in prison, or keep them there
@They explain the extremely high level of incarceration among Natives: “native people are not greater criminals than whites. They are jailed for minor offenses.”
6.fragment: to break sth, or be broken into a lot of small, separate parts
@The residential school experience fragmented the family experience.
7.confine: to keep sb in a place that they cannot leave, such as a prison
@The children were confined day and night, with no family contact.
8.agonizing: extremely painful of difficult
@She told of her agonizing experiences as a young girl in residential schools.
9.sinister: making you feel that sth evil, wrong, or illegal is happening or will happen
@In retrospect the residential school system was a sinister influence, spoiling the lives of many young Natives.
10.denomination: categorization, classification, designation, group, class
@There have been shocking revelations of wide spread sexual abuse in the residential school system operated by religious denominations.
11.tuberculosis: a serious infectious disease that affects your body, especially lungs
@He reported a shocking death toll from tuberculosis among the residential children.
12.contagious: influential, transferable, infectious
@This highly contagious disease was at epidemic levels in the schools.
13.trauma: a mental state of extreme shock caused by a very frightening experience
@The trauma of those who attempted to escape from the incarceration is described in numerous harrowing accounts of Native children trying to find their own way home.
14.disruption: separation, discontinuity, destruction
@They identify the residential school system as a continuing cause of disruption and violence within Native family life.
15.bias: unbalance, inequality, tendency, obsession
@The negative bias of standard textbooks adversely affected the Native self-image.


Critique

What is notable here is that schools played an important role in transforming the aboriginal society into the White one, which has led to today’s corruption of the Native people’s society. According to Al Evans, “Schools were built in an attempt to accelerate the cultural transition”. (Evans, 2004, p.65) The Native children had to be in residential schools for about ten months in one year, apart form their parents, community and culture. They were deprived of the family bond, language, religion, and compelled to be a member of the White society by learning English and Christianity.
Schools and religions have been ill-used by governments like that in Japan during the Second World War. Japan colonized the Korean peninsula and the northeastern part of China and built schools and National Shinto shrines there. People there were forced to use the Japanese language and to warship the Emperor. At schools, children were taught to be a citizen of Japan and if they used their mother language, they were severely punished. Today we often see people who can speak Japanese in Korea and China, some of whom are unwillingly to speak Japanese because it is connected to the memory of being deprived of their language and the memory of being colonized. What was fortunate was that colonization didn’t last so long. If the state had lasted longer like in the Native society in Canada, what would happen to them?
In the societies of the Native people in Canada, the state of being deprived of their cultural identity had last for at least seventy years, almost three generations. It has something to do with the high suicide rate of the Native youth. They have been deprived of their cultural background, cannot feel belonging somewhere nor find any place to be in. Once they get out of their community, they face the discrimination or ignorance. They feel they aren’t wanted and try to erase their existence. The biggest problems today are not only how to re-educate the Native youth but also how to educate the non-Native people to understand more about the Native people’s state of living.