Clickbait

This morning, while listening to the radio, my mother called me to ask, "Leah, what's 'clickbait'?" So I explained that it's a headline to tease someone into clicking a link, only to find that there's nothing particularly interesting on the webpage.

This afternoon in the Archives of Ontario, looking at microfilmed education files, I'm finding the clickbait of the early twentieth century. I could write a satirical conference paper pretending to draw out matters of substance from the most hideously dull, yet enticingly-titled, letters that I’ve found. We've all seen them: the files that are merely cover letters for other documents, acknowledgements of having received a package, and so forth, that somehow get their own individual file and a title for what the file would have been, if only it included the actual document, the actual package. The file that cruelly masquerades as a matter of substance and entices us to look inside (or scroll for ten minutes through a poorly labeled microfilm reel) only to find... “I beg sir to acknowledge the receipt of your favour of the fourth instant regarding [super exciting issue!] and will give it due consideration.” and...nothing more.

Truth and Reconciliation, Canadian Mass Media, and Arguments about Genocide

Since arriving home from the Congress for the Social Sciences and Humanities this Friday, I've been trying (perhaps in vain) to catch up with the extensive media coverage of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission closing activities. This weekend, the coverage ramped up a bit, with weekend papers giving opinion pieces, including some strong articles in the Globe and Mail and a variety of less astute writing elsewhere. I planned on writing a field guide of sorts, noting who was saying what about the TRC. Then I realized that the extent of the coverage meant that I could either give a review, or merely a series of links; I chose the former. Perhaps in future days I will read and write more. I hope to read beyond the mainstream media as well, because Indigenous blogs are of course a critical source for learning more about the TRC and its implications.

I'll start with the lowest-hanging fruit: Conrad Black, of all people, argued in the National Post that Canada's treatment of Aboriginal people, though shameful, wasn't genocide. Black starts with an assertion that I would agree with - that all countries founded on immigration could be accused of cultural genocide, of either the indigenous peoples or the arrivals. Yes, indeed we can; but just because we've all been committing cultural genocide, to various degrees, doesn't make it any better. Black continues with the sorts of apologist arguments that frankly don't deserve to be quoted, alleging a primitive population that was unfortunately assimilated through violence that, in Black's opinion, does not constitute genocide. He argues this by John A. Macdonald's policies to those of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot, who certainly terrorized people in different ways. If you click the link (which I don't endorse, if that's not already clear!), save yourself from the horrific comments.

At the moment that I'm writing this, the Sunday night panel on CBC's The National are debating whether or not this was a genocide. Jonathan Kay, from The Walrus and John Moore, host of Newstalk 1010 (both white men) are the regular panelists; tonight, they were joined by Dawn Lavell-Harvard from the Native Women's Association of Canada for a discussion of stereotypes about Aboriginal people. Kay made an argument that was relatively similar to that of Conrad Black, that because residential schools ≠ Hitler that they were not genocide. Lavell-Harvard unsurprisingly disagreed. Wendy Mesley, hosting, said to her arguing commentators that it wouldn't be possible for their panel to resolve whether residential schools were genocide. I generally respect Mesley, but resent her simply saying that the panel could not resolve the issue; indeed, it's not their role, after years of extensive research by the TRC. The TRC's publication What We have Learned: Principles of Truth and Reconciliation (PDF) notes in its second paragraph that residential schools were a component of a policy of cultural genocide. The report goes on to distinguish physical, cultural, and reproductive genocide, instantly refuting the arguments of those who dismiss statements of genocide by contrasting residential schools with Nazi concentration camps. When the TRC has taken this much time to consult survivors, to comb through documents - who are these journalists, who are Canadians at large, to persist in debating whether or not this is a genocide? Is it not time to put this argument to rest?

Doug Saunders, international affairs columnist for the Globe, notes the challenges of applying the term "genocide" to something that happened in Canada: the term "cultural genocide" itself was previously merely "an activist slogan and academic obscurity" (for the record, I'm inclined to disagree with that assertion - but since I move in academic circles, I'm not the person to make that argument); it's a label we link to the Holocaust in Germany; unlike other acts of cultural genocide, this affected a smaller percentage of the population. But he makes several comparisons to international events that should help Canadians to understand that, yes, it happened here just like it did elsewhere, in particular showing parallels between the Ukrainian Holodomor and Canadian policy. I've read several other articles today that I'd recommend, but regarding ideas about genocide, the Saunders piece is a pre-requisite for anyone who needs to be persuaded (or who is trying to persuade others) that yes, the TRC's accusations of genocide is more than reasonable in an international context.

The TRC and CHA - some thoughts on an opportunity lost

This year's Canadian Historical Association (CHA) annual meeting ran from May 31st to June 3rd; the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) closing activities spanned the same dates. Though both events were located in Ottawa, I am struck by how little interchange there was between the two. Where we could have had an event that was cohesive and powerful, instead the week felt fragmented and disengaged.

In panels about Aboriginal issues, presenters or audience members referred to the report and media coverage but, troublingly, none of the CHA sessions were specifically in dialogue with the TRC activities. While the TRC offered a livestream for those unable to attend in person, the University of Ottawa wifi was unable to cope with the influx of Congress attendees, much less with people streaming an hour or so of proceedings. There was no space available for people to watch a stream with a wired internet connection, in a group, with space for dialogue; no group transportation between the two events.

I think, also, of the Canadian Society for Studies in Education (CSSE). Their keynote brought in Bolivia's Vice Minister of Decolonization, Félix Cárdenas Aguilar, to speak on decolonizing education. However, only a handful of papers (which I did not attend, not being registered for the CSSE) considered the history of indigenous education, passing up a valuable opportunity for sessions that engaged with the TRC. From my cursory reading of the CSSE programme, I saw a number of papers on Indigenous pedagogies and decolonization, and on the challenges of northern reserve education, to give a couple of examples. But so much appears to be missing: where was the panel on the Truth and Reconciliation commission? If the CHA is large, the CSSE is gargantuan - getting lost in a list of sessions is hard to avoid. In contrast to the CHA, which noted that particular sessions on Aboriginal history were part of a sponsored mini-conference, papers on Indigenous education in the CSSE proceedings were scattered about, so that there was no coherent way to find them and attend them.

The Congress as a whole offered two events that dovetailed with the TRC proceedings: May 30th saw Murray Sinclair in a standing-room-only Big Thinking lecture, entitled "What do we do about the legacy of Indian residential schools?" followed by a youth panel discussion on Reconciliation and the Academy. This featured an impressive pair of pre-teen presenters, both youth leaders in Ottawa, alongside more well-known speakers such as Cindy Blackstock, Tracy Coates, Imam Zijad Delic, and moderator Waubgeshig Rice. Both of these were well-attended and informative. But in the Congress programme, these were the only two sessions I saw on reconciliation. There were likely a few here and there in the programmes for various associations - but how to find them? We have such an opportunity for interdisciplinary dialogue at Congress, and for engaging with major debates, issues, etc. - so while I had a great time at the conference this year, and thoroughly enjoyed (though exhausted) myself, I left with a nagging sense of disappointment.

CSSE sessions on indigenous people, history, and education:
(this list is partially for my own notes, so that I remember to contact these scholars - or for whoever actually reads my blog who wants this info for their own purposes. Note that it's likely that I've missed a few entries that would be of interest for me, and that I haven't listed panels that aren't about history or reconciliation)

Julie Vaudrin-Charette (Ottawa); Getting Credit for White Settler Colonialism: A Historiography of Indigenous Education Policy in Canada

A Textual Analysis of Post-Secondary Funding in Indian Affairs Annual Reports: 1947 - 1990. Josephine Steeves (Saskatchewan)

Witnessing residential school testimonial texts as self study in the preparation of future teachers: Disrupting colonial futurist logics in education. Lisa Taylor (Bishop's) 

Working in Tandem: Federal-Provincial Collaboration in Indigenous Education, 1901-1951
Helen Raptis (Victoria) 

Using re-storying as a pedagogical tool to examine the Indian residential school experience with young non-Indigenous students: an exploration into notions of identity and societal responsibility. Daniela Bascunan (Toronto) (roundtable)

Addressing Truth and Reconciliation: Curriculum, Non-Aboriginal Teachers, and Public Education

Nicholas Ng-A-Fook (Ottawa), Jesse Butler (Ottawa), Ferne McFadden (Ottawa), Julie Vaudrin-Charette (Ottawa) (symposium) 

Engaging difficult conversations with Indigenous and non-Indigenous preservice teachers: Taking up historical responsibilities through Story and Literature. Lisa Taylor (Bishop's), Curran Jacobs (Bishop's) 

The complexities of youth civic engagement in decolonizing territories and post-colonial nations: The challenges for Tikkun--Pedagogies of repair and reconciliation. Yvette Daniel (Windsor), Lisa Korteweg (Lakehead), Heather Koller (Lakehead), Frances Cachon (Windsor), Erwin Selimos (Windsor), Ereblir Kadriu (University of Pristhina), Janet Tower (Grand Rapids Community College), Nombuso Dlamini (York), Cynthia Kwakyewah (York) 

Adventures in Archives...And Emergency Rooms

Ottawa hates me. This is, right now, all that I can conclude.

I'm finally back in the archives. Yes, back. For the past two weeks, I've been too sick to eat more than the occasional morsel, or even drink much for some of that time. Lots of pain. Several trips to the hospital. I'll spare the details. For two weeks, the time I've spent in the archives has been minimal, which is supremely disappointing! It's a saga that's distinctly not fun, and I'm still not feeling quite up to standard, but I'm going to get back to work as best I can. I suppose this goes to show the old adage about best laid plans. Fortunately, I do have the opportunity to come back to Ottawa in the summer, and can finish up some of these boxes then.

One heartening thing I have found, however, is that the archives are not as soulless as one might imagine. The security guards whom I'd chatted with on breaks asked me if I was alright and how I was doing, welcoming me back. The archivists and privacy analysts are being understanding of my adjusted time frame. So it's not all bad - just disappointing.

Next step, two conferences and a few more days in the archives.

Adventures in Archives...and Airbnb

This has been an unusual week. I last posted at the close of my second day in the archives. Since then, I've spent a good many long days there, and scanned and photographed more things than I'd care to count. Some highlights have included materials from the Junior Red Cross, and the notes for an educational psychology research project in 1950 - particularly exciting for me also because my mother is in that field, and when I went home for the weekend, I shared the files I'd found. She'd administered those same tests and was able to give context for the psychology side of things. 

Almost every day, I find something that makes me laugh. An awkward typo, asking for "poets" rather than "posts" to build a fence. A letter with a cigarette burn. A political cartoon inserted between two far more serious documents. The documents I've found haven't quite made me cry yet, and I'm not so sure that's a good thing. In the past two days, I've been looking at a box of restricted material about health in the Sudbury area (a district which included a large chunk of northern Ontario). A mother writes in from a sanatorium, asking to be transferred to the same facility as her son. A bureaucrat denies her request. Two children write letters to their mother in a sanatorium; the mother forwards the letters to the Department of Indian Affairs, concerned that her daughters are being mistreated by their father and stepmother while she is away. 

This week, the archives have been the consistent thing that holds me together. I've had to change accommodation, after my Airbnb rental turned out to be quite disastrous. I've been itching to write it down, and lack a better place to put it, so here goes.

The place looked great in the descriptions and photographs on the Airbnb website. Queer-friendly household, vegetarian, rabbinical student who collects books. They sounded like my kind of people. When I got there, though, the place was in a bit of a shambles. When I arrived on Sunday, I found that the room I'd rented lacked a dresser, so I couldn't put my stuff away, and it was so tiny that with open suitcases on the floor, I really couldn't walk. The host had large piles of her stuff in the corner, so I couldn't even push my stuff out of the way. Despite the description saying that the host was fastidious about cleaning, that turned out not to be the case - dishes everywhere, hair everywhere. Both women who lived there have very long hair, and said hair went everywhere possible - in my bed, all over the kitchen and bathroom. I can cope with a bit of hair, though, or a few dishes in the sink; I'm hardly a neat-nik. 

After remembering that the ad for the room showed a picture of a dresser, I looked again at the Airbnb listing. That's when I realized that I wasn't just awkwardly feeling out of place in a new space - the room wasn't at all like the one in the photographs! It took little time for me to realize that I was living in an entirely different place. They had taken photos in their previous home, then moved to a different apartment in the same neighbourhood. Since I'd decided against previous places because of the lack of either a dresser or desk, or because the room didn't have much floor space, it was frustrating to find myself suddenly in a place that I would have turned down had I known what it actually looked like. The bedroom was small, and I didn't feel like I could hang out in the living room very much, because my host had rented her own bedroom, and was sleeping on her sofa for the month. Airbnb, when I told them about it, let me know that I'd be eligible for a full refund if I had to leave the place.

The other thing that I didn't know about in advance is that my host runs a minyan out of her home, regularly having prayer and study groups in her living room. 

On my second day in the flat, I texted a good friend: "I am moderately concerned that my airbnb hosts want to convert me to more Jewish than I am." It turns out that I was on to something. On my third evening there, they invited me to the Torah study they hold regularly in their living room. I'm generally up for learning something new, so I went. That week's reading was Emor, from Leviticus, and indeed it was interesting stuff. Most of the study group ended up being tangents from the text, which was good, because the text is obviously far more religious than I am comfortable with. My host seemed to figure out, perhaps just from my body language, which parts of the discussion resonated with me - so she offered to lend me particular Jewish texts to talk about various issues. At the conclusion of the Torah study, I felt like I'd learned a lot, and figured I'd go back the following week. I realized later in the evening that something just didn't feel right, though, about this. I've always felt comfortable in how I practice Judaism (generally in my case, it is a culture, rather than a religion, and I am absolutely fine with that). The Torah group made me feel like there was something wrong with what I have been happily doing all my life, and that I need to prioritize doing more, and being more visible. Each of my hosts covered their heads with a kippah, and wore long sleeves and long skirts. In their home, I felt naked, wearing the shorts that I usually do during a heat wave. When they prayed before meals, I felt like I should be doing something, too. It is disconcerting to me, now, that I felt compelled to change something about myself, after just a couple of days - and that I continue thinking about them, six days after leaving their home. My host's roommate, who converted to Judaism quite recently, is preparing a course for Jews who have been out of touch with Judaism and wish to reconnect. We chatted a lot about queer issues, and politics - particularly the Alberta election - but ultimately, every conversation made its way, somehow, to religion. Would I consider a female God? A gender-neutral one?

Following the Torah study, I asked my host if she could please move her piles of stuff out of the corner of the room, and set up some sort of a dresser so that I could unpack; it's so hard to feel at home in a place while living out of a suitcase. I'd arrived while she was out of town, and her room-mate had said she'd look into it, but obviously the two women hadn't communicated about the dresser yet. Yes, she said, of course she'd do this, right away while I was at the archives the next day.

I arrived home that evening after a long day in the archives. Nothing at all had changed in my room, and my host made no mention about it. I realized that if she hadn't done anything about it by then, odds are that she wouldn't - and perhaps she never had any intention to. When I first arrived, I'd asked my host's room-mate about locking the doors at night, because I really don't feel safe sleeping when the doors are unlocked. She agreed to, but every night thereafter, I had to do it - and if they put out the trash or something after I'd already locked the front door, they didn't lock it again. The bathroom had no curtain or frosting on the window, and while getting out of the shower, I noticed a person in a window across the backyards. Obviously that sort of thing creeped me out, but I realized that I felt even more uncomfortable with the people who were in the home than the people who were outside of it. I can be an anxious person at times, but I normally have things under control. In this home, I was beginning to panic. It was clear that I had to move. Officially, the reason for the move was the lack of a dresser; of course, that was just the tip of the iceberg.

While packing my belongings, late at night, my host got up from the sofa to use the washroom, and confusedly wandered into my bedroom. Already on edge, I was really unable to handle having an unexpected person stumble in the door. She muttered a bit, then left. I finished packing, and slept terribly. Fortunately, a good friend of mine lives in Ottawa, and was happy to rent me her apartment while she spent time with her boyfriend out of town. In the morning, I took a taxi to her place.

I spent the weekend at my mother's home in Toronto. When I described my hosts to her, she mused that this sounded a bit like a cult. I looked up the rabbinical program that my host had trained in, and it certainly sounds fringey - something along the lines of Hassidic Judaism, combined with Buddhism, and elements of various other spiritual practices, taking a feminist sort of approach. I googled the name of the group, adding the word "cult" to my search. While no list of cult-like religions is infallible, the presence of this group on such a list was enough to make me feel that I'd dodged a bullet by leaving.

At present, my host is messaging me insisting that she will not give a refund. Airbnb has already refunded my money for the nights I didn't stay, and I will not be bullied into giving any of that back. All in all, I probably lost a day of good archive work to dealing with this situation, and found myself even more stressed than I would normally be during a research trip. Worn down, today I took a two-hour nap after breakfast, and I'm hoping that I'm not getting sick.

Now, back to the archives.

Sometimes, all you can do is imagine.

Today I spent some time reading death inquiry reports from two residential schools in Ontario. Nothing that I saw today was particularly surprising, but the documents do weigh on me. Over a period of ten years, ten kids died at one school, and twelve at the other. Each report listed the name of the child; the cause of death; what sorts of medical care was done for the child; whether the local doctor evaluated the death as having been preventable. For every single one of these reports, the doctor determined that the school staff had done everything they could. I can’t time travel—and am not qualified to give a medical opinion even if I were there—but I am skeptical. At any rate, it does say what they may have thought about prevention: one a child had tubercular meningitis, little could be done, but there was no comment in any report about preventing the disease from having taken hold in the first place.

Often what strikes me the most is what remains unsaid in the records I read. The children and families have little voice, here, and I am still grappling with how to address this in my thesis. In this group of death reports, a principal notes that the mother of one small child came to the school to offer her comfort in her final days; a chief wrote to the Department of Indian Affairs to complain that often, communities learned of children’s deaths second-hand, as the school was not reliable about contacting parents. Following this letter, the principal forwarded brief notes to each family, notifying them of his regret and the funeral arrangements for the child. If the parents responded, their letters were not kept in the file. 

The report that sits with me the most tonight pertains to a little girl named Doris. Despite policies that children were not to be at a residential school until the age of seven, there are a great many cases of children attending the schools younger than that. The report noted that Doris, who passed away late one November, had turned four the previous March. Four. A handful of words on a page describe and rationalize the final days of a small child. 

With no words to tell the rest of the story, my imagination tries to fill in the blanks. For the sake of preserving myself for a month of long days in the archives, I cannot let it - but at the same time, I don’t feel right turning that side of my mind off. 

At the end of day two in the LAC microfilm room, this is where I’m at.

Ottawa

Here I am, in a cafe a few blocks from the archives in Ottawa, waiting for my breakfast. It’s been a slow start to the morning as I get my bearings in a new city, but I’m hoping to be in the reading room by 11 AM. I flew into Toronto last week, and spent a few days catching up with my family before coming here late yesterday. While there, I worked for two days at the Archives of Ontario, mostly looking at microfilms. So far, I haven’t seen anything groundbreaking, but there was an interesting file from the Sociological Committee regarding research on Aboriginal communities in the 1880s, and a file of correspondence on the Bear Island school in the Temagami area, where the provincial and federal governments cooperated to form a reserve school (this sort of cooperation is not particularly common, from what I’ve seen so far).

Dealing with privacy issues wasn’t as complicated as I’d anticipated. There was a good deal of bureaucracy, but shortly before I left for Ontario, a consultant called me from LAC to discuss my needs. I’d initially submitted a regular access to information request, as this was the only option given on the LAC website for gaining access to restricted files. It turns out that, for researchers, there is also an option called 8(2)(j), which lets me access many restricted files, provided that I safeguard the confidentiality of personal information. To get this access approved, I had to submit a formal request outlining how I would protect the information I received, and how I would anonymize it for eventual publication. Storing information on an encrypted and locked external hard drive, and assigning pseudonyms if I refer to an individual case in my writing, was sufficient. On the train yesterday, I received an email approving my request. This was far faster than a regular ATIP request, and it cost me nothing (for an ATIP request, I would have had to pay for the archivists’ time, in excess of five hours, to review the files - and that would have added up quite significantly, since I have a great many files to review!). 

Breakfast now eaten, here I go!

*** 

12 hours later...

My first day at the archives was fun, though overwhelming. The first thing I noticed when I arrived was the impact of the recent cuts to LAC. Four years ago, when I was last here, I came in and straight away got to speak with an archivist about my needs. Fortunately, this time, I am more independent in my research, because I would have had to make an appointment in advance in order to speak with anyone. Even to submit a request for documents and get a self-serve copy request form approved took a lengthy wait. Four years ago, there was a cafeteria. This time, there are merely vending machines, and I was glad to find a coffee shop just two blocks away. Unfortunately, it is closed on weekends. After 4 PM, there isn't a soul to help out. I don't expect research support in the evening opening hours, but I'm certainly glad that I know how to run a microfilm machine. 

The overwhelming part is considering the sheer volume of files I plan to consult. I got through a few microfilm reels today, but there are so, so many more that I have yet to look at. If reels were available through interlibrary loan (as they were until the year before I started my PhD program) I'd be less concerned, but I only have a month to spend in Ottawa this summer. I have many more files to consult in Toronto and Sault Ste Marie in July and August, so more work in Ottawa will have to wait until perhaps the end of the summer, but more likely Christmas, or reading week. That's frustrating.

Fortunately, there are many, many needles in what seems like a haystack of files. Today, I read regulations about school inspections, a few school inspection reports, correspondence about medical matters in residential schools, and instructions from the Department of Indian Affairs to school staff regarding the procedures to be followed, administratively, in case of the death of a student. I've found a fair number of files that will undoubtedly be useful for me - and there are hundreds more, waiting. 

Where am I?

For nearly a year, this blog has been nearly silent. My post-comps world got off to a slow start, but as of the end of February, I am a PhD candidate and ready to start my research.

During my prospectus defence, my supervisor - knowing that I thrive on metaphors - suggested one for helping to keep my work manageable. Think of a stone that you lift up, she said; underneath it are many different types of bugs. You might want to know where every single one of them are going, but that’s not feasible. You can only follow one or two bugs at a time.

“One bug at a time” has been a sort of motto as I’ve waded through catalogues of files, trying to decide what, when, where, and how I will read this summer. And so I have playfully subdivided my list of primary documents that I have yet to read into “bugs” - categories, really - so that the list does not become too overwhelming. That’s not precisely what she was suggesting in this metaphor, but I do feel that it’s in the same spirit. 

I’ll be spending this summer in archives in Toronto and Ottawa. At the beginning of the month, I sent out privacy requests for swaths of files; I have yet to gain access to any of them. Fortunately, I have a few hundred non-restricted documents to pore over first. Some of these are online, so they’re a good place to start while I’m in BC. In a sense, I’m alternating between two bugs right now - the Department of Indian Affairs annual reports (I am tweeting snippets of these, sporadically, at @DIAreports) when internet access is not reliable, and various letters and memoranda from the Red Series when I do have a good connection and can view digitized image files. 

Yesterday, I read a handful of letters pertaining to custody issues in the Northern Superintendency. One of the files I reviewed was quite lengthy, and also troubling. A little boy had gone to live in the home of a white settler in a village near his reserve. This settler had pulled the child out of school, in favour of tutoring him privately. I hope that I am seeing euphemisms where none exist, but to me, the Indian Agent’s condemnation of the man sounded like an allegation of sexual abuse. In any case, the man was deemed an unfit guardian, and the Department of Indian Affairs sent the child to the Shingwauk school, a significant distance from their home. Notably, there was another residential school far closer to the reserve; this was one of thousands of cases where interdenominational rivalry severed a family. The child’s family was neither absent nor deemed unfit by any of the officials involved in deciding his fate; the Department of Indian Affairs objected to a settler man adopting the child because the man was a "very peculiar sort of a fellow” - they made scant mention, however, of the boy’s mother and grandparents who were raising him. 

Today, I read still more files where the fate of a child was decided by white officials, far away. The files are full of words, yet blank when it comes to what I feel matters so much - the children themselves. In one case, the adults argue over jurisdiction, and whose responsibility it is to pay for the costs of a child’s maintenance in a reformatory, but behind all this documentation is an eleven-year-old who has been sentenced to five years in an alien environment, as punishment for misbehaving and running away from a residential school. In another file, the Department swiftly agreed to pay for the transportation of a little girl who was to travel to Toronto to have her foot amputated; for the surgery, she spent two months away from home. While my research is on policy, I am aching to see how children responded to the politicking that severed them from their homes, severed their limbs. From the thousands of pages of microfilm, spanning decades, I hope we have not severed the children.