Primary Source Analysis on Celia Haig Brown’s Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School

 

What was the purpose of residential schools? Residential schools within Canada were meant to remove Indigenous culture and promote assimilation. Residential school impacted the lives of many Indigenous people in a variety of ways. They were a large influence in Indigenous people’s childhoods during the 19^th century and promoted colonization.  It was an educational system that was formed out of the social concern and a means of social control. Indigenous children were forced from there homes to attend residential schools, this being with the intentions of stripping children of their identity and destroying Indigenous culture. Celia Haig-Brown`s book, Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School provides clear and concise evidence into the background of residential school within Kamloops, BC, and how the school was used to assimilate and remove Indigenous identities. Haig-Brown`s book is written in an orderly fashion that breaks down the role and experiences of residential school. Haig-Brown’s book represents the Indigenous perspective on residential school, by using people’s experiences and testimonies as insight. She talks about the background of residential school, the transition into residential school, lives before residential school, life within the school, the resistance, and life after exposure to the school.[1] Each of these categories is necessary to have a full understanding of the impacts of residential school and how the act to assimilate Indigenous culture was put into action. Haig-Brown’s book executes, in a precise and articulate way, the reasons why residential schools were implemented and their impacts on Indigenous people.

Celia Haig-Brown’s book provides accurate information in the aspect of residential schools. She taught in Kamloops high schools and was the co-ordinator for the Native Indian Teacher Education Program.[2]  Haig-Brown not only has personal experience working in Kamloops with Indigenous people but has a Ph.D. in Social and Educational studies.[3] Resistance and Renewal provide reliable and accurate information regarding the impacts of residential school on Indigenous people in Kamloops based on the time it was published. Her book was the first of many to consider the realities of the residential school in the eyes of Indigenous people themselves. Haig-Brown gives a voice to residential school survivors and offers a new point of view through the survivor’s experiences. Haig-Brown states in the introduction of the book what her research consists of and how it reflects cultural characteristics and outcomes of residential school on Indigenous people.  Haig-Brown offers diversity in her research with respect to gender, time differences, and other sources. She provides verification as to why she chose to interview Indigenous people stating that “the interior people traditionally have oral cultures, interviewing was deemed the most appropriate technique.”[4] Based on information she received from participants reflects the framework designed for the book. She claims that the book is written: “through the participants’ own words, the experiences of leaving home, of arriving at school, of surviving daily routines of the school, of resisting the oppressive structure imposed and, finally, of returning home, and restructuring.”[5]

Haig-Brown’s book is separated into different sections which demonstrate an organized structure of information. It provides further understanding as to the development of residential schools, how they were enforced, their impacts, and the aftermath. Haig-Brown, not assuming the reader knows the history of the Indigenous people and White European Settlers relationship, provides further conception into the connection between the two. She does this in the chapter “Setting the Scene”[6]. As an example, Haig-Brown describes first encounters with the White European settler saying, “initially the encounters were limited to exchanges with an itinerant fur trader who had little effect on the lifestyle of the people who met him. Trade goods which enhanced or made easier the work of the Native person were desirable”.[7] By Haig-Brown describing the relationship between settlers and Indigenous people, it brings awareness to that fact that encounters between the white European settler and Indigenous people didn’t always steer negatively. It wasn’t until white European settlers had the demand for control that their relationship with Indigenous people was influenced. Haig-Brown also draws upon the government, missionaries, and the Secwepemc’s roles and opinions of residential schools. The government was in control of Indigenous people and were the ones to first carry out the idea that Indigenous people needed to conform to the ways of white European settlers. Haig-Brown writes the government wanted to “… raise them [the Indians] to the level of the whites.”[8] She writes about the report that was published in 1847 by the Province of Canada that described the fate of Indigenous people.[9] Missionaries supported the government in ensuring the education at residential schools was in efforts to abolish Indigenous culture. These missionaries, otherwise known as Oblates, the main objective was to “control the lives of Native people spiritually and in terms of lifestyle.”[10] According to Haig-Brown. She supports this further by saying, “despite its good intentions, this desire for control over Native people partially through segregation and more directly through the destruction of their traditional lifestyle reveals the invasive nature of the Oblates’ work.”[11] Missionaries such as the Oblates were the ones to put into action the requests of the government and oversaw the schools themselves. Haig-Brown establishes the relationship between Indigenous people and other authorities and sets the tone for the discrimination and issues that came with residential schools. She also clarifies that “the startling differences between Shuswap education and that of the residential schools are numerous.”[12] This leads to the perception that there is more to learn about the contrast between Indigenous people and residential schools.

It is important to know that prior to residential school Indigenous children were exposed to traditional family life, states Haig-Brown.[13] Haig-Brown illuminates on Indigenous childhood before residential school. She highlights the importance of Indigenous children’s relationships with elders, their cultural traditions, parenting, and the differences in children’s home life. Haig-Brown states that children were viewed as adults in Shuswap culture[14] Parents and elders treated their children with love and respect and they rarely resorted to violence when implementing discipline. Haig-Brown displays the contrast in Indigenous children’s lives at residential school as opposed to their life prior. The residential school, although looked at by some as an opportunity, was a horrific turn of events for Indigenous children and their families. Haig-Brown describes how children were removed from their homes and transported to residential school. The entering of a residential school for children was an extremely traumatic experience and only represented what was to come later.  Haig-Brown indicates in the chapter “School Life”[15] that people’s memories of residential school “could be categorized in three ways: Indigenous peoples time at residential school based on details of daily lives, specific incidents, and current impressions”[16]. She claims, “the three intertwine one another and in so doing provide fascinating insights into the effects which the school had.”[17] Haig-Brown provides the bulk of her evidence based on interviews of participants in this chapter. She indicates what the school day consisted of extracurricular activities and discipline. She uses participants statements to describe the terrible reality of what happened in residential schools. She grasps the reader’s attention with real stories that breed empathy and grief. The annihilation and efforts to kill Indigenous culture was the purpose of residential school and based on Haig-Brown’s evidence their attempts to do so were not without extreme measures. “What better way to work at indoctrination than to take hungry children early in the morning and to subject them to a harangue on the evils of their family’s way of life.”[18], states Haig-Brown. Children were isolated, abused, starved and forced to forget the Indigenous traditions they had learned. Haig-Brown talks about the beginning of residential school but also addressed residential school during different time periods. She discusses changes that took place within the school in the late 1940s in relation to extracurricular activities. These activities and sports that were introduced into schooling were shimmers of light in a dark place for students. Haig-Brown says, that “some students found their successes in various fields rewarding.”[19] She suggests these activities and sports offered an escape from the school by saying, “Many people felt that simply getting away from the school was the major attraction of participation.”[20] One of the reasons that children would have been so desperate to get away from the school would have been the kind of discipline that was implemented. Haig-Brown exclaims that “discipline in the Kamloops Indian Residential School was severe”[21]. She also goes into detail the different forms of discipline. Not only was there the physical but Haig-Brown says that “public humiliation was one of the worst forms of punishment for children.”[22] She says there was also a punishment that included head shaving and bread and water diets.[23] Haig-Brown also makes the effort to show photographs of the residential school in Kamloops which gives the reader a visual aid into the lifestyle forced upon Indigenous people.  With so many Indigenous children having to endure monstrous childhoods at residential school they had come to form counter-cultures in resistance. Haig-Brown declares that “even with the controls already described well in place, the students found time and space to express themselves and to produce a sperate cultural of their own within the school.”[24] These countercultures that were produced were also seen in many other aspects of Indigenous education. In support of Haig-Brown’s book, Michael Marker’s article “It was Two Times a Day but it in the Same Place” also describes Indigenous countercultures saying, “American Indians provided the counterculture with a living identity base.”[25] Countercultures were how Indigenous children survived dreadful educational systems. These efforts to form unity within an unpleasant environment was what kept children strong. Haig-Brown addresses the relevance of resistance in the memories of survivors, “although other aspects of the school also influence the children’s development, these opposition movements live clearly in people’s memories as times of strength”.[26] She also says that not one person she interviewed regretted their behavior of resistance and instead accepts that “in retrospect, these actions can be viewed as the actions of strong people against a system which degraded and dehumanized”.[27]

Was there a life after residential schools for Indigenous children? Haig-Brown talks about Indigenous children leaving residential schools and reasons as to why they did. She states student either returned home because they had reached a certain age, had become ill, ran away, or died.[28] Indigenous people who made it out of residential school were survivors according to Haig-Brown.[29] However, their lives after residential school did pose challenges and heartache. Some used alcohol as a coping mechanism to drown out the pain and memories of attending residential school. Haig-Brown states, “alcohol also became a force in the lives of some families”.[30] She lists another escape from the horrors of the residential school; that being suicide.[31] Most influential in the lives of those Haig-Brown interviewed, and what got them through the impacts of residential school, was “the words and ways of the elders and their families”.[32] These factors were the biggest impact on the lives of Indigenous people before residential school and remained the largest role in healing from residential school.

Celia Haig-Brown’s Book Resistance and Renewal allows a thorough, personal and emotional outlook on the creation and destruction of residential schools. Haig-Brown encourages residential school survivors to speak out about the realities of the distorted education system. She does an inspiring job of giving information to help the reader better understand what residential schools were and how they affected the lives of so many Indigenous people. Haig-Brown bases her evidence off Kamloops Residential school and the Shuswap Nation however, she uses a diversification of sources both primary and secondary to support her argument. Based on Haig-Brown’s book, residential schools were meant to obliterate Indigenous culture in a form of genocide and conversion into Christianity. Their efforts in doing so failed. Haig-Brown supports this at the end of her book saying, “through pain, hunger, cold, and corporal punishment, the people interviewed managed to remain their ancestors’ children and to glean an understanding of the importance of being Native as an irrepressible part of life”.[33]

 

 

 [1] Celia Haig-Brown. 1988. Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School. Vancouver, B.C.: Arsenal Pulp Press, c1988, 7

[2] Celia Haig-Brown. 1988. Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School. Vancouver, B.C.: Arsenal Pulp Press, c1988, 172

[3] Haig-Brown. 1988. Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School, 172

[4] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 25

[5] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 25

[6] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 27

[7] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 27

[8] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 29

[9] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 29

[10] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 34

[11] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 35

[12] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 38

[13] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 39

[14] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 47

[15] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 58

[16] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 58

[17] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 58

[18] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 59

[19] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 75

[20] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 76

[21]Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 82

[22] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 82

[23] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 82

[24] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 98

[25] Michael Marker, “It Was Two Different Times A Day, But In The Same Place’: Coast Salish High School Experience in the 1970s” BC Studies 144 (2004/2005), 105

[26] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 114

[27] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 114

[28] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 115

[29] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 125

[30] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 123

[31] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 123

[32] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 125

[33] Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 125

 

Bibliography

 

 

Haig-Brown, Celia. 1988. Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School. Vancouver,

B.C.: Arsenal Pulp Press, c1988. https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-

com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat03106a&AN=tru.a183549&site=eds-live.

 

Marker, Michael. 2004. “‘IT WAS TWO DIFFERENT TIMES OF THE DAY, BUT IN THE SAME PLACE’: Coast

Salish High School Experience in the 1970s.” BC Studies, no. 144 (Winter2004/2005): 91.

https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h

&AN=17598593&site=eds-live.

 

I have included my Primary Document Source Analysis Essay in my portfolio as it highlights the theme of my portfolio and serves as a support to my argument. It highlights the segregation, assimilation, and discrimination within childhood and education of the Indigenous race. This source refers to the impacts of the Kamloops Residential School in BC. The author addresses the kind of education that was meant to be implemented at the school and how it affected Indigenous Children and their childhoods. It demonstrates racial seclusion within children and education.