That's Not What We've Been Told

One might even call this "misinformation":

A national scientific panel yesterday blamed media misinformation in part on the “journalistic norm” of presenting two sides to every story. Publicizing alternative viewpoints on issues like carbon taxes creates a “false balance of perspectives,” said the Council of Canadian Academies: “People perceive lower levels of consensus.”

 

Who needs information, anyway?!

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The senior Cuthand, born on the Little Pine Indian Reserve in 1918, began teaching the Cree language and other indigenous subjects in our new department of native studies in 1975, eventually becoming its head. Before that, he was a full-time priest, a vocation he pursued on- and off-reserve in Alberta and Saskatchewan for 25 years beginning in 1944. Before all that, his primary school education was received in the band’s day school followed by high school attendance in Prince Albert where he resided in boarding houses.

Though Father Cuthand was never a student at an IRS, he was resident chaplain of Saskatchewan’s La Ronge and Gordon Residential Schools, and of St. Paul’s School on the Blood Reserve, in the 1960s.

These are some of his first-hand recollections of life in these schools.

“The schools weren’t terrible places at all,” he recalled. “They were certainly not prisons, although the principals were a little strict.”

Reverend Cuthand recalls one incident of sexual abuse of a student, at the Gordon Reserve IRS, where one of the staff members was later convicted and sent to prison for several years. “Most of the kids had no complaints about sexual abuse; if they did, they would have told me. However, they did get homesick and some tried to run away. There was also plenty of food; raisins, fish, potatoes, bread with lard, stew.“

As for mandatory IRS attendance, Father Cuthand recalled that the only children who were “forced” to attend were orphans or children from destitute families. “The idea that all children were forced into the schools is an exaggeration,” he explained. “The idea of the separation of students [from parents] came from England. Practically all the [upper class] English were brought up in residential schools. In Canada, the main idea at the time was to civilize and educate the children; and that couldn’t be done if the kids were at home on the trapline.”

Reverend Cuthand said he enjoyed his time on the Blood Reserve in southwest Alberta. “It was an exciting place to live …. The Bloods were rich and very traditional. The school was a fine place with some very good teachers.” The parents were involved in the school, with some parents living there as staff members. “[Blood] Senator Gladstone sent his kids there, and many of the students from St. Paul’s went on to university.” 

But ... the Narrative!