Education is the key to reconciliation and the key to changing the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, according to a Canadian senator.
"We need to do a lot more. My view has always been that it was the education that created this problem for Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous people in terms of the negative relationship we have about each other," Murray Sinclair said during a virtual presentation Thursday night. "But it's going to be the education that is going to fix that."
Sinclair was invited to speak on Truth and Reconciliation at the event held by Northern College and District School Board Ontario North East. Sinclair is the first Indigenous judge appointed in Manitoba and the second Indigenous judge in Canada. He has served as co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry in Manitoba and as chief commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
During his presentation, Sinclair talked about how Indigenous history was poorly taught and the educational system that has been followed in Canada and the U.S. has been mainly about white supremacy.
He added how people were taught to believe Indigenous people were inferior, sub-intelligent and uncivilized, and that European settlers arrived in Canada and the U.S. to save Indigenous people from becoming extinct.
“From the time of Confederation until relatively recently, the myth of inferiority on par with Indigenous people was a predominant feature in Canada’s history,” Sinclair said. “And the counterpoint to that was the myth of the superiority of European settlement. So, European settlers were portrayed as highly civilized, they came with a kinder, gentler disposition, that they were here to protect Indigenous people, that they were more intelligent … And in order for Indigenous people to survive, they had to assimilate, they had to be indoctrinated into living as white men.”
After the Confederation period, most of the European settlement was within 150 miles from the Canada-US border because there was little interest to populate the north, Sinclair said, and treaty signings were mainly with people in the south in order to ease the way of Western expansion.
According to Sinclair, there is systemic racism within the education system. He also pointed out how the idea of Indigenous people being inferior to Western people was taught at both residential schools as well as at the public school systems.
“The group that is most resistant to understanding the impact of the education system on Indigenous people are teachers. That’s a sad truth,” Sinclair said. "But at the same time, the group that is working hardest to try to advance reconciliation and change the way things are done are teachers as well. So, there’s this real conflict within the school system between those who want to make the changes and those who are resistant to that."
The TRC came to the conclusion there were about 1,500 residential schools across the country, according to Sinclair. The purpose of residential schools, maintained by churches or missionary systems, was to Christianize, to indoctrinate Indigenous children into the Canadian system and to teach them basic labour skills, so they would become “literal servants of the rich people,” the senator said.
The same message of Indigenous people being lucky that European settlers arrived was still being taught in public schools when Sinclair graduated from high school in the late 1960s, he said.
“It was also a message that was maintained until relevantly recently,” he noted.
He said the importance of education needs to be recognized.
"We need to recognize the education system failed children, not only failed Indigenous children but it failed non-Indigenous children. Because by teaching them this message, we’re also teaching non-Indigenous children the myth of their own superiority and that’s not right. We need to stop doing that,” he said.
