Western Standard - Manitoba professor Rodney Clifton on residential schools

00:00:00.000 So Akiva, a bit of background, you're a professor at the University of Manitoba.

00:00:04.320 I was, I'm retired now, so I'm an emeritus.

00:00:07.100 Oh, good.

00:00:08.020 Yeah.

00:00:09.140 But as emeritus, that means I don't want to take away that hard-earned title from you.

00:00:13.980 And I read your piece the other day, and it was really good and really interesting, kind of, I mean, maybe if you can reiterate some of that to our viewers, you know, about how you started out over in the Blackfoot or now Sixica Reserve there at that residential facility.

00:00:28.560 That building is still there.

00:00:30.060 I drive through there on the way to Pisano sometimes, and you've had some very direct experience with residential schools.

00:00:35.540 Yep.

00:00:36.860 I, in 1966, when I was in second year at the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta, where I was a student, I got into a program called Cross-Cultural Education because I was interested in teaching on Indian reserves on the Métis colonies in Alberta.

00:00:54.040 And I had a summer internship, and I was assigned to the Blackfoot Reserve, now called the Sixica First Nation, and I stayed in the teacher's wing of Old Sun School, which is the Anglican School on the Reserve, and worked in the agency office, which was about a kilometer away towards Gleeson, between the school in Gleeson.

00:01:22.480 Yeah, one of the things you noted for, I guess, kind of, to begin with was, you know, people looked at this as if these schools perhaps were institutions that were top-down and were only manned by people from off-reserve.

00:01:34.200 A lot of employees at the residential schools were from the First Nation.

00:01:39.520 Yes, yes, both in the office, the Indian agent's office, Mr. Murray was the Indian agent at that time, and at the school were Sixica people themselves.

00:01:55.380 So, the senior boys' supervisor, and so many of the cooks, and many of the people there were Blackfoot people themselves.

00:02:07.740 So, yeah.

00:02:09.160 Many people don't seem to realize that.

00:02:10.980 Yeah, and that school is right in, it's right by Gleeson, it's right in the Reserve.

00:02:17.520 So, I mean, people also always envision that as if children were taken a long way from home and separated, and that did happen in some cases.

00:02:26.000 But many, if not most, of the residential schools were right near the home sites, and they were day students, or at least they would go home on weekends, right?

00:02:32.220 Yes, yes, not all the children would go home on the weekends, but many of the children would go home on the weekends.

00:02:39.240 The principal and the Indian agent would talk about whether some homes were not safe for children, and then if they weren't safe, what they were going to do.

00:02:51.520 So, some children stayed in the residence over the weekend, and some children went with their cousins to their cousins' homes

00:02:59.400 because they had food and places for them to sleep, and would look after them.

00:03:05.660 So, they did those kinds of things.

00:03:08.340 Yeah, and for those who didn't see the earlier interview with retired Justice Brian Giesbrecht, he talked about that,

00:03:17.000 in that the residential schools, again, were often set up because it was almost a de facto social service.

00:03:23.120 I mean, there was a lot of cultural transitional challenges, social challenges, and children weren't necessarily safe at home.

00:03:28.620 And needed to be removed for their own safety.

00:03:31.740 Yes.

00:03:32.660 There were, when I was at Old Sun, when I was in the residential school there, there was three children that had come from Hobima.

00:03:44.840 There were Cree children, so they didn't speak the same language as the Blackfoot children, and they were orphans,

00:03:50.180 and they were in the residential school.

00:03:52.060 And then, over the summer, these three children, Father Brown, who was the priest, and I were the residential school residents at that period of time.

00:04:03.220 But these three children, three girls, were there as well, and they were orphans from Hobima.

00:04:09.620 I thought it was very sad, and I thought somebody should adopt these beautiful children, but they were orphaned, and they were there.

00:04:21.700 Yeah, for people unfamiliar with the territory, Hobima is sort of central Alberta, and back then, it's a fair hall, and there are some big distinctions.

00:04:30.780 Blackfoot, they're going to be speaking Blackfoot.

00:04:32.360 So, those young girls, unfortunately, even the other First Nations residents in the school wouldn't be able to converse with them very fluently.

00:04:39.740 Yeah, their language of conversation was English, so they were pretty good.

00:04:44.620 They were good at speaking English, but the Blackfoot kids, when they got together, even at that time in the mid-60s, would speak Blackfoot among themselves.

00:04:52.240 So, in the playrooms, or out in the playground, or, you know, they would be speaking, in the dorms, they would be speaking Blackfoot.

00:05:00.920 Yeah, well, one of the things we often hear of is children being punished for speaking in their native language, and you gave an example, though, where that did happen, but the school didn't accept that very kindly.

00:05:15.120 There's probably great variability in that.

00:05:23.540 Our son went through French immersion, and obviously, in the French immersion classroom, when the kids went in speaking English, they were forced, though they weren't punished for speaking English, but they were encouraged, strongly encouraged to speak English.

00:05:39.900 So, this is quite a normal way of expectations, if you want children to learn in other languages, that you have to immerse them in the language, and then they have to speak it all the time, and they will get corrected by other kids, or by adults, and the children were, you know, very good in learning English.

00:06:02.900 That's for sure.

00:06:03.900 Of course, young people are better than older people. 1.00

00:06:06.900 Yeah.

00:06:07.900 Yeah, but I mean, the attempts to eradicate the native language word is perhaps not always as stringent as some people point out, because that's what a lot of people looking from outside feel, well, that sounds pretty awful.

00:06:17.900 If, you know, English is a common language, great, but they should be allowed to maintain their original tongue as well.

00:06:23.900 Yeah.

00:06:24.900 Well, most of the kids, all of the kids at the Blackfoot Reserve at that time would speak Blackfoot, and many of the young children now don't speak Blackfoot, and probably because, you know, they're watching TV, and they're playing video games, and they're doing all kinds of things in English.

00:06:41.900 And so a language is a tool like a pencil or a computer, and if you don't use one tool, you forget how to use it.

00:06:53.900 So they're not as familiar with the language or useful.

00:06:57.900 The language is not as useful as it was in the past.

00:07:02.900 It's a complicated thing.

00:07:03.900 And then you wrote later on, you went up to Inuvik and spent some time in the school there.

00:07:07.900 I spent some time working up there, too.

00:07:09.900 And it's an interesting spot because you had a lot of cultures kind of come together.

00:07:12.900 You had a lot of Dene.

00:07:13.900 You had Inuit there.

00:07:14.900 You even had, you know, Gwich'in, even some northern free sometimes as they'd come up the river. 1.00

00:07:19.900 Yeah.

00:07:20.900 And the schools of there were another experience, I guess you could say.

00:07:26.900 Yes, because there were many more languages.

00:07:32.900 Now, the Dene and the Gwich'in and the Hare and all the people from along the river, 1.00

00:07:38.900 those children generally spoke English when they came to school.

00:07:42.900 But the Inuit kids, of which the Anglicans had evangelized to a greater degree, came in for grade one or even younger.

00:07:53.900 The youngest was five years of age.

00:07:55.900 They didn't speak a word of English.

00:07:57.900 So they were, and we had two young women that worked with the junior boys and the junior girls, two young Inuk women.

00:08:10.900 And they spoke Inuktutuk with the children all the time.

00:08:14.900 And the kids spoke Inuktutuk all the time in the residential schools.

00:08:19.900 So sometimes I would see the kids walking down.

00:08:22.900 The little kids would generally speak Inuktutuk.

00:08:25.900 So they would be walking down the hall of the residential school, two little girls holding onto each other as they do. 0.53

00:08:31.900 And I would point at them.

00:08:33.900 And they would look at me and then they'd put the hand over their mouth and they would turn around and walk the other way,

00:08:39.900 speaking Inuktutuk right, and then look back over their shoulder to see if I was following.

00:08:43.900 It was kind of a cat and mouse game.

00:08:45.900 We encouraged them to speak English, but we certainly didn't punish anybody for not speaking English.

00:08:52.900 So did you, and I talked a lot with, you know, Tom Flanagan about that and some others.

00:08:58.900 I mean, you know, there's no doubt over enough years with enough children, abuses happened in some places at times.

00:09:05.900 Did you witness any in your time in those schools?

00:09:08.900 I never witnessed any physical or sexual abuse of children, though I did hear some of the supervisors

00:09:20.900 that have been doing this for a long time yell at some of the kids.

00:09:25.900 They were pretty burned out looking after a large group of children.

00:09:30.900 And if they told them to do something and they didn't do it in a timely way like they wanted, then they might yell at them.

00:09:38.900 But I never saw any sexual abuse or heard of any sexual abuse.

00:09:43.900 After my wife is from the Blackfoot Reserve, and I heard from her that there were some relationship,

00:09:53.900 some things happened in the dorms between the kids.

00:09:57.900 And there was a supervisor, a boy supervisor, who was abusing children.

00:10:04.900 His name was William Starr.

00:10:06.900 He was actually convicted, charged and convicted for abusing children.

00:10:13.900 So there were some, but I never saw anything like that.

00:10:19.900 And I was in Inuvik, I was about the same age as the oldest students, and they were pretty casual with me.

00:10:26.900 And if anything like that had happened, I'm sure I would have heard about it because they would have told me, you know, the stories that had happened.

00:10:36.900 And, you know, I didn't hear about it, no.

00:10:38.900 Yeah.

00:10:39.900 I mean, again, we know it happened, but it just sounds we hear a lot of myths.

00:10:43.900 And, you know, we busted a number of those, some of the urban legends and conspiracy theories that have gone around.

00:10:49.900 And we just need to clear the record.

00:10:50.900 I mean, if we do want resolution, if we do want reconciliation, we really got to start getting truthful about what happened.

00:10:57.900 I mean, there were mistakes made, absolutely.

00:10:59.900 And people could question the whole principle of the residential schools, but they weren't necessarily the ongoing horrific.

00:11:04.900 You know, when we label everybody who attended one now as a survivor, it's kind of an exaggeration of what the circumstance was.

00:11:11.900 Yeah.

00:11:12.900 Well, in the total history of the residential schools, it started in 1883 when the federal government actually funded three industrial schools and then continued funding schools.

00:11:26.900 So that was the beginning of the federal government being formally involved in residential schools to the 1996 that the enrollment went up from being very low and then it went up and then it dropped.

00:11:40.900 Because in 1948, the federal government, there was a joint commission of the Senate and the House of Commons that put forward a report arguing that Aboriginal children should be integrated into the day schools off the reserve with other children.

00:11:59.900 So they're being integrated.

00:12:01.900 So from 1883, very few children went to school.

00:12:07.900 So perhaps at the beginning up until the 1910s, 1920s, maybe five, 10% of the children.

00:12:16.900 And at the very maximum, just a little bit over 30% actually attended.

00:12:21.900 So a very small percentage of children actually went to residential schools, though this is the whole focus of the debate is that every child went to residential school.

00:12:31.900 Every child was abused in residential school.

00:12:33.900 And if the child went or anybody in the ancestry, anybody they know went, then you've got a legacy of abuse that's being passed on from generation to generation that will perhaps never end.

00:12:45.900 Well, yeah, it just seems to have no end.

00:12:47.900 Well, yeah, it just seems to have no end.

00:12:48.900 And that's that other point that's worth clarifying.

00:12:49.900 Not every child, in fact, not even close to every child went to a residential school, though we are apologizing to and repeatedly compensating, you know, further generational.

00:12:59.900 My wife actually went to school, grew up in Rockyford, not very far from from the Blackfoot Reserve.

00:13:03.900 Yeah.

00:13:04.900 Some of the kids went to Rockford.

00:13:06.900 Exactly.

00:13:07.900 Yeah.

00:13:08.900 Some of her schoolmates back in the 60s and 70s were from the Blackfoot Reserve.

00:13:11.900 They didn't all go to the residential school.

00:13:13.900 They went to other public schools.

00:13:14.900 Yeah.

00:13:15.900 My parents-in-law, Elaine's mother, Nora A. Young, drove the bus to Rockford, so picked up kids on the reserve and then took them to school in Rockford.

00:13:26.900 Yeah.

00:13:27.900 So this was part of, you know, this resulted after the 1948 decision that they should be integrated.

00:13:35.900 And this happened all across Canada, you know, trying to integrate the kids.

00:13:39.900 So the first decision was, you know, do these children need to be educated in the same sort of way that other children are educated?

00:13:47.900 And the answer seems to be yes then.

00:13:50.900 And I would still have the same answer today that they need to be educated.

00:13:55.900 Unfortunately, it's in a different language and it's a different way of thinking about things.

00:14:00.900 But it's education that prepares them for the modern world rather than for the world of hunting and trapping and living in teepees.

00:14:08.900 Yeah.

00:14:09.900 I mean, we can maintain culture and still have a modern education.

00:14:12.900 I think some people just have some binary thinking when it comes to that sometimes and it leads to some bad outcomes.

00:14:18.900 So and you're very active with the Fraser Institute and I believe, you know, other resources.

00:14:24.900 Yeah.

00:14:25.900 So just, you know, kind of in closing, we need to work towards resolution and solution and talking more about this and just bringing out the facts.

00:14:32.900 And it's not denying that there were things done wrong.

00:14:34.900 It's just getting clarity.

00:14:36.900 And I appreciate you coming out to talk about these.

00:14:38.900 So where can you know, what can we do, I guess?

00:14:41.900 And where can we find more information?

00:14:43.900 I want to keep on this issue.

00:14:44.900 Okay.

00:14:45.900 So there's a couple of people that I've referenced for you that you could talk to.

00:14:51.900 And I think there's some Aboriginal people that you might be able to talk to people that are more critical or difficult to find.

00:15:00.900 And one of the reasons is they become persona non grata on the reserve if they say negative things about the residential schools.

00:15:08.900 And then there's there are still a few people around.

00:15:12.900 Mark DeWolf, who was a student in the St. Paul's residential school on the blood reserve, Kainai Nation, who spent six years going to school with the kids.

00:15:24.900 And he's got a very, very interesting stories about his father being the principal and him actually going to school with the other kids.

00:15:30.900 So I think those people and we've got a book edited by myself and Mark and it's called From Truth Comes Reconciliation, An Assessment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report.

00:15:46.900 And we're doing a second edition of the book with a conclusion that has a little bit sharper things.

00:15:52.900 The first thing that people have to do is they have to be able to talk and listen to each other.

00:15:57.900 And if we don't get to that, we're not getting any further in terms of reconciliation.

00:16:02.900 Yeah, people get shouted down or demonized and it's not leading to any better outcomes for anybody.

00:16:07.900 So that's great. And there's a lot of resources, as you said, and I'm going to be following up with those other individuals.

00:16:11.900 I hope I can have you on again because it's just such a huge subject and there's so much to cover.

00:16:16.900 And I know it's been mentioned that Dorchester Review covers a lot and the Frontier Center has been publishing pieces by yourself and others.

00:16:23.900 And you have your book as well.

00:16:26.900 So thank you for coming on to talk to us today.

00:16:28.900 And I hope we can follow up with this more because, I mean, we're obviously going to be dealing with this issue for some years to come.

00:16:33.900 And we just need to have these conversations.

00:16:35.900 Yes. And, you know, there's so few news agencies that will actually touch this one because it's so hot as a political issue.

00:16:43.900 So we really appreciate the fact that a few news agencies, including Western Standard will take it on.

00:16:50.900 Well, hopefully it starts a trend.

00:16:52.900 I mean, Terry Glavin wrote a great piece on it a little while ago and he got terribly attacked for it.

00:16:57.900 But I hope that that doesn't stop him or the National Post from covering these things.

00:17:01.900 And we'll just keep pushing until people can't ignore it anymore.

00:17:05.900 Thanks.

00:17:06.900 All right.

00:17:07.900 Well, thank you very much, Mr. Clifton, and we'll talk again soon.

00:17:09.900 Thanks a lot.

00:17:10.900 Bye.

00:17:11.900 Bye.

00:17:12.900 Bye.

00:17:13.900 Bye.

00:17:14.900 Bye.

00:17:15.900 Bye.

00:17:16.900 Bye.

Western Standard - July 12, 2022

Manitoba professor Rodney Clifton on residential schools

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