Over the last week or so, the Globe and Mail has published an important series of stories about the history of the residential school system in Canada. In particular, the stories have focused on what to my mind is an unfathomable, unforgiveable neglect of the Canadian government as it ignored the vast numbers of native children who died of tuberculosis while attending these schools:

"A Globe and Mail examination of documents in the National Archives reveals that children continued to die from tuberculosis at alarming rates for at least four decades after a senior official at the Department of Indian Affairs initially warned in 1907 that schools were making no effort to separate healthy children from those sick with the highly contagious disease.

Peter Bryce, the department's chief medical officer, visited 15 Western Canadian residential schools and found at least 24 per cent of students had died from tuberculosis over a 14-year period. The report suggested the numbers could be higher, noting that in one school alone, the death toll reached 69 per cent." (Globe and Mail, "Natives died in droves as Ottawa ignored warnings; Tuberculosis took the lives of students for at least 40 years." April 24, 2007. I would link directly to all of these articles, but I'm sorry to say that most of them are restricted to Globe subscribers. I have made PDF copies of the articles though if any of you want to use them for research purposes)

On top of everything else that we've already talked about in our class with regard to the history of these schools, we learned this week of how many thousands of young children died in this system, which chose not to separate sick children from the regular student body, resulting in an infection rate more dramatic than perhaps we've ever seen anywhere else: "How many aboriginal children died from tuberculosis at the schools? Health Canada's website reports a death rate as high as 8,000 per 100,000 during the 1930s and 1940s — decades after Dr. Bryce's warnings. To put that in context, the death rates from tuberculosis on native reserves were, says Health Canada, among “the highest ever reported in a human population” — and at 700 per 100,000 people, they were less than 10 per cent of the rate afflicting children in the residential schools during the 1930s and 1940s." (Globe and Mail, "The Lost Children of Our Schools." April 28, 2007.)

In the discussions that have gone on about these revelations, we see a number of things of which we need to take notice.

First, if you factor in tuberculosis to what we already know about the physical and sexual abuse many of these students suffered, the systematic and deliberate destruction of culture, language and identity in the guise of "education," the forced removal of thousands of children from their families, communities, and all that they knew, we're reminded once again of how devastating this system was to the First Nations peoples of North America. Genocide is not an inappropriate word to use to describe what happened

Second, one of the other things that the Conservative government's response to the discussion of these issues reveals is the nature of some of the stories Canadians still tell themselves about what Canada did to the first peoples of that land. Quoted in the Globe and Mail's editorial on this topic over the weekend, "Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice said he will not apologize to aboriginals for the government's role in overseeing the largely church-run residential schools because 'fundamentally, the underlying objective had been to try and provide an education to aboriginal children.'”

In The Truth About Stories, Tom King reminds us that "the truth about stories is that's all that we are" and that we can learn a lot from looking more carefully at the stories we tell ourselves, at the narratives we allow to shape our perceptions of the world. The Globe runs with this idea in its Saturday editorial and reminds us of many of the myths some Canadians still hold on to with respect to how Canada has treated Native peoples in the past and in the present:

The myth of Canada's residential schools for native children holds that the schools had a paternalistic purpose, and that even after all is revealed about them — the physical and sexual abuse, the forced relocation of children, the ban on speaking native languages — Canada meant well. The country was simply limited by the assimilative vision of the times.

That myth may at last fall when Canadians take a close look at the abysmally high death rates among children, from tuberculosis and other causes, at the schools. They did not die in one great epidemic; they died over many years — at least 40 — as the federal government ignored warnings from its own medical advisers.

The full story of those deaths has not entered the Canadian consciousness. The Canadian Encyclopedia says nothing about tuberculosis under “residential schools” or “native education.” When the Canadian government apologized in 1998 for sexual and physical abuse at the schools, it said nothing about the deaths of children. (Globe and Mail, "The Lost Children of Our Schools." April 28, 2007.)

For what it's worth, Jim Prentice has stated in the last day or so that Canada will launch a new effort to learn more about this sad chapter of Canada's past that remains fresh for many people across the country:

"As for a government apology, the minister said it is better to wait until a new Truth and Reconciliation Commission completes its five-year mandate to tour the country and issue a definitive report on the history of residential schools. Mr. Prentice told the House that his decision to attach “enormous significance” to such a commission dates back to his experience working as a constitutional adviser in South Africa in the early 1990s as the country worked to dismantle its apartheid structure."

While this is a noble and likely important project, it's not enough for right now. The Liberal opposition today spearheaded a largely symbolic vote that passed unanimously in Parliament today. It calls for the House of Commons to apologize to First Nations peoples for what the residential school system did to them.

As these recent revelations -- "reminders" is perhaps a more appropriate word here, as these details were never forgotten by the First Nations -- show us, the effect of what Canada did to the First Nations through the residential schools alone are still an everyday part of life for those people:

"In his opening speech, Saskatchewan Liberal MP Gary Merasty, a former Cree Grand Chief who moved yesterday's motion, painted a dark picture of the residential schools experience.

'I stand here for numerous victims whose stories will never be told, whose remains are scattered across our land in unmarked graves, scars on the land and even larger scars on our nation's psyche,” he said. “According to some reports, students in the early to middle part of the last century often had to help bury their classmates, their friends, their relatives. Yes, children buried children.'"

Reading words like that, like some of the words we've read this semester are hard, painful, depressing, devastating even. But they're also important and words that I hope we all try to remember and not forget. We've seen this semester the power that stories can have. Stories are not simply entertainment. They are fundamental to who we are, how we see the world, and to the decisions we make about how we live our lives and what we demand of the leaders and representatives we elect. We've seen what can happen when we change the stories we tell ourselves. As King tells us, we can change reality by changing the stories we tell ourselves. Changing those stories is hard, but necessary work.