Book reveals history of residential schools
Project of Heart ebook includes clickable tools for teachers to use in classrooms
The B.C. Teachers’ Federation has created a book to commemorate the history of residential schools in B.C.
The book — Project of Heart: Illuminating the hidden history of Indian Residential Schools in B.C. — is available in traditional book form or as an interactive ebook.
The ebook contains links that teachers can click on, leading to resources they can use in their classrooms, such as videos, documents, timelines or activities.
Both are intended to help teach the history of residential schools, which is part of B.C.’s new curriculum and also has Aboriginal perspectives embedded throughout.
The book summarizes the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s key findings, including that Canada committed cultural genocide, that conditions in the schools were appalling, that indigenous children and families resisted residential schooling, that children were subjected to all kinds of abuse, that the death toll was in the thousands, that the legacy of residential schools is felt to this day and that the challenge of reconciliation is for all Canadians.
It uses stories, pictures and examples to make the terrible reality of residential schools come to life.
“Imagine that you are five years old. A stranger comes to your home village and seizes you from your mother’s arms. Imagine he takes you hundreds of miles away to a place where white people in black robes cut off your hair and take away your clothes, the ones your mother made especially for you,” the book begins. “They also take away your name — you get a number instead. They separate you from your brothers and sisters, and forbid you to speak to one another in your native language.”
Chief Ian Campbell of the Squamish Nation told a story of a relative who had been taken away to Sechelt residential school when he was six. He was abused there, but later escaped, rowing home to Musqueam when he was just eight-anda-half years old. He thanked the BCTF for the resource.
“Our children aren’t at risk — we need to stop using that term. Our children are culturally deprived and that’s what they are hungry for,” Campbell said.
B.C. teacher Gail Stromquist was the project leader and curator.
Her aunt, Gladys Chapman, died at age 12 in a residential school from tuberculosis and dilation of the heart. Chapman’s story is in the book, which says that Gail and her sister Janet, also a teacher, “share Justice (Murray) Sinclair’s conviction that because education was the primary tool of oppression of Aboriginal people and the misleading of all Canadians, education holds the key to reconciliation.”
There have already been requests for copies of the book from educators throughout B.C. and across Western Canada, said Moira Mackenzie, BCTF executive director.