The TRC, Reconciliation, and the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School

Abstract

The TRC, Reconciliation, and the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School Martha Walls (bio) IN 2015 THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION (TRC) released its final report, drawing Canadians' attention to "the complex truth about the history and the ongoing legacy of the church-run residential schools." Its 94 Calls to Action outlined wide-ranging initiatives to dismantle the enduring colonial attitudes and structures that gave rise to, and sustained, residential schools. In keeping with Eva Mackey's belief that academics are positioned to help "make things right," many regional scholars, both as educators and as members of a profession that has long reified white privilege and colonialism, have committed to the reconciliatory work of the Calls to Action.1 In some ways, these efforts have resulted in observable, if modest, changes: increasing numbers of university courses have been amended to highlight Indigenous histories and explore colonialism, inherent biases of familiar texts and narratives have been reconsidered, and pedagogical practices that reinforce structural privileging of non-Indigenous students and that disadvantage Indigenous ones are being questioned. The symbolic gesture of acknowledging that Atlantic Canada is unceded Indigenous territory has become commonplace and, significantly, some regional scholars – before and since the TRC – have applied their expertise to legal cases, some resulting in important rulings affirming treaty and Indigenous rights.2 Eight years on, however, reconciliation faces sharp critiques, both as a concept that is arguably reduced to platitudes and as a process that has been so abysmally slow that, at its current pace according to one study, all of the Calls to Action will not be met until 2057.3 The shortcomings of reconciliation are apparent regionally. That a settler scholar is exploring this topic for this [End Page 72] anniversary issue of Acadiensis underscores the extent to which the field of Atlantic Canadian history remains dominated by non-Indigenous academics. Moreover, the "complex history" of residential schools in Atlantic Canada remains largely unexplored as scholars working regionally have grappled to only a slight extent with either residential schooling as it operated in this region or with the wider consequences of this scholarly inattention. The neglect of regional residential school history manifests in gaps in university curricula (which filter down to the secondary school level by virtue of teacher-education in universities),4 undermines public knowledge, and impedes the building of new relationships with Mi'kmaw and Wolastoqiyik students and communities that continue to experience the ramifications of residential schooling. The marking of the 50th anniversary of Acadiensis is an apt – if overdue – time for both the difficult reckoning with a collective professional shortcoming around residential schooling in the Maritime Provinces and for suggesting ways that such work might be accomplished. In the Maritime Provinces, the "complex truth" about residential schools rests in the history of the region's only formal residential facility located at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia. Funded as all such facilities were by the federal government, the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School (SIRS) operated from 1929 until 1967 under Roman Catholic management and was staffed by the Sisters of Charity, who were headquartered at Mount Saint Vincent College in Halifax, Nova Scotia (and who were also engaged at the Kootenay Residential School in Cranbrook, British Columbia). Founded more than two decades after Peter Henderson Bryce's damning 1907 critique of residential schools as unsafe and ill-conceived,5 the Shubenacadie facility was part of a "second wave" of residential schools that emerged in the early 20th century. This second wave followed the First World War, as the growing rights-centred activism of Indigenous peoples was seen by the federal Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) as a threat to its assimilatory mandate. This second round of residential school construction was part of a spate of new and repressive federal policies, among them an Indian Act amendment that made attendance at school mandatory for Indigenous children – aimed at both curtailing Indigenous [End Page 73] peoples' quests for rights and at strengthening assimilation.6 The establishment of the Shubenacadie facility fulfilled the personal commitment of DIA Deputy Superintendent General Duncan Campbell Scott to the creation of a residential school system that stretched from coast to coast (to coast).7 Each year, for 37 years, 125 to...