This post is part of a series entitled “Land, Memory, and Schooling: Environmental Histories of Colonial Education.” You can find the introduction here.
This post and series discusses Indian residential and day schools. Please take care as you read. If you are a Survivor or intergenerational Survivor of residential or day school and you need help, there’s a free 24-hour support line. Call 1-866-925-4419. Additional resources are available here.
Author’s Note: Throughout this piece, terms such as “catholic,” “roman,” and names like “egerton ryerson” appear in lowercase. This is an intentional stylistic choice to refuse the power these institutions and figures have held over Indigenous lives, identities, and lands. This act of lowercasing is a form of critique and resistance.
In the early 1990s, I sat inside a roman catholic school room in Lakefield, Ontario, just a short drive from Curve Lake First Nation.
I remember sitting in the darkened gymnasium while my classmates stood to sing bible hymns, reading solemnly from an overhead projector. I remember gathering with the only other two First Nation kids in my grade, quietly whispering about which sins we’d make up that day for the priest in the confessional box.
I remember standing every morning for the daily prayer, memorizing the lord’s prayer, the hail mary, and other catholic devotions. I remember my grandmother, who was Italian and had the very best intentions for us, waking us early to recite the rosary before school.
I remember thinking that, to belong, I had to accept the sacraments of the roman catholic church: baptism, confirmation, holy communion, and reconciliation.
I remember picking out my confirmation name: Joseph. Not because I felt a connection to the saint, but because it was my father’s confirmation name before me. It felt expected, almost inherited. We were taught to choose from their list. No one asked if I already carried an Anishnaabe nooswin (Anishinaabe name). No one ever said that the syllables of my ancestors were worthy of ceremony.
I remember being twelve years old, sitting inside the Buckhorn roman catholic church of st. jean de brébeuf. My grandfather and I were the only “Indians” in a sea of white faces. I looked up at the stained glass and saw images of “Indians” on their knees, being anointed by a man in black. I remember the anger rising in my chest. I remember wanting to come back at night and smash that window.
In that moment, I asked myself: Why are my people always shown as less than?
That was the moment I began to question the theological dogma of the roman catholic church. That was when I began to seek out the original ways of my people.
“I experienced colonialism cloaked in the sanitized façade of catholic education.”
I am an intergenerational survivor of residential schools, day schools, Indian Hospital testing, and the infamous Sixties Scoop. Although I did not personally attend these institutions of assimilation and erasure, their impacts live on through me. I experienced colonialism cloaked in the sanitized façade of catholic education.
As a person of Gwich’in and Anishinaabe descent, I argue in this brief reflection that the ongoing oppression and cultural erasure inflicted upon First Nations Peoples remains evident today, particularly within the privatized catholic education system. Despite the language of reconciliation, these institutions continue to operate as vehicles of the colonial agenda through what is still, in many ways, “Indian Education.”
This was never just about education. It was about assimilation. egerton ryerson, one of the early architects of Canada’s educational system and a major influence on the residential school model, made the objective clear as early as 1847: “I understand the end proposed to be making of the pupils industrious farmers, and that learning is provided for and pursued only so far as it will contribute to that end… Agriculture being the chief interest, and probably the most suitable employment of the civilized Indians, I think the great object of industrial schools should be to fit the pupils for becoming working farmers and agricultural laborers, fortified of course by Christian principles, feelings and habits.”1
Throughout my education at st. paul’s catholic elementary school in Lakefield, Ontario, the objective laid out by egerton ryerson continued. The only time I ever learned about my Nation was in the context of the fur trade. Beyond that, all I was taught was that our People had been “saved” from our so-called heathen, pagan ways and converted to the colonial religion.
“I was lucky enough to maintain a connection to the Land and animals through my father, grandfather, and uncles.”
I was lucky enough to maintain a connection to the Land and animals through my father, grandfather, and uncles. From an early age, I was taught how to track, hunt, and trap moozoo (moose), waawaashkesh (deer), waabooz (rabbit), amik (beaver), zhashk (muskrat), binewag (partridge), ge mizise (and wild turkey). This is where I felt like I truly belonged. Out there, I was relieved of anxiety. Instead, I could breathe in the crisp autumn air and the familiar, grounding scent of pine needles and beaver castor. I remember hearing the stories of my uncles and the Lands they were connected to.
When I began to question the catholic church, my mother, who survived Indian Hospital testing and the Sixties Scoop, brought me to Hiawatha First Nation to learn from Niigaanzid Mshkode-Bezhiki-Nini-ba (the late Terry Rogers), Anishinaabe-Nini-ban (the late Merritt Taylor), Mskwaankwedoke (Georgina Rogers), and Asinii-Kwe (Edna Manitowabi).
I helped build my very first teaching lodge with Niigaanzid Mshkode-Bezhiki-Nini-ba, where I learned the importance of offering semaa (tobacco) to our relations before harvesting their life. After the lodge was complete, Asinii-Kwe pulled me aside and had me help her dress her Little Boy Water Drum, the one she carries for the Midewiwin Society.2 It was then that I first heard the story of how the Little Boy Water Drum came to our Nation as Anishinaabeg.
When I stepped into the teaching lodge to the sound of the Little Boy, I instantly felt at home. I was surrounded by the familiar scents of mshkodewashk (sage), wiingashk (sweetgrass), shkode-naakwadoon (fire smoke), and a knowing that I was right where I was meant to be.
I committed to four years of fasting, with a total of eight fasts held in the spring and fall. To this day, these ceremonies have instilled cultural values and personal morals that the catholic education system could never begin to offer.
I currently serve as the chair of Anishinaabe Knowledge and assistant professor in the Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies at Trent University. I am a member of the Midewiwin Society. I was entrusted with the rites to conduct sweat lodge ceremonies by Anishinaabe-Nini-ban, and the rites to put our people out on the Land for fasting by Asinii-Kwe. I continue these ceremonies for our People and our Nation, to support those who may be walking a path similar to the one I once walked.
Despite unlimited financial resources and the power of the settler state, egerton ryerson’s mandate failed. Despite the church’s efforts to erase our identities, languages, and spiritual connections, we are still here. I speak my language, I offer semaa, I have built and sat within teaching lodges, and I carry teachings passed down through generations. The system that was designed to make me “cease to be an Indian” could never sever the bond I have with my ancestors or the Land. If anything, it awakened in me a deeper commitment to return to the ways they tried to destroy. Every time I sit by a sacred fire, every time I sweat, every time I sing a song, I am living proof that ryerson’s vision of assimilation was not only unjust, it was unsuccessful.
I remember when I thought belonging meant kneeling in pews and choosing saints’ names from someone else’s book. But true belonging found me through my mother, who brought me back to our ways after surviving the Sixties Scoop and Indian Hospital testing. It found me through my father, my grandfather, and my uncles, who taught me how to live with the Land, how to track, hunt, and listen. It found me through Niigaanzid Mshkode-Bezhiki-Nini-ba, Anishinaabe-Nini-ban, Mskwaankwedoke, and Asinii-Kwe, who opened the lodge, lit the fire, and reminded me what it means to carry knowledge with humility and purpose. These were my real teachers.
“The Land taught me what the classroom never could: how to listen in silence, how to give thanks, and how to remember.”
The Land has always remembered me, even when institutions tried to make me forget. The Land taught me what the classroom never could: how to listen in silence, how to give thanks, and how to remember. Now, I help others remember too. This is a story about Indian Education, but it is also about Land-based resistance, about ceremony, about the scent of beaver castor and sage cutting through colonial fog. ryerson’s mandate was clear: to make us cease to be Indian. But the outcome is clearer still. I am still here. The Land is still here. And together, we remember.
Feature Image: This photo was taken on the land where I moose hunt. It’s just north of Curve Lake. It’s also where I learned to track, hunt, and trap beavers and muskrats. Photo taken by author on October 13, 2024.
Notes
1 Egerton Ryerson, “Report of Dr. Ryerson on Industrial Schools (1847),” in Statistics Respecting Indian Schools (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1898), 74.
2 Midewiwin translates to the way and sound of the good heart. Commonly referred to as the Grand Medicine Society, the Midewiwin Society is a complex society rooted in traditional spiritualism of the Anishinaabeg.
Jack Hoggarth
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