Citation:
Clark, Penney. “Representations of Aboriginal People in English Canadian History Textbooks: Toward Reconciliation.” In Teaching the Violent Past: History Education and Reconciliation, ed. by. Elizabeth A. Cole, 81-119. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007.
Abstract/Summary:
In this study, Clark examines twentieth century school history textbooks to better understand what English Canadian students learned about Aboriginal people over time. She focuses on four provinces - British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Nova Scotia - to represent the four broad regions of the country - the west, the prairies, central Canada, and Atlantic Canada. Using both primary and secondary analysis, depending on the time period, Clark presents her findings both visually and in writing.
After outlining the historical context of indigenous and settler groups in what is now Canada, Clark uses textbooks as lieux de memoire to glimpse the past in which they were written and authorized. Although Canadian history textbooks are not written with an explicit purpose to promote reconciliation with Aboriginal people, Clark argues that, over time, they have addressed their presence in various ways. She divides her exploration into three periods: 1911-1931, the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, and mid-1980s to the present. In the first period she finds that Aboriginal people were othered in textbooks, both in the paternalistic descriptions of them as children, and in the repugnance towards them. From the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s studies found that Canadian textbooks contained factual errors, glaring omissions, and negative stereotyping. In the most recent period, Clark argues that although it is clear that texts have improved in their discussion of Aboriginal people, they have not come far enough.
In the final section of the chapter, Clark outlines seven categories of depiction of Aboriginal people in textbooks. In the more distant past, Aboriginal people were depicted as spectators or savages. In the more recent past, Clark divides depictions of Aboriginal people in five categories: exotic, problem, uniquely spiritual, protestor, and invisible. She concludes that since “Canadian history textbooks have not yet come to grips with what reconciliation means within a postcolonial settler society,” textbooks reflect the social context in which they are written, one which relies on the narrative of progress and the othering of Aboriginal people (111). In order to fix this, she argues that the voices of Aboriginal people need to be included in texts and teachers need to disrupt this narrative.
Source/Credit:
Katherine Joyce 