The Lansdowne Letters: The Unfairness, Unjustness, and Inhumanity of It All

When I was a girl living in the North,
I keenly felt the unfairness, the injustice, and the inhumanity
in the way aboriginal people were treated by white people.
I observed this treatment, but I primarily absorbed it
through my relationships with my Ojibwa and Métis friends
in Lansdowne House, Lac Seul, and Sioux Lookout.
My girlhood shock and outrage have never left me.

We Five Shortly Before Moving to the North

Roy, Donnie, Louise (Me) with Bertie, and Barbie

Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada Fall 1960

Photo by Sara MacBeath

When I first moved to Lansdowne House in 1961
and attended its Church of England Indian Day School,
I thought that the government, the church,
the schools, and the Hudson's Bay Company,
were there to help the Ojibwa achieve better lives.
I had no idea of the complex and troubled history
between Canadian institutions and aboriginal people.

However, I soon sensed that the way white people
interacted with the Ojibwa was paternalistic.
I may not have understood the full meaning of paternalism,
but I was increasingly aware
that the Ojibwa were considered less than whites.

I could see the poverty that the Ojibwa lived in,
and I could hear the way that white adults talked about them.
I grasped that the white adults around me
thought our way of life was superior to that of the Ojibwa,
and that the lives of the Ojibwa would be greatly improved
if they abandoned their primitive ways and adopted our modern ones.
What took me longer to sense was the cost of such a transition for the Ojibwa.

Indian Camps on Shore of Nipigon Lake

Photograph by Joseph Burr Tyrrell, 1906

Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto,

Toronto, Ontario Canada, M5S 1A5

Part of: MS. Coll. 26 Tyrrell (Joseph Burr) Papers

Flickr License

At that time I had no knowledge of the 1876 Indian Act,
of the government's intent to subsume indigenous people
by destroying their languages and cultures,
nor of the cruel treatment of indigenous children in Indian schools.

I recognized that my experiences as a white girl
attending an Indian Day School were in no way typical
of an indigenous student's experiences,
but I had no comprehension of how the Indian educational system
had been used to demean and to undermine indigenous cultures.

I only knew that my father was my best teacher ever
and that he wanted all of his students to learn and to succeed,
not just his offspring, but his Ojibwa children as well.

From the time I was a small child,
I knew that my father believed in the necessity of reading and writing English well.
So it was no surprise to me that in his classroom in Lansdowne House,
my father's primary focus was teaching English to his students.
He didn't care if we were white or copper,
but he did care that we improve our English skills
at whatever level we were at as students.

My father insisted that we four siblings spoke to our classmates in English,
for he believed that his Ojibwa students
would improve their English skills by interacting with us.
That insistence worked with Roy, Donnie, and myself,
but not so much with four-year-old Barbie
who was having fun learning Ojibway from her Ojibwa friends.

My father was not someone who ridiculed or punished a student
for speaking Ojibway in the classroom or on the school grounds.
I doubt at the time he completely understood the insidious nature
of the Canadian government's drive to teach indigenous people English;
although, I think he quickly developed a full understanding of it
as he gained more experience in the Indian Affairs Branch.

Barbie and Dad

Sioux Lookout, Ontario, Canada Winter 1962

Photo by Sara MacBeath

I don't think many people spend much time thinking about
how fundamental their native language is to their very essence;
I know I certainly didn't. I'm just beginning to grasp its significance now.

A native language shapes who you are, how you relate to others,
and how you understand the world around you.
It connects you to your parents, your grandparents, and your past,
and it encompasses your culture, traditions, and spirituality.

When a government deliberately implements policies
that separate a group of people from its native language,
what it is actually doing is committing cultural genocide,
particularly if it separates children from their parents
and puts them in government schools
designed to eradicate their language and culture.

By disrupting families a government is preventing
the transmission of language, culture, and identity
from one generation to the next.

Group of students, Indian Industrial School

Brandon, Manitoba, 1946

Library and Archives Canada

Credit / Mention de source :

Canada. National Film Board of Canada. Photothèque.

Library and Archives Canada, PA-048574

Reference No. / Numéro de référence : MIKAN 3381315, 4112011

Flickr License

In Canada, for well over a century,
it was the goal of the Canadian government,
not just to eradicate indigenous languages and cultures,
but to eliminate First Nations peoples
by ultimately absorbing them
into the mainstream, white, western culture.
Indians were to cease to exist legally, culturally, and racially.

I think that Canada's first Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald,
expressed this goal for the new nation of Canada
when he told the House of Commons in 1883:

"When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages;
he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write
his habits, and training and mode of thought are Indian.
He is simply a savage who can read and write.

"It has been strongly pressed on myself, as the head of the Department,
that Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence,
and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools
where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men."

Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future:
Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: trc.ca

Sir John A. Macdonald, 1872

Wikimedia

When I lived in Lansdowne House, I didn't know that our first Prime Minister,
a key figure in Canadian Confederation, had uttered such words,
and I didn't understand that Indian schools were a powerful tool for achieving that goal.

Had I read MacDonald's words at that time,
I would have recognized that, according to him,
I was living among savages and attending school with savages on their reservation.

I would also have known that my Ojibwa friends were not savages
and that our heroic Father of Confederation was very wrong.

Now it's more than fifty years later,
and there have been improvements in the relationships
between Canadian institutions and aboriginal people.

We still have a way to go as white Canadians,
but I think we are finally understanding with our hearts
the unfairness, the unjustness, and the inhumanity
with which aboriginal Canadians were treated in the past.