| Kommentar |
Pandemic-related modifications to the seminar
This seminar will use a module-based approach to online learning. It blends synchronous (e.g., online face-to-face meetings) and asynchronous (independent, e.g., readings, discussion posts, and writing tasks to prepare for the final research paper) aspects. The frequency of synchronous meetings (monthly, bi-weekly or weekly) will be determined by a pre-seminar survey, in which students will be asked to identify their experience with and preferences and expectations for online learning. Primary course texts are available electronically and will be uploaded for each module with guiding questions for reading. Audio and visual materials will be provided to supplement the texts. Students requiring any learning accommodations, particularly regarding visual, hearing, or reading impairments, are requested to contact their instructor so the seminar can be modified accordingly.
The objective of this course is to explore the importance of historical analysis for policy and public history. Discussing the independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC; 2008-2015), this course reconstructs how nineteenth-century ideologies, policies, and legislative acts shaped the trajectory of the state’s treatment of indigenous people into the twentieth century. The TRC was tasked with documenting the history and impact of the Canadian residential school system, which comprised the forcible removal of indigenous children from their homes to be educated in boarding schools. The education program was designed to systematically eliminate indigenous children’s attachment to their indigenous culture and to assimilate them into ”modern” Canadians culture. The multi-volume final report (2015) concluded that the residential school system amounted to a cultural genocide of Canada’s indigenous people. Despite such profound impacts, the history of the Canadian residential school system has been largely overlooked in Canadian society. The TRC’s final report (2015) thereby offers an opportunity to correct the historical record and encourage a more critical discussion of Canadian history. With ninety-six calls to action, it serves as a starting point for reconciliation by working through the Canadian past and addressing the legacy of the residential schools system.
This seminar will explore the 2015 report’s findings, with a particular focus on the role the nineteenth century played in the subsequent development of the residential school system. The course will conclude with an examination of the concept of cultural genocide and what it means for—particularly nineteenth-century—Canadian history after the TRC and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) more generally.
The seminar language is English.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Explore the importance of historical understanding for public history;
- Reconstruct how policies, ideologies, and legislative acts rooted in the nineteenth century shaped Canadian history in the twentieth century;
- Interpret historical evidence pertaining to residential schools using an appropriate source analysis that considers the complexities associated with such records;
- Review, deconstruct, and evaluate the theoretical aspects of cultural genocide; and
- Compose a thesis-driven argument about the role of the nineteenth century policies in the cultural genocide of the indigenous people of Canada.
Literature: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling the Future (2015) available from
http://nctr.ca/assets/reports/Final%20Reports/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf; John S. Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986 (University of Manitoba Press, 2017 [1999]). |
