Storying Living Memories about Indian Day Schools: Transforming Reconciliation

This work is an intricate history of an Indian Day School located at Listuguj on Mi'gmaw territory of Gespe'gewa 'gi, Mi'gma'gi, present-day Gaspé Peninsula (Québec).The dissertation assembles living oral memory of former students together with finely detailed archival research.The Indian Day school (and its many forms) operated at Listuguj (formerly Restigouche), from 1856 until 1969.The dissertation makes a real contribution to our understandings of the genocidal 'education' of Indigenous peoples in Canada, complicating the dominant narrative about residential schools and also introducing Québec into this history.Is it possible to conceptualize deeper forms of reconciliation on the basis of a more complex story of colonial schooling as well as the affirmation of Indigenous knowledge systems?If so, how?The historiography assembles fragments from archival records together with living oral memories to create a picture, with the hope that others will take what is needed to create other stories, new memories.The dissertation works with Indigenous concepts of relationality and storywork and uses Western analytics as a webbing in its analysis.There are also moments of settler self-reflexivity necessary for deeper forms of reconciliation.The dissertation animates the concept of "trans-systemic knowledges".The concept of "ethical space" is brought into play to facilitate the active relationship sense of trans-systemic knowledge building.The research on day schooling exposes how state violence operated from the inside out: Indigenous children did not necessarily need to leave their families or their ancestral lands to feel iii (or experience) the harms of "white possession".The storying approach, centering the voices of former students, seeks to ethically honour Mi'gmaw knowledges, which continued, changed, and adapted, while settler institutions (and logics) encroached and attempted to take root on the territory.Beneath (beyond, despite) the dominant narrative depicting reconciliation as a 'national' and 'big hug' there are possibilities.Standing still, hearing the difficult history of day schooling, the dissertation balances the demonstration of pain and harm with an insistence on survivance and resistance.Attending to the history of a particular place, there are possibilities for transformative reconciliation.x I sought to invite participation from approximately twenty (20) people, aged 65 and older, men and women, presently living in Listuguj who spent all of their formal schooling at the Restigouche Indian Day School, and its many forms (e.g., including the 'Joint' School, which operated from 1961-1969).I did not seek participation from individuals who are part of the official integration period, after 1969 when Listuguj First Nation entered into an agreement with the province of New Brunswick allowing Restigouche (present-day Listuguj) students to attend the public school system in that province.The memories and experiences associated with the integration era (post-1969) is an area of research that could be investigated further.Also, I did not include non-Indigenous former students who attended either the local (white) school ('l'ećole des blancs') situated in Listuguj or the 'Joint' School (after 1961).These memories, too, of non-Indigenous former students who attended these institutions could be investigated in other research projects.3 This project did not, of course, include all former students of the Restigouche Indian Day School.The project participants, former students of the Indian Day who took part in this research were between the ages of 63 and 88, when the research took place (born in 1955 or earlier).All the participants are fluent Mi'gmaw speakers; however, all the interviews were conducted in the English language.Of these participants, 8 attended the Indian Day school, exclusively, while 11 attended the Indian Day School and, after 1961, attended the Joint High School (federally funded and provincially controlled).All the participants reside in Listuguj, except for one person who is from Listuguj, but now lives at a distance.The research design involved a relational approach, using semi-structured interviews (conversations and storying) as a method of data gathering, For this dissertation I draw on archival records and oral testimony about a particular school, the Restigouche Indian Day School, located on Mi'gmaq ancestral territory, at Listuguj First Nation (formerly Restigouche), in Gespe'gewa'gi, Mi'gma'gi (in the province of Québec).For this project on day schooling, I spoke with people who attended, or taught, at the Restigouche Indian Day School (and its iterations) from the 1940s to 1969.The project participants were not, of course, all of those who attended or taught at the school, but those with whom I was able to speak.I acknowledge and thank all the participants who took part in this project on the Restigouche Indian Day School.I hope that this work will contribute to formally documenting, and sharing, this history with others.

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