Canada's Indian residential schools and the recovery of a stolen indianness : from historiography to fiction

• Main Author: Miroux, Franck
• Other Authors: Cultures anglo-saxonnes (CAS), Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès (UT2J), Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université de Toulouse (UT), Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, Héliane Ventura
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: French
• Published: HAL CCSD 2022
• Subjects: Tomson Highway; Richard Wagamese; Indian residential schools of Canada; deculturation; assimilation; Canadian First Nations; pensionnats indiens du Canada; déculturation; Premières Nations du Canada; [SHS.LITT]Humanities and Social Sciences/Literature; [SHS.HIST]Humanities and Social Sciences/History; Canada; Indian; anishina*; First Nations; inuit; Premières Nations
• Online Access: https://hal.science/tel-04238003

Indian residential schools operated in Canada from the 1880s to the closing decades of the 20th century. Most schools closed in the early 1970s after the federal authorities ended their partnership with catholic and protestant churches. Some of them, however, continued to operate well into the 1990s. The “desindianizing” process at work in those schools left deep wounds on Inuit, Métis and First Nations communities. Six years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released its final report, this dissertation retraces the history of the Indian residential school system in Canada to highlight the way assimilationist policies disrupted tribal identities, and, paradoxically, contributed to the recovery of stolen identities. It purports to show that the Canadian government failed to assimilate Indigenous populations while Aboriginal cultures resisted destruction. Having provided the historical context of residential schools in Canada, this dissertation focuses on fiction as a space for testimony and recovery. It analyses the works of two First Nations writers who experienced the traumas of the Indian residential school system. The first is Nehiyaw novelist, playwright and concert pianist Tomson Highway, who uses fiction to document his own experience of the schools in his novel Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998). The second is Anishinaabe novelist Richard Wagamese, whose 2012 novel Indian Horse is a major contribution to the rewriting of the history of the Indian residential schools of Canada. As a result, this dissertation tries to demonstrate that these narratives played an active part in the emergence of new epistemologies, allowing the Indigenous peoples of Canada to regain agency after over 150 years of deculturation policies. Le système des pensionnats indiens du Canada fonctionna de 1883 jusqu’à la fin du partenariat entre le gouvernement fédéral et les Églises en 1969. Toutefois, certains établissements continuèrent de fonctionner jusque dans les années 1990. Les processus de désindianisation à ...