“To rob the world of a people”: Language Removal as an Instance of Colonial Genocide in the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School

• Main Author: Ilyniak, Natalia
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Digital Commons @ University of South Florida 2015
• Subjects: Colonialism; Genocide; Fort Alexander Indian Residential School; Canada; Sociology; Indian; anishina*
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol9/iss2/9; https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1291&context=gsp

This paper demonstrates, through Sagkeeng First Nation narratives, how the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School (FAIRS) is a micro-instance of genocide in the context of language. An understanding is offered from the perspective of a settler colonial academic, in consideration of decolonizing principles. Using relational theory, namely Actor-Network Theory, this paper discusses how FAIRS’s practices were designed and operated to disrupt relations between children and their community by removing Anishinaabe language, and the ways children and their families negotiated and undermined these practices. Data was collected through critical narrative analysis and sociohistoric inquiry to identify and unpack the practice of language removal in FAIRS, as identified in Survivors’ testimonies, interviews, stories, and memoir.