Integrating the eagles : members of Dokis First Nation reflect on public education in Ontario, 1960-1980

• Main Author: Blacklaws, Kaitlyn
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: Ojibwa Indians Ontario Dokis (Parry Sound) History; Ojibwa Indians Education Ontario Dokis (Parry Sound); Indians of North America Education Canada; Indigenous peoples Education Canada; Indigenous children Education Canada; Canada; Indian; Parry; anishina*; First Nations
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/102679

This research paper was completed and submitted at Nipissing University, and is made freely accessible through the University of Toronto’s TSpace repository Between 1939 and 1945, thousands of Aboriginal Canadians enlisted for service in the Second World War, left their loved ones, travelled overseas, and even lost their lives. No single reason exists for why these men and women chose to fight alongside Canadian soldiers, although each one received the same token of gratitude for their service; the loss of their “Indian status.” As a result of this type of governmental ingratitude, along with the poverty, homelessness, and residential school abuses that Aboriginal peoples continued to face in postwar Canada, organizations such as the National Indian Brotherhood developed to pressure the Canadian government to action. Increasing postwar unrest, combined with the Canadian government’s signature on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, resulted in the creation of a Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Commons in 1946 to investigate potential changes to the Indian Act. The Committee recommended the closure of residential schools and amendments to the Indian Act in order to integrate Aboriginal peoples into Canadian society through provincial education in non-Aboriginal schools. Using the stories of Aninshinaabeg from Dokis First Nation and neighbouring communities in Northern Ontario, I argue the early integration of Aboriginal children into public schools was based on the same policies of assimilation as residential schools. By the 1970s and 1980s the experiences of some students improved, but under the integration scheme First Nations education in Canada continued to be characterized by discrimination because of the decision making authority of Indian Affairs and the provincial government over local communities, the lack of cultural resources and training available to teachers, and the removal of children from Anishinaabe land into public schools that ignored their language, identity, and culture.