Situating Self
I want to begin this analysis of the Saskatchewan History 10 curriculum by first situating myself. This is a process that I learned within my Master of Curriculum and Instruction program at the University of Regina. By situating myself before my analysis, I hope to make visible the biases in which I write (Cote-Meek, 2020, p. xii). My name is Curtis Bourassa; I am grateful and fortunate to live in Treaty 4 territory, the traditional territory of the Cree (Nêhiyawak), Saulteaux (Nahkawé), Nakota, Dakota, Lakota, and the Métis Nation. My ancestors have been in this area for multiple generations, farming the land and hunting and fishing on the land. I recognize that my ancestors and I are uninvited guests on this territory. I have been an educator for eight years. This includes five years as an instructional technology coach, as well as one year as a school principal. Over the past five years of my graduate studies journey, both at the University of Regina and now at the University of British Columbia, my experiences have led me to interweave my passion for technology with truth and reconciliation. I recognize that Truth and Reconciliation is a deep, heavy personal work, but I do this work for my ancestors and to be a better ancestor for my children.
Context
The History 10 curriculum was published in 1992, and is still used across many Saskatchewan schools. It is one of three options for a mandatory course needed for graduation (History 10, Social Studies 10, or Native Studies 10). I chose to study this curriculum because it is a course that is new to me. I decided to analyze this curriculum document because, within my school, it is a course taught to every grade 10 student. The course has a profound impact on students’ understanding of world history, students are introduced to units including: political decision making, economic decision making, the development of nations, imperialism, and international relations.
Q1: Within the curriculum, I hope to uncover the following question: How could the History 10 curriculum contribute to the misrepresentation or biased/problematic perspectives of Indigenous history in Saskatchewan and Canada?
The curriculum was searched using the key terms Indian, Indigenous, Aboriginal, First Nations, Métis, and Native. It was found that the word Indian appeared 44 times, Aboriginal 36 times, Métis 20 times (All within the section “Indian and Métis Curriculum Perspectives), Indigenous 17 times, Native three times (only in terms of the Native Studies course), and First Nations zero times. As I was reading the curriculum, I wanted to focus specifically on the Imperialism and the Economic Decision Making units of study. Within Saskatchewan, Treaty Education has been mandated to be taught and embedded within curriculum content. Thus, I wanted to analyze how treaties, colonization, and assimilation were discussed in the curriculum.
| Indian | Indigenous | Aboriginal | First Nations | Metis | Native | Colonization | Treaties | Assimilation |
| 44 | 17 | 36 | 0 | 20 | 3 (in terms of the course Native Studies) | 1 (Reference to colonizers and the treatment of Indigenous people) | 4 (2 referring to treaties made in China, and 2 referring to the Cherokee treaties made in the USA) | 10 (only 1 specific to the assimilation of various Indigenous groups. |
Q2: How does the curriculum portray the treaties and the impact of colonization of Indigenous people within Canada?
It should be noted that there was specific mention of both the Iroquois in a study on the Iroquois Confederacy, as well as the Cherokee, which was included within the unit on imperialism focused on the conflict between the Cherokee people, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Findings – Question 1
To answer how Indigenous people are represented in this curriculum, we must try to understand bias. Much like how I introduced myself in this analysis, I believe looking at the various backgrounds of the people who wrote the 1992 History 10 curriculum in Saskatchewan is essential. In looking at the curriculum, it appears that Indigenous representation is limited. One representative was from the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, and it seems this was the only Indigenous representation involved in the curriculum’s writing. Therefore, I argue that a tremendous bias results in unequal representation of the Saskatchewan population among authors.
The Saskatchewan Ministry of Education has included a curriculum section titled “Indian and Métis Curriculum Perspectives.” It discusses the importance of an education that meets the needs of Indian and Métis peoples, and how Indian and Métis perspectives benefit all students in society (Saskatchewan Education, 1992, p. 6). Despite the outdated language, this preface in the curriculum is a welcome sight, and it ties into culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), and culturally responsive teaching (Villegas & Lucas, 2002). Despite this promising start, it should be noted that minimal reference to Métis was made again within the document outside of a reference to the Northwest Resistance (Saskatchewan Education, 1992, p. 418) and a brief connection to Louis Riel. A welcome surprise was that the Northwest Resistance was labelled as such. Often, this resistance is labelled as the Northwest Rebellion in historical documents, further villainizing Métis people.
The curriculum includes some content on teaching Western and traditional Aboriginal worldviews. However, the curriculum pan-indigenizes all Indigenous people as the same. The curriculum states, “Traditional Aboriginal societies in North America were founded upon a holistic and spiritually-based worldview known as the ‘Sacred Circle’” (Government of Saskatchewan, 1992, page. 116). The curriculum fails to acknowledge that Indigenous people across Canada have distinct ways of knowing and being. Although the Sacred Circle may be a fundamental component of the worldview for many Indigenous people, it does not recognize the distinctness between Indigenous people.
A shocking find for me was the limited number of Indigenous examples shared within the curriculum. One example they referred to often was the Iroquois Confederacy. The curriculum aims to compare the Iroquois Confederacy to other forms of democracies worldwide. Although the reference to the Iroquois Confederacy may be well-intentioned, it is a very early democratic system in world history. The curriculum fails to address that many other Indigenous people on Turtle Island also had working governance systems. In addition, the Iroquois Confederacy was a collection of First Nations groups from the Great Lakes region of Turtle Island. The curriculum did not mention other specific Indigenous groups in Canada or, more specifically, Saskatchewan.
Findings – Question 2
The analysis of the inclusion of Treaties and how colonization has been introduced has resulted in some disappointing findings. Despite the importance that Saskatchewan now places on learning about the Treaties. No reference is made to making Treaties with Indigenous people in Canada. Furthermore, colonization was often included in the curriculum content but not considered colonization. Lastly, the issue of assimilation was brought up; it again did not address the policies that were put in place to assimilate Canada’s Indigenous population.
The curriculum’s inclusion of Treaties was limited to the Treaty of Nanking and the Tientsin Treaty through discussion of how China was impacted by European Imperialism (p. 414). The other example of Treaties in the curriculum discusses how the United States refused to recognize and affirm the treaties it had signed with the Cherokee Nation (p. 422). It is essential to recognize what is missing in this curriculum. Why is the focus on the Cherokee and the Trail of Tears in a Saskatchewan curriculum? The Trail of Tears is the forced displacement of Indigenous people in the southeastern United States (“Trail of Tears,” 2019). Similar acts of colonialism, including not following the agreed-upon Treaties, the enacting of assimilation policies (pass-system, residential schools, Indian Act), and cultural genocide, were occurring within Canada at the same period.
The History 10 curriculum aims to teach students about colonization through a Western European lens, focused on defending the perceived need to take over Indigenous land. The curriculum does touch the surface of the impact of colonization on Indigenous people. However, it does not explain the historical impact colonization has had and continues to have on Indigenous people. For example, the curriculum states to ask students the following: “Who has the prior property rights in this situation: the Indian whose ancestors have lived there for generations; or, the settler who comes to ‘virgin’ land and turns it into a farm?” (Saskatchewan Education, 1992, p. 237). Including this debate within the Economic Decision Making unit does not allow for a meaningful debate because the unit focuses on economics and not the intergenerational trauma and the effects of colonization.
Lastly, assimilation is addressed in similar ways to colonization. It is extensively discussed, but outside of one mention, it does not address the assimilation that Indigenous people have experienced. One specific exercise the curriculum states to do is to “Challenge the students to consider how they would feel if a large country decided it had some valid (from their perspective) reasons to take over Canada” (Saskatchewan Education, 1992, p. 417). It then states reasons such as the use of propaganda the try to convince Canadians and that the country that is taking over is more scientifically and technologically advanced (p. 417). This exercise is highly inappropriate and demeaning, as it attempts to identify parallels to colonization and assimilation in Canada to Indigenous people. The curriculum states, “Now point out to students that many countries in the last half of the nineteenth century faced this kind of situation” (p. 417). Again, the curriculum fails to consider the ongoing impact that these decisions and policies have made on Indigenous people.
Limitations and Conclusion
This analysis has limitations as it only addresses the History 10 curriculum. I would be interested to do the same analysis using the same questions on the Social Studies 10 curriculum and the Native Studies 10 curriculum. Further limitations include errors in the search of the document due to the inability to search for key terms utilizing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology and keyword searches throughout the document. This limitation resulted in the manual work of looking up the keywords found within the document, which is prone to mistakes.
In conclusion, the findings in History 10 resulted from a misrepresentation and biased perspectives of Indigenous history in Saskatchewan and Canada. The use of outdated language, as well as the blatant absence of Indigenous content, reaffirms that Indigenous content is not at the forefront and is deemed as less important. Furthermore, the absence of recognition of the Treaties made within Canada undermines the importance of these legally binding documents. The inclusion of specific examples, such as the Cherokee, deflects the issues of colonization in Saskatchewan and Canada and fails to address the ongoing intergenerational trauma that has occurred, as it sends the message that these issues did not occur in Saskatchewan or Canada.
References
Cote-Meek, S. (2020). Introduction. In S. Cote-Meek & T. Moeke-Pickering (Eds.), Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education in Canada (pp. xi–xxiii). Canadian Scholars.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/1163320
Saskatchewan Education (1992). History 10: Social organizations a curriculum guide [Program of studies]. https://curriculum.gov.sk.ca/CurriculumHome?id=186
Trail of tears. (2019, March 1). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears
Villegas, A. M., & Lucas, T. (2002). Preparing culturally responsive teachers: Rethinking the curriculum. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(1), 20–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487102053001003
Curtis Bourassa 