Settler Historians are Busy Rewriting History to Make You Feel Enraged and Guilty
By Michelle Stirling ©2023
On National Indigenous People’s Day, it was a pleasure to see many young Indigenous people expressing pride in their roots with images and positive messages across Twitter. Years ago, I worked as a career and employment counsellor. Some 30% of my clients were aboriginal people. At the time I was pleased to see that so many Indigenous youth, were enthusiastic and willing to work, only wanting a ‘way in’ and perhaps a ‘hand up’ — not a handout.
Less welcome on Twitter were the various articles posted by ‘settler’ historians presenting Indigenous Canadians of note, mostly because the biographical articles included historical rewrites to mislead the public.
One story was that of Chief Dan George. He was a remarkable man and had an exceptional career and influence on the generation of Indigenous people who came after him.
One of the stories posted it was from “The Daily Hive” authored by “Canadian History Ehx” — aka Craig Baird.
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In the story, the almost mandatory mantra appeared: “His English name was Dan Slaholt, but his last name was changed to George when he was forced into Residential School at the age of five.”
Independent researcher Nina Green pointed out immediately that as per Baird’s article, Chief Dan George was born July 24, 1899. He would have been 5 in 1904. Children under the age of 7 were not allowed admission to Indian Residential Schools unless they were orphaned, destitute or from a risky home. Likewise, as Nina explained, the Indian Act didn’t mandate compulsory attendance at a residential school until 1920, and even then, the parents didn’t have to send their child to a residential school if there was a day school on the reserve.
Was George forcibly taken away? And how did he get into Indian Residential School if he was underage?
According to Encyclopedia.com “His father believed it was best for his children’s future to learn English, so he decided to send George’s older brother to the Mission school. However, the boys were so close that Harry refused to go without his little brother, and so his father sent both boys. They knew no English when they arrived and were forbidden to speak their native language. George found the priests and nuns, in their strange garb, “terrifying for a little boy of my age,” as he told biographer Hilda Mortimer in You Call Me Chief: Impressions of the Life of Chief Dan George. They saw their parents twice a month. “Every two weeks we’d catch the streetcar to the end of the line,” he recalled, “then walk seven miles to get home on a Friday night.””
So, it looks like Chief Dan George’s parents voluntarily sent him and his brother Harry to Indian Residential School to learn English because his dad felt it would be best for the children’s future. He was right. Chief Dan George became a literary icon and actor. In English.
The Encyclopedia.com article continues: “George did well in school, but government funding for Native American education stopped when a student reached the age of 16. “I remember I cried when I left, for I felt that if I was to get anywhere in life I needed to study and learn more,” he told Mortimer. “But I packed my clothes and walked the miles home.”
Chief Dan George cried. Because he had to LEAVE an Indian Residential School.
Chief Dan George rejected radical Indigenous action. The Canadian Encyclopedia states: “George refused to become involved, believing that using guerrilla tactics was counterproductive. According to Notable Native Americans, he was more “interested in changing predominant images of Native Americans in the media, as well as derogatory images that many Indians had of themselves.”
“George died in his sleep on September 23, 1981, on British Columbia’s Berard Reservation where he had been born. He left behind six children and 36 grandchildren.”
Another profile posted on Twitter to celebrate National Indigenous People’s Day was that of Richard Wagamese. I met Richard years ago when he was in Calgary, writing for the Calgary Herald, and I always enjoyed his work.
Craig Baird’s tweet reads: “Richard was born on Oct. 14, 1955, in Minaki, Ontario to parents who were forced into Residential Schools, causing lifelong trauma for them.”
However, The Canadian Encyclopedia entry about Richard, written by Jules Lewis, April 18, 2017, says that Richard’s parents were removed from their homes and placed in residential school. This suggests that both his parents came from destitute or dysfunctional families, and this intergenerational issue is echoed in the events described by Lewis.
“…(Richard Wagamese’) first home, as he recalls in his essay “The Path to Healing,” in One Story, One Song (2011), “was a canvas army tent hung from a spruce bough frame.” As a toddler, he lived communally with his parents, siblings, his maternal grandmother, uncles, aunts and cousins.”
“When he was almost three years old, his parents left him and his three siblings alone in a bush camp for days while they were drinking in a town about 96 km away. Cold and hungry, the children managed to cross a frozen bay to seek shelter in the small railroad town of Minaki, where a provincial policeman spotted them and dropped them off at the Children’s Aid Society. From there, the siblings were taken away in what is known as the Sixties Scoop, a government program in Canada that aggressively “scooped” Indigenous children from their homes and placed them into foster care.”
Richard did suffer a great deal, being bounced from foster home to foster home. He also narrowly escaped death, being left alone for days while a toddler when his parents went drinking.
Later in life, he did reconnect with his mother, and his 2008 description of her residential school days is positive, not bleak or horrific at all. “My mother has never spoken to me of abuse or any catastrophic experience at the school. She only speaks of learning valuable things that she went on to use in her everyday life, things that made her life more efficient, effective and empowered,” he wrote. Likewise, he noted that his mother’s Christian faith was prominently displayed, “There is a cross on the wall, a Bible by her bed and a picture of Jesus in the living room.”
Indian Residential School records indicate that his mother was part of a very large family, and she was admitted to school underage at 6 by special request of the principal who averred that her two older sisters then at school “can look after her probably better than the mother could at home.”
As has been said of Indigenous people, many have shown their exceptional resilience in the 200-year transition from hunter-gatherer culture to a world of high-tech.
And as it was for Chief Dan George, English literacy was the ticket for Richard Wagamese.
Wagamese said of his motivation for writing: “Simply and briefly put, I get my inspiration from the knowledge that there is someone out there in the world who is just like me — curious and desiring more and more knowledge of the world and her people. I write so that when they pick up one of my books there is an instantaneous connection, like we’re collaborating on the story.”
It seems that Indian Residential Schools are not what causes intergenerational trauma, but more likely Complex Post-Traumatic Stress, from the extreme changes, from the inculcation of alcohol and its worst effects on aboriginal communities, from the decades of concurrent deaths and injuries on reserve, whether it be the early smallpox epidemics that orphaned thousands of children, Tuberculosis plague that walked, like a Grim Reaper, through every village, the Spanish Flu that again orphaned thousands of children, or today’s deadly fentanyl crisis, where young and beautiful Indigenous women and men are laughing today — cold and dead tomorrow.
“Settler” historians are doing damage to Indigenous youth by relentlessly accusing Indian Residential Schools of being the root cause of dysfunctional and deadly elements in rez life, never addressing the fact that many children’s lives were saved and enriched at these schools. Without them, thousands of orphaned children or those in dangerous homes would have died.
“Settler” historians somehow haven’t read Ruth Teichroeb’s book “Flowers in my Grave,” which documents the horrors of child abuse on reserve — specifically the tragic life of Lester Desjarlais.
“Settler” historians virtue signal about their fake interpretations and politically correct historical claims so they can be cool and in vogue, never acknowledging that the selfless nuns and priests at residential schools provided a safe harbour, food, medical care, inspiration and skills for people who faced an unstoppable transition at the speed of light, from traditional living on the land, to landing on the moon.
As noted in Shingwauk’s Vision, an Assiniboine Chief recalled: “…Our children and grandchildren will be taught the magic art of writing. Just think for a moment what that means. Without the aid of a spoken word our children will transmit their thoughts on a piece of paper, and that talking paper may be carried to distant parts of the country and convey your thoughts to your friends. Why even the medicine men of our tribe cannot perform such miracles.”
This miracle came to Chief Dan George and Richard Wagamese. Their talking papers still speak to us, even though they have crossed into the Great Unknown.
May they inspire Indigenous youth to shake off the contrived claim of ‘genocide’ which will never lead to reconciliation, and which is not the truth. If you would like to know more of the truth of history, read the many works of Dr. Hugh Dempsey, who documented so much of treaty history and key people of the time. Unlike the rage farming of ‘settler’ historians, Dr. Dempsey’s work and the vision of those early elders who signed the treaties will leave you inspired.
As Chief Dan George would have been taught at the residential school that he wept to leave behind, the Creator’s message is that “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”
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Michelle Stirling is a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists. She researched, wrote, and co-produced historical shows about Southern Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Hugh Dempsey, then curator of the Glenbow Museum.
