Interpretations of the Christian variety coupled with aspirations of assimilation were procrustean, murderous and culturally corrosive. Blissful in the minds of the conquistadors, but destructive to the to the schema of the dominating hegemony. However redundant placing dominance next to hegemony may seam, in the preceding sentence, the repeatability is worthy of repeating until it sinks in. In the name of their Lord and Saviour, families were destroyed, and symbolically so, rulers were the weapons for the pedigree of “God”, the one and only, Father figure and son that are painted in a pure light.
The ruler was the instrument of forceful instruction and embodies fear from within. For those that don’t already know, residential school “teachers” in Canada used to wield the weapon of the ruler to threaten students into submission. This rapture is anything but liberating. Conservative common sense cites the status quo as a method to achieving a civilized society. Partially this is true, the inductive reasoning we employ to do the heavy lifting of predictability was once left to the devices and whims of the prophetic. Pathetic paranoia placates the power of the people with the search for thought leadership and community leadership. What are we searching for?
My own story has a direct descendent from these live-in schools, my Great Grandmother was of Cree ancestry from the prairies of Alberta. I post thoughts related to this history in a Twitter moment called, By Sun and the Plains Indian Within.
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