QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS

Queering Canadas Comfy Habitus: Decolonizing our National Representations, Narratives and Pedagogy.

(Native Canadian Flag at Squamish Nation Youth Pow Wow 2010)

Lisa Howell

The University of Ottawa

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS

Queering Canadas Comfy Habitus: Decolonizing our National Representations, Narratives and Pedagogy. An Invitation to transform the Canadian Habitus During my elementary school years, I was nestled safety within the comfortable walls and pedagogy of a typical Canadian classroom. I lived and was schooled in the rural area south east of Ottawa, Ontario in the late 1970s and 80s. Many of my fellow classmates were from farming families, or children of civil servants who made the half hour commute into the city to work each day. Most of us were white, predominately catholic or protestant and lived in the nucleus of the traditional patriarchal family unit, with father at the head of the supper table and definitely the one behind the wheel of the car. Looking back at my class pictures, I see that my memories of this homogeneously blanche demographic are reliable: only white faces smile back at me. There were, in fact, no other ethnicities in our entire school; at the local high school, there was one black family, and this was how they were known: as the one black family. There were no Asians, Africans, South Americans, Middle Easterners and certainly no Aboriginals in my class or on my street. The only Aboriginals I knew of lived on the crinkled, stained and worn pages of my social studies textbook. They wore breechcloths, hunted and gathered and lived in the matriarchal family long house. My exposure to these solely historical images placed aboriginal people in the confines of the version of history that I had exposure to. I had no idea that Aboriginal people actually existed and lived across Canada in a wide variety of communities. I knew nothing of the reserve system, the royal proclamation of 1763, land claims and treaties or residential schools. My lack of knowledge of true Canadian history ensured that I was also ignorant that the land on

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS which my school sat was unceded Algonquin territory and that I, and all of my classmates, were, in truth, uninvited guests to this land. My classmates and I were not alone in our deficit of accurate knowledge surrounding the history of Aboriginal people and the barbaric colonization of Canada. This void of understanding and teaching is pervasive throughout Canada, and, according to History teacher J.D.M. Stewart (2012), it indicates how the educational system is letting Canadians down when it comes to teaching them about their countrys past (para. 2). The curriculum that my teachers were tasked with was versed in the grand Canadian narrative that purposefully and criminally keeps settlers in the dark about historical events. The rendition of history that I learned in school was based on the ideology and representations of the Canadian as a multicultural peacekeeper. What I did not know until I was a much older, (and through my own self-edifying) was that this grand narrative (Megill, 1995) is based on a colonially sanitized version of reality. In Why I

Killed Canadian History: Towards an Anti-Racist History in Canada, Professor Timothy J. Stanley (2000) contends that: Like other grand narratives, the English Canadian one is more of a cultural artifact than a serious history. It is widely reproduced and appears to explain the world as it is. It is so much a part of common sense that for many people it has ceased to be a story about the past, but has come to be the past itself (p. 82). Crafting and reproducing ones own history into a culturally digestible folktale is the ultimate act of privilege. It allows a cultural group to disenfranchise themselves from the truths of history that do not befit the image of the group. Injustices are forgotten, inequalities erased, genocides rationally explained under the guise of civilizing practices.

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS These acts of colonization continue to exist in Canada today and perpetuate the chronic scarcity of truth in our curriculums, conversations and national stories. As a dominion, Canadas systems are mostly colonial formations, encompassing the nuclear family, government, healthcare, schools, workplaces and religions. At their essence, these structures are founded on principles that are predominately patriarchal, antifeminist, Eurocentric, religiously oriented and in opposition to indigenous ways of being. The

continued colonization of Canada ensures that we are kept from learning indigenous ways of government, wellbeing, family structures and environmental understanding. In the colonized world, indigenous cultures have often been viewed through a binary lens, either as an impediment to socioeconomic progress, or as static packages of knowledge, belief and practice that must therefore be preserved from homogenizing pressures, such as globalization (Burlando et al., 2009). Rarely have indigenous ways of knowing been recognized as adaptive and dynamic assets that could benefit structures and institutions. Indigenous scholar Marie Battiste (2005) explains that Euro-centric researchers take three predominant approaches to Indigenous knowledge, which aim to keep this knowledge in the realm of the mythic. First, they have attempted to reduce Indigenous knowledge to categories that are frozen in time. Second, they have tried to reduce it to its quantifiably observable empirical elements. And third, they continue to limit its validity to that only of the spiritual domain. Its time we begin to critically confront these truths. It is my intention in this paper to show that Canadas national identity is based on the Euro-centric story of colonization, which is the well articulated Grand Narrative, that we learn in schools, at home and through popular culture. Provincial and territorial curriculums, patriotic branding and politics relentlessly advance this national story. It is

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS weaved tightly throughout the image and identity of every Canadian settler. It is in our DNA and has thus become what Pierre Bourdieu refers to as habitus. Habitus is the way society becomes deposited in persons in the form of lasting dispositions, or trained capacities and structured propensities to think, feel and act in determinant ways, which

then guide them (as cited in Navarro, 2006, p.16). This habitus of the Canadian settler, is a comfortable position that we enjoy and gain privilege from. Shifting this colonial paradigm would a lead us to learning veracities that would challenge our power and the social order of the habitus. The unexpurgated story of colonization includes ugly realities about oppression and occupation, about the horrifically unimaginable government and church removal of between 105,000 to 150,000 native children to Residential Schools (Rice, 2011, para. 3), about treaties and land claims and about purposefully engineered circumstances to ensure continued aboriginal subsistence on government. As this unabridged story does not mirror our national image of peacemaker or cultural mosaic, it calls into question the ideology of our national representation, thus endangering our longlived habitus. This is indeed dangerous territory for our national modus operandi. Moreover, I hope to show that grassroots evolutions such as Idle No More further unnerve the colonial collective as they question the assumptions that support the habitus. The fact that they evolve from an indigenous model that we are not accustomed to further propagates our fear and discomfort. I intend to theorize that Canadas international reputation and representation as a fair and just nation disregards the fact that our country continues to be occupied by a government and a constitution that have historically not acknowledged aboriginal self-government as right to indigenous Canadians. The Constitution of Canada was conceptualized by the Grand Narrative, and has continually

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS to exclude Aboriginal people from the structures of government. From the point of first contact, the existence of Aboriginal people was commonly regarded as legally irrelevant, at least insofar as claims to sovereignty were concerned (McNeil, 1994, p. 114). That the Aboriginals were denied the status of Nation allowed the Europeans to believe and proclaim that they had "discovered" America (McNeil, 1994). This discovery is both literally and figuratively the Once upon a time of the Canadian narrative. Its time for us to wake up from the cozy lull.

Finally, I will make a passionate plea that to move forward collectively, our systems, structures and ultimately, we as individuals must begin the decolonizing process and recognize the danger of a single story (Adichie, 2009). Ultimately, it is my intention to contribute to the growing body of literature that offers suggestions on how to engage in a revolution of the heart and spirit. This revolution is the place to begin the decolonizing journey into pedagogy, politics, awareness and action. The Theory of the Comfy Habitus The Grand Canadian Narrative is largely based on the ideals of tolerance, diversity and multiculturalism. How did this come to be and what are the implications of the narrative we live with? My age and demographic situates me as a child of Pierre Elliott Trudeaus Canada; a child of the multicultural discourse and, like many other Canadians, I too, felt that unabashed pride in the peaceful story that I grew up believing. I was unaware that multiculturalism was part of the intentional image of Canada, introduced as a political strategy as a way to address contesting language, cultural, and land claims within the nation (St. Denis, 2011, p.307). To this day, multiculturalism persists as a colonializing tactic that helps to erase, diminish, trivialize, and deflect from

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS acknowledging Aboriginal sovereignty and the need to redress Aboriginal rights (St.

Denis, 2011, p. 309). The longevity and allure of multiculturalism is dependent upon the deep structures of colonial discourse (Day and Sadik, 2002, p.6). Although many Aboriginal and non-aboriginal people recognize that an understanding of past relationships, treaties and land claims is key to future relations, normative Canadian history refuses to recognize Aboriginal interpretations of history (Turner, 2006) which often results in a deep lack of understanding of Aboriginal sovereignty among many Canadians. These misunderstandings, misgivings and deficits of knowledge and experience result in a colonial model of Canadian representation, discourse and cultural identity. This inter/national identity of goodwill has become our cultural habitus and is lusciously comfortable for those of us in its fold. Using the theoretical frameworks of social theorists Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault and Stewart Hall allow us to deconstruct the habitus of power and social class so to understand how and why it works and is upheld in our country. Their various theories contend that power is culturally and symbolically created, and is chronically and constantly re-legitimized through agency, capital and structure. Bourdieu believes that habitus derives from socialized norms and tendencies that guide behaviour and thinking (Bourdieu, 1984). Our experiences of these structures and norms shape our future experiences and our perceptions of the norms themselves. The norms and socialization that augment the comfy Canadian Habitus emerged from the colonial social structures that projected the European into the dominant position of power and keeper of capital. Bourdieu explains that cultural capital: Plays a central role in societal power relations, as this provides the means for a non-economic form of domination and hierarchy, as classes distinguish

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS themselves through taste. The shift from material to cultural and symbolic forms of capital is to a large extent what hides the causes of inequality. (as cited in Navarro 2006, p.16) The inequality that exists in the relationships between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadians, government and services today is largely due to the cultural capital that

colonization created and the habitus espouses. The habitus requires ignorance, power and silence and is sustained largely by the lack of education and conversation around the history of colonial relations and the continued marginalization and oppression of Indigenous Canadians. Even in recent gestures toward truth and reconciliation, the innocence of the colonizing government is defended. At the 2009 G20 meetings, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated that Canada has no history of colonialism (Ljunggren, 2009, para. 11). The erasure of history has profoundly deleterious effects on Aboriginal Canadians, while bolstering the narrative. Researchers Day and Sadik (2002) reason that: This public denial of the colonization of Aboriginal people can surely be reassuring to a very select group of people, particularly to those invested in dominant Canadian historical narratives that continue to efface the history of illtreatment that Aboriginal peoples have endured at the hands of the Canadian state. (p.1415) When discussing the role of power, it helpful to explore the theories of Michael Foucault, who, according to author Claire OFarrell (2005), describes culture as a hierarchical organization of values, accessible to everybody, but at the same time, has a mechanism of selection and exclusion. He goes on to define institutions as mechanisms to freeze

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS

particular relations of power so that a certain number of people are advantaged (Identity section, papa. 38). Like Bourdieu, Foucaults theories of power and institution build a framework for the apparatus of the Canadian Narrative. Foucault often refers to apparatus to indicate the various institutional, physical and administrative mechanisms and knowledge structures, which enhance and maintain the exercise of power within the social body (OFarrell, 2005, para. 2). The multicultural Canadian habitus is an apparatus of power that operates using the static narrative. This safeguards power, social and cultural capital and the continued hierarchy of the Euro-centric apparatus. Stewart Hall adds to the framework with his ideas on cultural identity, which questions the rigidness of the grand narrative and the identity of the settler. Hall (1990) contends that cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But, like everything that is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialised past, they are subject to the continuous 'play' of history, culture and power (p. 435). Halls work on cultural identity and the black diaspora can be applied to the oppression of indigenous people in Canada, whereby they have been subjugated in the dominant regimes of representation and constructed as different and as the other within the categories of knowledge of the colonizing regimes. The colonizers not only saw the Indigenous people as the Other, they also had the power to make indigenous people see and experience themselves as 'Other' (Hall, 1990, p. 436). Much like the colonial structures and experiences shaped the habitus of the settler, the positioning of those that were colonized created a place where a habitus of other thrived. It is interesting to acknowledge in terms of a cultural identity, Foucault favours the dissolution of identity, rather than its creation or maintenance and sees identity as a form of subjugation and a

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS way of exercising power over people and preventing them from moving outside fixed boundaries (OFarrell, 2005, para. 40). I maintain that the rigidness of the categorical other also reinforces the national habitus. The Habitus at work in schools, politics, and popular culture

10

The national habitus is the thread that tightly affixes Canadas fabric. It transports the grand narrative to the pages of truth rather than folktale and is explicit in who it includes, excludes, marginalizes and criminalizes. Stanley (2000), argues that the English Canadian grand narrative focuses on Europeans, tracing the progress of European-derived communities and institutions. It begins with the arrival of Europeans and rarely mentions Aboriginal people except as obstacles to European progress, as in the Riel Rebellion (p.82). Canadian children learn that our country was founded on a peaceful, naturally occurring process, claiming confederation as its key organizational turning point and celebrating modern Canada as the place that redeems the evils of the past and of the rest of the world (Stanley, 2000, p.82). The grand narrative of Canada as a nation has been remarkably stable since its invention at the beginning of the twentieth century and is the anecdote of popular culture, and the forethought to Canadian heritage commercials, government publications and branding, curriculums, television shows, story books, childrens movies and even beer commercials (what Canadian has not identified with Molson Canadian patriotism?). The grand narrative makes the conditions and travesties that many aboriginal Canadians face somehow excusable to non-indigenous people. A sad example of this continued colonially fuelled inequality is the astronomical numbers of First Nations children who are removed from their family homes and placed in the child welfare system. When the Federal government officially apologized for the forced placement of Aboriginal children in the Residential School system in 1998, Minster Jane

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS Stewart made this Statement of Reconciliation: Reconciliation is an ongoing process. In renewing our partnership, we must ensure that the mistakes that marked our past relationship are not repeated. The Government of Canada recognizes that policies that sought to assimilate Aboriginal people, women and men, were not the way to build a strong country. (as cited in Blackstock, 2007, p.72)

11

Despite the acknowledgement of past mistakes, the federal government continues to act in ways and enact policies that do not address inequities that lead to massive inequalities. In terms of child welfare, the federal government funding formula is not adequate to ensure equitable child welfare on reserve, nor does it support meaningful advancements in the development of culturally based child welfare standards, policies or programs(Blackstock, p. 74). The data shows that there are more First Nations children in child welfare care today than at the height of residential schools by a factor of three (Blackstock, p. 74). The continued governmental colonizing structures persist despite calls for the end of inequitable child welfare funding policy. It begs the question, as executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring society, Cindy Blackstock (2007) poses, What legitimate reasons are there for the federal government to knowingly underfund child welfare services for First Nations children? I have no idea. Perhaps someone should ask the government of Canada (p. 77). If Cindy were to ask me, (and we have had this discussion, as we are good friends and fellow activists) I would posit that the underlying epistemology of the Canadian condition is what legitimizes issues such as underfunding. If we accept this as a theory, we are able to see how the Canadian public is able to reconcile these injustices. According to Stanley

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS (1998), the national habitus is rotund with colonial perspectives that enable the articulation of racism and historical memory in popular culture (p. 43). These perspectives allow Canadians to cast a blind eye, sometimes unknowingly, on the continued repression of aboriginals and other marginalized groups in our society. The perceptions and assumptions about natives are the substance of the discourse of

12

excuses used when it comes to justifying our own racism and hate. Across the country, Aboriginal Canadians experience systemic racism based on systems of representation. Startling evidence of this is the 2012 report released by the Health Council of Canada which claims that while factors like poverty and the impact of colonization are known to have an impact on aboriginal health, a Western approach to health care often reinforces stereotypes which alienate and intimidate some patients (para. 6). The report recommends an increased emphasis on aboriginal history and cultural sensitivity during post-secondary and on-the-job training of those in the health sector. CEO John Abbotts explains that part of it is ignorancesome of it racismpart of it is just general stereotyping, (para. 12) when explaining possible reasons for the way many aboriginal patients say they have been treated. Regardless, the accounts are disturbing, such as in the following:

Some aboriginal patients were refused painkillers even when in severe pain because of a belief they were at a higher risk of becoming addicted or were already abusing prescription drugs. In another case, the report said an aboriginal man who was beaten and bloodied was brought to an emergency room where he was not allowed to lie on a bed. When a doctor asked why, the report said a nurse explained that the man was dirty and would return to the street to engage in the

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS

13

same risky behaviour that had landed him in hospital. In fact, the report said, the patient was employed, owned a home, and had been attacked on his way home from work (para. 10 and 11).

These stereotypes grow from colonial frames of reference, but are intensified by attempts to keep the Grand narrative alive. They are exacerbated by the lack of accurate history and political teachings across school systems and the chronic devaluing of indigenous systems of knowledge. The stereotypes are reinforced by both the image of what it is to be Canadian as opposed to Aboriginal in the media and popular culture. Canadas Centre for digital and media literacy, MediaSmarts, advocates stern warnings when it comes to the portrayal of Aboriginals in Canadian media and states that:

Portrayals of Aboriginal people as being primitive, violent and devious, or passive and submissive, have become widespread in movies and TV programs and in literature ranging from books to comic strips. Such depictions have become a comfortable frame of reference for most of us each time there is a question about Aboriginal people, even though a non-native may not have had the opportunity to meet a Native person in real life (para. 2).

Furthermore, social critic Ward Churchill argues that the stereotypes around Aboriginals were no accident. He maintains that they served to explain in positive terms the decimation of Native tribes and their ways of life by advanced cultures in the name of progress, thereby making it necessary to erase the achievements and very humanity of the conquered people (as cited on MediaSmarts, The Bigger Picture Section, para. 3). Here we can see themes of power and discourse through explicit decisions in media

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS representation. Linguist Noam Chomsky (1989) talks of the media as just one of "a variety of measures to deprive democratic political structures of substantive content,

14

while leaving them formally intact" (p.7). Similar to Foucault's views of power, Chomsky implies that power has implications for knowledge, in that power produces a certain kind of knowledge (p.7). Foucaults work is crucial to our discernment of the workings of the grand narrative in the media systems. He posits that the power-knowledge relationship might create a perceived truth which will have significance for conduct and that this truth is nothing but interpreted knowledge which might immediately take a new relationship with power (as cited in Green, para. 3). This discourse of truth and power is an integral part of the process of socialization and societal control (Sheridan, 1980, p. 220). Foucault explains the production of truth" via power when he says: "Truth isn't outside power Truth is a thing of this world; it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraintand it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth; that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true" (cited by Green, para.4). Our collective epistemological positions manifest subconsciously into our shared maps of meaning (Hall, 1997), informing our decisions and actions. Hall argues that it is through the images and words on screens and in books that meaning is distorted, thus creating a gap of representation that changes the image and words and that representation does not occur after a viewing event, but that representation comes through and from it (1997). A recent example of the relationship between stereotype,

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS

15

habitus and power in the media is the grassroots Idle No More movement. According to the Idle No More website:

We call on all people to join in a peaceful revolution, to honour Indigenous sovereignty, and to protect the land and water and to do this with a focus on the: education and revitalization of indigenous peoples through awareness and empowerment and by encouraging knowledge and sharing about indigenous sovereignty and environmental protections (2013, The Vision section). Although Idle No Mores vision is a clearly peaceful movement of resistance, the mainstream media rejected that view in favour of one that reports Indigenous issues through the lens of the colonial ideology. Leanne Simpson (2013), a Nishnaabeg writer and academic explains that the media:

Have consistently chosen to exaggerate and manufacture controversy and crisis, rather than to create open dialogue. Theyve promoted fear over understanding and have amplified potential divisions as a way of destabilizing the movement. Worse, a few networks have even promoted Indigenous protestors as terrorists and questioned if Idle No More is a rise in a more fundamentalist view of First Nations politics (para.7).

Although many indigenous writers, researchers, sociologists, authors, filmmakers, academics and journalists podcasted, blogged, reported and commented from an Indigenous perspective on the Idle No More movement, their views points were rarely transmitted to Canadians through mainstream media. While the Aboriginal Peoples

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS Television Network (APTN) has tried to diligently refute inaccuracies, how many non-

16

aboriginal Canadians can claim to regularity watch APTN? Simpson also makes the point that there is a problem with expertise, or lack thereof, in mainstream media. She writes: Repeatedly, Ive listened to pundits and panelists with no expertise on Indigenous issues contribute to the already overwhelming body of misinformation about us. For example, while CBC Radio's Q host Jian Ghomeshis opening essay on Idle No More was warmly received on December 21, 2012, that same episode's media panel discussed the movement with no Indigenous representation. There is no excuse for this. We have hundreds of political scientists, academics, analysts, journalists and experts within Indigenous communities. Just like Canadians, we dont all agree. If your media panel is discussing Indigenous issues and you do not have at least one Indigenous expert on the panel, you are doing something wrong (2013, para 10).

Simpson asks that aboriginal stories be validated in the media, with a hope that this will inspire our youth when they see themselves and their relations represented in a positive manner, as well as provide Canadians with different stories, angles and voices(2013, para. 20). In this sense, Idle No More is not only a battle for land, culture, treaties and environment. It is also a battle for the fair and accurate representation of Indigenous Peoples and issues. It is a fight for a better relationship, and that begins with truth, dialogue and respect (para. 20). This dialogue invites all of us to recognize that the decolonizing process is integral to our ability to connect to our own true sense of history, of kinship and of our place here in Canada.

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS

17

The National Habitus in Schools: Pedagogical implications and a call to revolution In my sons current Grade 10 Canadian History class, (where they cover the period between 1914 to the present day), his notes indicate that John A. MacDonald is a National Hero. When I asked him why he is considered a hero, my son nonchalantly replied, Well, Mom, he built the railway. I asked what he had learnt about the railway and he regurgitated, John A. MacDonald connected the vast country and expanded economic prosperity west. He said that is what his teacher said. I asked him if he was taught that the path of the railway swallowed many parts of aboriginal land, even though treaties had promised full ownership of reserves. My son, having grown up in a decolonizing household, knew exactly what I was alluding too and explained that his history class did not seem to include teachings of aboriginals. He is sixteen years old and only knows about residential schools because of the education he gets at home. How can this be? How is it possible that a secondary school class that covers the period of Canadian history between 1914 onwards not teach about Indian residential schools? The colonial paradigm that shapes the content and context of the writings in school textbooks is what makes this feasible. If the grand narrative is to change, the revolution will have to begin with the youth and their teachers, and not from the ministries of education. In a video produced when she won the Governor Generals History Award, Ottawa teacher and activist Sylvia Smith imparts that: Its absolutely critical to teach about Indian Residential Schools now because we know so little of our shared history. It was an abomination to find only 63 words dedicated to something that has been going on in Canada for over a hundred years. We have to start addressing those injustices. If we dont then were going

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS

18

to go into the future, continuing to commit the same things. Young learners deserve to know the truth of their history (2011). The 63 words Smith is referring to is the number of words about residential schools in the history text she was using in her high school history class. Her students were incensed by this and decided that they needed to create a project that would help them, and others, learn about the history residential schools. In response, Smith developed an artistic, collaborative and intellectual tool kit that she calls Project of Heart. During the project, students learn about residential school history and turn small wooden tiles into artistic memorials for each student lost in a residential school. They hear stories and learn from the experts- elders and residential school survivors. They experience a traditional smudging ceremony, singing and traditional teachings. Finally, students are asked to partake of a social justice action such as writing letters to the government, organizing a teach-in or participating in a peaceful demonstration. This project draws attention to the lack of truth in Canadian curricula and also highlights the need to decolonize mainstream curricula through an indigenously influenced pedagogy. Smith affirms that: This kind of learning is something we cant get from books. A lot of our teaching experiences do not touch on the heart and the spirit. In yet, as teachers, I think we all know that the affective component is the most important component. Its what stays with you (2011). Smith has developed an indigenously influenced assessment and evaluation tool for building reciprocal students-teacher relationships (Smith, 2010, figure 1). In her rubric, indigenous and western analysis is applied to the learning objectives of Project of Heart.

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS

19

What Smith uncovers is that in the western model of education, the categories that are addressed are usually only knowledge/understanding, thinking/inquiry, communication and application. In the indigenous ways of teaching and learning, as in Project of Heart, we witness mind, body, heart and spirit engaged. Moving towards an indigenously influenced pedagogy is a powerful way to decolonize the curriculum and add spirit to our teaching. It is indeed this spirit that we need to embrace to have the courage and compassion to leave colonization behind and write our new, historically accurate and spirit-infused narratives.

Proj ect of H eart BUILDING RECIPROCAL STUDENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIPS

THROUGH INCLUDING INDIGENOUSLY-INFORMED (HEART+SPIRIT) STUDENT REFLECTION AND SELF-EVALUATION
PROJECT OF HEART LEARNING CONTENT Part 1 - Knowledge of Indian Residential Schools (IRS) INDIGENOUS ANALYSIS WESTERN ANALYSIS EVALUATION/ASSESSMENT

Mind, Heart

- Number of child deaths/genocide - Intergenerational trauma - Incarcerative aspects - Church groups who managed them
Part 2 - Partnering of school with chosen IRS to

Ontario Ministry Curriculum Achievement Categories 1) Knowledge/Understanding

HEART MIND
Mind 1) Knowledge/Understanding 2) Thinking/Inquiry

commemorate - Contributions of Indigenous people historical/contemporary - Distinctive Indigenous nations and relationship to geography/territory of the chosen IRS
Part 3 - Decoration of tiles (each symbolic of the death

MIND
Body, Heart 3) Communication 4) Application

of one child due to the IRS experience response to newly acquired knowledge - Artistic expression of heart/spirit knowledge as gesture of reconciliation
Part 4 - IRS Survivor/Elder/Cultural worker invited to

HEART BODY
Heart, Spirit

class to answer questions/conduct smudging ceremony of decorated tiles - Students learn Indigenous protocol for visiting Elder/survivor (tabacco offering, etc.)
Part 5 - Social justice actions to address on-going

HEART SPIRIT
Mind, Heart, Body, Spirit 1) Knowledge/Understanding 2) Thinking/Inquiry 3) Communication 4) Application

colonization of Indigenous people - Student acceptance of responsibility for our (settler) governance by taking action to address current injustices (i.e. signing petitions/wrting letters to MPs or MPPs, attending rallies) - Second gesture of reconciliation

HEART MIND SPIRIT BODY

Figure 1 We cannot discuss curriculum exclusion and reform without drawing on the work of academic Elliott Eisner. "He figured out that there was something missing from

mainstream educational theory and method," said Stanford colleague Professor Raymond McDermott. "He wanted to address matters of the heart, whereas most of the discipline

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS

20

was pushing a more mechanical view of the child and the act of teaching or researching (as cited in Brooke, 2014, para. 8). Eisner (1994) believed that by not teaching certain topics in schools, we are in fact creating a null curriculum that sends messages to students that certain content and processes are not important enough to study. Eisner also wrote about the implicit curriculum, in which the well-defined embedded agenda in schools is transmitted (1994, p. 98). The implicit curriculum conveys cultural norms and expectations such as compliance and respect of authority. Eisner (1994) argues that schools, therefore, have consequences not only by virtue of what they do not teach, but also by virtue of what they neglect to teach. What students cannot consider, what they don't process, they are unable to use, have consequences for the kinds of lives they lead (p. 103). We can certainly see how the null curriculum and the implicit curriculum work together in Canadian schools to keep the explicit, colonial narrative intact, compelling and undisputed. At the political level, we see the inclusion and exclusion of agendas happening, too. Recently, a joint announcement on the proposed legislation of the First Nations Control of First Nations Education Act (FNEA) took place in the Kainai First Nation on the Blood Tribe Reserve in Alberta. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo and Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt held a ceremony in the community to seal the deal. Although the event was held in the community, the guests were separated at the door and given either a blue dot or a yellow dot. The blue dots were for uninvited guests (who were ushered to the gymnasium), and the invited guests were given yellow dots and brought to the auditorium where the dignitaries were (Sterritt, 2014, para. 4). Since then, a blue dot wave has flooded social media: people are posting a blue dot on photographs of themselves, and on

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS

21

historical and current people on photographs lifted from the Internet. For many First Nations, the blue dot represents a historical exclusion from decisions that are made about them but not by them. Metis artist Christi Belcourt explains that to her, the blue dots represent: Our people, the masses of people who are not able to influence decisions. It signifies all of us who do this despite not being at a table with Atleo or the prime minister or anyone else who has the power to mark their 'X' and sign away our rights (as cited in Sterritt, para. 15). This modern day segregation is another hallmark of the colonial imperative that works to maintain the otherness between the dominant powers and the chronically oppressed. What is different about the blue dot incident is that those segregated are resisting the representation of other and instead re-representing the connotations by speaking out, and ultimately using the blue dot as a tool for transformation. It would seem as if Canada is operating on a cultural and political system of authoritarianism that is slyly and expertly disguised as democracy. My question, then, is this: is the collective responsibility of the Canadian public to participate in the decolonization and democratization of Canada forthcoming? It would seem that there is a groundswell of a movement of re-representation. Or am I dreaming? A Conclusion for a New beginning: Moving towards the habitus of a democratic, decolonized Canada Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a prolific Nigerian novelist that speaks about the dangers of the single story. Adichie believes that we create single stories by showing a

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS people as only one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they

22

become. In her 2009 TED talk, her ideas on single narratives and power are in the realm of Foucault: It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is "nkali." It's a noun that loosely translates to "to be greater than another." Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali: How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power. Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but also to make it the definitive story of that person. (Adichie) In this paper, I have argued that Canada is in the dangerous realm of the single story that largely persists due to its entanglement in our collective and comfy habitus. Bourdieus theory of habitus (1984) explains how the Grand Narrative has become so accumulated in us in the form of lasting impressions, capabilities and propensities to think, feel and act in encoded ways that in turn affect future thoughts, feelings and actions. The Canadian habitus is built upon the colonial structures that we are incredibly inured to. And of course we are! The narrative is upheld by representations of what it is to be Canadian in the media, pop culture, literature, music, iconic symbols, patriotic branding, television commercials, museums, government policies and finally, in the school system. Bourdieu believes that a careful analysis of habitus is part of the process of social change, as it can help to reveal the power relations that have been rendered invisible by habitus and misrecognition (Navarro 2006: 19). Drawing on Marie Batistes

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS work on Indigenous Knowledge, cognitive imperialism (a cornerstone of the grand narrative) has tried to render Indigenous Knowledge invisible, inept and ineffectual. Batiste (2005) argues that, through one's knowledge base, cognitive imperialism is empowered through public education and ultimately denies people their language and cultural integrity by maintaining the legitimacy of only one language, one culture, and one frame of reference (Conclusion section, para. 4).

23

Misrecognition also factors largely in Halls work on cultural identity and otherness (1990). In Canada, the colonizing powers had and continue to have the supremacy to subvert indigenous people to a state of inferiority, thus cultivating the representations and identifications as the other that endures today. We see this misrepresentation in the mainstream media coverage of Idle No More; in what and who were depicted and perhaps, more importantly, who and what were not. Exclusion is the spine of the colonial prototype, as is re-storying the story. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes:

If you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, "secondly." Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, you have a different story (as cited by Adichie, 2009).

I have also addressed the reasons why the Grand Narrative remains so informative to our national habitus. At its essence, the reasons are human in nature: identity, power and security. Foucaults theories of power explicates the way that our institutions,

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS

24

administrative, physical and knowledge structures enhance and maintain the exercise of power within the social body by maintaining the single story.

In terms of pedagogical implications, educators and students have the chance to restory the history books and reveal the truth of our collective past. Curriculum should be critically considered, questioned and evolutionary in nature. Eisners work on curriculum (1994) asks fundamental questions about what is and isnt taught in schools. Why, for instance, is it compulsory to take just one arts credit in secondary school but at least four English credits? Why is the history that students learn that of the colonial paradigm? Eisner believes that what we teach in schools is not always determined by a set of decisions that have entertained alternatives; rather the subjects that are now taught are part of a tradition, and traditions create expectations, they create predictability, and they sustain stability (1994, p.105). The habitus not only determines what we teach, but how we teach it. Most classrooms, even that of the more progressive schools, continue to group children by age, and move them along through-out the system year by year, as if they are on an assembly line. Sir Ken Robinson speaks fervently about the industrialization of schooling:

Schools are still organized on factory lines; ringing bells, specialized into separate subjects. We still educate children in batches. We put them through the system by age group. Why do we have this assumption that the most important thing kids have in common is how old they are? Its like that the most important thing about them is their date of manufacture (TED talk, Changing Education Paradigms 2010).

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS

25

Encouraging a critical and careful thought process about what we teach and how we teach it is integral to the pedagogical shift that is integral to decolonization. Engaging students in the curriculum and in issues that pertain to equality and power facilitates the shift from the anesthetic teacher-centred model of learning, to that of esthetic engagement. As a teacher, esthetic learning for me involves waking up the essence of the student to be open to a world community that involves learning about a diverse range of stories and realities. Changing the narrative allows students to develop generosity and gives them the opportunity to become caring individuals that see the world as a community. It develops a movement away from the them and us dichotomy to that of the we(Howell, 2012, slide ). The dishevelment of the dichotomy is fundamental to the rewiring, rewriting and reconstruction of the habitus.

Finally, this paper is about essentially about stories of the past and stories of the future. It is about the people whose stories have been misconstrued, forgotten and silenced. The people whose stories remain absent from Canadian public history and memory mark who are included Canada and who are silenced. As Professor Timothy Stanley (2006) writes:

Our landscape is marked by the rights of European privilege; those of us with European origins have colonized the space, not just physically, but semiotically, having populated it with innumerable devices celebrating and marking our presencethese devices of public memory actively create the imagined community of the nation (p. 215-16).

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS

26

It is my strongest hope that an intellectual and spiritual revolution develops among Canadians. This revolution would provide a space for a critical analysis of the habitus that shapes our current Canadian representations. Decolonization necessitates releasing our comfortable stories and embracing new, less comfortable ones. It involves questioning curriculum and pedagogical practices to include both Euro-centric and Indigenous ways of knowing into contemporary modern education. Decolonizing the national habitus requires us to listen closely, speak less and think deeply. Shifting the grand narrative will happen, if we believe that stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity (Adichie, 2009). This paper represents an invitation to re-story the Grand Canadian Narrative and discover one that is equitable, transformative and based on truths of the past and present. Wont you join us?

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS References

27

Adichie, C. (2009, July). Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story. TED Talks. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg Battiste, M. (2005). Indigenous knowledge: Foundations for First Nations. World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC) Journal. Retrieved from: www.usask.ca/education/people/battistem/ikp_e.pdf Blackstock, Cindy. (2007). Residential Schools: Did They Really Close or Just Morph Into Child Welfare? Indigenous Law Journal, 6(1), 71-78. Retrieved from: https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/17131 Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. London: Routledge. Burlando, C., Deutsch, I., C.J., Kocho-Schellenberg, J-E.N., Miller, A.M., Pengelly, R.D., Robson, J.P. &Turner, K.L. (2009). Building Communities Of Learning: Indigenous Ways Of Knowing In Contemporary Natural Resources And Environmental Management. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 39 (4), 173-177. Retrieved from: http://www.tandfonline.com Chomsky, Noam. (1989). Necessary Illusions. London: Pluto Press. Day, R. J. F. and Sadik, T. (2002). The BC Land Question, Liberal Multiculturalism, and the Spectre of Aboriginal Nationhood. BC Studies, 134, 534. Donald, Brooke (2014, January 17). Stanford Professor Elliot Eisner, champion of arts education, dead at 80. Stanford Report. Retrieved from:

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS

28

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/january/elliot-eisner-obit-011714.html Eisner, Elliot. (1994). The Educational Imagination: On the design and evaluation of school programs (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Macmillan. Green, Steven. (1999). How can some of Foucault's ideas and perspectives be usefully applied to the study of the mass media in society? Retrieved from: http://www.theory.org.uk/f-essay1.htm Hall, Stuart. (1990). Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In: Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. & Tiffin, H. (Eds.), The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (2nd ed.) (435-438). New York, NY: Taylor and Francis. Hall, Stuart. (1997). Representation and the Media. (Video Lecture). Director: Sut Jhally. Media Education Foundation. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTzMsPqssOY Howell, L. (2012). Engaging Students through Social Justice Education. Workshop at a Global Perspectives Conference at The University of Ottawa. (Power-point Slides). Retrieved from: http://room224.yolasite.com Idle No More Vision Statement. (2012.) Retrieved from the Official Idle No More Website http://www.idlenomore.ca/ Ljunggren, D. (2009, September 25). Every G20 nation wants to be Canada, insists PM. Reuters. Retrieved from: http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/26 McNeil, Kent. (1994). The Decolonization of Canada: Moving Toward Recognition of Aboriginal Governments. Western Legal History, 7(1),113-141. Retrieved from: SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2316899

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS MediaSmarts. (nd).Common Portrayals of Aboriginal People. Retrieved from: http://mediasmarts.ca/diversity-media/aboriginal-people/common-portrayalsaboriginal-people Megill, Alan.(1995). Grand Narrative' and the Discipline of History. In Ankersmit, F. & Kellner, H., Eds. A New Philosophy of History, 19-34. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

29

Mehta, D. (2012, December 11). Aboriginal Canadians face racism, stereotyping in urban health care. McLeans. Retrieved from: http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/12/11 Navarro, Z. (2006). In Search of Cultural Interpretation of Power. IDS Bulletin 37(6), 11-22. O'Farrell, Claire. (2005). Michel Foucault. London: Sage. Retrieved from: http://www.michel-foucault.com/concepts/index.html Rice, Joanna. (2011). Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Cultural Survival, 35(1). Retrieved from: http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ Robinson, Sir Ken. (2010, October). Sir Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms. TED Talk. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U Sheridan, Alan. (1980). Michel Foucault: The will to truth. London: Tavistock. Simpson, Leanne. (2013). Idle No More-Where the mainstream media went wrong: Self-representing a peoples movement. The Dominion: A Media Co-publication. Retrieved from: http://dominion.mediacoop.ca/story/idle-no-more-and-mainstreammedia/16023

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS Smith, Sylvia (2011). Canadas History: Governor Generals History Awards.(Video). Retrieved from: http://www.canadashistory.ca/Awards/GG/Articles/2011 Smith, Sylvia (2010). Building reciprocal student-teacher relationships through including indigenously-informed (heart and spirit) student reflection and selfevaluation. (Rubric). Retrieved from: http://poh-curriculum.wikispaces.com/Evaluation_and_Assessment St. Denis, Verna. (2011). Silencing Aboriginal Curricular Content and Perspectives Through Multiculturalism: There are other children here. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 33 (4), 306-317. Retrieved from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2011.597638 Stanley, Timothy J. (2000). Why I Killed Canadian History: Towards an Anti-Racist History in Canada. Histoire sociale / Social History, 33(65) 79-103.

30

Stanley, Timothy J. (2006). Playing with Nitro: The Racialization of Chinese Canadians in Public Memory. In Hodgins, P. &Neatby, N., Eds. Settling and Unsettling Memories: Essays in Canadian Public History, 215-234. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Sterritt, Angela (2014). Blue dots becoming symbol for First Nations Education Act resistance: Meme meant to represent those not included or considered in current FNEA legislation. CBC. Retrieved from: http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/bluedots-becoming-symbol-for-first-nations-education-act-resistance-1.2534518

Stewart, J. D.M. (2012, February 29). Canadians Need an Aboriginal History Lesson. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globedebate/canadians-need-an-aboriginal-history-lesson/article549808

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS Turner, D. (2006). This is not a peace pipe: Towards a critical indigenous philosophy. Toronto: University Of Toronto Press. Ray Van Eng. Native Canadian Flag at Squamish Nation Youth Pow Wow 2010. (Photograph). Retrieved from: http://vancouver21.com/?p=1203

31

QUEERING CANADAS COMFY HABITUS

32