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“[T]he teacher that cannot understand their language should not be allowed”: Colonialism, Resistance, and Female Mi’kmaw Teachers in New Brunswick Day Schools, 1900–1923

2012; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.7202/1008957ar

1712-6274

Martha Walls,

Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights

Between 1903 and 1923, sisters Mary, Rebecca, Martha, Margaret, and Alma Isaacs and Rita Gédéon, left their homes in Restigouche, Quebec, to teach in federal Indian day schools on New Brunswick Indian Reserves. As Mi’kmaw women, their “Indian” status not only made them anomalies in a federal day school system that only rarely and reluctantly hired “Indians” as teachers, it also placed them in complicated positions on the frontline of Canada’s colonialist project. Tasked with imparting to Mi’kmaw students an array of assimilatory messages both within and outside of the classroom, these six teachers bolstered Canada’s colonialist agenda. In other ways, however, the women used their positions in federal schools to undermine this same colonial agenda. By insisting on the use of the Mi’kmaw language in their classrooms, and by challenging the directives of federal officials and government protocol, the Isaacs sisters and Rita Gédéon remind us of the complex and competing motives, intentions and relationships that shaped Canadian colonialism and reveal that Aboriginal women were involved in ways rarely considered.