Reporting on Cultural Genocide and the Legacy of Indian Residential Schools

Objective:

You will be able to explore how interviews with survivors of Indian residential schools communicate evidence of cultural genocide in order to investigate and communicate evidence of threatened cultures in your own communities.

Warm-up Questions:

1. What images do you think of when you hear the word, "culture"? Consider, what defines a person's culture? What is your definition of culture? Click here for the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition.

2. What are elements that represent your culture? Make a list of at least ten things. Look back at your list and reflect on how important these parts of your culture are to your identify. Use the following scale to rate how important each element in your list is to how you define yourself: (1-not important to 5-very important)

Example: English language (3), Always letting the eldest person in the family eat first (5), etc.

3. Consider the following questions, and be prepared to share your responses with the class:

   1. Where are the spaces where you feel most comfortable expressing your culture, and why?

   2. How comfortable do you feel expressing your culture in your school?

   3. How would you respond if your school demanded that you not express yourself in any of the ways you wrote on your list? How would you feel?

   4. Why might a school mandate that students not express elements of their cultures?

   5. In history, when have groups of people been forced to not express their cultures? Why?

4. Look at the following image and respond to the following:

   1. What do you see?

   2. What do you think is happening in this photo?

   3. How does this image connect to culture?

   4. What questions do you have about this photo?

      1. Use the caption to find out more information about the subject of this image.
         
         Mike Pinay attended Qu'Appelle Indian Residential School (1953-1963). Pinay says, "It was the worst ten years of my life. I was away from my family from the age of 6 to 16. How do you learn about relationships, how do you learn about family? I didn't know what love was. We weren't even known by names back then; I was a number … 73." Image by Daniella Zalcman. Canada, 2015.

Introducing the Lesson:

This lesson plan explores the lasting impacts of government-mandated residential schools for Native Americans in the U.S. and First Nations children in Canada through analysis of photojournalist Daniella Zalcman's "Signs of Your Identity" project. In an introduction to the Signs of Your Identity project. Zalcman writes, "For more than a century, the Canadian government operated a network of Indian Residential Schools that were meant to assimilate young Indigenous students into western Canadian culture. Indian agents would take children from their homes as young as two or three and send them to church-run boarding schools where they were punished for speaking their native languages or observing any Indigenous traditions, routinely sexually and physically assaulted, and in some extreme instances subjected to medical experimentation and sterilization.

The last residential school closed in 1996. The Canadian government issued its first formal apology in 2008."

In June 2015, Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission referred to actions taken by Canada's residential schools as "cultural genocide." The Commission wrote, "These measures were part of a coherent policy to eliminate Aboriginal people as distinct peoples and to assimilate them into the Canadian mainstream against their will. The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources." Click here to read the full report.

Zalcman uses photography and extensive interviews to illuminate the stories of survivors of residential schools, and the stories of survivors' families. As you review the resources and exercises connected to this lesson, consider the following:

1. What do you learn about residential schools from Zalcman's reporting?

2. How did residential schools for Indigenous children limit the ways that students could express their native cultures?

3. How do the people being interviewed describe their cultures?

4. Where do you see evidence of people being stripped of their cultures in your own country, and your own community?

Exploring the Legacy of Residential Schools for Indigenous Children in the U.S. and Canada:

Review the following resources from Daniella Zalcman, and respond to the following questions after reviewing each resource:

1. What images and stories stick with you from the piece?

2. What do you learn about how residential schools were established and run?

3. What do you learn about the cultures of the subjects profiled in the piece?

4. What evidence do you see of what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls "cultural genocide"?

5. What has been the impact of this "cultural genocide" on the subjects interviewed by Zalcman? Use text from the interviews and Zalcman's descriptions of the subjects to support your response.
    

• Lost Generations: The Dark Past and Hopeful Future of Canada's Indigenous Populations by Daniella Zalcman

• Canada: Kill the Indian, Save the Man by Daniella Zalcman

• For More than 100 Years, the U.S. Forced Navajo Students Into Western Schools Images by Daniella Zalcman, text by Luci Tapahonso

• World Policy Journal Podcast with Daniella Zalcman: "Kill the Indian, Save the Man" (start at 2:38)

Discussion:

After reviewing the resources above, use your written responses to guide a conversation addressing the following questions:

1. How do the subjects of Zalcman's reporting describe residential schools?

2. How did residential schools for Indigenous children limit the ways that students could express their cultures?

3. How do the people being interviewed describe their cultures?

4. Where do you see evidence of people being stripped of their cultures in your own country, and your own community?

5. What has been the impact of residential schools? What could be the lasting impact?

Extension Activities:

1. Exploring steps for reconciliation: Research and Letter Writing

   

Start by writing your responses to the following questions:

1. After reviewing the resources above, what questions do you still have about the cultures of the Indigenous communities described in the articles?

2. According to the subjects interviewed, what have the Canadian government and Indigenous communities in the U.S. and Canada done to respond to the legacy of residential schools?

3. What could be potential solutions to restoring cultural practices lost as a result of residential schools? What needs must be addressed? Who could be involved, and what could they do?

Next, conduct a research project exploring the ways that different stakeholders (The Canadian government, Indigenous communities, survivors of residential schools, The U.S. government, etc.) have worked to support survivors of residential schools. Consider the following:

• What solutions appear to be working?  Be sure to include evidence from your research, and consider to what degree the solutions are supporting what survivors say they want and need.

• What solutions do you think should still be explored? What might be next steps? Who should be involved, and how?

Consider using the following articles from Daniella Zalcman to start your research:

• Piapott Powwow

• After Years of Forced Assimilation, Canada's Indigenous Population Begin to Heal

Use your research and reflections to write a letter proposing an action that should be taken to reach a need outlined by survivors of residential schools and their families. Address your letter to someone that you identified in your research as someone that might be able to support the project you have in mind. In your letter be sure to clearly explain your idea, how the idea could contribute to the challenges that have emerged as a result of the residential school system, and why the person receiving the letter might be able to help.

2. Making Local Connections: Research, Interviews and Portraits

Embark on a research project inspired by "Signs of Your Identity" that explores how people in the world today, and/or in your own community, are being stripped of their cultures. Consider the following as you plan your research project:

• Where do you see evidence that a community's culture is being threatened? In the world? In your country? In your community?

• How are cultures being threatened, and why?

Next, plan a reporting project to investigate the lasting impacts of the issue you identified in your research. Your goal will be to create a blended-image portrait and write a caption, much like Daniella Zalcman created for her investigation into the lasting impacts of residential schools.

Consider who you might want to interview and what questions you would like to ask. Think about what questions would help your subject comfortable, and what questions would help an audience learn about your subject's culture.

Conduct interviews with the subjects you identified. After each interview, take a portrait of the interview subject. Using your interview notes for inspiration, take a secondary photo of a place/object/moment that reflects something you learned about your interview subject. Using a photo-blending app, Diana and PhotoBlend can be downloaded to your phone for free, blend the portrait and the secondary photo into one image. Write a caption that uses your reporting and quotes from your interview to explain the following:

1. Who is in the image (First and Last Name, age, maybe occupation)?

2. What is the story you are hoping to share with this image?

3. Where is the person?

4. When was this photo taken?

5. Why is the portrait blended with this secondary image?

Share your photos with Pulitzer Center and Daniella Zalcman by sending it to [email protected].