Article 5: How Can I help in the Truth and Reconciliation Process as a Student at UCN
Kelly Laybolt
Re-evaluating current Indigenous social issues from a historical viewpoint has been an integral part of the Truth and Reconciliation process because it has changed the narrative of Indigenous social issues since the 19th century as well as the Eurocentric perceptions of Indigenous people and their culture. As a university student, I have taken both literature and history courses and I have witnessed the narrative change in the past century.
I am a non-indigenous person who lived in Thompson, Manitoba all my life. Prior to attending university, I had a very naïve and opinionated view of Indigenous culture, which had been developed when I was in elementary school, and it continued when I entered high school: my Indigenous peers weren’t interested in schoolwork and didn’t participate in many school activities. A lack of education about Indigenous people in Canada contributed to these negative perceptions. Studying Indigenous history, culture, and literature at the University College of the North (UCN) has helped me understand the roots of my naïve view of my Indigenous peers, the current social issues of Indigenous people, the stigmas that have continued to persist, and the future of Truth and Reconciliation at UCN where Indigenous content has been integrated to courses and programs. In UCN where the majority of students are Indigenous, consultations with the Council of Elders in many respects are necessary to ensure that education is meaningful to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. Through this Indigenous content education is inclusive as well as comprehensive as Indigenous students learn about topics that are pertinent to them and non-Indigenous students are taught about various aspects of Indigenous culture and tradition. As a result, education becomes less institutionalized and promotes a more inclusive atmosphere for learning. I appreciate that UCN provides us with numerous opportunities to learn about Indigenous culture including courses that helped me gain better insight into Indigenous History, Aboriginal and Northern Studies, and Literature.
Courses with Indigenous content offered at UCN have taken me to a new understanding of Truth and Reconciliation: acknowledging the truth by studying Indigenous history and creating an environment where there is no prejudice against Indigenous people. History courses have helped me learn about Indigenous people’s roles in the history of Canada and the Western opinionated views toward Indigenous people. Aboriginal and Northern Studies classes provided a vast amount of information regarding Indigenous culture as well as current social issues Indigenous people continue to experience. Literature courses have also exposed me to the plethora of Indigenous literature that is available to read and the spirit and inspiration of the most influential literary works. Muses from the North, a student journal published biannually, has provided a platform for students to use their learning to challenge existing stereotypes, contest negative narratives, and share their stories with the world. It is Muses from the North that has given me the opportunity to make my personal contributions to the Truth and Reconciliation process. With the assistance of journal editors, I have been able to publish “The Environmental Impact of Over-Harvesting in the Fur Trade,” a research paper for history class, a “Critical Review of Gothic Literature and Western Perspectives of Sophia Alice Callahan’s Wynema: A Child of the Forest,” a reflection paper for a literature class, and “An Interview with My Indigenous Peers on Intergenerational Trauma.” All three pieces were written to dispel the negative perceptions about Indigenous people that have endured throughout history and contribute towards Truth and Reconciliation.
As a student majoring in History, I have come to believe that the current social issues of Indigenous people must be dealt with historically and critically. As such, my first publication, “The Environmental Impact of Over-Harvesting in the Fur Trade” re-evaluated the roles of Indigenous people during the fur trade. I was initially inspired to write an essay about the roles of Indigenous people in the fur trade because it seemed that they were being held solely responsible for the environmental degradation that occurred due to the overharvesting of fur-bearing animal species. Despite this notion, I was able to discern that environmental degradation during the fur trade was a culmination of several factors including inflated pelt prices, increased reliance on European trade goods and an inadequate legal system to discourage trappers from abusing Indigenous sustainability efforts. Furthermore, I came to see that both European traders and Indigenous trappers were responsible for the ecological damage that was caused by the fur trade industry.
Prior to the fur trade, Indigenous people had striven to live harmoniously with the land and employed sustainable practices to ensure the preservation of resources. Sustainability remained commonplace in the Indigenous culture at the beginning of the fur trade as Indigenous people preferred to trade used pelts and only traded to garner their basic needs. This began to change in the mid-1700s as French voyageurs began encroaching into the Hudson Bay Company’s territory and jeopardized the trade monopoly that the English had in this region. As a result, beaver pelt prices increased exponentially. In addition to the increase in pelt prices, Indigenous people had also become more reliant on European trade goods. Many European products were an improvement over traditional tools and they were easier to obtain. As a result, Indigenous trappers spent more time harvesting furs to purchase tools instead of making them out of traditional materials such as bone or stone. Additionally, European traders attempted to instill their values regarding the accumulation of goods and status in Indigenous people. Although Indigenous people initially repelled Western influences, there was evidence that they eventually began to value luxury goods that displayed their social status which exasperated the over-harvesting of fur-bearing animal species.
The absence of a legal system to hold trespassers accountable for hunting in territory that belonged to Indigenous people was another factor that greatly contributed to environmental degradation during the fur trade. In present-day Quebec and Labrador, many Indigenous nations had established hunting territories that were allotted to individual families. These families were encouraged to harvest animals sustainably in these territories to preserve resources for future generations. As the fur trade industry became increasingly lucrative, both Indigenous and European hunters trespassed in these territories, but often escaped punishment because families did not have the resources to deter lawbreakers. As a result, there was an extreme amount of ecological damage as fur-bearing species in these territories were overexploited. Thus, after careful analysis of several important aspects that contributed to environmental degradation during the fur trade, it can be determined that this ecological damage was a multifaceted issue. Moreover, Indigenous people cannot be held solely responsible for the overharvesting of fur-bearing animals. Therefore, re-evaluating our understanding of historical events is an integral part of the Truth and Reconciliation process because Indigenous people have either been vilified in historical documents or had their contributions to Canada’s history completely left out.
The second piece that I published addresses the silence that was imposed on Indigenous people in literature and history. Sophia Alice Callahan, a Muskogee teacher and novelist, successfully employed the Gothic style to highlight social issues in the late 19th century and recount the events of the Wounded Knee Massacre from an Indigenous perspective. Moreover, these findings led me to reflect upon my own personal development, my responsibility as a non-Indigenous writer, and how Callahan’s work is relevant today. The colonial narrative dominated mainstream media and Indigenous voices could have been suppressed if Callahan hadn’t adopted the favourite topic to the popular readers. Callahan avoided being silenced by the dominant society during the late 19th century by implementing the Gothic style within her novel to appeal to the predominantly Western audience. This allowed Callahan to discuss several topics that would have been considered part of The Unspeakable such as assimilation, subjugation and inefficiencies in the reservation system while also ensuring that her work would be disseminated to as large a readership as possible. Additionally, Callahan’s work was published in 1891, less than a year after the Wounded Knee Massacre. At the time of Callahan’s publication, the Massacre was viewed in a positive light by the dominant society and a source of pride because the United States Army was able to quash the alleged rebels. Despite this perception, Callahan provided readers with an Indigenous perspective of the Wounded Knee Massacre which revealed the extreme destitution caused by the reservation system and the horrific, grisly tragedy this event was.
As a reflective essay, we were encouraged to relate our own life experiences and feelings to the novel or the characters. The aspect of the novel that I associated most with my own life experiences was the transition that some of the non-Indigenous characters went through as they became less biased toward Indigenous culture. At the beginning of the novel, several of Callahan’s European characters showed a large amount of ignorance towards Indigenous culture and traditions, but as the story progressed many of these characters become more accepting of Indigenous culture. I experienced a similar transition when I was a young adult. As a child and an adolescent, I was naïve towards Indigenous culture because I was never exposed to it when I was younger. I attended elementary and high school before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) released its findings in 2015. In my experience, prior to the release of the TRC’s findings and the publication of the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action,” Indigenous content was not as prevalent within educational institutions as it is currently. As a result, I found Indigenous culture very foreign and expressed some jaundice towards it. Despite these inappropriate opinions, learning about indigenous content in university as well as talking with my peers has changed my perspectives and inspired me to try to educate others through my writing. Thus, I am greatly appreciative to have an outlet like Muses from the North to promote conversations on decolonization and to have journal editors who are also extremely committed to Truth and Reconciliation to help me achieve my goals.
My third publication for Muses from the North is “An Interview with My Indigenous Peers on Intergenerational Trauma” and it is an essay based on an interview I conducted with an Indigenous woman in her mid-twenties from the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation about her experiences with intergenerational trauma as well as education about residential schools. The interviewee wished to remain anonymous so the pseudo-name Cheyanne Harvey was used. I wanted to conduct this interview with Harvey because both her parents attended schools that promoted assimilation and inflicted similar punishments they experienced in their youth on their children. As a result, she has been subjected to emotional and physical trauma despite never attending one of these institutions. She also attended elementary school as well as a high school prior to the release of the TRC’s findings in 2015 and was open to discussing her experiences in educational institutions from an Indigenous perspective. Her testimony is integral to conversations around Truth and Reconciliation because the TRC’s historical focus on residential schools has caused misinterpretations about the timeline of the residential school system. For example, Harvey explained that many people she has talked to about residential schools, including her Indigenous peers, assumed that residential schools closed around a century ago and were shocked when she told them the last residential school closed in the late twentieth century.
To determine what has contributed to misconceptions about the timeline of residential schools, I analyzed the type of information about residential schools that is available from public resources such as the Government of Canada website and several CBC articles. I then compared this information to Harvey’s statements and discerned that the focus of information available to the public transitioned from being centred around children’s personal experiences while attending residential schools to the social issues that have been caused by the operation of these schools. As a result, society is not aware that the legacy of these schools still drastically affects the Indigenous population personally and socially. This can hinder Truth and Reconciliation efforts because some parts of society may perceive Indigenous social issues as a product of their own actions instead of the legacy of residential schools. Thus, it is integral to continue including Indigenous content within the education system and encourage informative conversations about topics like the legacy of residential schools to reduce further dissemination of Eurocentric ideologies.
The Truth and Reconciliation process will continue well into the future, but I am proud to have the opportunity to contribute to this process. These three works represent the efforts that I have made to dispel enduring Eurocentric perceptions about Indigenous cultures in Canada, but I could not have succeeded in publishing these works without the support of my peers, Journal editors like Dr. Kong and Dr. Atoyebi, as well as the rest of the staff at UCN who have contributed to my education. University College of the North ensures that students have a safe space to learn about Indigenous history, culture and social issues. Furthermore, Muses from the North provides students with an outlet to share their stories, and challenge outdated narratives. Therefore, Truth and Reconciliation has remained paramount to the university, its staff and UCN students.
Author Bio:
Kelly Laybolt is a student in his fourth year of the Bachelor of Arts program at the University College of the North (UCN), Thompson campus. He has lived in the North for his entire life and began studying at UCN in 2019. Through his university studies, Kelly has learned about the historical and current issues that Indigenous people face. Additionally, he has had the opportunity to participate in a myriad of discussions about Truth and Reconciliation and contributed to the Truth and Reconciliation process on an individual level. As such, Kelly has tried to advocate for Indigenous peoples whenever possible and has published several essays in Muses from the North that have challenged historical or current perspectives of Indigenous history. In the future, Kelly hopes to become an educator to teach students about Indigenous history in Canada and guide others in contributing to the Truth and Reconciliation process.
Instructor’s Remarks: In answer to Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation, UCN has begun integrating Indigenous content into courses and programs for more than a decade. What Kelly Laybolt has discussed about his achievement in understanding Indigenous history, Indigenous people and their traditions is the result of Indigenous education at UCN. As a featured author of this special issue, Kelly is one of the many non-Indigenous student writers of Muses from the North. His voice represents the voice of UCN students and his achievement is part of TRC at UCN. We are very proud of UCN student writers such as Kelly who have constantly made progress in helping the healing of the wounds Indigenous people have had. (Dr. Ying Kong)