ELL: Language policies in USSR & North America

[Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine]

> I would call for a less ahistoric view on these issues. Language policies
...

Always a good start, so long as we can agree as to what constitutes "history".

...
> Canada: In an anti-constitutional setting "Indian residential schools" were
> run by the churches (thus mingling church and state affairs). In the early
...

Recently I received a note off-list from a subscriber to this list who took
exception to what s/he construed as comments that implied netative qualities
such as a lack of intelligence based on ethnicity.

Rather than dispute the received truth of the European Experience in the
Americas, which broadly is a waste of time anyway, here is a cite on the
subject this thread addresses, in part -- Canada. This being a product of
Indigenous intellectuals, any "fact" alleged is presumptively rebutted by
the assertion to the contrary by any European, misplaced or otherwise lost.

THE CIRCLE GAME: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School
Experience in Canada,
A Report to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples,
Submitted October, 1994,
Roland D. Chrisjohn, Ph. D. & Sherri L. Young, M. A.
with contributions by Michael Maraun, Ph. D.

Publisher: Theytus Books Ltd., 257 Brunswick Street, Penticton, BC, V2A 5P9,
1997, ISBN 0-919441-85-8.


The recent note from a contributor at the University of Frankfurt was what
the authors of The Circle Game denote as "the Standard Account".

	[It] disposes neatly of all problems associated with Indian
	Residential Schooling. There is a statement of initial motive,
	a recognition of responsibility, an exoneration of victims
	(Aboriginal Peoples), and the expression of a determination
	to tackle present manifestations of existing, unintentional
	injuries with all the armamentaria of modern social science.
	In short, the Standard Account is an act of contrition.

Sections of this work are available at the Treaty7 web, see:
http://www.treaty7.org/document/circle/circltab.htm

Non-Standard Accounts, whether those of the authors of this work, or other
works, are less cheritable. Those with a legalistic critical framework use
"genocide", "crimes against humanity", and related terms of art. An older
critical framework is re-expressed in the 1977 work by a group of authors in
"A BASIC CALL TO CONSCIOUSNESS".

A BASIC CALL TO CONSCIOUSNESS, published by Akewesasne Notes, official
newspaper of Mohawk Nation, P.O. Box 196, Rooseveltown, NY
ISBN: 13683-0196

This work is also available on the net, see:
http://niikaan.fdl.cc.mn.us/natnet/c2c1.html

Many excellent books about the state of Aboriginal affairs in Canada have
been published in recent years and can be found in any good book store.
Titles by Olive Dickason, J.R. Miller, Rupert Ross, Dan Smith, Geoffrey York
and Ronald Wright are also recommended.

> In the US it was essentially the same but all developments one or two
> decades earlier (first boarding schools in the 1870s, first native-run
...

Umm.
Boston Latin.
Dartmouth.

The Blackfoot Confederacy, 1880-1920: A Comparative Study of Canadian and
U.S. Indian Policy, Hana Samek, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
1991.

The "essentially the same", as well as the "better than in the US" summaries
are not supported by Samek's study.

Kitakitamatsinopowaw,
Eric
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