KINE 1000 Witnessing Painful Pasts Lecture Slides 2024-2025 PDF

Honouring Indigenous Experiences and World Views of Health and Physical Activity Witnessing Painful Pasts 2024-25 KINE 1000 Week of October 7 th, 2024 Instructor: Tammy George, PhD  Tutorial Tests Begin This Week! In-tut...

Honouring Indigenous Experiences and World Views of Health and Physical Activity Witnessing Painful Pasts 2024-25 KINE 1000 Week of October 7 th, 2024 Instructor: Tammy George, PhD  Tutorial Tests Begin This Week! In-tutorial tests start THIS WEEK, week of October 7th. Please remember to bring your own pencils and erasers for scantron sheets. Bring valid YU-card for test. If you need YU-card? Go to: https://www.yorku.ca/yucard/ for more info. Students without a valid YU-card will not be permitted to write the test and will be asked to leave tutorial. TESTS: 30 multiple choice questions; 35 mins to complete. Test on ALL course content up to and including ‘What is Kinesiology 2 unit’.  York University Land Acknowledgement We recognize that many Indigenous nations have longstanding relationships with the territories upon which York University campuses are located that precede the establishment of York University. York University acknowledges its presence on the traditional territory of many Indigenous Nations. The area known as Tkaronto has been care taken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Wendat, and the Métis. It is now home to many Indigenous Peoples. We acknowledge the current treaty holders and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This territory is subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement to peaceably share and care for the Great Lakes region. 3  Why is the significance and importance of these acknowledgements? Important to acknowledge our relationship to the land and to Indigenous Peoples whom were here before us. It means acknowledging that we have a responsibility to the land and our relationships with Indigenous Peoples. What is the land It also means that we must and engage with acknowledgement? colonialism and ongoing structural violence. How does acknowledging this relationship and responsibility deepen our work in, health, sport and physical activity? Think about the article you had to read for this week. What do we learn about the role of sport in colonization in Canada particularly with respect to the residential school system? 4  Lecture Aims 5 To examine and reflect on how we come “to know what we know” about Indigenous issues in Canada. What are the ideas about Indigenous Peoples and history that continue to circulate and be reproduced in the present? To define and understand the process of colonization an and structure of colonialism in Canada. How do we understand its production and reproduction in Canada? To problematize and critically examine how sport and institutional life are sites of the reproduction of colonialism and resistance. What does effective resistance look like in our institutions that honour and respect Indigenous ways of knowing and being?  Notes on Language Be specific: position/location within a territory, community, and/or Nation; Indigenous: includes First Nations, Métis, and Inuit (FNMI) Peoples. Indigenous Peoples have historical relationships to lands and territories prior to colonization. Indigenous Nations/Peoples maintain social, economic, and political systems with distinct languages, cultures, and knowledge systems that maintain and develop identities and institutions (United Nations, n.d.).  Recall: P. H Collins: Oppressions Structured Along 3 Main Dimensions Institutional: relationships with privilege and oppression structured via social institutions. Ex. schools, businesses, hospitals, governments, sport, science, medicine etc. What have you learned? Symbolic: ideologies used to justify relationships of domination and subordination. Production and reproduction of stereotypical images. Individual: examining personal biographies to think through relationships of privilege and oppression that considers the piece of the oppressor in all of us.  Status of Indigenous Peoples in Canada Some measurable inequalities... United Nations Human Development Index, which is based on income, education and life expectancy, indicates that First Nations People in Canada have Poverty, unemployment, incarceration rates higher than any other groups in Canada. Indigenous women in Canada are twice as likely to live in poverty as non- Indigenous People. Estimates suggest that around 4,000 Indigenous women and girls and 600 Indigenous men and boys have gone missing or been murdered between 1956 and 2016 (Guyot, 2022).  Status of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada Suicide rates for Indigenous females in Canada are approximately 8 times the national average and 5 times for men. 53.8% of all children in foster care in Canada are Indigenous (Statistics Canada, 2022) 25% report family abuse (Health Canada, 2012) Wage gap is significant in comparison to Canadian counterparts As of Feb. 3, 2023, there were 32 long-term boil water advisories in 28 communities in Canada. The majority of them were in Ontario, with 24 advisories in 21 communities; Saskatchewan had five remaining advisories in four communities. (CBC.ca)  Status of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada How do we understand these figures and the disproportion of poverty in the contemporary moment? These disparities appear to be racial and or cultural, however… We need a context of colonialism and what Bonita Lawrence calls Canada’s “National genocidal policies”to understand the plight of First Nations further”.  Reclaiming Former B.C. judge Marion Buller stated “ this Power and tragedy is a persistent and deliberate pattern of systemic racial and gendered human and Place: Indigenous-rights violations and abuses, perpetuated historically and maintained today by The Final the Canadian state, designed to displace Indigenous people from their lands, social Report into structures and governments, and to eradicate their existence as nations, communities, families MMIWG (2019) and individuals…This is genocide” Judge Marin Buller, Cree, Chief Commissioner (supplementary report on Genocide) Doctrine of Discovery Doctrine of Discovery  Terra Nullius – Nobody’s Land (TRC, 2015). Land that is legally deemed to be unoccupied or uninhabited. European settlers were provided legal, commercial, and property rights to Indigenous lands mostly without the knowledge and/or consent of Indigenous Peoples and Nations (Miller, 2010). Doctrine of Métis lawyer Bruce McIvor describes the doctrine as the “fundamental lie that non-Indigenous people can show up, plant a Discovery flag, and claim a right to own the land and displace Indigenous laws over the land.” Land theft justified under the idea of racial superiority. Mass genocide, stealing, and land dispossession permitted under the view that Indigenous Peoples, values, and worldviews were inferior, backward, and/or ‘savage’ (TRC, 2015).  Colonialism in Canada The OED defines colonialism as: “A settlement in a new country…a body of people who settle in a new locality, forming a community subject to or connected with their parent state; the community so formed consisting of the original settlers and their descendants and successors, as long as the connection with the parent state is kept up”. What Is missing here? Erased? Colonialism in Canada may be best understood as Indigenous Peoples’ forced disconnection from land, culture and community by another group…Colonialism is defined as a policy or set of policies and practices where a political power from one territory exerts control in a different territory. It involves unequal power relations (Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, 2016). Basic definition: Colonialism is characterized as the ongoing theft of Indigenous lands for capital gain (Alfred, 1999; Tuck & Yang, 2012; Coulthard, 2014; A. Simpson, 2014).  Recall: How Power Operates? Power is the ability to define and shape reality. Power influences what is valued, and how success is measured. Power is exercised through discourse, policy and institutional practices.  Often accompanied by violence Expansion of territory Colonialism in (establishment of boarders and nations) Canada Policies of assimilation* Land possession and resources Knowledge production and cultural production  Colonialism is a structure not an event. (Wolfe, 2006) Colonialism As Operates through a logic of Structural elimination in which genocide is Oppression embedded within the structures of Canada in ways that range from removal of Indigenous Peoples from lands, to mass killings, and cultural assimilation. (Wolfe, 2006). Why we know what we know…  What does this mean? Canada as a nation was formed not only through colonization and dispossession of First Nations people, but through large scale racially selective immigration. Specific institutionalized mechanisms of colonization: Removal of land from people/people from land Externally imposing new definitions of status, rights and family (The Indian Act of 1876). The effects: denying peoples’ identity, culture, taking away sovereignty or ability to make decisions, entrenching power imbalances. KEY POINT: Assimilation was central to the colonial project whereby Indigenous Peoples needed to be absorbed into mainstream Canadian life and adopt the same values.  The Indian Act of 1876: It is the primary law the federal government uses to administer Indian status, local First Nations governments and management of reserve land. It defined who was legally an Indian and how someone could lose their status.  Duncan Campbell Scott Appointed Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs by the government of Canada from 1913 to 1932 20  Residential School System The state governed the lives of First Nations people, particularly children through various mechanisms: Residential schools: Until the 1960s and later in some northern communities, “First Nations were transported from homes and schooled in Indian residential schools” which isolated children from home communities Loss of culture, language, sexual abuse The goal was to “civilize and Christianize” Indigenous children Estimated number of children: At least 150,000 The Last federally run residential school in Canada only closed in Saskatchewan in 1996.  Photographs ‘do’ things (McKee & Forsyth, 2019) To photograph is to confer importance. Sontag, S. (1977). On Photography What Photographs ‘Do’ 1. Offer a socially constructed view of the world 2. Shape what people believe to be ‘real’ and ‘true’ 3. Can influence a range of decisions that go beyond the picture itself 4. Do not depict the world in its absoluteness; but offer renditions and representations (McKee & Forsyth, 2019, p. 179).  Health & Residential ‘Schools’ Legal requirement for all Indigenous children to attend residential school (Hay et al., 2020). Little to no access to healthcare/medications. Lack of policy meant educational standards were essentially non-existent (National Crime 1922; TRC, 2015b). Declining health, death, and generations of physical, emotional, spiritual, and sexual violence (National Crime; 1922; RCAP, 1996; Saskamoose, 2021). Honouring Resistances Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce Physician and early public health advocate for Indigenous children. Blew the whistle on living conditions and alarmingly high rates of death from Tuberculosis (TB) among children in residential schools (National Crime, 1922; Hay et al., 2020). Reports perennially ignored and ultimately fired from his role as Chief Medical Officer for Indian Affairs. Later published his findings in his book: The Story of a National Crime (1922). First Nations Caring Society Sport, PA & Health in Residential ‘Schools’ Sport and PA introduced under the idea that Indigenous children were ‘weak’ and ‘diseased’ and in need of orderly instruction to regain vitality (Forsyth, 2007). Sport/PA inexpensive methods to combat the declining health in residential schools (Forsyth, 2013). Windspeaker Sporting Values as Assimilation Institutionalized sport a policy of ‘health’ in residential ‘schools’. Value based sport: increased competition could translate into a desire for individual wealth and achievement (RCAP, 1996; Forsyth, 2013). Euro-Canadian values of individualism and competition associated with sport/PA deeply rooted in settler-colonial histories. https://collegesport.co.nz/2018/04/27/the-value-of- sport/ Sport & Residential Schools Competitions between Indigenous and Canadian youth became publicized events that offered opportunities for gaining approval and mobilizing public support (Forsyth, 2013; Habkirk, 2017). The more attention sport received, the more valuable it became as a specific tool of assimilation (Forsyth, 2007). Learning Through Story Eugene Arcand (Cree) from Muskeg Lake First Nation, spent 11 years in St. Michael's Indian Residential School in Duck Lake from 1967 -1969 https://vimeo.com/867485483 Eugene Arcand Shares His Story: https://www.sasktoday.ca/north/local -news/residential-school-survivor- eugene-arcand-shares-story-in- humboldt-4469395 Nuances of Sport Sport as reward for ‘good’ behaviours and punishment for being ‘bad’ (Johnston, 1994) Tension in taking pride in sporting accomplishments, while simultaneously trying to reconcile horrid experiences and trauma of residential schools (Forsyth, 2013; Saskamoose, 2021) Sport left children vulnerable to continued and ongoing abuses (Wagamese, 2018). https://www.librarything.com/work/142 6738 Thomas Moore Keesik (#22) Regina Indian Industrial School ‘Face’ of assimilation. His before and after photos shared widely in textbooks and social media. Reproduced ideas about Indigenous ‘savagery’ and European ‘civilization’ Photos justified ongoing ‘intervention,’ or assimilation (McKee & Forsyth, 2019). Performing Painful Pasts McKee & Forsyth (2019): Photographs of residential school sports performed a similar function but were even more powerful because of the positive associations tied to sport. Reproduced Narratives (stories) of progress and development. Sport for ‘Development’: racial, cultural, and social uplift that transformed Indigenous youth from savage to civilized (p.180). How Hockey Offered 'Salvation' Duncan McCue Power of Symbolism: False sense of equivalence among settler audiences who see something of their own sense of ‘normalcy’ in the pictures (McKee & Forsyth, p. 185) Residential school photos strategically reinforced positive assumptions while distracting and silencing the destruction ‘schools’ were causing (McKee & Forsyth, p. 185).  Hi(stories) of Health, Sport, PA are NOT Neutral Important: What do these images say about Indigenous settler relations in Canada? Don’t be fooled! Eugene’s story disrupts silences and erasures of sport in residential school that challenge the view that sport is outside of efforts to colonize Indigenous Peoples (McKee & Forsyth, 2019). Sport is deeply engrained in Canada’s History of colonialism (McKee & Forsyth, 2019; Day, 2023). Reflect on how this takes place both through this reading and elsewhere. Sport and PA were (and continue to be) tools that attempt discipline, control, and assimilate Indigenous bodies (Forsyth, 2007; 2013; Day, 2023).