Beyond The Lecture: Innovations in Teaching Canadian History

Andrea Eidinger and Krista McCracken

2019

Beyond The Lecture: Innovations in Teaching Canadian History by Andrea Eidinger and Krista McCracken is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

1

Eidinger, Andrea and McCracken, Krista. Eds. Beyond the Lecture: Innovations in Teaching Canadian History. Active History, 2019.

Beyond the Lecture is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

ISBN (electronic book): 978-1-9990201-0-1

ISBN (print book): 978-1-9990201-1-8

Cover design by Taylor Jolin, Ojibwe visual artist from Sault Ste. Marie and Pic Mobert First Nation.

Beyond the Lecture is part of the ActiveHistory.ca ebook series. The Active History ebook series brings together some of the best writing published on ActiveHistory.ca in an accessible, open-access format. Its thematic collections focus on connecting historians to the public and the past to current events.

2

Contributors

Editors

Andrea Eidinger (She/Her) is currently a sessional instructor in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University. She holds a Doctorate of Philosophy in History from the University of Victoria (2011). Her research examines the intersections of gender and ethnicity in postwar Canada, particularly with respect to the role that Jewish women have played in the establishment of Jewish-Canadian identity. She is also the creator of the popular blog, Unwritten Histories. You can find her on twitter at @andreaeidinger.

Krista McCracken (They/Them) is an Archives Supervisor at Algoma University’s Arthur A. Wishart Library and Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre. Krista’s work focuses on Indigenous archives, community history, accessibility, and public outreach. They hold an MA in public history from the University of Western Ontario. For more information visit their website. Krista can be reached at krista.mccracken@algomau.ca.

Contributors

John Belshaw is a faculty member with TRU-Open Learning, a consultant to the post-secondary sector, and a freelance writer.

Benjamin Bryce is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Northern British Columbia. He is the author of To Belong in Buenos Aires: Germans, Argentines, and the Rise of a Pluralist Society (Stanford, 2018) and co-editor of Making Citizens in Argentina(Pittsburgh, 2017) and Entangling Migration History: Borderlands and Transnationalism in the United States and Canada (Florida, 2015).

Claire Campbell is a Professor of History at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, where she revels in Canadiana and environmental history. She is also a lover of exploring, maps, Jane of Lantern Hill, and Scandinavia.

Tim Compeau is an Assistant Professor of History at Huron University College. He researches public history and colonial North America.

Samantha Cutrara with a PhD from York University in Education and a focus on meaningful learning in Canadian history education, Dr. Samantha Cutrara has become an expert in her field of teaching and learning history in both traditional and non-traditional sites of education. As a History Education Strategist, Dr. Cutrara develops strategies, projects, and programs to help organizations and individuals teach Canadian history in interesting, meaningful, and comprehensive ways. Her first full-length manuscript, Imagining a New “We”: Canadian history education for the 21st century, will be published by UBCPress in 2019. Visit SamanthaCutrara.com for information about her consulting work and publications.

Sanchia deSouza, Joel Dickau, Edward Dunsworth, William Fysh, Benjamin Lukas, Kari North, Maris Rowe-Mcculloch, Lindsay C. Sidders, Hana Suckstorff, Nathaniel Thomas, Erica Toffoli, and Spirit-Rose Waite. The authors are current and former graduate students in the Departments of History and Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto. The syllabus and expanded bibliography for the workshop can be found here.

Jessica DeWitt is a historian of the Canadian and American environment and Social Media Editor for the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE).

Thirstan Falconer is Assistant Professor in Canadian History at St. Jerome’s University. His research examines the efforts of mainstream political parties to engage with and appeal to ethnocultural communities during the 1960s and 1970s. He considers how these relationships led to an “invention” of ethnicity.

Crystal Fraser is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Alberta and Gwichya Gwich’in from Inuvik and Dachan Choo Gèhnjik, Northwest Territories. Her research focuses on the history of residential schools in the Canadian North during the postwar period.

Adam Gaudry is Métis and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. He is the First-Year Coordinator for INDG 107. Each year the course is offered more than a dozen times to over 1200 students across Saskatchewan.

Heather Green is a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Wilson Institute at McMaster University and a recent graduate from the University of Alberta. She is also the 2018/2019 NiCHE New Scholars representative and a 2018/2019 Fulbright Canada Scholar. Her research interests include environmental and indigenous histories, Northern Canadian history, and histories of environmental tourism. You can connect with her on twitter @heathergreen21.

Skylee-Storm Hogan studies Public History at Western University on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Lenape nations. Skylee has worked primarily with residential schools history and legal history on Crown-Indigenous relations in Canada. They are interested in digital heritage mediums, digital repatriation, and accessibility. Currently Skylee works at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology as the Sustainable Archaeology Community Coordinator and will be graduating in Fall 2019.

Sean Kheraj is an associate Professor of Canadian and environmental history. His work can be found at seankheraj.com.

Sara Komarnisky is a post-doctoral fellow in History at the University of Alberta and is of Ukrainian settler heritage. She is an anthropologist currently researching art and craft made by Indigenous patients at Canadian “Indian Hospitals” from the 1940s to the 1960s.

Kathryn Magee Labelle is an Assistant Professor of Aboriginal/Native-Newcomer History, University of Saskatchewan. In addition to publishing articles on Wendat child-rearing, witchcraft, warfare, and leadership, Labelle is the author of the award-winning book Dispersed, But Not Destroyed: A History of the Seventeenth Century Wendat People (UBC Press, 2013). Her current research is a collaborative project with the Wendat Longhouse Women entitled Daughters of Aataentsic that explores the lives of seven Wendat women from the 17th-21st centuries.

Catherine Larochelle is Assistant Professor in the History department at Université de Montréal. Her research interests are in cultural and transnational history of Quebec and Canada during the long 19th century, particularly with respect to education, childhood and critical race studies. Catherine is a member of the editorial team of HistoireEngagée.ca.

Daniel Laxer is a research adviser in the Ministry of Indigenous  Affairs. He graduated with a PhD in history from the University of  Toronto in 2015 and has published articles in the journals of Ontario  History, Material Culture Review, and the Journal of Canadian Studies.

Mark Leier is in the History Department at Simon Fraser University. His books include Bakunin: The Creative Passion and Rebel Life: The Life and Times of Robert Gosden, Revolutionary, Mystic, Labour Spy.

Zack MacDonald is Assistant Librarian at St. Jerome’s University, where his current work looks at the relationship between instructional design and learning space design, and student engagement and learning outcomes. He is the Digital Librarian for the Medieval D.R.A.G.E.N. Lab at St. Jerome’s University, where his research explores the use of GIS and 3D modelling as a means to reconstruct medieval human and natural landscapes.

Jean-Pierre Morin is the departmental historian for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and Indigenous Services Canada, as well as an Adjunct Research Professor in History at Carleton University. He is the author of  Solemn Words and Foundational Documents: An Annotated Discussion of Indigenous-Crown Treaties in Canada, 1752-1923.

Alison Norman is a research advisor at the Ontario Ministry of Indigenous Affairs. She is also faculty in the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies at Trent University. She has published articles in Indigenous women’s history, culinary history and the history of education.

Andrew Nurse is a professor in the Canadian Studies program at Mount Allison University and a contributing editor at ActiveHistory.ca.

Daniel Samson an Associate Professor at Brock University, is an historian of rural 18th and 19th-century Nova Scotia. He is most interested in the political and social processes that forged modernity in the colonial countryside. He is writing a book-length biography of 19th-century Nova Scotia miller James Barry, building a web-based research tool with Keith Grant called the Colonial Bookshelf, and developing online courses that employ digital tools to enhance critical reading skills.

Tom Peace is an Assistant Professor of History at Huron University College and editor at ActiveHistory.ca. His research focuses on settler colonialism, literacies, and education in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century North America.

Geoff Read is Associate Professor of History at Huron University College. He publishes primarily on gender in modern France and the French Empire.

Daniel Ross is an assistant professor at UQÀM, an editor of ActiveHistory.ca, and an entry-level digital historian.

Sarah York-Bertram is a Canadian historian from Treaty Six Territory and  a PhD Candidate in York University’s Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies programme. She specializes in the socio-legal histories of the Canadian Prairies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

3

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, Andrea and Krista would like to thank Active History for their support throughout the Beyond the Lecture series and through the creation of this edited volume. We would also like to thank Andrew Nurse for his encouragement when we first launched the series. We wish to thank our contributors for their generosity, for without their work this book would not have been possible.

Thank you to the extremely helpful staff at eCampusOntario, who made the technical side of this publication possible. We also wish to thank Taylor Jolin for their work designing our ebook cover and for creating something beautiful out of our vague design ideas.

Andrea would like to thank Krista for being such a wonderful collaborator who was exceptionally forgiving about her habitual lateness. She would also like to thank her husband, Lee Blanding, for his patience and support, and for continuing to work as her copyeditor despite the lack of payment.

Likewise, Krista would like to thank Andrea for her humour, collaboration skills, and fantastic ideas. They would also like to thank their partner Andrew – who also serves as a copyeditor without payment.

Lastly, this collection pulls a few pieces from beyond the Active History blog. The editors would also like to thank the following blogs and their authors for permission to republish these pieces.

- Jessica DeWitt’s piece, “Twitter in the Classroom,” originally appeared on her blog.

- Kathryn Magee Labelle’s piece, “Early Canadian Biographies,” and Daniel Samson’s “Colonial Canada: Making the Familiar Dis/Comfortingly Strange,” originally appeared on Borealia.

- Claire Campbell’s piece, “I’ll Stay in Canada? Frameworks for teaching environmental history,” originally appeared on The Otter from NiCHE.

- Andrea Eidinger and Sarah York Bertram’s piece, “Imagining a Better Future: An Introduction to Teaching and Learning about Settler Colonialism,” originally appeared on Unwritten Histories.

4

Introduction

Andrea Eidinger and Krista McCracken

Photo by Michał Bożek on Unsplash

Being a historian is as much about being an educator as a researcher. And yet, most academic historians receive little to no training in pedagogy. Though there are many history education resources aimed k-12 teachers, there is substantially less for those interested in critically engaging with history education at the post-secondary level. During their tenure, THEN/HiER and the Historical Thinking Project created spaces for conversations around history education. However, in the years since the conclusion of both projects, these conversations have gone largely silent.

In March 2018 we launched a monthly series on ActiveHistory.ca dedicated to teaching Canadian history at the post-secondary level. This series has – and continues to – create a space to expand perspectives, deepen insights, and challenge assumptions about history education. The series has presented us with an opportunity to both highlight the wonderful work already being done by educators across the country while also providing us with a forum to circulate these ideas more widely. Because it is clear that even though many of us lack formal training in pedagogy, there is a lot of careful thought that goes into designing history courses and classes. At the same time, the series has created an online community where educators can share and circulate ideas, learn from each other, collaborate, and continue to grow.

Our decision to create an ebook was inspired by a desire to extend the life of the original Beyond the Lecture blog posts and to highlight the broad themes which have emerged throughout the series. This open access ebook also developed out of the enthusiasm, insight, and conversations that were sparked by the Beyond the Lecture blog series. This book compiles pieces from the Beyond the Lecture series and the Active History site more broadly, as well as blogs like Borealia, The Otter/La loutre, and Unwritten Histories. It also builds more broadly on discussions taking place at all levels about the value of a university education and the importance of history as a field and a discipline.

Our cover image, illustrated by the talented Ojibwe artist Taylor Jolin, was inspired by the sense of community and growth that we hoped to evoke within these digital pages. The circular shape embodies our feelings of continuity and change, endless possibility and opportunity, and overcoming challenges. We envision the book as a kind of sharing circle where individuals that are separated across vast distances can come together in spaces where we can be both brave and safe.

The blueberries represent and recognize the importance of place, locating us within the land currently called Canada, and recognizing the forever history of this land. We strongly believe in the importance of centring Indigenous perspectives, though we recognize the challenge of acknowledging territory in digital projects like this one. In lieu of a traditional territorial acknowledgement, and in consideration of the fact that the scholars in this book come from across Turtle Island, we would instead encourage settler scholars to become aware of the history of the land they live on and to learn about the history of the Indigenous communities connected to that land. The history of the land we currently call Canada did not start in 1867. When considering the use of territorial acknowledgements we recommend reading âpihtawikosisân‘s post on “Beyond Territorial Acknowledgements” as a starting place.

As public and digital historians, we strongly believe in the principles of open-access, and are committed to making our work accessible to communities and scholars both in and outside academia. By making this publication freely available we aim to reduce socio-economic barriers to knowledge, while promoting equality of access.

While organizing this project, we were committed to the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion by bringing together a range of perspectives and ways of knowing. We remain committed to uplifting the voices of contingent/precarious academics, as well as female, trans, non-binary, Indigenous, Black, non-Black People of Colour, queer*, disabled, and other marginalized scholars and communities.

We hope that readers find as much inspiration in this publication as we did.

5

Historiography: Historians and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Historians and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Andrew Nurse

In the Fall of 2017, I had the good fortune to attend a regional workshop and conference on post-secondary teaching and learning, or as it now increasingly called: the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education (STLHE). For me, the highlight of my weekend was watching a fawn walk in front of my car — seemingly without a care in the world – as I left Mount Saint Vincent University for lunch and some reflection. However, James Lang, the keynote speaker, was a close second. His talk was organized around a series of suggestions that were intended to make for more effective university-level teaching. His thinking was empirically grounded and focused on steps that could be taken with a minimum of fuss. It was also mercifully free of the buzzwords (like “learning styles”) that, to my mind, have done more to muddy the waters in discussions about university-level teaching than anything else. The rest of the conference was good too. It was lively, participants were enthusiastic and generous, and the sense of common mission – taking steps to improve university-level teaching – was palpable. I left wanting more. Perhaps, the fawn was a good omen.

The good omen fawn. Photograph by author.

Later, as I drove home, I began to think about who had attended the conference. A broad range of disciplines were represented: literary critics, biologists, mathematicians, chemists, business professionals, kinesiologists, and a long list of others. Cognitive scientists and teaching centre staff were over represented, but as I thought about, that made sense. This was their gig. What struck me, as I thought about it, was that there were few historians in the room, at least in the sessions I attended. Why was this?

It is not, as sessions at the CHA, this series of blog posts, or even Active History itself illustrate, that historians are uninterested in the university classroom. Quite the opposite In fact, the debate that has periodically polarized this generation of historians is over what is being taught and what is being learnt. Moreover, as Daniel Ross’s recent post illustrates , historians have not been slow to adopt new techniques, materials, ideals, and media to the university history classroom. Said differently, the historical discipline is not populated with fuzzy old recalcitrant educators being pulled against their will into the future of teaching and learning. Perhaps, it is precisely the regular ongoing engagement with teaching and learning that is part of the historical discipline that explains why historians have, in Canada at least, not been key contributors to the scholarship of teaching and learning. In their own discipline, historians are addressing issues of teaching and learning all the time. Yet, the distinction remained. Even historians and history educators don’t seem to run in the same circles. Few academic historians, for instance, (and mea culpa!) seem to attend the Historical Thinking Summer Institutes .

What I’d like to do in this piece is to argue that the scholarship of teaching and learning has something to offer historians as university-level instructors and, equally importantly, something to which historians can and should contribute. The STLHE will not revolutionize the university-level teaching of history. Our students will not all suddenly start producing A-level work. But, as James Lang suggests, it can contribute a series of small changes that enhance what we do in the classroom.

“Classroom Practices”: Historians and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

To begin, I’d like to focus a bit more about what the STLHE is and provide some resources, that I hope will be useful. I’ll also try to suggest how historians can and should contribute to the broader conversation of STLHE.  I am not an expert on the STLHE, but from what I can tell it is more than a bit of a broad grab bag. On its highest level it represents an effort to bring greater intentionality, evidence-based practice, and professionalism to teaching and learning. Put differently, the STLHE logics like this: we have a bunch of research from educators, cognitive psychologists, and others that clearly relates to post-secondary education. Why don’t we make use of this research? If we have studies that point to more effective ways to organize class time or more effective study habits or better testing strategies (better in the sense of contributing to learning objectives), why neglect these? This is the type of STLHE that interests me: what can I do, as an instructor, to improve my students educational experience and performance. What strategies can I use to help students learn more?

However, this is not all there is to the STLHE.  The STLHE addresses a broad range of topics, from teaching specific concepts to student motivations to problem-centered learning, among others. In short, the STLHE is an interdisciplinary field but one which simultaneously bears specific focus. Professional writing in the STLHE is affected by the disciplines that make the most sustained contributions. The role of professional educators and cognitive psychology, for example, is evident from even a quick review of its leading periodicals and that was my experience, too. Participants in the sessions I attended came from a variety of disciplines, but folks who taught skill-oriented courses (communications, reading, remedial science or math), along with staff from teaching centres, seemed over-represented.  Said differently, much of the discussion was valuable but also needed to modified for the university-level history classroom.

In my view,  this is a bit of a shame because, I think, historians have something to offer to the STLHE ,and they have, I might be so bold as to say, been offering it for some time, just in another guise.  The STLHE is not about separating good instructors from bad ones. Indeed, to attempt to make it about some sort of ranking of instructors or their techniques does a deep disservice to its goals. Let me be clear about this: the STLHE does not provide supporting scholarship that can be used to, say, justify denying tenure to anyone on the basis of poor teaching. It is about providing means through which post-secondary instructors can make their own work more effective. Here, historians teaching in universities could make two contributions.

First, we bring an historical perspective to the subject. The fact that the evidence suggests that certain classroom strategies or tactics can work better than others needs to be placed in a temporal perspective. Historians have seen, researched, and written about, the history of educational reform. Historians have written extensively about the changing roles and dynamics of higher education. Conceptions of effective teaching relate to their context and depends on how one thinks about other social objectives. What supposedly new ideas are actually not all that new? Where did seemingly new educational ideas come from? How are they connected to cultural, gender, political, and economic processes? In this regards, James Cairns’ fascinating new book, The Myth of the Age of Entitlement, provides important context when it comes to looking squarely at neoliberal post-secondary policies and their effects on higher education and its goals. In showing how changes to teaching can be linked to broader historical processes – in ways that both challenge and reaffirm neoliberalism – historians can contribute a different kind of voice to the STLHE.

Second, and again like Daniel Ross’s piece suggests, historians can contribute case studies to the literature. One might hope, in fact, that this series will stimulate more case study contributions. What have we tried that has worked? What has not? How have we measured that work? What excites our students? What does not? What skills are we trying to built in the classroom? What habits of mind do we seek to promote? What ethics do we strive to inculcate? How do we encourage students to think about issues from a temporal perspective the includes a range of contributing causal factors? How could we historicize our own context?

The need to address racialized and racializing dynamics of colonialism, for instance, and to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations might serve as cases in point. Both orders of contributions I think historians can make to the STLHE involve a different set of educational objectives for higher education than were overtly being addressed even a few years ago. They involve different educational strategies, different voices, and different perspectives. This is something that is, from what I can tell, not on the agenda of the STLHE and it would be an important contribution of historians were to put it there.

“Ditch the Highlighter”: What the Research Suggests about Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Photo by Daniel Cheung on Unsplash

The question remains: how can we — how should we — teach history at the university level? This question has been the subject of a great deal of discussion. The perspective that I’m trying to introduce here is influenced by the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education (STLHE). If the STLHE is about evidence-based changes that can make for more effective university-based teaching, what are changes that historians can make? James Lang’s Small Teaching is an easy and accessible guide. His blog and periodic column in The Chronicle of Higher Education provide a set of nicely-organized suggestions that can point university instructors toward STLHE-informed educational strategies. These suggestions are not a series of tips per se, or even best practices, but what Lang calls “classroom practices,” or ways in which we can reorganize classroom time and pedagogy guided by research into teaching and learning. Following some of Lang’s work, let me suggest three small changes to classroom practice that seem to make a difference in learning. You might already have implemented these changes, or some variant of them. If this is the case … good! I hope I can provide some positive reinforcement.

First, the according to Lang, the STLHE  suggests that we should make better use of the first few minutes of a class. I’ve tried a whole series of different ways of starting class, from what I had hoped were stirring — nay, arresting — opening words, to due date reminders, announcements about co-curricular activities, admonitions or congratulations about test or paper scores, to explanations of assignments. Lang thinks we don’t make good use of the beginning of class time, particularly in the age of social media, when students come to class already distracted by the gadgets in their hands. I’m not certain any of my ways of starting class are bad, but the research we have suggests that a more effective way to begin class is to get students thinking right away. Begin with what a colleague of mine calls “orienting questions” and don’t just use those questions as an outline. Have students take a few minutes to work in, say, pairs or small groups to answer them.

This practice has several merits. It allows students to begin thinking about the material or issues that will be addressed in that class and gives the instructor a rough overview of the state of knowledge, giving us a better chance of pitching, say, a lecture at the right level. Obviously we already come to class with lectures prepared, but some subtle adjustments are always needed — no two lectures are ever exactly alike . More importantly, it allows students to activate any knowledge they already have and build on (or challenge) it, or connect it to material they may have previously learnt. Regardless, it begins of process of making a class — a lecture, a lecture/discussion, a seminar —  about thinking, addressing issues, and fitting things together, rather than simply dropping a knowledge bomb. At this point you are already ahead of the game.

Additionally having students write down their answers seems to help, and this is the second point I want to make. The STLHE suggests that there are way of improving factual recall. At Mount Allison, we used to have long discussions about whether we were teaching ‘facts” or “critical thinking.” If you pause to think about for a bit, this is actually more than a bit of an artificial distinction. I agree with Tom Peace : we should not pretend that a straightforward narrative built around supposed “great men” — and recalling facts about their lives —  is somehow Canadian history. Much less do I like those polls that periodically pop up in the newspapers telling us that Canadians don’t really know their history because they can’t name a certain Prime Minister or a World War I battle. This is more akin to trivial pursuit than it is university-level history education.

On the other hand, the ability to recall factual information is important because this information is the precondition of critical thinking, analysis, and challenging or confirming different perspectives on the past. Knowing precisely when an important event occurred may not be important in and of itself but it can be important for a discussion of the processes that led to that event, say Confederation, the progress of suffrage, or the various facets of colonialism and marginalization that produced the long-term subjugation of Original Peoples. These are examples, the point is that knowing these “facts” helps us fashion narratives and analysis. They provide the basis upon which we might, say, question the triumphant narratives of Canada that surrounded us during Canada 150.

Most students don’t like trying to recall facts — most, in my experience, dismiss it as a form of education — and there is a good reason for that. Most of us are really bad at it because we go about doing it the wrong way. We try to recall facts in isolation as a parade of names and dates that are of supposed significance by themselves. Moreover, as James Lang has noted, common student study strategies — highlighting texts and re-reading textbooks — are really ineffective ways to promote recall. More effective methods put those facts in context. Self-testing — that is making up ways of testing yourself that allow for knowledge recall — is one method that can be successful, but rewriting notes, mind-mapping (to provide connections between facts, events, people, and processes), and content review are also useful tactics.  As many of us can attest, cramming does little to promote long-term knowledge or help make the types of connections out of which critical thinking and analysis emerge. Encouraging material review, or even making time for it in class, can facilitate the types of learning — the interaction of fact and process and persons — that we want to promote in our classrooms.

To my third point: we must make better use of the last few minutes of class time.  This is a particular weakness of mine: I run long and, consequently, the last few minutes of my classes are often rushed affairs. If I have the big-class lecture that semester (something which is far from ideal but which is also a reality of the contemporary university), it tends to be even more so, as I strive to “cover” material and “keep on track.” This may not be a very good use of time.  My students, at least, don’t seem to think so. I can tell because they start to shuffle in their seats, close their laptops, glance less furtively at their iPhones, or begin to chat about something other than class material to the person sitting next to them. Instead of trying to hold their attention even as it wanes, a more effective approach is to get students thinking again. Lang suggests the “minute paper” as one way to close out the class and, in one of his columns , explains it like this: “The minute paper comes in many variations, but the simplest one involves wrapping up the formal class period a few minutes early and posing two questions to your students:

- What was the most important thing you learned today

- What questions still remain in our mind?”

This encourages students to recall material, translate into their own words, reflect on what they have learnt and still need to learn, and make judgements about what was discussed.

I am acutely aware that the practices I am suggesting add more work to what we do in the classroom, even if I have billed them as small changes. In the modern university, we need to know that the burden of added work falls unevenly across classroom instructors. Faculty who are sessional instructors or on limited term contracts already often have more work than they can handle as they navigate the precarious employment market of the neoliberal university. Asking them to make further changes, to add work, to become more intentional begs more than a few questions about ethics and compensation so I want to state this point clearly: I am not trying to make more work for people who are already underpaid. Indeed, ideally, the opposite development might happen. If we think about the need for more intentional design with regard to classroom practices, the time taken to develop these should be part of the compensation of precariously employed instructors. If it is not, well, then as institutions we are not really making a commitment to more effective teaching. And, that would be a real shame because the STLHE is at a point where we can, I think, start to have this conversation.

Additional STLHE Resources:

- The History Teacher

- James M. Lang’s blog, Reflections on higher education, literature, travel, and more.

- James M. Lang’s Small Teaching Columns, Chronicle of Higher Education

- International Journal: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

- Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Annotated Literature Database

- SOTL Canada

1

Innovating Pedagogy in Canadian History: Infusing the Classroom with Primary Research, Analysis, and Collaboration

Thirstan Falconer and Zack MacDonald

Flipped classroom setup. Photo by author.

Not every history student is going to become a professional historian. The challenge, therefore, is an obvious one: how can instructors transcend traditional pedagogical models that emphasize written exams and research papers to incorporate elements that better prepare students for life after an undergraduate degree? Some instructors of Canadian history are especially interested in reinventing the traditional lecture teaching style for a hybrid model that explores digital history, experiential/active learning, inquiry/problem-based learning, and public history. Through collaborations with other scholars, as well as partners in other departments or faculties, Canadian history instructors have the opportunity to transform the way students interact and learn in university classrooms.

Many history graduates have found themselves in jobs for which their research and analytical skills are important factors in their success. To get into these positions, applicants encounter employment competitions that force them outside of their comfort zones and challenge their creative thinking skills. How can we expect our history program alumni to innovate in the workplace if their post-secondary education employed pedagogical models that were pioneered before the arrival of the digital age? Employers are looking for skills and experience that are often overlooked by traditionally structured history departments. Moreover, the contemporary employment landscape is increasingly collaborative while academic history training rarely requires meaningful collaboration. Consequently, recent graduates often lack the practical experience of conducting media scans, summarizing complex ideas, or writing clear and concise summaries. While it is true that Canadian history departments encourage undergraduate research, how many of them have integrated real-world scenarios into their classrooms?

Canadian history can offer students the opportunity to engage in problem-based learning in an active and experiential learning environment. The authors of this post have collaborated to reimagine learning within the scope of a third-year Canadian international relations course. In addition to a final exam and research paper, we envision that students participate in in-class simulations that require them to write a briefing note or an action memorandum in an allotted amount of time.[i] While many Canadian history instructors use policy writing assignments to replace traditional research papers, simulations provide a unique experiential learning experience for undergraduate history students.[ii]

For example, in one scenario students engage with primary sources from the 1956 Suez Crisis, in the days following Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal and the incursion of Israeli, French, and British forces into the region. Student teams are given two hours to digest radio broadcasts, television clips, and a selection of Department of External Affairs (DEXA) documents written following Israel’s invasion of Egypt on 29 October 1956. They are tasked with drafting a briefing memo to Canada’s Minister of External Affairs Lester Pearson before the November 1956 vote that created a United Nations Emergency Force, imposed a ceasefire, and kept the peace. They are expected to produce the various courses of action Pearson could pursue, including their one recommended option, in order for Canada to deescalate or resolve the situation from its own perspective.

Students are graded by their ability to understand the context of the event, the potential choices for action (or inaction) and their consequences, as well as the rationale for their final recommendation to the Minister. Completing this scenario in two hours is difficult, but it is a professional group-based task that some students will find themselves in following graduation.

Many Canadian history scholars have either privately gathered or published collections of primary documents that offer tantalizing scenarios for students to grapple with. Though the Suez scenario is more of a crisis situation, instructors could elect to use any setting involving political parties, federal elections, labour actions, or any other historical topic. This simulation is particularly suitable to introduce students to the complex nature of Canada’s history with Indigenous peoples and northern development. For example, the Centre on Foreign Policy and Federalism’s Documents on Canadian Arctic Sovereignty and Security (DCASS) series has released ten volumes of primary documents that are open-access and readily accessible. For those interested in Canadian external affairs, the Documents on Canadian External Relations series has over twenty-seven volumes of primary document collections. Scholars can also find audio-visual sources within the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Digital Archives.

Institutions that have endeavoured to be technologically and pedagogically innovative are, perhaps, best positioned to offer students an immersive experience for these scenarios. Using a flipped learning approach allows instructors to engage students in more meaningful discussion and facilitate deep learning during class time. Introducing collaborative technology into a flipped environment can enhance student-to-student, and student-to-instructor collaboration, as well as improve student engagement. Rather than replacing in-person collaboration with strictly virtual environments, collaborative classroom technology allows students to search for, create, edit, share, and publish content on different media platforms, while instructors act as a guide on the side and facilitator.

For example, instructors at St. Jerome’s University, a college of the University of Waterloo, have access to smart classrooms embedded in the library. The classrooms are variants of the SCALE-UP (Student-Centred Active Learning Environment – with Upside down Pedagogies) model of active learning classrooms. These collaborative, active learning environments offer an ideal platform for problem-based learning. The rooms consist of large, round tables to facilitate group work, virtual collaboration and screen sharing to enhance information gathering and sharing, and writable surfaces to aid in ideation and problem solving. The technology in the room allows instructors to deliver audio, video, and image content to students, or allow for each student group’s content to be shared with the rest of the class. In this particular simulation, the technology facilitates a “live” broadcast of archived radio or television content to initiate a research and analysis scenario.

In the case of the Suez Crisis assignment, students are limited to primary sources including: international newspapers, press briefings, and parliamentary records which are readily accessible through library subscriptions or open access. The smart classroom could be used to restrict access to outside digital content and limit students to a carefully curated selection of primary materials. Rather than searching out secondary sources and synthesizing scholarly opinion, the students must rely on their own creativity and problem-solving skills. In other words, it forces students to think for themselves by creating a problem where the answer must be developed from independent analysis through engagement with the primary materials.

An additional benefit of this model is the element of professionalism or experiential learning embedded in the students’ content learning. The intensive team-based work requires additional communication, leadership, and followership (yes, it’s a thing) that students can expect to encounter when they reach an increasingly collaborative workplace.[iii] History undergraduate students are not often introduced to this until they enter the workforce. To be successful, students must organize their team, delegate certain research tasks, complete their individual assignments, clearly communicate their findings to their teammates, form a cohesive argument in order for their team to be successful, and write a clear and concise memo for the Minister. This team-based approach does not easily allow individuals to avoid contributing. Rather, it provides a platform to safely push students beyond their normal comfort zones.

Instructors and their institutional partners must infuse course content with additional learning opportunities to prepare students for success with experiential and problem-based learning. Providing the class with enough historical context and background information is a vital first step. A workshop introducing students to writing briefing notes ensures the mechanics of the process. By the end, students submit their drafted briefing notes and receive feedback from the instructor. In addition, a second workshop on the effective use of primary sources, co-facilitated between librarian or archivist and instructor, rounds out skills the students need to complete the task. In other words, instructors must incrementally introduce students to the process of employing research and analysis skills in alternative settings, through hands-on simulations.

Historians must innovate their teaching philosophies to adapt to the digital age and prepare students for life outside of the academy. Many historians, librarians, and archivists have already begun to normalize the digitization of archives, the creation of primary document databases, and the release of digital open-access e-books, among many other ways that we collect, organize, and share our ideas. The briefing note scenario encourages instructors to collaborate within their institutions, to share and utilize their primary document collections in ways outside the confines of traditional research, and to expose students to a problem-based and experiential learning environment that tests their research and analysis skills in real-life settings. By modernizing the traditional lecture-based teaching model through the incorporation and employment of digital sources, we will attract more students and train them to be better prepare for employment.

[i] There is scholarship that considers policy writing in political science classrooms. This includes: James D. Boys and Michael F. Keating, “The Policy Brief: Building Practical and Academic Skills in International Relations and Political Science,” Politics 29, no. 3 (2009): 201-208; Andrew Pennock, “The Case for Using Policy Writing in Undergraduate Political Science Courses,” PS: Political Science and Politics 44, no. 1 (2011): 141-146; and Adam Chapnick, “The Action Memorandum: An Assignment with a Promising Future,” Transformative Dialogues: Teaching & Learning Journal 5, no. 3 (2012): 1-12.

[ii] P.E. Bryden, Norman Hillmer, P. Whitney Lackenbauer, and Ryan Touhey, among many others, have all employed policy writing assignments in their classrooms.

[iii] In 1980 twenty percent of professional work was collaborative. By 2010 that trend in the professional workforce had reversed to eighty percent. See: Marc Hurwitz, Samantha Hurwitz, Leadership is Half the Story: A Fresh Look at Followership, Leadership, and Collaboration, (Rotman – UTP Publishing, 2015)]; Mary Uhl-Bien, Ronald E. Riggio, Kevin B. Lowe, Melissa K. Carsten. “Followership Theory: A Review and Research Agenda.” The Leadership Quarterly 25, no. 1 (2014): 89.

2

Assessing Critical Reading Assessments at Huron University College

Geoff Read, Tom Peace, and Tim Compeau

Students in the library of a British Columbia high school, 1930-1960. Library and Archives Canada. MIKAN 4369768

As the most recent professors in Huron University College’s signature first-year course, History 1801E, “Controversies in Global History,” we have struggled for several years with an issue that appears to plague university instructors far and wide: many of our students are not doing the readings for their weekly tutorials. This poses quite a problem since the premise of the tutorials is that through discussion of the readings, students will learn how to identify and assess arguments, particularly through the critical evaluation of the historical evidence upon which they are based. Students who do not do the readings for the tutorials, therefore, not only cannot participate in, or contribute to, the discussion, but actually cannot even follow the course of the conversation. They essentially learn nothing in the process.

So what to do? We increased the participation grade to 15% of the final mark to emphasize that we valued this component of the course. This had no apparent effect. We incorporated student-led discussions hoping that class members would feel obliged to help each other out by doing the readings thereby enabling them to answer each other’s questions. Again: this had at most a negligible impact on students’ reading and participation. For a few years we instituted content-based quizzes at the start of each tutorial. This made some difference but was labour-intensive for the professors and encouraged the kind of rote-learning that was at odds with our desire to encourage students to think of History as more than just the memorization of facts.

Then in 2016-17, following the Historians Teaching History Conference at Mount Royal University, we tried a new approach, requiring the students to fill out a critical reading assessment form available below for every tutorial where a reading was discussed. This assessment would then count for half the participation grade each applicable week. We hoped to convey several messages with this mechanism.

First, we wanted our expectations to be clear – we require students to come to class prepared, having done and reflected upon the assigned reading in a rigorous way.

Second, we hoped that by encouraging students to prepare properly, we would not only ensure that a critical mass of them would do the reading, but that they would be ready to discuss it at a relatively sophisticated level.

Third, we designed the forms to reinforce our in-class teachings. The form asks students to identify the thesis, the sources on which the argument is based, the author(s)’ position in the historiography, connections to other class materials, and three strengths and three weaknesses of the argument. Further, the form requires students to explain why, or why not, they found the argument convincing.

Fourth, we hypothesized that part of the culture of not preparing properly for classes was a general sense students had of disengagement from the course. Accordingly, we hoped that the continual evaluation and feedback provided on the assessments would be one means of keeping students engaged in the class material.

A fifth benefit of the assessment forms was not part of our initial motivation but is worth mentioning: completed and graded assessments provide excellent study materials for students as they prepare for the course’s tests and final exam.

So have the critical reading assessments been effective? Have they met our four main objectives?

We should be clear that there has been no rigorous test applied to measure this. We didn’t run a study to test student-learning, for example, before and after implementing the assessments. That said, the anecdotal evidence we see in our classrooms suggests the measure has been at least a partial success. Certainly, it seems a given that these assessments help to make our expectations as clear as possible with regard to tutorial participation. If students overlook the blurb in the syllabus that outlines these, and also miss the instruction given in both the introductory lecture and introductory tutorials of the year to this effect, then surely these assessments send a message about what they need to do to prepare for class. Moreover, the results have been encouraging. More students do the reading; class discussions are more substantial; and student engagement in the class does seem better. Tests and exams, additionally, seem to confirm that the students are having greater success at mastering the material and at developing their critical thinking and reading skills.

So pleased are we with how the experiment has gone that we have begun to implement these assessments in other classes. In the summer of 2017, for example, Tim adapted the critical reading assessments for his second-year online American survey course, History 2301E at Western University. In previous years, his attempt at replicating the tutorial experience online using the forum feature of the university’s course platform proved disappointing. With summer jobs and other distractions, students routinely skipped the discussion component where they were challenged to post and answer questions about the articles much as the students do in class. The introduction of the critical assessment sheet, weighted as a separate weekly assignment (10 sheets at 2% each), was accompanied by a significant improvement in the forum discussions over the twelve weeks of the course.

The impact of this weekly drill, carried out within such a short time frame, was also evident in student essays, especially for non-history students taking the course as an elective or for an essay-course requirement. Students with little or no experience with the demands of history essays received a crash course through these sheets and seemed to gain a clearer idea of how to interrogate and write about the books and articles they encountered in their own research. As with the in-class assessments, the online version caused a significant increase in the professor’s workload, and with only a single year in place it is too soon make any concrete claims as to their effectiveness. Nonetheless, the early evidence is promising.

However, this modest success story comes with a proviso. The positive effects of the assessments in tutorials are most obvious in the first halves of our courses, when we would estimate that somewhere between 80-90% of the students complete them and come to class better prepared accordingly. This is indeed a marked improvement on earlier years, and has positive effects in all four areas outlined above. But in 1801E, a full-year course, in the second half two discouraging trends emerge.

One sees an exodus of weaker or less-engaged students from the class. One possible explanation for this is that the burden of doing the assessments helps put them to flight. Another more troubling possibility is that once students fall behind on their assessments this helps create a feeling of hopelessness on their part wherein they feel they cannot possibly catch up in the class and give up.

A second negative trend is that by February and March, when essay-writing season hits, a dramatic drop-off in students doing the assessments, and therefore presumably the readings, as well as in the quality of class discussions takes place. This is entirely consonant with patterns that existed prior to our having implemented the critical reading assessments and suggests that the positive effects of the assessments are real but limited in both time and scope.

A third downside to the critical reading assessments is of course that like the content quizzes we experimented with previously, they create quite a bit of work for the instructors. Instead of heading back to our offices and quickly recording participation grades for the day for each member of the tutorials, for example, we must now spend roughly 3-5 minutes per assessment to go over them, ensure they are substantive, provide some constructive feedback, and record the grade.

The critical question for us, then, as instructors is whether or not when we weigh the positives against the negatives and factor in the extra work they create the assessments are worth the effort and cost. We are united in believing they are. As with so many assignments and pedagogical strategies, the payoffs of the critical reading assessments are admittedly greatest for those students who are fully engaged with the class. The best students, in short, remain the best students and take maximum advantage of the instruction we provide, including these assessments. But the improvements we see in class discussion and student engagement and performance combined with the fact that most students do the assessments most of the time, albeit with the drop off towards the end of the year, suggest to us that this is a strategy and exercise worth continuing.

So for next year we will be keeping the assessments and also incorporating some new strategies to try to encourage student learning in the lectures. Perhaps in March 2019 we can update activehistory.ca readers on how it all turns out.

History 1801E: Critical Reading Assessment

Author ______________________________________________________________

Title________________________________________________________________

Title of Publication (eg: William and Mary Quarterly) ____________________________________________________________________

Date Published _______________________________________________________

1. What is the central argument of this reading?

2. What evidence is provided to support the argument?

3. What other historians are discussed? How are their arguments or positions on the topic different?

4. How does this reading connect with the textbook and lectures? Does it complicate or challenge the other narratives we have examined?

5. List here the article’s strengths and weaknesses:

Weakness

Strengths

1.

1.

2.

2.

3.

3.

6. Are you convinced by the argument? Why or why not?

3

Tariffs and Taxes and Boredom, Oh My! Using A Role-Playing Game to Teach About the Debates Over the Tariffs in Canadian History

Mark Leier

An 1878 political cartoon for the National Policy and against Free Trade. Public Domain.

If there is anything more boring than the history of Canadian tariffs, I would chew my own leg off in an attempt to escape from it. Yet from Confederation to the National Policy to Prairie populism to the Maritimes Rights movement to the Auto Pact to NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, fights over tariffs have been at the centre of Canadian politics and economics. Is there a way to help students appreciate this part of Canadian history?

Probably not. But “The Great Canadian Tariff Game” can help them understand tariffs and why they have framed some of the most divisive moments in Canadian history.

I devised the game for the first-year post-Confederation survey course. At Simon Fraser University, this is taught as a large (200+) lecture with tutorials of 10-18 led by teaching assistants. The basic outline is simple. The students in the tutorials are divided into four groups, each group representing a different sector of the Canadian economy with a different view on tariffs. Each group is asked to develop its own position on the tariff to present to Wilfrid Laurier, played by the instructor, to influence him and the Liberal party as it designs its platform for an upcoming election.

The teaching assistants are given broad instructions, the scenario, and all of the roles, laid out below. All of the students are given the Scenario and the members of each group are given the role for their group (included at the end of this post). The instructor goes over the rules briefly, then lets them hammer out their positions and strategies. While playing the game, the actual numbers and figures don’t much matter. The point is to help students understand that the debates over tariffs are much more than arcane disputes: they are crucial to basic economic issues for people and companies. Fights over tariffs reflect the unequal development of capitalist economies, the tendency of capital to centralize and concentrate, competing interests and the role of the state in capitalist economies.

Teaching assistants and students report that they find the game lively and informative. Students quickly understand and take up their roles with enthusiasm and are great at devising arguments, incentives, and threats to deliver to Wilfrid Laurier. The small group work encourages students to talk and the different viewpoints help them learn about conflict in history, and in the classroom.

The game needs fine-tuning and refinement, but even in this stage, it’s been useful to get students to understand why tariffs mattered. It connects them with the current debates over free trade that many students are concerned about and gives them some sense of the political economy of the 19th and 20th centuries in ways rather different from the standard economic discourse of today.

And it beats lecturing about the Reciprocity Treaty.

Game Materials

For Teaching Assistants: The Great Canadian Tariff Game, Background

Off-hand, I can’t think of anything less exciting than a discussion over tariff rates in Canadian history. Yet the tariff was at the heart of Canadian political debate from Confederation to the present, when it takes the form of fights over free trade and globalization.

Why do tariffs figure so large in Canadian history? They’re about money and taxes, two things most people get excited about. Who pays for what and how are fundamental political and economic questions. The Great Canadian Tariff Game is an attempt to help students think about why the tariff generated such debate and attention.

Instructions:

Divide the tutorial into four groups, as equal in number as possible. Assign each group a role: directors of Maple Leaf Manufacturing, owners of Jones and Sons Stoves and Horseshoes, prairie farm family members, and Toronto metalworkers. Give each member of each group the sheet with their role and task on it. Go over the Scenario pages they have been given, and then briefly explain the roles and tasks. Explain that you will be acting as Wilfrid Laurier, the leader of the Liberal party, and you will determine the party’s platform on tariffs based on which group makes the most compelling argument. Remind them that as a politician you need both money and votes to win an election.

Newton McConnell editorial cartoon from the Toronto Daily News regarding the Reciprocity Agreement, ca. 1911.  Archives of Ontario, Public Domain Image.

Give the groups 10 minutes or so to develop their goals and methods of persuasion. Then have each group briefly outline its position. Consider having each member of the group speak on one point to ensure everyone talks. You might write down their key points on a flip chart or blackboard, or have someone from each group write their points down. After all the groups have delivered their points, you can let each group make a short closing remark.

Ponder your decision. You may elect to adopt any group’s position, or you may take refuge in the grand Canadian tradition of saying the matter needs more attention and thought and they may rest assured that your party, if elected, will devote every energy to it. Laurier himself spoke of the “scientific tariff,” a magical formula that would make everyone happy. That magic formula, however, was never revealed….

Other questions for the group to discuss are, whose concerns and interests are ignored in political debates about the tariff? Who can take part in these debates and who is excluded?

THE SCENARIO

The year is 1890, and a federal election is looming. John A. Macdonald and his Conservative party won a majority of seats in the 1887 election, but Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberal party has been making steady gains. Both parties are honing their political platforms in anticipation of the election.

One of the issues each party must figure out is the tariff. A tariff is a tax, or duty, charged on goods imported into the country. If you go to the United States and purchase goods, you may have to pay customs duties when you bring the goods back to Canada. That is a tariff. A tariff on US manufactured goods makes those goods more expensive in Canada. The tariff is also an important source of funding for the Canadian government.

Canadian manufacturers often want a tariff on US goods. Why?

US manufacturers have significant competitive advantages over Canadian manufacturers. The Canadian population in 1890 was about 4.3 million, the US population, about 63 million. The larger market in the US meant larger sales and larger profits, and larger companies. Larger companies can take advantage of economics of scale and use their size to negotiate lower prices when they purchase materials and supplies. A company such as GiantMegaCorp can use its larger profits to invest in national advertising and increase its market share. It can also afford the newest and most productive technology. This technology replaces skilled workers with less skilled workers who are paid less. The company can then produce and sell products—let’s say stoves—more cheaply than smaller firms can, and so squeeze them out of the market. It can also wield some influence over politicians to get government contracts and to get laws passed that benefit the company.

Smaller Canadian stove manufacturers, therefore, find it very difficult to compete with GiantMegaCorp. On a level playing field, with free trade between the US and Canada, the smaller Canadian firms could get beaten badly; they simply cannot produce their stoves as cheaply as GiantMegaCorp. Therefore, they ask the Canadian government to put a tariff on the US stoves. That extra tax makes the US stoves more expensive and so Canadians buy Canadian stoves, creating Canadian jobs and making everyone happy.

In theory.

In reality, manufacturers in different regions have different needs. So do workers, and so do farm families. Any tariff makes some Canadians happy and some angry. Abolishing the tariff makes some happy, and some angry. Reactions to the tariff are expressed through voting. What is a politician to do?

The Four Groups for the Game

Anti-Reciprocity signs on The News building, 1911. From the City of Toronto Archives, William James Family Fonds 1244, Item 342.

MAPLE LEAF MANUFACTURING: You are on the board of directors of Maple Leaf Manufacturing, or MLM. Fifty years ago, it was a small Toronto company, Maple Manufacturing, employing 10 people. It expanded, then merged with Leaf Equipment to form MLM. It bought out two other firms and another competitor went broke, leaving MLM the only stove manufacturing company in Central Canada. It has modern equipment and a skilled work force of 400 men and women. It makes a good stove, but it can’t make a profit unless it sells the stove for $100. The US company, GiantMegaCorp, sells a similar stove, with the Stars and Stripes, not a red maple leaf, on the front, for $90. Calculate the tariff rate you need so you can compete with GiantMegaCorp. What arguments will you make to Wilfrid Laurier to convince him to set the tariff at that level? What inducements and threats can you use?

JONES AND SONS STOVES AND HORSESHOES: You’re part of a small family business in Truro, Nova Scotia. Your great-grandfather started a one-man black smithy sixty years ago, and it has become a well-known local company, now with 12 employees. Your stove is very well made, and you are proud of the craftsmanship and proud that you are a local family firm with roots in the community. You know you make a great product, but are worried that a bigger Toronto company, Maple Leaf Manufacturing, or MLM, will move into your local market. You don’t have the economies of scale that MLM has, the access to transportation and markets, or the money to purchase the newest, cost-saving technology. You need to sell your stove for $110 to make a profit. MLM, with its modern equipment, sells its stove for $100. You want to modernize your plant so you can compete, but the big banks, headquartered in Toronto and Montreal, aren’t keen to loan you money, as they don’t think you can beat MLM and any money they lend you would be lost if you go bankrupt. Even worse, the US company, GiantMegaCorp, is considering entering the market with its stoves that sell for $90. Calculate the tariff rate you need so you can compete with MLM and GiantMegaCorp. What arguments will you make to the Liberals and Conservatives to convince them to set the tariff at that level? What inducements and threats can you use?

Breaking Prairie Sod Camrose, Alberta, 1900. Public Domain Image.

PRAIRIE FARM FAMILY: Your family has immigrated to Canada from the “old country.” It’s been hard. You sell your wheat on the international market, which means the price you get for your wheat varies drastically even though your costs remain the same. When the harvest is good, you have lots of wheat to sell—but so does everyone else. When there is lots of wheat on the market, the price of wheat drops–it’s the law of supply and demand. When the harvest is poor, there’s less wheat, and the price increases–supply and demand–but then you have less wheat to sell. Because the price for wheat is set on the stock exchange, it can vary drastically and you have little idea what this year’s crop will be worth at harvest time. If you have a crop: a hailstorm can wipe out your entire crop in 20 minutes; locusts can destroy it almost as quickly. And if you get a crop off, there might not be enough railway cars available to get it to market in time. You need a new stove. The Canadian company, Maple Leaf Manufacturing, or MLM, makes a very nice stove that costs $100. The giant US firm, GiantMegaCorp, makes a similar stove, though it has the Stars and Stripes, not a red maple leaf on the front, and it sells for $90. Or it would, if the current Canadian tariff didn’t boost the price to over $100. You’re as patriotic as the next person, but what is your position on the tariff? What arguments will you make to Wilfrid Laurier to convince him to adopt your position? What inducements and threats can you use?

TORONTO METALWORKER: You work at Maple Leaf Manufacturing, or MLM, a large Toronto stove company with 400 employees. Women are paid less than men in the company, even when they do very similar work, but it is better than being a domestic servant or staying on the farm. Some men are skilled trades workers, but increasingly production is mechanized and resembles assembly line work. The stove you make sells for $100, and it’s a good stove, with a proud red maple leaf on the front. But you’ve read in the newspapers, both the Liberal Globe and the Conservative Empire, that the US company, GiantMegaCorp, wants to expand into Canada. Its stove sells for $90. If the company can sell its stoves here, what will happen to your job? A tariff makes the GiantMegaCorp stove more expensive than the MLM stove. What is your position on the tariff? What would be an effective rate, from your perspective? What arguments will you make to the Liberals and Conservatives to convince them to set the tariff at that level? What inducements and threats can you use?

4

Teaching the Work Process and “Deskilling” With the Paper Airplane Game

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash

Mark Leier

Understanding that the division of labour is a function of class and power rather than technology and efficiency is crucial to understanding historical and contemporary capitalism.  Because the division of labour is fundamental to capitalism, practically everyone who works has some familiarity with it. We can use the ‘Paper Airplane Game’ as a way to draw on that individual experience and have some fun while teaching about labour and capitalism.

The division of labour is so important to capitalism that Adam Smith begins The Wealth of Nations with it, observing “The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour… seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.” His well-known example of the pin factory then demonstrates how artisans were replaced by workers, each confined to one small task, the work “divided into about eighteen distinct operations.” Smith, however, was also keenly aware of the terrible effects of such work, noting

In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of… the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations; frequently to one or two….The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations….generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.[i]

Karl Marx too observed this dual nature of the division of labour. While the gains in productivity were undeniable, he pointed out that

The division of labour, introduced by capital and continually increased, compels the workers to compete among themselves….As the division of labour increases, labour is simplified. The special skill of the labourer becomes worthless. He becomes transformed into a simple, monotonous productive force that does not have to use intense bodily or intellectual faculties. His labour becomes a labour that anyone can perform…. Therefore, as labour becomes more unsatisfying, more repulsive, competition increases and wages decrease.[ii]

In Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, Harry Braverman shows how the labour of people as diverse as machinists, clerical workers, and retail servers has been divided and deskilled. This process has only intensified since Braverman’s book was published in 1974, and readers of ActiveHistory.ca will be keenly aware of how university administrators make full use of it.[iii]

One way to demonstrate the nature of power and class in the division of labour is with a revised version of the “Paper Airplane Simulation” by William Bigelow and Norman Diamond in The Power in Our Hands: A Curriculum on the History of Work and Workers in the United States. The game can be completed in 50 minutes or over a longer period. My version goes like this:

The Paper Airplane Game

Object: to encourage critical thinking about the dual nature of the division of labour, historically and in contemporary work experience.

Supplies (For a class of 30-40 people)

- 50 or so sheets of 8.5” x 11” paper

- Stopwatch or stopwatch app

- Blackboard, or other way to present information to class

- Optional: small individual treats, such as wrapped candies or “Employee of the Month” certificates, enough for entire class.

Process:
Creating Artisanal Airplanes
Ask if anyone can make a simple paper airplane. Select 1-5 volunteers and ask each to carefully make a paper airplane. Make it clear that while you will time them, quality, not speed, is crucial. Give the artisans each a sheet of paper, and ask them to begin when you are ready to time them.

Typically, people will take 1-3 minutes to make the paper airplane. As they work, you can talk in broad terms about manufacturing before the factory system and the assembly line. Shoemakers, for example, would consult with customers, design the shoe, make the glue, cut the leather, piece it together; they would control every stage of production. From apprentices to masters, shoemakers shared a culture, a tradition of work and craft that included reading aloud on the shop floor, and a moral economy of wages and even spontaneously declared “holidays.” There was some division of labour, especially between apprentices, journeymen, and masters, but being a shoemaker meant you would learn every step in production—just like our paper airplane artisans—and every apprentice could aspire to becoming an independent master.

When the artisans have finished their airplanes, note on the blackboard how long each took. Sometimes people will decorate their planes—an example of pride of craft. Have them test their airplanes and have the class determine which airplane flew best. Congratulate the winner. If you have treats, you can reward the winner.

The Factory and the Assembly Line
Explain to the class that you don’t know how to make paper airplanes, but you have something the artisans don’t: the capital to hire workers and build a factory. You could hire artisans to work for you, but why would an independent artisan become your employee? Furthermore, since artisans have a monopoly of the knowledge and skill needed to make the paper airplane, they can insist on high wages, leaving you little room for profit.

But now that you have an artisanal paper airplane, you can “reverse engineer” it to take the knowledge of the artisans and build it into the work process. Make a show of unfolding the airplane. Ask “What knowledge do I have that I didn’t have before? What can I do now that I have acquired this knowledge? How can I now make paper airplanes and make a profit?” which is, after all, your goal. The answer is you can set up a new work process that does not require any special knowledge of the workers: assembly lines that require no craft and little training.

Divide the class into equal groups of 4-6, depending on the size of the class. Give each group one sheet of paper. Explain that you are not going to hire people to make paper airplanes. You’re going to hire them to make one or two folds in the paper you give them. The precise number of folds depends on how many people are in each line, and can vary to accommodate class size.

Demonstrate each fold. The first person in each team folds the paper in half lengthwise, and passes it to the second person. That person folds over one or two top corners to the crease line, and passes it on to the next person who makes the next fold. If you don’t know how to make the dart, instructions are available on line. The process can be divided into 4-6 separate operations, depending on the number of participants, and you can have some people be timers or quality control inspectors if you have an uneven number of people in the class.

Have each line produce one airplane, following your instructions carefully. They can go slowly and take their time. Don’t time them. You can repeat the process so everyone knows their specific job, that is, their one or two folds.

Now explain that you don’t need to hire everyone. How will you pick the team you’ll hire? A simple competition. Each team will be asked to produce five paper airplanes using your new production method. The team that produces five flyable airplanes in the shortest time will be hired. If you have treats, you can say the winning team will be paid one treat each.

Count out five sheets of paper for each team. Make sure no one starts folding until you tell them to start. Tell them to shout out when they’ve finished five planes. Remind them that the planes have to fly well, so speed alone will not win.

When you and other timers are ready, have them start. As teams announce they’ve finished, note their times on the blackboard. When all the teams have finished, have each team launch its planes and have the class determine the winning team based on speed of completion and quality.

Check the times: have people produced more planes more quickly than the artisan? Typically, they produce five planes in a minute or so, compared to the one plane produced by the artisan in more time. If someone points out you have to hire more people, you can explain you’ll  pay them less. At this point, I usually invite everyone to have a treat, explaining that I believe in the socialist maxim, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”

Adding Context to the Exercise

You can then ask broad questions—what happened here? Or you may ask more specific ones. Here are some questions I have used in the past, with some answers people have given:

What do bosses have that they didn’t have before?

- Complete knowledge and control of the new production process

- Power to force people to compete with each other for jobs and pay

How has work changed for people?

- Paid less, more tedious and faster-paced—workers are only “part of a machine”

- No room to advance

What impact might this have on people’s lives?

- Decline in standard of living as wages are forced down

- Other employees and the unemployed are competitors, not allies; harder to organize

- Alienation from work

At this point, we can ask people to share their own work experiences that reflect the lessons we’ve learned. People have talked about

- Training as skilled baristas and bartenders, then reduced to pushing buttons on machines

- Unalterable scripts for telemarketers and retail sales people—emotional labour is deskilled

- Construction work like an assembly line: drywallers drywall, roofers roof

- Tighter control over teaching, with fixed learning outcomes

- The gendering and racialization of jobs

We can then suggest capitalism is not primarily about technology or innovation, but about the power of capital over labour, taking power away from direct producers and putting it into the hands of the capitalist. We might ask why capitalists are pressured to constantly change the work process in particular ways and how we might structure work—the production of goods and services we all need—differently.

Framing as Experiential Learning

The game is an example of experiential learning. By that I mean something different from what university administrators usually mean, which often sounds like taking students on river-rafting trips. I mean experiential learning in two related ways. The first is taken from Paulo Friere and others, and is based on four steps:

- Experience, or activity, or exercise

- Reflection, where people can think and talk about what we’ve just done

- Generalization, where we move from immediate thoughts and feelings to concepts and ideas. This takes us to the level of abstraction

- Application, where we can connect the ideas to our own experience and draw out lessons for the future

The second way is through drawing on people’s own experience in the workplace. It makes their own experience, shared with others, part of our learning.

I’ve used the paper airplane game with university students from first to fourth year, in education sessions with trade union members, and high school students. It is lively and fun, and gets people moving, physically and emotionally, to make the division of labour real and obvious. Most important, it lets people draw on their own experience, of the game and of their jobs, to connect to theory and history and to think critically about work and capitalism.

[i] Adam Smith, “AnInquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth ofNations“, in Of the Division of Labour. Smith’s observation of the effects of the division of labour is in Wealth of Nations, Book 5, Chapter 1.

[ii] Karl Marx, “Wage Labour and Capital,” in Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Volume 9, (New York: Progress Publishers, 1977), 225-6.

[iii] Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capitalism: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998).

5

Teaching Environmental History Field Trips

Heather Green

One of my greatest pleasures in studying environmental history is the ability to get outside of the office and connect with the landscapes that I study. This connection with place is essential in researching environmental history, and at the University of Alberta, myself, Dr. Liza Piper, and PhD Candidate Hereward Longley wanted to provide this opportunity for students to engage with what they were studying in the classroom on a more practical level. Last April, we co-organized a weekend-long field trip to Jasper National Park for students in Dr. Piper’s HIST 460 / 660 “Histories of the Rocky Mountains” course, which examined histories of the Rocky Mountains drawing on primary source materials and secondary literature from environmental history, studies of parks and protected areas, Indigenous history, and recreation and tourism studies. Dr. Daniel Sims with the University of Alberta Augustana campus and two of his students also joined us for the weekend.

The Rocky Mountains in Jasper National Park. Photo by H. Green.

Our goals were to critically engage students with history outside the classroom and to actively engage in learning. We broke down our pedagogical purposes for the trip into three categories:

- The field trip allowed students opportunities to witness some of the changes they had studied in the classroom first-hand. For example, they had studied the impacts of strip mining in class and the field trip included a tour of Teck coal mines. In seeing these changes on the ground, students could think about the value of field research (as opposed to archival research) in the study of history.

- The trip introduced students to skills and methods specific to seeing historical change in present day “wilderness” landscapes. One excellent example of this was a repeat photography workshop organized by Dr. Mary Sanseverino with the Mountain Legacy Project.

- Finally, the trip allowed students to meet with different groups and individuals with significant interests in, and impacts on, Jasper National Park and the adjacent foothills and to understand more directly the multiple competing perspectives that shape the past and present of these places.

The field trip took place over a three-day weekend and included a mix of presentations and experiential learning. For the full itinerary, you can check out the trip schedule on Liza Piper’s website here. The evening before departure we began with a fantastic talk from Dr. Mary Sanseverino with the University of Victoria and the Mountain Legacy Project; the talk discussed the history of photographing mountain landscapes and the uses of photography to capture environmental change over time. Dr. Sanseverino pushed students to ask themselves to what extent can images speak for themselves? Her talk included examples of her work with the Mountain Legacy Project team and highlighted the ways in which images (and maps) are products of the photographer’s thoughts and views, and, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, were often produced with a colonial mind-set.

The following day, armed with a list of required readings and warm coats, we departed for Jasper. Our first stop included a tour of the Teck Coal operation at Cardinal River. Environmental coordinator and social responsibility officers with Teck gave a brief presentation on the history of Teck and the Cheviot Mine, which is actively mined at present, and then they gave us a tour of the Cheviot and Luscar mine sites. The Teck crew spoke about their efforts at creating an environmentally sustainable mine and their reclamation actions, which included recontouring slopes to mimic nature and planting trees and seeds in top soil, relocating/reintroducing fish, and transplanting sheep from Montana after the sheep population around the mine collapsed.

The Cheviot Mine Site. Photo by H. Longley.

Some of our group all geared up and ready tour some mines. Photo by H. Longley.

Next, we met with met with Garry McDonald and Elder Colin Moberly from the Aseniwuche Winewak Nation who have strong historic connections to Jasper. Garry and Colin discussed the  expulsion of most Métis families  living in Jasper National Park, and specifically, their family’s removal from the Moberly homestead, after which they move to Grand Cache. In 1910, most Métis families living within the boundaries of the newly created Jasper National Park were evicted so that the federal government could expand and develop the park and establish the Jasper Townsite. Some families left while others refused to leave. You can learn more about the Métis removal from Jasper National Park boundaries here. Aside from the removal, Garry and Colin also spoke about other aspects of their historic relationship with the Jasper area, including impacts they witnessed from mining operations, a ban from hunting in the park until the 1980s, and current efforts at integrating their history into Parks representations.

Visiting the Moberly Homestead. Photo by H. Longley.

The following day, we spent most of the day with Parks Canada. We had the opportunity to visit the Moberly homesteads with Parks Canada Officer Mike Eder where he spoke about the history of removal and led us around the grounds. We heard a presentation by Tanya Letcher who took us to Henry House Flats to see a prescribed burn site and she spoke about Jasper’s fire history and their current prescribed burn management. Finally, Parks Canada Aboriginal Liaison Officer, Mike Young spoke about the historical exclusion of Indigenous people from Canadian National Parks and the current endeavours at reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Jasper. He spoke about the significance of the Simpcw First Nations traditional hunt that took place October 2017 in Jasper National Park. Young argued that this hunt was different that previous ones as it was not a cull on hyper abundant populations, but was organized on the basis on Indigenous right. He left us with the pressing question, “is Parks Canada ready to accept Indigenous people and Indigenous rights?”

Post-repeat photography workshop. Photo by M. Sanseverino.

The above two photos are an example from the repeat photography workshop. Top photo by M. Sanseverino. Historic images provided courtesy of the Mountain Legacy Project and Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada.

To round out a busy day, we hiked up to Old Fort Point where Mary Sanseverino did a repeat photography workshop with the students. This workshop was a highlight for many of the students on the trip. One student wrote in reflection that “integrating a popular and accessible hobby such as photography into learning from the past can present valuable lessons and brought light into a whole new aspect of photography I had never thought of previously.” Finally, before leaving Jasper we met with Jill Seton with the Jasper Environmental Association, which was formed in 1989 from members of Parks Canada and other Jasper residents who were concerned about business influence on parks’ ecological integrity. Their current projects include caribou population protection and wildlife protection from commercial tourist development.

Before heading back to Edmonton, we held a discussion and debrief with the students. I was deeply impressed with the level of reflection from the students on what are some major themes in the study of environmental history. Students identified and discussed the following major themes from what they learned over the weekend:

- they noted strong linkages between historical issues they studied in class and contemporary issues today centred on the complex and varied relationships that humans have with the natural world.

- this trip allowed them to see that national parks are highly contested landscapes with tensions at play among various groups, and are sites of potential conflict.

- There is a long history of tension and conflict between the goals of development vs. visitation vs. wildlife protection in Parks.

- They stated that what they learned over the weekend complicated the narrative on what and who Parks are for – and how this has changed over time.

- they appreciated the diverse perspectives from the different people and groups we met with over the weekend – Parks Canada employees, Indigenous community members, industry representatives, and local environmentalists. They noted that having various, and often conflicting, perspectives allowed them to consider the complexity of historical narratives and form their own opinions.

- They also noted the value of presentations mixed with the opportunity to go to these sites and connect with them first-hand.

One student’s reflections from the trip demonstrates the ways in which the field trip helped her critically think about, question, and engage with environmental history, and is worth a lengthy quote:

“When we discussed the eviction of the Moberly family and the expropriation clause in the National Parks Act in class, we concluded that Dominion Parks had justified taking land away from a few so that it could be enjoyed by many. […] On our trip to Jasper, we were lucky enough to visit the Moberly homestead […]. The site has interpretive panels, a short walking trail, their first home, and a restored version of their second, larger home. It was powerful to briefly mimic the spatial experiences of the Moberly family. […] Everything at this site complemented what I had already known about the Moberly family but allowed me to grapple with it in an alternative way. It reminded me of what I value in public history sites. And yet, when we left, I still wanted more. This was a hidden gem in terms of cultural heritage. It wasn’t an elaborate space, it was actually quite modest in its presentation. However, its significance as a site of Métis history represents an Indigenous presence within Jasper National Park. A presence inherent to this land before the concept of a national park had ever existed.”

Just as many of the students reflected they were grateful for the hands-on learning experience this trip provided them, I am grateful to have been a part of organizing it. It is no small task to organize a trip of this scale with, and we realize that we are privileged to be at an institution that supports these types of events. However, the effort is worth it when you witness the engagement students have with a topic when learning in the field. As an instructor, I saw this trip as an extremely valuable and effective teaching tool am working it into my own intro to environmental history course here at McMaster University, albeit on a much smaller scale than a weekend trip!

We would like to thank those who supported this field trip:
KIAS Sustaining Mountain Cultures in the Canadian West Research Cluster
Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta
Parks Canada
Mountain Legacy Project

6

Community Engagement and Public History at the North Pacific Cannery

Benjamin Bryce

All photographs by author.

In late August 2017, I taught an experiential and service learning course at the North Pacific Canneryin Port Edward, BC, a former salmon cannery and now a national historic site. Sixteen history majors from the University of Northern British Columbia travelled 700 km from Prince George in central BC to the north Pacific coast at mouth of the Skeena River.

Students learned about labour, migration, and environmental transformation in British Columbia and the Pacific world, and the experience of being on site gave them new perspectives on public history and community engagement. That engagement was driven both by a desire to bring the university to the communities it serves (in UNBC’s case, essentially the northern half of British Columbia) and by a conviction that we can do more to help undergraduates convert the abilities acquired in the humanities into marketable skills in the world after university. In sharing some of my experiences from this course, I hope colleagues elsewhere will consider undertaking similar activities themselves.

During the six days we spent living at the cannery, students and I toured the site, discussed with the director her expectations of us, and contrasted in seminar discussions the historical narrative presented at the cannery with the material covered in the academic readings. Students spent two days in archives, either at the cannery’s private archive or at the Prince Rupert City & Regional Archives, and the better part of another day hearing from Aboriginal elders, cannery workers, and a union representative in a sort of oral history roundtable.

Like any fourth-year seminar, I assessed students based on both participation and their writing. Yet as an experiential learning course, both of those tasks differed from the traditional classroom. Participation involved not only contributing to seminar discussions but also asking questions during the tour, taking initiative in the archive, chatting over lunch with various stakeholders, or giving a brief presentation with me to about 25 people from the community at the Prince Rupert public library. Students submitted an annotated bibliography of all of the readings on our first morning in Port Edward, they carried out research during the week, and they completed two assignments over the course of September. For those whose final project was a podcast, students and I attended a podcast making workshop at the CFUR student radio station once back in Prince George.

For the first writing assignment, students prepared articles based on original archival research, and their brief histories can be found on the course website. For their final projects, students chose between making a podcast, writing or greatly revising Wikipedia articles, or making a museum exhibit (roughly five panels) with images, quotations, and a historical explanation of a specific topic. Students documented the course and showcased the cannery and our activities in a collaborative Instagram project as well.

In these assignments, the course transitioned away from experiential learning and to a service learning and public history course. As one of only two experiential learning courses offered by my department, this course built on and benefitted from students’ previous experience in more conventional university classes. Students applied the skills acquired during their time at UNBC to projects outside the university, and they mobilized research and writing skills to add content to the national historic site’s website.

Students’ research and writing on workers’ rights, racial segregation, First Nations families, Asian immigration, female workers, and evolving environmental regulations broaden significantly the narrative presented at the site. The site’s director (Laurie Davie) asked students to focus their attention on Japanese-Canadian and Chinese-Canadian labourers because there was very little coverage of these two groups, a noteworthy omission considering their very large roles in cannery workforces in both the Fraser and Skeena canneries from the 1880s to the 1950s. While several students did take up this torch, having sixteen researchers allowed for a great diversity of topics, all of which cast new light on underrepresented subjects.

Teaching an experiential learning course required both students and me to shift our approach to the study and discussion of history. As a colleague wisely advised, it should be experience for the sake of experience. Researching in an archive, giving a talk at a library, or taking a tour that does not fully square with information in scholarly publications were all experiences that helped students get a better grasp of the writing of history, historical memory, and community engagement.

In Port Edward, students found themselves in the dusty basement of the Port Edward district office (city hall), with unlabelled boxes documenting various aspects of the North Pacific Cannery’s history. I must admit that this archive was one of my own most rugged archival experiences. And the students loved it. The visiting archivist, Heidi Rempfl, up from her regular job at Gulf of Georgia Cannery in Richmond, BC, started the students off by handing them a box and telling them to write a paragraph describing what was in it. She and I decided that this task would help the cannery with its current project of cataloguing its materials. The vast majority of the cannery’s collection consists of numbered but undescribed boxes stored in a small room off a larger garage where the district office also stores piping, a motorcycle, and topsoil.

Five students found themselves in the far more organized Prince Rupert City & Regional Archives, but they were similarly overwhelmed by the possibility of hundreds of research topics and simultaneously limited to the documents they could find in a single place.

The students all agreed that they now look at and appreciate a history book or article in new light. Several told me that it was one thing to read a historical pamphlet ordered through interlibrary loans, download a PDF from Archive.org, or read microfilm, but it was quite another thing to spend hours digging through papers and trying to find a needle in a haystack only to find a pot of gold on another topic that they did not know existed and that they suddenly had to work through before the archive closed.

History majors at any university would have trouble graduating without having written papers based on primary documents. But far fewer would have experienced “the thrill of discovery” – to borrow the slogan from the Archives of Ontario – that one gets by discovering new topics by accident or finally uncovering what one was looking for after hours of sifting through documents. In this digital age of searching for and ordering specific documents, few students experience the creative and seemingly limitless opportunities afforded by sitting in a room with stacks of boxes around them or by a good old-fashioned finding aid.

For an experiential learning course to really work, the learning needs to move in many directions. Students learn from the professor and fellow classmates, and we all learn from the people we meet on site. The professor also learns from students. For instance, on our last day, students suggested that next time I ditch the seminar discussions of the readings altogether; instead groups of students could lead classmates on walking tours where the student-teachers explain the important points that they read about in specific readings and but that gained new value by actually seeing the space and imagining the history.

Teaching a course off site required a lot planning, organization, and the willingness of a community partner to host a large group of students. Condensing the 39 hours of instruction into a single week (with the readings done before and the assignments after) was intense. Yet what the students (and the professor) learned and how they learned it has – I think – enriched the overall learning of a group of UNBC students.

Student travel and accommodation costs were covered by the Undergraduate Experiential and Service Learning Award, generously funded by UNBC donors.

7

Meaning Making in the Digital Age

Sean Kheraj

This week, I’ve been invited to speak on a panel about digital technologies and open access in the university. I’ll be addressing these issues as they relate to my field of Canadian history.

We have been provided with a series of questions to address. Here are two of the most significant questions that we will consider on this panel:

How does the digital – tools, technologies, methods, instruction, etc – connect with the ways you make and find meaning in your discipline?

Digital tools, technologies, and methods have transformed the discipline of history in three primary areas:

1. Scholarship

2. Teaching

3. Public history

The ways in which the digital has changed history as a discipline are numerous, but I will provide a couple examples in each of these three areas.

Scholarship

Digital technologies have changed the scale of historical research and precipitated a need to develop new digital methods for search, analysis, and communication. These changes begin with the digitization of research sources. In the discipline of history, digitization has had its most transformative effects on primary source research, working with original historical records. Mass digitization projects have created enormous digital archives of primary source records easily available online.

The availability of digitized primary source records has created the need for the development of better systems of metadata for searching these new digital archives. Digital historians are also developing their own custom search engines to meet their particular research needs.

The ability to search and access large digitized primary source collections has created “big data” challenges for historians. Researchers can now collect more records than they have ever been able to before. When once a historian might have scoured a newspaper archive on microfilm using labourious (and arguably inefficient) search methods of manual review, she can now use keyword searching and other digital search methods to acquire mass databases of digital records that exceed a scale that can reasonably be analyzed with traditional close reading methods. Making sense of that massive digital archive now requires what some digital humanists call “distant reading,” the use of machine reading technologies to organize data and even generate analytical insights that cannot be observed via traditional methods. Digital text analysis tools and geographic information systems are two technologies that facilitate distant reading that have become more common in historical research today.

Teaching

Digital technologies and methods have influenced history education at all levels. The implications for historical scholarship that I described above all apply to the work of students in history courses. In the classroom, teachers also have access to a wide range of digital sources and digital tools that can change how we teach history.

Textbooks are one example of where digital technologies have changed history education. Digital reading is now the predominant form of reading in nearly all of the classes that I teach. While I still assign monographs, even those books are now available as e-books. Digital reading can be convenient and more affordable for students. While the pleasures of reading off a printed page in a beautifully formatted book remain, they are often overshadowed by the convenience of having access to an entire library of books and articles on a single device. The best textbook a student can have is the one that she can have with her at all times.

Digital reading introduces new opportunities for engagement with course materials. Recently, I started using a tool called Hypothes.is, a web-based group annotation tool that allows students to highlight and comment on their digital textbook and share those annotations with their classmates for online discussion in advance of their in-person tutorials and seminars. The digital textbooks that I assign also make use of rich media including, high-resolution images, audio, and video.

Public History

Public history incorporates methods and practices for conveying and communicating history outside of academic institutions. Digital technologies and methods have already reshaped the work of museums, archives, heritage institutions, and other public history organizations.

For example, Heritage Toronto, a charitable arms-length agency of the City of Toronto tasked with promoting public knowledge about the people, places, and events that have shaped Toronto’s history, has long had a program for creating historical plaques and markers throughout the city. It is one of the most active historical plaques programs in Canada. Recently, Heritage Toronto completed a digital database of its entire collection of historical plaques, making that data available for re-use and re-mixing by others. One of the results has been a partnership with Driftscape, a mobile app developer that has integrated the Heritage Toronto plaques database into its geo-location app. App users can explore the streets of Toronto and be alerted when they are near any of Heritage Toronto’s plaques. They can access the full text of each plaque and an image of that plaque. This is just one of thousands of examples of public history organizations leveraging digital technologies to further their missions to disseminate historical knowledge to their communities.

How do you understand the role of open access in the twenty-first-century university?

The open-access movement has tremendous potential for reshaping teaching and research at Canadian universities. In many ways, it has already made significant inroads. In the discipline of history, its influence is still nascent and faces some significant pedagogical and scholarly barriers.

In teaching, open access offers students two main advantages:

1. Cost savings

2. Access

Open access journal articles, textbooks, and other readings for course work can help reduce the cost of education for undergraduate students at Canadian universities. The cost of textbooks is not an insignificant barrier to education for undergraduate students. With rising tuition costs, the use of open access readings can help to partially mitigate the financial burdens students face. Anecdotally, we know that many students forgo the purchase of expensive textbooks and attempt to complete course work without access to the materials they need to succeed.

Open access readings can also make reading easier for students. To take an example from my Canadian history survey course, I adopted an open access textbook in 2016. This book can be downloaded in multiple formats and accessed digitally in HTML from any web browser on a desktop PC, laptop PC, smartphone, and tablet computer. Students also have the option to purchase an affordable print-on-demand copy. This flexibility in access is a result of its open access copyright status. Barrier-free access means that students do not need to deal with cumbersome login and authentication systems. They can download and copy the textbook as many times as they want, keeping duplicates on their laptops and their phones.

The use of open access readings in teaching, however, raises pedagogical challenges for instructors. When designing a course, when should you choose open access sources over closed sources? Should you exclude a book or article because it is not open? How does this shape the pedagogy of your course design?

In research, open access is gradually changing the university for historians. More journals published in Canada are transitioning to open access models. This has largely been driven by the Tri-Council Agencies and their open access policy for journals that use federal publishing subsidies. Some university press publishers are also moving toward open access book publishing. Athabasca University Press and University of Calgary Press stand out as leaders in Canada in open access publishing.

The movement toward open access publishing, however, has been slow in Canada and confronts certain limits. For history, many of the leading journals published in Canada have not adopted open access publishing models. Canadian Historical Review, for instance, remains a closed access journal. Open access publishing is a major financial challenge for scholarly publishing. Some publications have adopted a consortium model like the one developed by Érudit and Public Knowledge Project that sees journals and libraries partner in ways that help journals with the financial challenges of transitioning to open access publishing.

For historical researchers, open access helps fulfill part of the mission of a public university to create and disseminate knowledge. Historians who receive federal research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada must now deposit their digital research data in open institutional repositories, such as YorkSpace. This makes research materials accessible in ways that were not possible in the past. It has also encouraged researchers in history to move away from proprietary views of their work.

While there has been resistance to these open access mandates from SSHRC, the advantages for researchers at public universities are significant and open new opportunities for scholarly communication. Our open digital repositories make our work accessible to new communities. These include students, of course, but they also include a global community of scholars who previously might not have had access to research findings and data from Canadian university researchers.

In my field of Canadian history, the global community that we can now reach via open access policies includes scholars from the global south based at institutions that could not afford subscriptions to our journals as well as researchers from around the world whose institutions would not ordinarily subscribe to Canadian history journals or order Canadian history books. Open access for Canadian history then could fulfill the objectives of disseminating knowledge about Canada around the world that have been part of the mission of Canadian Studies organizations and Canadian governments for the past half century.

Finally, open access is creating new opportunities for novel forms of scholarly communication and a revival of scholar-led publishing. The combination of open access research policies and the development of digital institutional repositories is establishing a new independent publishing infrastructure for historical researchers at Canadian universities. For the past couple of years, I have been involved with a team at the Network in Canadian History and Environment to develop a new scholarly research paper series called Papers in Canadian History and Environment. This is a scholar-led, peer reviewed, open access publication developed in partnership with York University Libraries. Using YorkSpace and support from our digital librarians, we have published our first paper. This is potentially a new form of scholarly publishing that retains the strengths of traditional peer-review publications in history while leveraging the advantages of digital and open-access publishing.

8

The Presence of the Past: The Possibilities of Virtual Reality for History

Sean Kheraj

For the past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about virtual reality and its potential applications for historians. Can we use virtual reality to better understand the past? Can the experience of virtual reality alter historical thinking? Can we now build time machines, teleporters, and holodecks using virtual reality?

These questions may be overly optimistic or idealistic. I may look back on this article a year from now and shake my head and chuckle at my naive enthusiasm for this technology. But for now, VR has got me thinking about the future of history.

VR stands apart from other multimedia technologies primarily because of its ability to generate a sense of presence. Thomas B. Sheridan describes this as a “sense of being physically present with visual, auditory, or force displays generated by a computer.” He proposed three measurable physical variables to determine what he called “telepresence” and “virtual presence”: (1) extent of sensory information; (2) control of relation of sensors to environment; and (3) ability to modify physical environment. Does VR have the potential to generate a sense of the presence of the past?[i]

John Bonnett’s concluding remarks in his 2003 article on the 3D Virtual Buildings Project in Journal of the Association for History and Computing suggest that I’m not alone in my enthusiasm. He wrote, “3D environments are instruments, and if properly exploited they stand to provide historians with substantial gains in their capacity to teach, represent and analyze the past.” Remarkably, Bonnett’s outlook on the future of 3D environments predicted some of the most recent developments in virtual reality and augmented reality technologies:

In this vision of computing, users in near future will wear computers with the computational power of today’s desktops, and the size of today’s personal digital assistants. These computers, in turn, will be connected to wireless networks to access and post information, and to head mounted displays the size of glasses to display information. I mention this newly emerging field because it is already making a contribution to the way we represent the past, and the way we tell stories. In principle, it should be possible in the next 10 to 20 years to produce something akin to the holodeck from Star Trek. We will not be able to interact with objects without the mediation of glasses or gloves. But we should be able to generate representations of ancient Rome or 19th century Paris, and project them onto football fields.fields.[ii]

Smartphones with stereoscopic viewers (Google Cardboard, Daydream View, Gear VR) and tethered VR/AR headsets like the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Microsoft HoloLens have brought us closer to that holodeck-like experience. Immersing yourself in a 3D representation of nineteenth-century Paris is not a fantasy. It can be done now.

In this article, I’d like to show some examples of how VR can be used today to, in Bonnett’s words, “teach, represent and analyze the past.”

Teach the Past

Virtual reality, like many other technologies before it, holds the potential to enhance history education. VR headset manufacturers and application developers have already been pushing the idea of using this technology for teaching. Microsoft has focused its early attention on medical education.

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/beyondlecture/?p=83

Google is not far behind and already offers an introductory VR education product called, Google Expeditions. Using Google’s relatively inexpensive Cardboard headsets, teachers can guide students on virtual field trips. Students can be teleported to historic sites around the world and view them through Cardboard headsets.

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/beyondlecture/?p=83

Using spherical photography, Google has captured VR images of historic sites all over the world. This includes UNESCO World Heritage Sites, such as the Angkor Archaeological Park in Cambodia. Through Google Maps and Street View, users can explore the temples of the ancient city of Angkor:

https://goo.gl/maps/CU55Ni3zsU52

Viewing these images in a VR headset can be arresting. The ability to “take” our students to these historic sites is a powerful example of the potential of VR for history education.

Represent the Past

The public history applications of VR are ample and many institutions and organizations have already begun to experiment with the technology. There are now several short historical documentaries shot in spherical video on YouTube. With a VR headset, users are placed within the video. For instance, this short video takes viewers into the buildings and rooms of Bletchley Park to tell the history of code breaking during the Second World War and the work of Alan Turing and others:

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/beyondlecture/?p=83

Last summer, New York Times produced an impressive immersive VR video of the history of the Olympic Games with 3D reconstructions of stadiums from 1896 (Athens), 1932 (Los Angeles), 1968 (Mexico City), and 2008 (Beijing). Viewers stand in the middle of these stadiums as historical images from past Olympic Games surround them and oral histories with athletes play along with narration:

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/beyondlecture/?p=83

While these videos may just be another medium for representing history to broad public audiences, the capability of VR technology to generate a sense of presence and situate those audiences within past environments represents something different.

Analyze the Past

With VR technology, scholars may now be able to use that sense of presence to analyze history in new ways. Textual and visual documents along with oral accounts have been the primary sources historians use to access fragments of the past. They provide us with documentation and evidence about the past, but to what extent can they convey a sense of presence? Historians have used other methods to recreate the materiality of the past from food historians using historical recipes to the use of 3D printers to recreate objects from the past. Spherical photography and 3D virtual environments may provide historians with new ways of analyzing the past through presence.

Once again, we can draw from the enormous spherical photography archive of Google Street View to begin to see the future potential of VR for historical analysis. Google recently created a tool within Street View to allow users to “travel to the past” by accessing images from the past decade of the Street View project. In effect, Google has created a massive spherical re-photography project. For instance, users can view the transformation of the World Trade Center site in Manhattan from 2007 to 2016:

September 2007

August 2012

June 2014

August 2016

Historians can now travel ten years into the past and experience a sense of presence with this tool. This type of primary source and the ability to stand in the past isn’t limited to twenty-first century photography. Historical panoramic photographs from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can also be viewed in VR. Although these images are not spherical, they can still give the viewer a sense of presence by wrapping around the viewer’s head within the VR headset. For example, the City of Vancouver Archives has a number of outstanding high-resolution panoramic photographs like this one from Shaughnessy Heights in 1911:

View of Shaughnessy Heights from Matthews and Wolfe Avenues, 1911

Using Full Dive, a mobile VR app, the panorama can be stretched and wrapped around the viewer to recreate the view of the photographer standing in the middle of the clearcut forest and future site of suburban development in Vancouver:

Screenshot of VR view of historical panorama

The experience of viewing a historical panorama in a VR headset can be powerful. It can generate a sense of presence. Or is this just an illusion? Is this just a twenty-first century stereoscope?

Finally, VR has expanded the possibility for interacting with 3D models, the type that Bonnett described in his 2003 article. Here the possibilities are astounding. Bonnett sketched out a vision for a massive crowd-sourced historical 3D modelling project, one that was not technologically feasible in 2003. Today, such a project does exist in SketchFab.

SketchFab is an online community for sharing 3D objects and environments. Users can share, view, and interact with 3D objects in a web browser. More impressively, these objects can be viewed in VR directly from the browser. While the collections in SketchFab include a wide range of objects, there are incredible collections of reconstructed historical artifacts, buildings, and environments.

Take for instance the work of the Arc/k Project, a non-profit group that uses crowd-sourced photographs and photogrammetry to reconstruct cultural heritage sites that people have destroyed. Recently, they have worked to virtually reconstruct ancient Roman sites in Palmyra, Syria which ISIS destroyed. Users can now use VR headsets to walk through and explore the third-century Arch of Triumph, destroyed in October 2015:

https://sketchfab.com/models/38315a821d0342a5a1189a7144f18b25/embed

The possibilities of VR for historians are exciting and certainly worth further exploration and critical analysis. Are these examples simply flashy gimmicks or do they represent future tools for history educators, public historians, and scholars? There are clearly some current applications of VR for history. Through our teaching and scholarship, we may find more ways to use presence to better understand the past.

[i] Thomas B. Sheridan, “Musings on Telepresence and Virtual Presence” Presence 1, no. 1 (Winter 1992): 120.

[ii] John Bonnett, ““Following in Rabelais’ Footsteps: Immersive History and the 3D Virtual Buildings Project” Journal of the Association for History and Computing 6, no. 2 (September 2003).

9

Digital History in the Classroom: Mapping Montreal Migration Stories

Daniel Ross

Screen short of “Montréal: ville de migrations”

In this post, I’d like to provide a short overview of a recent experience integrating digital history into my teaching. This fall, I taught the course HIS4567, Histoire de l’immigration et des communautés ethnoculturelles au Québec, for the first time at the Université du Québec à Montréal. HIS4567 is a second-year undergraduate history course with a group small enough–30ish students–that we could mix lectures and discussions. It was a great learning experience, for me (and I hope for the students too), and also a chance to experiment.

One of the first things I did was think about grading and term work. As I designed the course, I was particularly interested in finding assignments that would engage students from a range of personal and disciplinary backgrounds–social work, political science, education, history, certificate programs in intercultural relations. Many, I knew, might be unused to historical research & writing, or unfamiliar with the major themes in the field. At the same time, at UQÀM, we were lucky enough to be studying immigration history in the heart of a North American metropolis whose history has been defined by migrations — I thought that was worth exploiting in this class. All the more so considering there is very little in the way of public history around Montréal’s immigrant past, although that is changing with initiatives like the Museum of Jewish Montréal.

I settled on a digital history project with low barriers in terms of technological expertise (which I don’t have anyway), a collaborative ethic, and a product designed for public consumption. Over the course of the semester, the students and I created, with only a few hiccups, a collaborative digital map of Montréal migration history using the fabulous (and free!) HistoryPin platform. We called it “Montréal : ville de migrations”.

Over the last decade, a number of colleagues in the US and Canada  have experimented with this kind of assignment in undergraduate classrooms. So by no means was I venturing into uncharted territory. The idea for the project came both from hearing their reflections on how best to go about these kind of digital history projects (thanks Gilberto Fernandes in particular!) and from my own playing around with HistoryPin in the past.

As part of prep for this project, the Museum of Jewish Montréal hosted my students for a walking tour of Jewish Plateau Mont-Royal (c.1900-1950), and an informal Q&A about their project. It was a chance to discuss the profound impacts migrations and migrant communities can have on the urban landscape, both through their day-to-day life patterns and the founding of institutions and businesses. We also saw firsthand how neighbourhood identities depend on presence and use, and how they evolve and change over time: in the twentieth century Plateau Mont-Royal has been shaped successively by rural Québec migration and by immigration from Britain, Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europe, Portugal, and other parts of the world.

Putting together our project went something like this:

Students picked and visited a site related to the history of migrations for their research. I left the idea of “site” deliberately vague in the assignment, although I provided a list of examples: they could pick a person, a building, a park, a street, a neighbourhood. I was eager to see students get creative in their choices, and they did. Several chose churches and community centres; others chose a nightspot, a mural, a graffiti artist, a library, and a community history project in Montréal-Nord.

I deliberately encouraged students to think of migrations in their most general sense, and not to confine themselves to studying particular ethnic communities. Of course, with their networks of institutions and ethnic-identified neighbourhoods (“Little Italy,” “Chinatown”), those tend to be the first migration stories we latch onto. But cities like Montréal have also been shaped by rural-urban migrations within the province, by departures, and by other movements that do not necessary conform to the classic immigration model, which tends to emphasize ethnic difference and rupture. One student, for example, focused on Montréal’s gay and lesbian archives as an institution created by inter-provincial migration of young gay men from Ontario, in the context of the establishment of a gay village populated by migrants from other parts of the province, country, and world.

Students then researched their site, using secondary and primary sources. Generally, most relied on the former. But several conducted oral interviews, with some guidance from me on research ethics. One profiled her neighbour, recently arrived as a refugee from Latin America, on her personal experience discovering Montréal’s network of Latino shops and cultural institutions. Another interviewed the owner of the first North African café to open up in the Petit Maghreb neighbourhood. The amount of research that went into this part of the project varied. The next time I assign something similar, I will be clearer about my expectations regarding the use of primary sources, and will try to include some training in using sources in the process.

Students handed in a four-page research report that discussed their site and its links to the larger history of migrations to, from, and in Québec and Canada. We then worked as a class to convert those texts into short (250-300 word), clear and accessible texts for a public audience. I called them “virtual historical plaques”, to give a sense of the length and approach desired. One successful activity was a mini-workshop in class, in which students got together to read one another’s short texts and provide comments on their clarity, style, and historical narrative. It was fun, and students quickly mastered giving constructive feedback. An excellent alternative to having the professor comment on each of the short texts.

Finally, students searched the ample archive of digital images for an historical image of their individual or site. When there was none to be found, they took a photo themselves. Here, again, their might be room for improvement in the assignment process: not all students were as comfortable as I expected finding and citing images in online archives.

Using HistoryPin, we assembled our digital map in about 90 minutes. This essentially consisted of “pinning” images and texts to a map, on which 26 sites slowly appeared. Students took ownership for their pin: they each created an account and posted using that account, giving them control over (and responsibility for) what they had produced. This is, I think the best way to do this kind of project; one unforeseen difficulty, however, was that I had to chase students to get minor edits on their posts done. A solution might be to complete the project earlier in the term (we finished it the second-last week of term) and make editing their post/pin part of the assignment. Note that if you are an educator, you can contact HistoryPin and get help with your own collaborative project. I found them responsive and enthusiastic.

The class also presented their research, talking for about 5-10 minutes each and showing the images and geographical information they had found. This was by far the most fun, although it did eat into class time quite a bit (30 presentations * 5-10 minutes = less teaching time for a few weeks). We learned a great deal about an idiosyncratic range of people and places related to Montréal’s migration history, from the 1600s through to 2017. Students asked questions and were generally very interested in learning about the city they study and (mostly) live in. Many UQÀM students are not originally from Montréal, like me, and a few mentioned that this was an excellent way to get to know their adopted city.

This was an assignment that demanded considerable work from the professor, as compared to a more standard short essay. I met individually with all the students to approve their topics, and ensure they would be able to find sources. I provided research suggestions and a resource bank to the class; I laid out a long and probably too-complex process for getting the work done in steps. I also devoted a substantial amount of class time to discussing the project and to presentations. Still, I’ll be doing it again. Particularly with a mixed group of students, around a third of whom were in their first history class, this was an excellent way to introduce them to historical research as something creative and useful. I wanted them to produce something they could show to family and friends, and that could be read by the average Google-searcher interested in a particular site or theme in Montréal’s history. Next time around, I’ll change a few things; but I hope to have a similar group of diverse, curious, and fun students to explore the city with.

Further reading

Check out the project “Montréal : ville de migrations“.

Gilberto Fernandes’ & his students “Toronto the Bad: A Riots Map and Timeline” helped inspire this project.

Aaron Cowan, “Digital history for undergraduates…without the coding,” NCPH, November 8, 2013.,

Julia Gossard, “Mapping the early modern world: Using GoogleMaps in the classroom,” (2017), AHA Today, October 23, 2017.

Kerri Young, “Tips for teachers using HistoryPin: the basics,”  HistoryPin, February 4, 2016.

10

#HIST274US: Reflecting on My Course Hashtag

Jessica DeWitt

I integrate social media into my professional and personal life daily. In addition to serving as Social Media Editor for the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE) and Media Officer for the American Society for Environmental History Graduate Student Caucus, I run several other academic Twitter accounts and regularly consult and give talks on how to effectively use social media in academia. When I learned that I was going to teach HIST 274: American History to 1865 in the fall of 2017, I knew that I wanted to try to integrate Twitter into class. Because it was my first time teaching and because I was teaching a subject outside of my comfort zone, I was hesitant to get too fancy with my social media integration. I did, however, decide to create a hashtag for my course. That is when #HIST274US came into being.

*Advice I was given: course hashtags should contain some indication of the university where it is taught so as to decipher it from other similarly numbered/named courses at other institutions. I chose #HIST274US because US simultaneously symbolised US History and the University of Saskatchewan.

How did I use #HIST274US?

1. Student Reading Responses

I provided my students two options for providing their responses to their primary source readings. Firstly, they could hand in index cards with their reflections in class. Secondly, they could post Twitter threads. If they chose the Twitter option, they were expected to do three threads per class/set of readings. They were expected to tweet these threads by 8am on the day of class so I could read them and integrate them into that day’s lecture and discussion.

*Most universities require that any social media use in class stick strictly to course content.

How did it go? Well, I only had two out of nineteen students regularly provide their reading responses on Twitter. These two students were gung-ho and did a great job.

Response 3 of 3 to Thursday October 26th’s readings for History 274 #HIST274US

— Reid Braaten (@Reid_Braaten) October 25, 2017

#HIST274US Reading Response 2 for November 21st, 2017. Reflections on the Missouri Question.

— a n i k a 🇨🇦 (@capitalismwitch) November 21, 2017

Why didn’t I make it mandatory?  I didn’t make it mandatory for two main reasons. Firstly, because I wasn’t sure how this hashtag would work in practice, and I was nervous to make it mandatory before I had ironed out the kinks in the course social media strategy and in the course as a whole. Secondly, I was hesitant to make students use a public social media platform. In the future, I would make it mandatory, and perhaps only use this strategy in upper-level 300 and 400-level courses.

2. To Share Related Content

I used the class hashtag to share any relevant articles, podcasts, memes, and other information that I came across during the term. For example, I regularly shared episodes of Liz Covart’s Ben Franklin’s World podcast to the hashtag feed.

Episode 158: The Revolutionaries Army https://t.co/xbF4zMw1mK via @lizcovart#HIST274US#amrev#earlyamhist#ushistory#podcasts#history

— Dr. Jessica DeWitt (@JessicaMDeWitt) November 5, 2017

Students were also encouraged to share content that they found and were given extra-credit points for doing so. (1% towards their participation grade per ten extra reading comments or extra content).

#HIST274US semi-relevant to today’s question about the shift in partisanship geographically: https://t.co/FWxgkotGJ4

— a n i k a 🇨🇦 (@capitalismwitch) December 5, 2017

3. Lecture Content

The third main way I used the class hashtag was to share links to online readings, links to any videos I showed in class, and all images that I used in class. I then organized all of this content into Twitter Moments.

#HIST274US

"Soldiers with the 25th regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops(USCT) Company during the Civil War."

Source: https://t.co/2HlDG1DfHSpic.twitter.com/taFDFDuXeg

— Dr. Jessica DeWitt (@JessicaMDeWitt) December 5, 2017

#HIST274US

Link to Reading: “South Carolina Declaration of Secession, 1860”https://t.co/Ate8RcAa7w

— Dr. Jessica DeWitt (@JessicaMDeWitt) December 4, 2017

Course Lecture Twitter Moments

I organized all of the course hashtag content: student responses, related content, and lecture content into Twitter Moments that matched each lecture. Even though only two students used Twitter for their responses, I know that most of my students visited the hashtag for course content. Organizing the content into specific moments enabled students to access the information more easily. It also helped me keep track of the content that I and the students produced throughout the term. To make the Moments even more salient, I allowed the students to cite content shared to the hashtags in their take-home final exams. Here is one example of the course Twitter Moments: #HIST274US: Slavery in the English Colonies

Recommendations for Future Educators

If you are interested in doing something like this in your class, I do have a couple of recommendations regarding asking students to create content in a public forum. First, I think that you and your department should set out some guidelines to protect students from online harassment on social media. Unfortunately this is a reality these days, and it is our responsibility to ensure that students have a safe space in which to learn. Second, I think that there should be some discussion with your students about copyright infringement and plagiarism. This is both in terms of avoiding it themselves (for instance, in the use of images), but also what to do if others plagiarize their work.

That said, I do still think this was a successful experiment. Please let me know if you have any questions or want any clarification on how I used this course hashtag, or if you plan to use one yourself!

11

What is Open? History and Open Education Resources

Sean Kheraj

Source: Christian Siedler, Flickr.

For the past few months, Tom Peace and I have been writing an open education resource textbook with support from eCampus Ontario. This is a free, online textbook in Canadian history intended to complement John Belshaw’s two open textbooks, Canadian History: Pre-Confederation and Canadian History: Post-Confederation. We’ve called this textbook, Open History Seminar: Canadian History and it is a collection of primary and secondary sources for tutorials and seminars.

I started using Belshaw’s textbooks in my undergraduate Canadian history survey course in 2016. I was thoroughly pleased with it. The book reflected recent scholarship in the field, it was fully online and available in multiple formats (PDF, EPUB, MOBI, etc.), it included numerous photos, videos and other resources, and it could be easily read on a smartphone. As an open textbook, the digital versions were free and low-cost print copies were available for order on demand. The only thing missing was a complementary document reader for my tutorials.

Like many other course instructors, I like to assign a primary source reader for tutorials in my Canadian history survey course. These textbooks introduce students to critical reading of historical documents by curating the documents and accompanying them with secondary analysis and interpretations. I just needed an open textbook version to add to Belshaw’s books. When eCampus Ontario reached out to Tom and I with support to develop open education resources to complement Belshaw’s textbooks, we jumped on the opportunity and launched Open History Seminar.

Readers can already take a look at what we’re called our “beta” version of Open History Seminar: Canadian History.The textbook includes historical documents and secondary interpretations built on the PressBooks platform, an open-source e-book creation platform that itself is a layer built atop WordPress. We also added a WordPress plugin called Hypothes.is, a group annotation tool that allows students to highlight and annotate the documents as they read. Students will be able to see the annotations of their classmates as they read before class. They can post questions, highlight sections that stood out, and write critical commentary. We hope this tool will facilitate exercises in active reading.

Our process of writing chapters for this book has been relatively straight forward:

1. Determine topics.

2. Search for and acquire public domain and open access resources for each chapter.

3. Transcribe those resources into PressBooks.

4. Draft introductions and discussion questions for each chapter.

It has been the second step in this process that has proved to be the most challenging. Finding historical documents in the public domain is mostly a simple task for the period prior to the twentieth century. As we proceeded with work on the chapters covering the twentieth century, open primary sources became more difficult to find.Newspaper articles? Nope. Magazines? Nope. Many of the digitized historical documents in twentieth-century Canadian history are restricted by copyright. That left us with published government documents (public domain) and sources that creators have voluntarily made open and accessible. Our best resource has been Internet Archive.

Finding open-access secondary sources has been even more challenging. Although SSHRC and the other Tri-Council federal funding agencies in Canada have adopted an open-access policy, many journals adhering to this policy are still sorting out the often difficult aspects of open-access publishing. One of the problems we found was ambiguity around the terms of each journal’s open-access policies. SSHRC’s policy “is based on the idea that the products of research (i.e., full-text publications and research data) should be available to the user free of charge and without restrictions.” However, the terms of use for open-access journal articles are not always made clear on journal websites.

For the development of an open education resource, clarity of the terms of use is crucial. Is this article free to read? Free to copy? Free to re-publish? Free to re-mix? In order for the Hypothes.is plugin to function on Open History Seminar, we needed to transcribe all our sources in HTML directly on our website. This was, in effect, a re-printing of these sources. Do open-access journals allow for this? It wasn’t always clear.

Thankfully, this is a problem that copyright scholars and activists thought about and solved years ago. Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that created a simple system for communicating copyright terms to users. Lawrence Lessig, one of the founders of Creative Commons, describes it as follows:

Its aim is to build a layer of reasonable copyright on top of the extremes that now reign. It does this by making it easy for people to build upon other people’s work, by making it simple for creators to express the freedom for others to take and build upon their work. Simple tags, tied to human-readable descriptions, tied to bulletproof licenses, make this possible.[1]

Open-access journals could more easily communicate the terms of use for their articles by adopting these simple Creative Commons tags. This website and several academic journals already use Creative Commons tags. Last February, the Network in Canadian History and Environment launched its own open-access, peer-reviewed publication that prominently displays its Creative Commons tags at the bottom of each article. Users are free to read each article, download those articles, copy those articles, and remix those articles so long as the user attributes the authors and uses the articles for non-commercial purposes. The terms are simple and clear. Users do not need to contact the publisher to request permission.

As scholarly journals move toward the full implementation of the Tri-Council open access policy, they should also consider adopting these Creative Commons tags. Clear, simple terms for the use of open-access materials will help facilitate the creation of new scholarship and the development of open education resources. This is the full potential of open-access publishing.

[1] Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, (New York: Penguin, 2004), 282.

12

OpenTextbooks in Canadian History

John Belshaw

Open textbook sketch by Gulia Forsythe. Public Domain.

I had this ‘eureka’ moment in the barber’s chair.  Well, I thought, if a book is like a railway line, heading in one direction from west to east, then an e-book is more like a mine elevator, heading from the surface into the depths, from top to bottom or, perhaps, from north to south. If that’s the case, then an OpenTextbook is like a hive. It is living, fluid, with junctions that run up, down, outward in several horizons but also in three dimensions. It offers options rather than a singular pathway, complexity rather than guiderails, a little more risk but the possibility of greater rewards.

Moving from metaphor to practicality, the OpenTextbook is just plain different from conventional textbooks. For starters, it’s smart. It can evolve. Instead of waiting for the (inevitable) umpteenth edition, you (the prof) can refine and effectively create the newest edition. What if your textbook could be made to look more like something from Harry Potter, with moving images on the page? What if it could function differently?

What if it was available for free?

A couple of years ago the Province of British Columbia’s Ministry of Advanced Education was asking questions about the costs of post-secondary and the barriers students faced to accessing higher ed. One cost, of course, is textbooks. At that time, for example, the text we were using in our courses at Thompson Rivers University – Open Learning cost $88. Other intro texts in the Social Sciences, English, and the Sciences – the usual suite of courses taken by first and second years – generally sell for much more. It’s quite possible that a first-year student could spend over $1,000 on textbooks.

Or not. And that’s what the research points to. Potential students decide to forego higher ed because they cannot afford it. Or they enroll and balk at paying hundreds of dollars for texts that they can’t resell later on because (you know what’s coming) the next edition has rendered them unusable. The planned obsolescence of the university textbook has thus become a real hindrance to students maximizing their learning potential. Sure, some photocopy like mad (thereby violating all kinds of copyright) and some share, but it would appear that many – reckoned to be between a quarter and a third of a class – simply don’t read the text.

On October 16, 2012 at the annual OpenEd conference in Vancouver the then Minister of Advanced Education, John Yap, announced the BC Open Textbook Project with support provided by BCcampus. The goal was to make higher education more accessible by reducing student cost through the use of openly licensed textbooks. Specifically, BCcampus was asked to create a collection of OpenTextbooks aligned with the 40 highest-enrolled subject areas in the province. And it came to pass that I authored the one on Pre-Confederation Canadian History.

Writing a survey text is a very different proposition from preparing an original monograph. Writing an OpenTextbook is still more different. Both require a careful synthesis of existing research, which is fairly obvious. But when one begins that process it rather quickly becomes clear that the meta-narrative might need a bit of tweaking. It’s no surprise that we get stuck in well-worn channels of thinking and that, despite our best intentions, we find ourselves in Week 13 marching down the “Road to Confederation.” Immersed in as much new literature as one can manage and carefully reading familiar narratives obliges the writer of the synthesized text to ask questions about why we think things happened the way they did and why we apportion importance to one event but not to others. What was the turning point? What was the agenda?

That’s what’s common to both the hardcopy and OpenTextbook project, but what distinguishes them is two things, one obvious and the other less so. Obviously, the OpenTextbook exists in an electronic form principally, although it can be printed out. That creates opportunities for experimentation with and inclusion of different media. You no longer have to worry about printing costs so all kinds of bells and whistles can be packed into sidebars and hyperlinks. It can become a vastly enriched document. The second difference is that the world of OpenTextbooks adheres to different rules. When you first encounter a herd of OpenTexts they will be running free across the Creative Commons. They dwell outside the boundaries of conventional copyright.

There are three reasons why anyone teaching or studying introductory history ought to be excited – or at least curious – about OpenTextbooks. First and foremost – and most likely to appeal to us cheapskate Canucks – is that they are free to use, order, assign, etc.

By “free,” I mean, um, free. There is no charge to use them. They don’t come cheaper in a bundle , there’s no special password that you’ll have to buy, no account info you have to submit, there’s no clock ticking in the background and there’s no best-before date. They’re free. Free of charge. Anytime, anywhere. I just looked at one on my smartphone. I paid for the electricity, yes, okay, that’s true. You got me there.

It’s the two extraordinary things one can do with OpenTextbooks, however, that make them most appealing. First off, any instructor can edit the textbook. It might be something simple, like changing up the Suggested Readings. Or perhaps the little learning tasks currently in the OpenText don’t work in your course or in your jurisdiction.  It’s a work of synthesis so it is completely possible that some of the information is even now out of date. Or wrongly synthesized. Perhaps you know something about a particular issue, something that no one else is likely to know. Or you find an error (that happens, sure, mea culpa). So change the textbook. Fix the mistakes, add details, write a whole new chapter, or excise one that you don’t like.

In short, instructors using the OpenTextbooks are, for once, not excluded from the process of creating the teaching instrument. You can do as little or as much as you like.

Better still, consider having your students do so. This option allows you to move beyond the “disposable assignment” and create something of lasting value. In all likelihood there are some chestnut assignments that show up in your course. Perhaps it is that perennial essay on the causes of the Rebellions of 1837 or the good ol’ Origins of Confederation. Consider asking a group of students to look at several different interpretations of such topics. They can highlight the differences between historians’ positions, the kind and use of evidence, the ways in which successive takes on the event(s) have been shaped by the historiography. They could write that up and, if it passes muster, you can add it to the OpenTextbook.

Or take a bigger risk: have them create a visual debate. One of the best I’ve seen thus far in this kind of environment involved stripping the sound from a video of the Nixon-Kennedy debate of 1960 and providing voice-overs for the two grainy figures as they discuss some aspect of the course material. (I’m part of a team that is interviewing historians on their areas of expertise for a set of HD videos: we’re going to drop them directly into the text. Your students could do something similar.)

The point is, the textbook is no longer sealed in shrink-wrap. It’s yours to play with. Reuse, remix, revise, retain, redistribute – the five Rs of open education resources. This is possible because OpenTextbooks are leased using a Creative Commons license. As most readers of ActiveHistory will know, the Creative Commons is the organization that develops, supports, and stewards the sharing of materials through their free legal tools, like the CC license. a place in which writing and visual records (and other artifacts) are shared. Depending on the kind of license in place, the document may be copied, modified, and repurposed with attribution but without written permission of the copyright holder. OpenTextbooks are part of that tradition and set of practices.

I look forward to discussion about how this might unfold. There have been many survey textbooks before, competing in the marketplace of academia for adoptions. There was a wonderful CD-Rom on Post-Confederation that came out about a dozen years back. At the end of the day, however, the question was essentially, “which of these do you want your students to buy?” Now, the question is “why would you ask your students to pay for something static when there is something dynamic and freely available, something that you can yourself tailor to meet your needs?”

13

Open Pedagogy: The Time is Now

Thomas Peace

OER Global Logo by Jonathas Mello is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Unported 3.0 License

I’ve been a rather slow convert to the open-access movement. Though ActiveHistory.ca operates under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareALike copyright license whereby you’re free to repost this (or any other essay you find here) so long as you provide us with attribution and do not profit, this was my sole venture into the world of open access.

Then in 2015, Thompson Rivers University historian John Belshaw approached us about promoting his new two-volume open Canadian history textbook (click here for pre-Confederation and here for post-Confederation) published as part of the BC Open Textbook Project (we ran two posts about it here and here). Belshaw’s books were the first open access textbooks I encountered. I was excited and – having gradually moved away from textbooks in my teaching – integrated them as support material for my Canadian history courses.

Until recently, these were the only open projects with which I have been involved. Though I was never fully resistant to the idea, I also never pursued it with much interest. I have been fortunate enough to move from academic contract to academic contract in such a way that only for a few months have I ever been without full access to a university’s library subscription services. From my vantage point, as a student then professor, all of the on-campus resources I used were free.

This, of course, is not true.Both institutionally and personally, the costs to purchase educational resources are significant. At Ryerson University, a school with about 50,000 students, the library’s annual acquisition budget for serials, databases and e-journals is over $4.7 million, about $94 per student. Add to that the books, computer software and other course-related materials faculty demand of their students, and the total nears $800/year.

It was figures like these that brought me around to fully embracing Open Educational Resources (OER) as an important part of my pedagogical and curricular outlook. It was one particular talk, by Kwantlen Polytechnic University Psyche Prof. Rajiv Jhangiani, that opened my eyes. In his talk, Jhangiani did the math for my own institution (Western, not Huron, for those reading the fine print). At Western, students pay about $8,000 in tuition and another $9,000 for housing and subsistence off campus for a total of $18,000 per year when books are also included. For on-campus students the number is closer to $21,000.

Depending on where they live, a student without recourse to scholarships, bursaries or loans, would need to work full time at the minimum wage for between 32 and 38 weeks to cover the cost of studying full time. With only 17 weeks available in the university summer break; this leaves about half that amount to be earned during the academic year through a part-time job. Without outside financial support, a student cannot dedicate their full attention to their studies; they are required to dedicate substantial energy to ensuring they can pay for their studies.

The point here is partially one about accessibility to post-secondary education and partially one about student behaviour.  In Canadian history the entry-level textbook with a primary/secondary source reader is about $150 per semester; a steep price for many of our students who don’t envision a future where these resources will be drawn upon again.

Jhangiani asks how students respond to this context of expensive course material.  His answer is that “54 per cent of B.C. students [his home province] do without at least one of their required textbooks, while 27 per cent take fewer courses and 17 per cent drop courses, all because of high textbook costs.” Unsurprisingly, it is visible minorities and students with most financial need who tend to occupy these demographics.

I won’t go into detail about how large publishers hold university libraries is a similar position. University Affairs has covered the subject well here. Suffice it to say that this system creates similar barriers within the institutional setting.

For those of us teaching history, it doesn’t have to be this way. We can make an intervention.

First, traditionally closed resources are becoming open. Led by the B.C. Open Textbook Project, provincial governments are beginning to support the creation of alternative resources like Belshaw’s textbooks. Through eCampus Ontario, a similar agency to Open Campus B.C. (both house open text book libraries), Sean Kheraj and I are in the middle of creating a companion to Belshaw’s books, tentatively entitled The Open History Seminar. You can view the prototype here (critical feedback welcome). We will be presenting a more complete version during the poster session at this year’s annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association.

This work builds on similar open access decisions made by the editorial boards of prominent journals such as Acadiensis, B.C. Studies, Canadian Journal of Native Studies, and Histoire Sociale/Social History, who have made their material open after a two-year embargo. Special note should be given to Historical Studies in Education, however, who have made their journal completely open access. University of Calgary Press has similarly embraced open access publishing, making its titles available online under Creative Commons copyright licenses.

Second, much of this shift has happened because of the democratization of publishing made possible through the digital turn. A culture of open source production has developed and has transformed the research and teaching landscape. The flagship project is probably the Internet Archive, but we might also point to how most governmental archives have developed digitization programs (Ian Milligan has a good post here about using soldiers’ digitized attestation papers at Library and Archives Canada).

Many universities and colleges are using open source software as part of their operations. Every university I have worked at over the past decade uses open source software for their learning management systems (Moodle at York and Acadia, Sakai at Huron and Western).

Many of our colleagues have also been busy supporting this work. The Canadian Encyclopedia and Dictionary of Canadian Biography are perhaps the best known accessible, but not open, projects; we might also add projects such as the University of Victoria’s Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History or Ronald Rudin’s work on Acadian history (Remembering Acadie and Returning the Voices).

For teachers and professors looking to open their classroom, MERLOT, an international initiative that curates online and open learning tools, holds extensive resources of interest to researchers, teachers and professors. The history section of MERLOT holds just over 2,300 open educational resources (including some that I noted above). Here is just a sampling of what is available with MERLOT’s project descriptions:

- The Raid on Deerfield: This site provides an analysis of the French Canadian/Indian raid on Deerfield in 1704 and its causes and impact on the participants and victims.

- OutHistory.org: OutHistory.org is an ever-growing website on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) US history, produced by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. Using MediaWiki software, OutHistory.org allows any user to add discussion threads, edit content, create new pages, and upload images, audio or video files. OutHistory.org makes it easy for teachers to bring primary materials documenting the history of sexuality into their classroom. OutHistory.org also provides a unique platform where students can publish papers or create digital history exhibits about the LGBTQ past.

- Nature, Environment, and Empire: This course [designed by well known environmental historian Harriet Ritvo] is an exploration of the relationship between the study of natural history, both domestic and exotic, by Europeans and Americans, and concrete exploitation of the natural world, focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

- Women and Social Movements in the United States: This site, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, mounts on the WWW editorial projects consisting of primary materials that explore the history of women and social reform in the United States between 1820 and 1940. Currently (November 2000), there are 22 projects with about 450 primary documents for use in high school and college classrooms. New material is added regularly. Topics covered include issues of race and gender, the struggles of working women, women’s suffrage, temperance, moral reform, antislavery, and women’s rights.

The central point here is this: there is ample secondary and primary material available online, and through our institutional libraries, to make it unnecessary to charge students money for course materials.

Open pedagogy, though, goes beyond choosing accessible resources from which our students can learn. It also involves changing how we think about our classroom practice. It means demonstrating to students that although they do not need to pay for their course materials, there are costs involved in their production. Open cultures work because users are willing to also be contributors. This is something that needs to be taught.

Eight attributes of Open Pedagogy by Bronwyn Hegarty (Click the image for the article for which this infographic was created).

Because of this, when I had my epiphany about OER after hearing Jhangiani’s arguments, I decided not just to draw exclusively from open access and library resources in my Canadian history courses, but also to design assignments where students contributed to our understanding of Canada’s past.

I was somewhat introduced to this idea last year when Daniel Heidt convinced me there was merit to having my class participate in his crowd-sourced Confederation debates transcription project.

This year, my solution was to have them edit Wikipedia. I won’t go into much detail about this experience because, once again, I am a relative latecomer to this activity; on numerous occasions colleagues have posted here about their experiences with Wikipedia (click here for a list of essays). I will, however, note that Wiki Education has a relatively streamlined and easy to use system to support this type of assignment and, with final projects now completed, I have been relatively happy with the results (you can view them here).

In sum, what I hope to have demonstrated here is that the time has come for us to rethink most of the pedagogical and curricular practices associated with our discipline. The resources exist to present our students with a much more accurate understanding of the historians’ craft at substantially less cost to them. Additionally, the move towards crowd-sourcing transcription projects and wikis – when centred on student learning rather than service to a larger research project – create opportunities for our students to contribute to our historical understanding of the past.

Many readers are already doing this. It was not until last November though, when Rajiv Jhangiani spoke at Western’s Open Education Day, that I saw the potential opportunities open pedagogy presents for students.

The transition to open is difficult. I still have not fully embraced this culture. In fact, just last week I had an article about 18th- and 19th-century Indigenous intellectual traditions come out in a closed journal (yes, that was a shameless plug, if you have access to a university library that subscribes!). Changing systems, behaviours, and norms is a difficult task. I have written this post for those who, like me, have been slow to come around and are still learning what embracing the culture of open means. The time is now, however, for us to start making this change.

14

Writing is “easy”… Student Learning in the First-Year Canadian Survey Course

Mark Leier

The assignment made all of us squirm. Some broke into a sweat; others made little nervous jokes. At a workshop on teaching writing, we — professors, graduate students, librarians, deans — were asked to take five minutes to complete a short writing exercise that we would share with others. We were seasoned veterans with countless theses, books, articles, memos, and position papers between us, yet being asked to write something made us uneasy.

The sportswriter Walter “Red” Smith is alleged to have said, “Turning out a column is easy. I just sit at my typewriter until beads of blood form on my forehead.”

I took that lesson to heart as I redesigned my first year survey course, “Canada since Confederation,” as a “writing intensive” course. The aim is not to teach writing skills such as “Our Friend the Comma” or “27 Keys to the Successful Term Paper.” Rather, writing is one of the skills we work on in the class, and writing is emphasized as a way to learn. But if a simple assignment at a voluntary workshop made us nervous, what would writing do to students who know they are about to be weighed and judged?

The problem is particularly acute in “Canada since Confederation.”

Word cloud represents how frequently students gave each word when asked for “one word to describe how you think or feel about Canadian history.

For many students, it is a compulsory course in a subject far from their major and interest. The reading and writing load in history is greater than most disciplines, and even among history majors Canadian history is regarded as boring. The lecture has over 200 people, and that can be alienating, especially for first year students unused to university life; the tutorials of 15-19 students bring their own close-up horrors. Most of my students have jobs, some working as many as 30 hours a week; many have family responsibilities ranging from childcare to elder care. Rebekah Nathan, (2006) in My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student, outlines some of the issues contemporary students face.

Furthermore, nearly half of SFU students do not speak English as their first language at home. SFU has followed other universities in seeking international students as a source of revenue, and many of these students are ill-prepared for the peculiarities and requirements of the Canadian education system. Elizabeth Redden (2014) has explored this in her article, “Chinese Students in the Classroom,” in the journal Inside Higher Ed.  Some are reluctant to display what they believe is an inability to write in university appropriate language. Many believe they are in a competitive scramble for grades and so are wary of any exercise in which they will be compared with others.  It is, therefore, not surprising that asking students to write can induce in them a paralyzing anxiety.

Making a safe space

Reducing that anxiety so students can write more freely became my starting point for redesigning the course. That started with the way we came together. We have 13-week semesters at SFU, and while that has some advantages — burnout is a function of duration more than intensity — it also means that students don’t get to know each other and instructors don’t get to know students. It is a common lament that tutorials and seminars really come together around week 11, just as people start drifting away to attend to final assignments and exams.

That meant I had to make the classroom and tutorials safe; we had to create what George Lakey, (2010) in Facilitating Group Learning: Strategies for Success for Diverse Adult Learners calls a “safe container,” where people can share, engage, make mistakes, and learn. This safe container is not necessarily comfortable: learning is often uncomfortable. But if people do not feel safe, they will not risk feeling uncomfortable and so will not risk learning in lectures, tutorials, or written assignments.

This may not be news to you. I may well be the last professor on the planet to understand this. But my experience is that most students are unaccustomed to professors taking their concerns seriously. Two quick examples taken from Lakey’s work suggest simple ways to help create that safe container and why it is valuable.

Before our first lecture, I emailed all the students and asked them to check their assigned tutorial number. When they arrived at the lecture hall, I asked them to sit near their teaching assistants, who were holding up signs with their tutorial numbers. Instead of going over the syllabus, which focuses attention on me and the course, I asked students to introduce themselves to five or six of their colleagues and to mention one thing they were looking forward to in the course and one thing they were anxious about. This changed the focus away from me and the rules and regulations of the course. Why do that? It may shock some professors — it shocked me — but most people are more interested in themselves and their colleagues than they are in the carefully planned and lovingly detailed syllabus. Acknowledging their concerns is a useful first step in reducing anxiety, for it demonstrates the professor has some awareness of what students are facing and takes them seriously.

It also meant that when students went to their tutorials, they already knew some of the people in it. Many reported they were surprised and delighted to see a familiar face in the tutorial. That they were surprised they had already met someone in their tutorial after they had been asked to sit together at the lecture suggests that many students experience university as an exercise in isolation rather than collegiality. That it delighted them was some evidence that building a safe container was a novel, and important, goal.

In the second example, I asked the TAs to do the “mingling” exercise we had done in the lecture among themselves. Even though all the TAs knew each other, each reported that getting up, introducing themselves, and sharing two concerns about the course was still a little uncomfortable, but it helped them appreciate how their students felt. The TAs then did the “mingling” in their tutorials. All the students got up and walked around the classroom themselves to everyone in the tutorial, and again shared two concerns about the course. This proved much more effective as a way for students to learn each other’s names than having them remain seated and introducing themselves to the whole class. It meant that people who were not keen on drawing attention to themselves did not have to announce their names to 20 strangers and rather than, say, share a personal detail, they could talk about the course in ways that mattered to them. Both of these are very small examples. Neither is a magic bullet. Nonetheless, each had a positive effect on the dynamics of the lecture and the tutorial. Simply acknowledging the complexity of group dynamics went some way to reducing anxiety.

Writing real life

The next step was re-designing the assignments. Betting the rent cheque is more stressful than betting the price of a cup of coffee, and a heavily weighted term paper wagers a great deal on a single event. That is the case even if the paper is broken down into components such as bibliography, thesis development, and revising drafts. The research paper is also an artificial, unfamiliar exercise. Everyone writes all kinds of things all the time: articles, poems, letters, blogs, email, tweets, books, memos, lists, diaries, reports, case studies, but one thing we don’t write outside of the first year university class is a first year term paper.

Thus the final paper means mastering several skills in very short order: finding a topic, finding the library, online or on campus, doing research, devising a thesis, learning university-appropriate language, figuring out how and what to cite, putting together a bibliography, editing, time management. Oh, and we tell them to make it interesting to read, too. When we combine a high stakes assignment with several steep learning curves, fear of failure, and the anxiety of writing, it is hardly surprising that students turn in desperation to plagiarism. As the anarchist Emma Goldman noted, a society gets the criminals it deserves.

Even for prepared students, the term paper can resemble the folk tale of teaching monkeys how to swim: throw all the babies into the river, and the ones who make it across know how to swim. Some students, by virtue of natural talent or a high school that stressed such training, do indeed make it across. But most of us learn better in small pieces, building on what we know and moving from step to step. This is especially the case when we are learning new skills and have much invested in the outcome.

Another drawback of the term paper is that it rarely helps student master course content. Too often it requires them to do narrow research on a very specific topic rather than help them integrate lectures, discussions, and readings in the course. In that sense, it stands outside the rest of the course and is a diversion from it. Students may become first year experts on a slice of a question, but at the expense of taking time from pondering the larger questions of the course and course material.

One potential benefit of the term paper is that students can be required to submit and revise drafts. Much of that work, however, can be done with short assignments. Students can, for example, be shown how to revise titles, introductions, arguments, and citations on one paper, and apply that knowledge to the next paper.

Instead of the term paper, I assign four short papers that resemble things students have already written, such as a letter to a friend, something they have read and enjoyed, such as a short story, or something they anticipate doing, such as sketching an advertising campaign for a cause. The aim is to build on what they know so they can concentrate on the essential elements of thinking critically, finding their own voice, and writing with enthusiasm.

Each of the assignments draws explicitly on course materials to help students think more broadly and to help them understand and integrate the ideas in the readings and lectures. In one assignment, students read and discuss in tutorials two academic articles. One writes very favourably of a company that traded with First Nations and settlers on the Canadian prairies in the nineteenth century. The second implicates that same company in the forcible removal of First Nations from the land. Students are then asked to write a letter or an email to a friend who has a job offer from the company and wants advice on whether to take it. The assignment encourages students to write informally, to develop their “ear” for language rather than fret over the difference between their semicolon and a hole in the ground. A quick introduction to this idea may be found in Michelle Navarre Cleary’s article in The Atlantic, “The Wrong Way to Teach Grammar” (2014).

Making assignments matter

The assignments try to take advantage of another characteristic of the students. Many commentators have argued that the current generation of students is uninterested in politics and civic engagement. Paul Howe explores this extensively in Citizens Adrift: The Democratic Disengagement of Young Canadians (2010). In my experience, however, they are profoundly interested in issues such as the abuse of power, the environment, inequality, corporate malfeasance, and employment. They are also keenly engaged in discussions of ethical questions, though they may well prefer to have these discussions with their friends in the pub rather than in the formal setting of a graded tutorial.

This does not, however, necessarily translate into an interest in conventional politics. Students often express deep cynicism toward party politics. If we may take Aristotle’s word for it, young adults “prefer honour to profit,” and students are disgusted with the influence corporations and the wealthy wield in our political system. They are also aware that Canada’s first past the post, multi-party system means governments are often elected with a minority of votes. Negative advertising has left many with a distrust of all political parties and the political process. They understand the mainstream parties do not share their own political views. When surveyed through an online site, politicalcompass.org, students cluster considerably further left and less authoritarian than the traditional parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, and most are more left and less authoritarian than the left-looking New Democratic Party. This is not a rigorous study of students and their political views. It does suggest that there is no political party students view as their natural home and that they do not see in parliamentary democracy a way to be heard or to be virtuous. But this cynicism and disengagement from conventional politics does not mean students do not care about ethics and politics. The writing assignments build on their concerns to capture their interest and let them develop their thoughts on issues and the use of history.

For example, students are concerned with the arbitrary exercise of power. This reflects their experience at home, at work, and at university. Ernest Hemingway suggested writers need “a built-in, shock-proof shit-detector,” and to that we may add the observation that shit flows downhill. We must look upstream to discover the source. The writing assignments in this course try to build upon students’ outrage over arbitrary authority to help them write on historical matters. Put more simply, they are encouraged to think and write about the past to determine whence shit flows, who gets to pour, and who does the cleaning up.

War is a particularly vivid example of the exercise of authority and power; as Randolph Bourne put it in 1917, “war is the health of the state.” Thus one assignment asks students to write a letter to their brother who has been conscripted to fight in World War I. The students are asked to demonstrate some knowledge of the course material, their views on war, and the authority of the state to declare war and conscript people to fight in it. Alternatively, they may design a pitch for an ad campaign to recruit men to serve in the army, with particular attention to the tropes and images they think would be most successful, given what they know about Canadian politics, demographics, and myths of nation. In this way, we explore power in history, ranging from the power to compel, using the state’s monopoly of violence, to the power to persuade using techniques of manipulation and propaganda. And students write, if obliquely, on an issue they have a visceral understanding of: the arbitrary exercise of authority.

In a third assignment, students consider World War II, often portrayed as “the good war.” They read material on the Dieppe raid, in which the Canadian military took high casualties. Whether the raid was useful militarily, a cynical political ploy, or a blunder is still debated by historians. Students also read an article on Canada’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan. Students are asked explicitly to consider when they think it is appropriate for a country to go war, when they would consider volunteering to fight, and whether Canada’s reasons for fighting the Boer War, World War I, World War II, and in Afghanistan make sense to them.

Metahistories

Assignments also have students examine the work that historians do; they are invited to apply critical thinking to the past and the material we are using, again building on their experience, this time their experience as history students. Kevin O’Neill in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University has done research on how students think about history, or “metahistory.” To greatly oversimplify, many students come to university believing there is a single “true” version of what happened in the past. If historians differ, one must be wrong. Others concede there may be different versions of the past, but the differences will be resolved as more information comes to light. Few come to the first year course with a strong sense that historians construct the past, not through making up facts but by giving interpretations, and that all historians have, if not biases, certainly perspectives. Each of the above assignments suggests to students they need to consider how and why historians’ interpretations vary and how these differences are displayed in historical writing. They help students appreciate that just as the past was contested and fought over, so too is the history of the past. That appreciation in turn helps them understand that history is not just about names and dates but about ethical and political concerns in the present. Finally, the assignments invite them to make their own decisions, based on their sense of ethics and politics, on practical issues they will face, such as ethical concerns about a company or a government’s decision to go war. That is to say, the assignments demand some critical thinking and supply the context necessary for such thinking.

Finally, instead of a final exam, students are asked to read a science fiction story, “And Then There Were None,” by Eric Frank Russell. Written in the 1950s, the story has an Earth Empire ship landing on a planet colonized by Terran emigrants centuries before. The planet was explicitly founded on Gandhian, anarchist principles, and so is in sharp contrast to the hierarchy of the diplomats, bureaucrats, and military personnel sent out by Earth. Students are then asked to write a short paper imagining a conversation they might have with a “Gand” who lands on Earth and demands not “take me to your leader,” for such a concept is bizarre to Gands, but an explanation of why Canadians take orders from governments and employers — and still claim to live in a democracy. The assignment asks students to pull together historical material and their own analysis of that material in a form that is less alien and more fun than a final exam or research paper. It encourages them to model Russell’s style, in the way an apprenticing artist will redraw the work of masters. Susan B. Blum (2010) makes this analogy in My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture. Fiction is more familiar to students than academic writing and modeling lets students spend less time on the mechanics of academic writing and more on thought and reflection.

Doing more with less

Incorporating all of this into a 13 week course meant something would have to go. I am a historian, and it is a history course, not a dedicated writing course; content matters. But it might not matter as much as I’ve thought. The Canadian humourist and university professor Stephen Leacock, wrote a short story in 1910 titled “A Manual of Education.” In it Leacock notes that a university education takes about six years to acquire, and “when it is all written out on foolscap, covers nearly ten sheets” (127). His manual pulls together the scraps of education that remain so “everybody may carry his education in his hip pocket.” Under “Remains of History,” Leacock covers historical figures, “Peter the Great, Alfred the Great, Frederick the Great, John the Great, Tom the Great, Jim the Great, Jo the Great, etc., etc.,” with the observation that “it is impossible for a busy man to keep these apart. They sought a living as kings and apostles and pugilists and so on” (129).

Hard though it was to admit, when I reflected on my own undergraduate education, Leacock had a point. In fact, I’m still a little shaky on the four Canadian prime ministers who served in rapid succession between 1891 and 1896. The readings have been reduced, and tutorials spend more time on writing than searching out the thesis statements of academic articles. One can’t do everything in one 13 week course, and helping students find their voice as they think about ethical and political matters seems more important than testing their knowledge of the King-Byng constitutional crisis of 1926 or even the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The lively buzz in the lecture hall and the tutorial classrooms and the invigorated, thoughtful writing students have produced suggests they agree.

Students have stories to tell and insights to share. When they have a safe place and issues that matter to them, the writing begins to take care of itself.

References

S. B. Blum, My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010).

M.N. Cleary, “The Wrong Way to Teach Grammar,” The Atlantic, February 25, 2014

P.D. Fawcett et al., “Chinese International Students’ First-Year Learning and Teaching Perceptions,” December 2013.

P. Howe, Citizens Adrift: The Democratic Disengagement of Young Canadians (Vancouver and Toronto:  UBC Press, 2010).

G. Lakey, Facilitating Group Learning: Strategies for Success with Diverse Adult Learners (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2010).

S. Leacock,  “A manual of education,” in Literary Lapses,  (Toronto: Musson Book Company, 1910), 67-70. R.

R. Nathan,  My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student (New York: Penguin Books, 2006).

D. K. O’Neill, S. Guloy, F. MacKellar, & Ö. Sensoy, “Retooling the teaching of history: Refining a unit targeting conceptions about differing historical accounts,” 2010.

E. Redden, “Chinese Students in the Classroom,” Inside Higher Ed, 9 April 2014.

15

Forgotten Indigenous Figures – Early Canadian Biographies and Course Content

Kathryn Magee Labelle

White Cap’s Band and their Captors” (cropped), from a photograph by Sgt. A.C. Barraud, Published by Grip P & P Co., 1885. Virtual Museum of Métis History and Culture. The caption for the White Cap image lists Chief Whitecap, his wife and daughter – although their personal names are not given. The Dakota chief was imprisoned during the 1885 Resistance because some members of his band fought with the Métis during the Battle of Batoche, (May 9-12, 1885).

I always try to incorporate the life stories of lesser-known and often-overlooked historical actors when I teach the Pre-Confederation history survey (see a few examples from my course outline at the end of this blog). The content for these biographical sketches are usually drawn from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB). Easily accessible on-line (http://www.biographi.ca/en/index.php) with well-researched and informed essays, it has been an essential tool in my course creation. Yet, I am continuously shocked as to who remains neglected within this substantial collection. In many cases, individuals who have contributed greatly to the early history of what would become Canada are not found. More specifically, Indigenous men and women from this time period are rare to say the least. What follows are three case studies of individuals who I include in my course lectures, but who are not represented in the DCB. I’ve included a few highlights about them and their accomplishments. I hope that this is helpful and that one day they will find their way into other course outlines or perhaps even the DCB!

Chief Aenon (Bear Nation – Wendat Confederacy)

- Aenon was a seventeenth century civil headman of the Bear Nation of the Wendat (Huron) Confederacy.

- He was a liaison to the French and brought the first Jesuits to Wendake (Huronia)

- He had a family (including at least one son who committed suicide in 1636)

- He may have murdered Étienne Brulé (although this has never been proved)

- He was involved in a power struggle with the civil Chief Taretande. Aenon was pro-Jesuit and Taretande was a traditionalist who led a campaign in the 1630s to evict the missionaries from Wendake.

- Aenon singlehandedly saved the lives of a group of Jesuits who were accused of witchcraft and sentenced to death.

- Aenon introduced the idea of a “Centre Lieu” (an amalgamated mega village that incorporated five villages). This strategy was suggested in order to counter the attacks from Five Nations. The village was never built, however.

- Aenon invited the French to take part in the Wendat Feast of Souls in 1636.

- Aenon died meeting with the Governor of New France in 1637.

Chief White Cap – Wapahska ( Dakota Nation)

- Wapahska was a 19th century chief of the Dakota First Nation who lived/live in present-day Saskatchewan.

- White Cap led his people north from Minnesota in the 1860s.

- He was an ally to the Assiniboine and Yanktonais of the area.

- He systematically played a diplomatic role with British settlers who entered the territory.

- Wapahska helped John Lake find a location for what would become the city of Saskatoon.

- Died of tuberculosis in 1889.

Sara Riel (Métis Nation)

- Sara Riel is the sister of the famous Métis leader, Louis Riel.

- Sara was born in St. Boniface, Manitoba in 1848.

- Sara joined the Grey Nuns in 1860s and was a devoted Catholic.

- She returned to her ancestral homestead (the birth place of her father) in northern Saskatchewan and spent over a decade conducting missionary work in the community.

- She became the Godmother of several children within the community, despite not having any children of her own.

- She changed her name to Marguerite-Marie after surviving a major bout of pneumonia

- Sara died of tuberculosis in 1883 and is buried at the Métis community of Ile-la-crosse, Saskatchewan.

Copied below are a few examples of the historical actors I have incorporated into my Pre-Confederation history survey class. This is usually a 12 week course, so these represent just a few possibilities.  In general, the course is described as: “A survey of the history of Canada from the pre-European contact period until 1867, emphasizing social, cultural, economic, political, constitutional, and external policy developments.”

SELECTED WEEKLY COURSE TOPICS

Week 3: Cultural Encounters and Colonial Projects

READINGS: Interpreting the Past, Section TWO

LECTURE 1 Explorers, Missionaries and Merchants

LECTURE 2 Chief Aenon, Jean de Brébeuf, Marie de l’Incarnation

Week 4: Land and Property

READING: Interpreting the Past, Section THREE

LECTURE 1 Systems of Settlement and Territorial Authority

LECTURE 2 Charles Le Moyne, Jean Ouetenac, Mme. Grandmaison

Week 12: Beyond the Great Lakes

READINGS: Interpreting the Past, Section TWELVE

LECTURE 1 Facing East from “Indian Country”

LECTURE 2 John Palliser, Chief White Cap

Week 13: The Birth of the Métis Nation

READINGS: Interpreting the Past, Section THIRTEEN

LECTURE 1 Métis communities and culture

LECTURE 2 James “Jemmy Joe” Bird, Cuthbert Grant, Sara Riel

16

From Early Canada to Early North America: Why We Stopped Teaching History before the 1860s from a National Perspective

Thomas Peace

Let’s begin with a question: without help from the internet, can you name the person who founded the city of Chicago?

I suspect that for many of our readers, the answer is ‘no’.

“Founders” are not terribly in vogue these days, anyways.

It was, however, the man who founded Chicago that helped me make a profound shift in how I teach Canadian history. Last month, at the Canadian Historical Association’s annual meeting, I presented about this curricular shift, arguing that people like Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, the putative founder of Chicago, help us rethink early North American history, moving us away from national frameworks. The feedback I’ve received since that presentation has been very fruitful and quite diverse, so I’ve decided to post the talk here to continue the conversation.

Bust of Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable, next to the DuSable bridge in downtown Chicago. (Photo by Groov3, Wikimedia Commons)

The life lived by Jean Baptiste Point du Sable has all the necessary components for the pre-Confederation Canadian History survey course. Though we know little about his early life, du Sable was supposedly born to a French sailor and an enslaved woman in the French colony of Saint Domingue around 1745; there is also an argument suggesting he was born in the St. Lawrence Valley. Regardless, he was well educated and, by the time concrete evidence emerges about his life, he was active in the fur trade. It was in that capacity that, during the 1770s, he met and married a Potawatomi woman named Kitihawa according to Potawatomi customs and then, years later, in a Catholic ceremony in Kaskaskia in the Illinois Country. By the 1780s Jean Baptiste and Kitihawa moved to the place known as Eschikagu (“the place of the bad smells”), today known as the north bank of the Chicago river, where they established a trading post, a mill, a smokehouse, and a workshop. The businesses they established brought them considerable wealth. In 1800, with the United States now claiming this place, Point du Sable sold his businesses and moved to French Louisiana. There the French governor commissioned him to operate a ferry across the Missouri River.

Here, in this one man’s life, we have seeds for much of what we teach in the pre-Confederation Canadian History survey course. His birth in French America provides an opportunity to discuss the French Atlantic and the integrated systems of American, African and European slavery. His entry into the fur trade and the relationship he struck with Kitihawa provides for discussions of kinship, gender, trade and religion; while also drawing attention to how – from a Eurocentric perspective – France controlled the two major waterways into the heart of the continent; providing good opportunity to circle back and emphasize that the French settlements at Kaskaskia were located on Cahokia’s fourteenth-century remains. And finally, their establishment at Eschikagu points to the development of infrastructure upon which the eastern settler colonial regime would be built and extend further westward.

I first discovered Jean Baptiste Point du Sable when I translated into English the lyrics to Webster’s song Quebec History X as part of an interview we translated from our partner site HistoireEngagée.ca. Indirectly, both the lyrics and the imagery in the video below call for our profession to change our practice, especially in the classroom.

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/beyondlecture/?p=174

Du Sable points towards one way we might effect this change.

In this man’s biography we have an opportunity to teach North American history without the constraints of more recent national frames, allocating more appropriate attention to North American, African and European influence.

Without taking this broader perspective, important histories like Jean Baptiste Point du Sable’s are lost. For me, as a professor of Canadian history, it is hard to incorporate du Sable’s story into the pre-Confederation Canadian History survey course. Yes, it allows me to address many important themes; but, if emphasized too strongly, his life story prevents discussion about the people and places that shaped Canada itself. Du Sable’s biography is only indirectly a Canadian one.

This is a problem that I have increasingly confronted in my teaching. As someone whose research is defined neither by colonial nor later national borders, teaching the pre-Confederation part of the survey has proven difficult. Borders, even between colonies, were relatively fluid for many of the people I study; they moved back and forth often and, for most of the Indigenous nations I focus upon, colonial and national borders sliced (and continue to slice) right through their homelands. Borders matter; but the lives of the people who crossed them (or whose lives were crossed by them) cannot be understood by focusing solely on one side or the other.

At Huron, I wasn’t alone in these feelings. Our Americanist, Nina Reid-Maroney, researches slavery and freedom in the lower Great Lakes. For the past decade, her American History survey course uses London and Chatham Ontario’s connections to the Underground Railroad as an entry point into nineteenth-century American history.

So here we were. At Huron, if you took the Canadian History survey course, you’d get a dose of American history; if you took the American History survey course, you’d get a dose of Canadian history. The reality is, of course, that for much of the period covered by these courses, you can’t teach Indigenous, Black, or settler colonial histories well within a national frame. You have to adopt a continental perspective.

Wishing to move beyond the bordered implications of nationally-focused histories, we developed HIS 2710F/G: Red, White, Black, et Blanc: North America to the 1860s and changed our program requirements from requiring competency in three of four geographic areas: Canada, the United States, Europe and Global history to two of three areas: North America, Europe and Global history.

HIS 2710 is structured around an annual field school to Oberlin College in Ohio. Initially developed in Prof. Reid-Maroney’s slavery and freedom courses, this year we expanded the trip to focus more broadly on the Lake Erie borderlands, stopping at Wyandot Nation of Anderdon, to think about how peoples like the Wyandot navigated the comings and goings of imperial jurisdiction; we also added an assigned reading about French settlers along the Detroit River. The purpose of the trip, and the course more broadly, is to challenge students to think about the diverse meanings this space has for the peoples living along these waterways.

Though significant for our program at Huron, these changes to our curriculum are not that innovative.

In my last post on Active History, I went through all the first and second year course offerings available in English-language Canadian universities. Many history departments take an approach like the one we have adopted, moving beyond a national frame. Memorial, Saint Mary’s, Mount Alison, Bishop’s, Laurier and Brock all offer a similar course at the first-year level (Daniel Samson and I had a good Twitter exchange about this, you can read it here & here); Ottawa, Waterloo, and Laurentian offer similar courses at the second year.

More common are continental surveys of specific populations: Five schools teach Indigenous history from a continental perspective; a smattering of other courses are offered in women’s history, gender & sexuality, childhood and business. In total there are about 36 courses on the books in Canada that frame their perspective continentally, while there are 231 with Canada as the centre of attention.

What makes our decision innovative and, I think worth discussing, is that because we are small (a department of five) we have replaced the early nationally focused survey courses with this continental course. We haven’t just added, but we have taken away. Though, of course, there may be history departments that have also moved away from teaching the survey course in their practice, all history programs have some iteration of the Canadian History survey course on their books. Usually, but not always, these courses are broken down into pre- and post-Confederation (though there is surprising variety in the start/end dates and some schools, like the University of Ottawa, offer a suite of three or four courses divided chronologically).

In making this change, what we have done, or perhaps better put, are trying to do, is indicate to our students that there are other ways of thinking about this time and space. What happened before 1867 is important for understanding Confederation and what has happened since; it need not, however, be taught from within that frame. The life of Jean Baptiste Point du Sable demonstrates well that we can cover similar ground, preparing our students for more nation-state-focused courses in their future (such as U.S. post-Civil War and post-Confederation Canadian history), while also introducing them to the complex North American worlds of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early-nineteenth centuries (many of which persist into the present). In other words, by decoupling this period from its defacto association with the nation-state, we are teaching our students to think like historians, assessing the past on its own terms.

It is from this perspective, that I want to end with another reason it is important to make this change in how we teach Canada’s past: nationally-focused histories can be offensive and alienating to our students. Though many of us try to prevent such consequences when we teach Canadian history, such challenges are hard to avoid when the nation-state remains the focal point, especially in the periods before the American and Canadian nation-states were created. With the dawning American and Canadian state as the inevitable ending point for this type of course, the content inevitably gravitates towards those white wealthy men who brought their British colonies together, leaving out the many crucial histories (and alternative geopolitical visions) that often defined this earlier period; the memories and legacies of which continue to shape our present-day social and political context.

When you try to balance this out by better representing women, Black, Francophone and Indigenous histories, the scope of this type of course inevitably expands beyond national borders and frameworks. Boundaries become blurred. It is time for a different perspective.

17

I’ll Stay in Canada? Frameworks for Teaching Environmental History

Claire Campbell

That brings me to the Americans! There’s another reason for not wanting to leave Canada for England. I’d hate to be so far away from the United States. You see, with us it’s second nature, part of our lives, to be near them. … we admire the Americans for the way they shovel up mountains and shift river-courses and throw the map all round the place.

Stephen Leacock, “I’ll Stay in Canada” (1936)

A little while ago, NiCHE editor Dan Macfarlane (evidently still respecting the 140-character limit) tweeted,

Expat crowdsourcing at its finest.

Dan was asking, I think, with a view to whether we needed North American environmental history texts; but the field is now robust and varied enough to ask: What (or how, or where) are we teaching? Does it work?

I’ve talked elsewhere about the experience of teachingtoAmerican students; it doesn’t make teaching about Canada any easier, but as Stephen Leacock suggests, the necessary continentalism is probably a better way of seeing environmental realities. Plus, there are institutional logistics to contend with. National narratives still predominate in departmental offerings and in student preference (drawn as they are by the familiar; more on that in a minute). In the U.S. (or elsewhere) you’ll probably have to, as other Canadianists in the U.S. have pointed out, “be prepared to place Canada in a wider context in your teaching.”

When I came to Bucknell, for example, I felt some pressure to include the nearby Susquehanna River, as well as some skepticism that any more than one class on Canada could attract students (I know). Meanwhile, an American Environmental History class already on the books was being taught by the much-more-capable Andrew Stuhl, newly hired into Environmental Studies. So I designed a class in North American Environmental History, themed to rivers, which I thought was a terribly wily strategy. I’d supply Canadian examples for each week’s theme (e.g. harvest: the Kaministiquia, the North Saskatchewan; settlement: the St. Lawrence; disaster: the Red River [of the north]); work comparative American content in through readings (in-class prep!); and assign the students American rivers for their research projects. Teach to your strengths, learn a bit as you go, and, you know, fake the rest.

Looking North Or Up The Kaministiquia River From a sketch by our special Artist, Canadian Illustrated News (1870), Toronto Public Library.

That worked well enough from an operational point of view, except – my hydrologicalheart is elsewhere. I got much more excited about a seminar on islands and coastlines because I was just starting a new project on the Atlantic coast.

Institutional logistics, intellectual fickleness, and other vicissitudes aside, what are the best ways to organize undergraduate classes in environmental history? Our problem tends to be that there is an environmental read of almost anything. What have we been doing? What else what could we be doing? Do any of these resonate?

- National History Plus. The rise (or fall) of the nation-state through an environmental lens or expressed through environmental change. Easily the safest way to introduce environmental history to undergraduates. I taught a class at McGill that probably looks pretty familiar:

In this class we will see how indigenous peoples, explorers, settlers, and urban Canadians have understood and used nature since the fifteenth century; how different spaces have been gradually folded into national borders; how critical events in Canada’s history shaped, and were shaped by, geographical factors and territorial considerations. At the same time, we will discuss the origins of some of the most significant issues in Canadian political life. Questions of rights, identity, and empowerment have always been closely tied to claims of territory and resources in this country.

This would vary widely by region (not to mention the cultural landscape of French Canada), but there’s still a pull toward the prevailing national story, if only because that’s what’s most familiar. In my Eighteenth-Century North America class, for example, students have to research some element of climate in the 1770s and 1780s – and they all chose something about the Continental Army.

Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the … we know (1851)

Are you enhancing that narrative, explaining it, or merely submitting to it?

- Transnational History Plus. This one may skew a bit more thematically (connect, compare, and contrast on indigenous peoples, colonization, industrialization, environmentalism, etc.), but you’re basically dealing with the same actors. Unless, of course, by “transnational” you mean First Nations, which really does change the frame, and would be a wonderful step forward.

- Environmental History by Natural/Non-Human Feature*: e.g. rivers, coastlines, mountains, glaciers, maybe climate. Maybe the non-human biota, too: North America as seen through beavers or bears (“dans le Canada, pays couvert de neige et de glaces huit mois de l’année, habité par des barbares, des ours et des castors,” as Voltaire sneered in 1753).

- Environmental History by Human Feature*: e.g. cities, national parks. I suspect these are also pretty popular with students because, again, they are recognizable places.
*Yes, we know these are really hybrid spaces, false dichotomies, etc. You need something your faculty curriculum committee is going to understand.

- Environmental History by Regional/Transnational Feature: e.g. Great Lakes, Great Plains (and picking up Dan’s question, the circumpolar north). This one depends on proximity. I can just get away with “islands and coastlines” in central Pennsylvania but only because most of our students come from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

- Environmental History by Resource, Use, or Industry: e.g. energy, pelts, commodities, tourism (I’d do “the white pine” if only for the Log Driver’s Waltz). This would be good for discussing the dynamics of imperialism and capitalism, but it also reifies the taxonomies that have proven so problematic to ecological thinking.

- Environmental History by Method or Source Material. Probably better for upper-year or senior classes, and if your university is lucky enough to hold a great collection of primary sources (although God bless the Internet and archivists for this, as well). Another version of this would be environmental history as seen through a genre of materials: films, novels, or maps. Environmental history through Can/lit would be just as bleak as ever, but maybe a bit more interesting. A history of environmental change through art could also be eye-opening; think of how much you could get out of:

Pierre Desceliers, Mappe Mundi (1550), detail. Note the unicorn.

J.J. Barralet, America Guided by Wisdom (1820)

Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm–The Oxbow (1836). Dear God, am I turning into an American?

- Environmental History by Period. Most of these frameworks so far are by geography. What about history through a biography, a generation (think of the transformations in, say, my grandmother’s lifetime, 1915-1988)? A season (like winter), an event, an epoch? We are seeing classes on the Anthropocene. Or a series of the most influential individual years in environmental history? Or a way of thinking about the past: environmental history as a series of anticipated futures, or as nostalgias?

West Virginia, Washington Post photo by Michael S. Williamson (9 July 2017)

- Environmental History as Action: successful or disastrous human interventions. That could be a mix of long-term screw-ups (dams) and restorations/rewildings/rebalances. It would also be a good way of countering the declensionist despair so many of us our students wind up with. It’s one reason my students like Richard Judd’s Second Nature so much.

- Environmental History as Something Else: environmental justice, public health, technology, capitalism, science.

Ultimately, I suspect most of our teaching use bits of all of these. Other considerations at work: what kind of background will students have (if any)? What are you actually interested in, thinking about, and how quickly can you update the class to keep up with your own roving mind?

So what should I do next year when I teach North American Environmental History again?

What are you doing?

18

Colonial Canada: Making the Familiar Dis/Comfortingly Strange

Daniel Samson

Carte de l’Isle Royale, Nicholas Bellin 1744, updating Jacques L’Hermite, 1717, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

In my introductory colonial Canadian survey course, students sometimes complain that I spend “all” of my time on Nova Scotia. That’s not actually true, but I understand their point. It may be true that I talk about Nova Scotia more than others might, but for the most part I follow the broad conventions of the story and spend much of the course discussing rebellions, state and cultural formation, and Indigenous dimensions of the colonial world – and the literature (and most textbooks) mean that that is primarily a story of the Canadas, with asides on Maritime and western stories. But Nova Scotia’s older different history allows me to stray from those broad conventions, and thus it’s a good example of the problem I want to discuss here. Nova Scotia illustrates well the messy religious, ethnic, national, and imperial complexities of the early modern North Atlantic: the land of Mi’kma’ki, their sometimes uneasy co-existence with French Acadian settlers, the Wabanaki federation and its contestation of Northern New England, the first plural moment of Acadian-Mi’kmaw populations occupied by British colonial troops, of a global war that expelled the French population and brought in New Englanders and Germans, of Mi’kmaw representatives at Niagara, of a globe-shattering revolution that saw local republicans thwarted and “Loyalists” (white and black, plus their human property) instated, of trade routes that linked Nova Scotia ships, George’s Bank fish, Caribbean sugar and rum, and enslaved African bodies. The story may be centred in Nova Scotia, but it extends to the corners of the Atlantic World, its peoples’ worldviews astonishingly broad.

The course is called “Colonial Canada”; it’s half of what we routinely refer to as “the Canadian survey”. That name is part of the problem we face. Following the transnational impulse, we can critique the notion of Canada as a suitable framing for the messy and broad-ranging subject at hand. As I suggest above, I get that. Even looking only at my tiny little corner, the spillovers are enormous, and in an introductory course much mopping needs to be done. Most of that stems from the fact that the assumed place of Nova Scotia emerged from a colonial past where the lines (spatial, political, affective) were blurry to begin with and then redrawn, and redrawn, again and again. These imagined – “fictive” in Jeffers Lennox’s terminology – lines sharply delineate, but they also obscure older stories.

What then is the relationship between the people and places we study and the place we now call Canada? We can pause on what (and when) was “colonial” Canada? Though problematic, it’s far better than “Pre-Confederation”, which is confusing even within the political boundaries of Canada. As a time period – and thus as a conceptual framework – it still offers innumerable ambiguities: does “colonial” end in 1848? 1867? 1870? 1885? 1905? 1931? 1939? 1949? Or has it even ended? And just what do we mean by “colonial”? Is it Arthur Lower’s “colonial” – the one on the path to “the nation”? Or it is one espoused by Indigenous activists and post-colonial theorists – one that sees continental theft and genocide at its core? Or is it a complex bundle of both that needs careful exposition? I would maintain the latter – that it needs to be all of these things. But how do we do this?

In teaching about Canada, I want my students to see something that is both familiar and strange – something they recognise as their country, but often in ways that they had not previously imagined. In the colonial survey, I often begin with the map on our header, Nicolas Bellin’s 1744 map of Isle Royale (Cape Breton/U’nama’kik). It looks like Cape Breton, but it also introduces us to this strange island off the coast of Acadie/Mi’kmaki/Nova Scotia (in 1744, it was very much all three of these!). In this one image, we see the familiar (the simple outline of what is normally today called Cape Breton), places we’re coming to know (like that fortress along the coast named for the French king), and places we can’t see any more like Port Toulouse/Quescouminigan, Moulagash, and le grand lac Bideauboch “rectifee … sur l’orginal des sauvages”.

Detail from Carte de l’Isle Royale, Nicholas Bellin 1744, updating Jacques L’Hermite, 1717, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Seeing the familiar de-familiarised – place-names whose connection to other histories have been over-written – helps us to think about the multiple stories embedded in places we once imagined in simple and linear Eurocentric manners. Those older histories sometimes acknowledged Indigenous presences, but most often as foils for our advancing greatness: those “Indians” were here in their rude state, but we came and gave them order, and history. There were some messy bumps caused by the French – enough to add some adventure to an otherwise admirable but dull tale of exported British constitutionalism – but here we are: secure liberal-capitalists with universal healthcare.

My own teaching has been very much influenced by post-colonial writers, particularly Dipesh Chakrabarty. His work on Bengal workers took me beyond Thompsonian class cultures to the inability of Western/liberal national histories to convey subaltern stories. Though the subaltern people I was studying bore a very different relationship to colonialism, I recall well the revelation his work offered me in understanding that not only was the British colonial state exploiting the miserable Highland immigrants and Acadians I was examining, but also that historians, even good leftist historians sympathetic to the condition of the oppressed, were condemning them to a history that could seldom comprehend their difference. The condition – be that cultural, economic, political – of Bengali peasant-workers was not the same as that of Catholic Highland settlers nor that of Mi’kmaw villagers, but they shared dimensions of a relationship to power and a place in a universalising history of progress and improvement. They were “other”, and their history – their motive to action – was incomprehensible in the western liberal imagination. In this sense, we also need what Chakrabarty calls affective histories – distinctly pre-national histories of disparate peoples and their humanity emerging from and in different contexts. Chakrabarty taught me that bridging material and affective histories offered a sense of patterned differences.

So, should we also remain attentive to the local and national frames? Yes, because (a) those frameworks remained powerful in refashioning subaltern lives, and (b) our students need to understand their country’s place in that broader story. And I think the importance of the particularity of colonial history has become ever more significant in the past three years. Godwin’s law says that all political internet conversations eventually arrive at Hitler. In Canada, in 2018, we arrive at Trump, Ford, and the clear sense that a many of our fellow citizens don’t see the reasons our democracy is different (if also very similar!) than the republics of America and France, don’t know, or care, why the Cree, the Mi’kmaq and the Metis matter, nor the 18th-century constitutional framing of states, don’t acknowledge the fraught immigration history of the country, the powerful role of civil society in building institutions and relations that support the common weal, no longer see the benefit of the welfare state, nor the struggles and accommodations that have allowed us to become a pluralist democracy, and much, much more. That means that for all our deep-seated troubles – for all the very real imbalances of wealth and power, the still reduced place of women in families and seats of power, and the very real nativist, antiqueer, and racist forces that emerge on an everyday basis – that we have institutions and ideals that remain worth fighting to protect – and to improve. As historians, the best way we can do that is to also remain attentive to the basic political and social questions that have defined our national history and to understand that the broad trans-Atlantic movement of goods and people, free and unfree, conquerors and the conquered, and to see ourselves as products of that massively complex tale.

To teach those layers, those dimensions, of historical background, we need to avoid the ahistorical traps fostered by of our nation state – the kind of complacent neo-Whig history espoused by figures as different as Jason Kenney and John Ralston Saul. But to understand our profound connectedness to that past, to fully understand how colonialism produced our current position, Canadian students need to see that their lives – their Canadian lives – are implicated in the story of settler colonialism, that the peculiar continued presence of French nations is the product of a century and a half of French colonialism and then two and a half centuries of national struggle, that the legacy of Highlanders is much more interesting than the increasingly curious spectacle of kilts and caber-tossing. And so on.

Canadian students need to understand affective difference and the historical development of their own state; they need to see that people like them, people in whom they can see themselves, made Canada. Assuming that high schools teach such a history will fail our students. I can’t speak for all of Ontario, much less the country, but Canadian history is barely taught in Niagara high schools. We should, as university-based academics, be working to encourage a stronger place for Canadian history in our high schools. But in the era of STEM, and Ford, it’s hard to be optimistic about much changing – witness the recent cancellation of efforts to rewrite the Indigenous high-school curriculum – and if it does change one fears little more than a sad re-hashing of 1812 and Vimy Ridge. There are fine history teachers out there doing great work, but their role is diminished year-by-year. Every autumn in my colonial history course I get 150 to 200 second-year students. Most of them are Education students, most of them destined to teach in Niagara high schools. It is highly likely that this is the only opportunity they will have to explore the colonial world. I think it’s crucial that they be given a chance to connect that messy colonial history to the society their students will inherit.

19

The Historical is Personal: Learning and Teaching Traumatic Histories

Andrea Eidinger

Learning and teaching history is hard work. The physical, mental, and emotional toll can be high, for both educators and learners. This is especially the case when it comes to traumatic histories. For educators, it is difficult to balance the desire to make an emotional impact on your students without inflicting (further) trauma. For learners, it is difficult to balance curiosity with respect. We are often implored to “never forget,” but we seldom take a moment to talk about what and how we are supposed to remember.

All of us come to the field of history from different backgrounds, and the ways in which we interact with history as educators and learners are shaped by these early experiences. But, with certain exceptions, it remains rare for anyone to talk about this, especially when it comes to teaching. So in this blog post, I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about my personal experiences learning and teaching about traumatic histories and specifically how my experiences as a Jewish-Canadian woman who was taught about the Holocaust as a child shaped my approach to teaching first-year university students about residential schools.

I was born and raised on the island of Montreal, the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka people, which was also a place of meeting and exchange for many nations. My family lived in the city of Côte Saint-Luc, an Anglophone enclave and home to the largest Jewish population on the island. My ancestors came from Russia, Poland, and Austria, and landed in North America between the 1890s and 1910s. At the time of my birth, I was the third generation of my family born in Canada.

I had been fascinated by history for as long as I can remember, though I often found myself wondering why none of my textbooks talked about Jewish people. This is why I was initially (somewhat) enthusiastic when my parents enrolled me in a Jewish Studies program in elementary school. My enthusiasm was cut short when my teachers introduced the subject of the Holocaust in grade three. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that day remains vivid in my memory. Here is a brief summary of what I learned:

Once upon a time there was an evil man in Germany named Hitler. He didn’t like Jews, and neither did the German people. So, he decided that all of the Jews needed to be killed. He sent them to these places called “concentration camps.” When people got to the camps, the girls and boys were separated, and the guards took all their belongings. In groups, the girls and boys were told to go and take showers. They entered into the showers, expecting to wash, but that’s not what happened. Instead of water, gas came out of the showerheads. This was poisonous gas, and the people in the showers started to suffocate. They tried to use their fingernails to scratch through the doors. If you visit the showers today, you can still see the marks the people made with their nails. Once all the people were dead, other people would come to get them. The bodies would be dragged out of the shower and then put into ovens until they turned to ash.

It will perhaps come as no surprise to learn that I refused to use the shower for months afterwards and was plagued by regular nightmares for years. To this day, I still can’t watch images of the Holocaust when they are broadcast on television or on film. If I accidentally glimpse them I tend to burst into tears or have trouble falling asleep afterwards. I still feel uncomfortable in the shower sometimes. And I can’t even imagine how much worse it would be if I had family members who experienced the Holocaust

These experiences played a very important role in how I’ve taught traumatic historical events as an educator. For the purposes of this blog post, however, I am going to focus specifically on the subject of residential schools. Active History has published a number of excellent pieces on the topic of Indigenization and decolonization in the academy and in the classroom and the work that settler-Canadians need to do to challenge settler colonialism, so rather that repeat what others have written, I would encourage you to read those previous articles. While I was teaching (mostly) young adults rather than children, I did not want any of my students, particularly my Indigenous students, to go through what I did. But I  also wanted to make sure that what I said would have an emotional impact, and would make my students feel uncomfortable.. I felt that it was especially important to do this in a proper and respectful fashion, using only sources created by Indigenous authors. Surely that wasn’t so unreasonable…

Another inspiration behind my approach came from an encounter that I had, when I was about sixteen, with an actual Holocaust survivor. Mr. L. was my neighbour’s grandfather, and he often drove us to school together.[i] One day, while waiting for my neighbour, he introduced me to a group of his friends, explaining that they, like him were Holocaust survivors. All of the men were so kind and genuinely happy to meet me and hear about my accomplishments. I don’t know if it’s something I concluded later, or if Mr. L mentioned it to me, but what I remember most about this encounter is that it seemed so important to these men to see a smart little Jewish girl who had every opportunity to succeed and do whatever she wanted with her life. I represented something that many Holocaust survivors never thought they would see: hope for the future. In many ways, I was a tangible reminder that their suffering and survival had not been in vain.

Screenshot of NFB website for “We Were Children,” taken by author”

I took this lesson to heart during my research. I wanted to teach residential school history in a way that was meaningful and emotional, but not hurtful; from a place of hope, not fear. I finally found my solution with the film, “We Were Children.”[ii]This film centres on the testimony of two residential school survivors, Lyna Hart (Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation) and Glen Anaquod (Muscowpetung First Nation), featuring their testimony alongside dramatic recreations of specific events.[iii] While it does not shy away from portraying the realities of residential schools, the focus of the film is on healing and resilience.

While I cannot recommend this film highly enough, what sets it apart, at least for me, is the accompanying educational guide, developed by the NFB and Barbara Frazer, an Indigenous educator with the Legacy of Hope Foundation (LHF).[iv] The full guide takes about 2.5 hours to complete, though it is easy to adapt to any type of classroom setting. But there are two activities that I believe are essential: the opening activity on framing resilience and the Gift of Silence activity. The first activity invites students and teachers, to reflect upon their own life experiences and share, through the use of anonymous post-it notes, traumatic events that have shaped their lives, with a particular emphasis on how these events were overcome. The ensuing discussion highlights the importance of support networks, resilience strategies, and coping mechanisms, and is designed to illustrate how many of these were taken away from students in residential schools. The second activity, the Gift of Silence, is a four-minute pause where students are invited to reflect upon the importance of silence within an Indigenous cultural context.

Screenshot of facilitator’s guide taken by author.

I have facilitated these activities with my students twice now, and each time has been among the most profound educational experiences of my life.[v] Each time, the candor with which the students engaged in the Resilience activity, was remarkable. Many felt empowered to share stories of addiction, family violence, relationships, and conflicts. Our discussions, both before and after the film were compassionate, complex, and respectful. My students emphasized that the personal nature of the stories in “We Were Children,” the Resilience activity, and the Gift of Silence made them see the history of residential schools in a new light, to see that this history was real and immediate. And most importantly at all, at least for me, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students were able to articulate the contemporary legacy of residential schools, and to consider the roles of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in reconciliation.

Most of us are familiar with the phrase, “the personal is historical.” However, I think the opposite is also true, that the historical is personal. Moving forward, it is my hope that more historians will talk about their personal relationship to history (whether as researchers or educators), and to engage in honest discussions about our approaches, successes, and failures.

[i] Name withheld to protect privacy.

[ii] The film is also available in French, under the title of “Nous n’étions que des enfants…”

[iii] “We Were Children,” APTN Reel Insights. I’m sad to say that both Hart and Anaquod have since passed on.

[iv] Unfortunately, this guide is currently only available to individuals or institutions who are subscribed to the NFB Campus service.

[v] A quick pedagogical note: Ensuring that my classroom is a safe space is central to my pedagogy. I show the film on the final day of class, once I had established a good relationship with my students. I announced the film screening and activities in a previous class as a trigger warning. I also made a point of speaking personally with all of the Indigenous students in my class to discuss their feelings about watching the film and, if they chose, to develop an exit plan for them if necessary. I also make available a list of support services available for students, and hold extra office hours for any students who want to speak to me about the film. I should note here that my classes were capped at 35 people, so by the end of the semester if and when I teach in a larger classroom setting, I will likely need to reassess my strategies

20

Teaching Sexual Violence in History

Sanchia deSouza, Joel Dickau, Edward Dunsworth, William Fysh, Benjamin Lukas, Kari North, Maris Rowe-Mcculloch, Lindsay C. Sidders, Hana Suckstorff, Nathaniel Thomas, Erica Toffoli, and Spirit-Rose Waite.

Left, Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna and the Elders, 1610. Right, Kathleen Gilje, Susanna and the Elders, Restored, 1998.

As movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp direct renewed and broadened attention to sexual violence and harassment, many sectors of society (especially workplaces) are being forced to reckon with and critically assess these forms of violence. This cultural shift has been most visible in the entertainment industry, politics, and the service sector, and has manifested in moments of both cacophony (the Women’s March) and whisper (“Sexual Harassment in the Academy” list). It has also illuminated the unequal ways that attention is paid to survivors (and alleged perpetrators) of different economic circumstances, racialized statuses, genders and sexualities, and abilities.

For a new generation of historians, this moment has prompted critical reflection beyond our contemporary workplaces to the object of our studies: the past. How should we, as historians and teachers, grapple with sexual violence in the past – in both our classrooms and our research projects – and how should we assess the intersection between historical inequities and sexual violence in the present?

To this end, a group of graduate students at the University of Toronto recently organized a five-day workshop entitled Teaching Sexual Violence in History. Over more than ten hours of discussion, debate, critique, and negotiation, grounded in secondary and primary historical sources, the group agreed that a radical transformation of how sexual violence is approached in the classroom is essential.[i]

First, we need to recognize that sexual violence cannot be treated as a purely academic subject, no matter how “distantly” in the past. Both students and teachers enter our classrooms with a wide range of identities and personal histories, including lived experiences of sexual violence. To truly create accommodating classrooms, history teachers must not only commit to a rigorous analysis of historical “perpetrators” and “victims” of sexual violence, but also attend to the real effects of teaching historical sexual violence in a classroom full of students who either are or might become perpetrators, victims – or both – of sexual violence.

This is a very tall order that requires a deep commitment to acknowledging the historical exclusions, systemic power dynamics, and economic and institutional barriers that make our classrooms safe and comfortable for certain students to the detriment and discomfort of the historically marginalized (women, racialized persons, the queer community, persons with disabilities, and older persons).

The discipline of history has tended to concern itself with such concepts as “critical distance” and “rational discourse.” One unfortunate result of this is that, very often, the historian teaching episodes of sexual violence pays more attention to their historical subjects than to the vulnerable people (by nature of the classroom dynamic) that sit before them.

Our discussion of the readings and our own classroom experiences revealed that the gap between historical analysis and empathy can be cavernous. Emotions and feelings – those of our subjects (often only accessible by reading “between the lines” or “against the grain”), and most crucially, of our students – must be a source of knowledge going forward.

Our discipline needs a reformed vision: history must meet empathy.

History teachers must be assertive in addressing the barriers to teaching sexual violence and in meeting the goal of generating accessible classrooms. Teachers must be sensitive to students’ diverse experiences and yet still investigate the prevalence of sexual violence throughout history with our characteristic disciplinary rigour. We must admit that our traditional pedagogical credo to investigate the past from a “critical distance” has allowed for the further dehumanization of the historical subjects under study who experienced sexual violence. This distanced and dehumanizing treatment can extend to, and adversely affect, our students as the present-day survivors of sexual violence and as those who have inherited under-acknowledged and often unredressed legacies of historical violence. Therefore, we must act resolutely to re-structure the classroom to accommodate students – and instructors – with experiences of trauma.

Some of the barriers to these goals emerge from the structure of our curricula, classrooms, and institutions. For example, instructors (at any level), despite interacting with students on daily basis, typically receive no training that prepares them for dealing with trauma in the classroom, a crucial consideration for handling a topic like sexual violence.[ii] This lack of training leaves instructors unprepared for, and potentially in a position to do further harm to, students experiencing trauma in the classroom.

Other barriers are societal: the apparent growth of “men’s rights” and “free speech” advocacy on university campuses—trends that find their way into lecture halls and seminar rooms—pose particular problems for teaching assistants and instructors who are women, racialized, queer, differently abled, or otherwise marginalized.

We need to be open minded but firm in our approaches to dissolving these barriers; the solution to these problems is absolutely not to remove sexual violence or other difficult materials from our courses. On the contrary, this vital subject deserves serious historical analysis. But sexual violence must not be treated as “just another topic.” In too many history courses, sources containing graphic descriptions of sexual violence simply appear in readings with no advance warning given to students, nor advance instruction on how to approach this topic.[iii]

When we treat sexual violence as simply an omnipresent “part of history,” it hampers students’ ability to question why these events occurred in specific times and places, including the present. There is a danger of assuming an innate human tendency to commit sexual violence, instead of understanding the phenomenon within its social, cultural, and political contexts. One consistent justification for sexual violence in history is the naturalization of unrestrainable masculine desire, a harmful assumption that occludes the social factors that make sexual violence so prevalent and erases the experiences of men as survivors of sexual violence. By situating sexual violence in its specific historical context, we can begin to see that there is not one overarching biological imperative that excuses this kind of violence. Instead, sexual violence is dependent on societal factors that perpetuate unequal power relations. It is incumbent upon historians to do this work—it is not only about advocacy in our own time; it is also about doing more diligent work to shed light on the lived experiences of historical people.

Attention to the issues outlined above is long overdue. The university is intended to be a place of innovation and community. As historians and members of this community, we need to commit ourselves to finding solutions to the difficulties of teaching sexual violence, and to creating a community that is more inclusive and therefore more creative, original, and inspired.

For more information see the syllabus and expanded bibliography for the workshop.

[i] We wish to acknowledge the land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

Additionally, this series would not have been possible without the generous support of the Intellectual Community Fund through the Department of History (University of Toronto), the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (CRRS) at Victoria University, and the Graduate History Society in the Department of History (University of Toronto). Special thanks to: Alison Grossman, for help with editing; Kaitlyn Carter, and Zixian Liu, for their engaged participation; to the Department of History Chair, Prof. Nicholas Terpstra, for his very early support of this workshop premise; the patient administrative staff of the Department of History; and the staff of the Innis College Café. Finally, Prof. Lara Putnam at the University of Pittsburgh gave us permission to work with her unpublished conference paper and encouraged this workshop. We thank you.

Different versions of this piece have appeared in U of T’s History Department newsletter, and on the White Ribbon blog.

[ii] At the University of Toronto, TAs get four hours of paid training. This training is meant to be cover all aspects of teaching (such as leading tutorials, marking, etc.); however, both the amount of paid training and types of training workshops are limited (at present, there are none that address trauma). The Teaching Assistants’ Training Program (TATP) on campus has a Guide Supporting Students in Distress but it does not address issues of sexual violence specifically.

Additionally, while sexual violence and harassment on and around University campuses is discussed extensively by the Canadian Association of University Teachers and Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, the same literature does not exist on handling trauma in the university classroom nor on teaching topics which could trigger trauma.

If confronted with a disclosure or experience of sexual violence at their university or workplace, readers are encouraged to consult resources and services at that institution. At U of T, available supports include: the Sexual Violence Prevention and Support Centre; Health & Well-Being; and CUPE3902’s new sexual violence paid leave, available to Unit 1 (graduate student teaching staff). For Ontario residents, this website contains information about a number of hotlines related to sexual and domestic violence.

[iii] If unable to access the link: Corrine C. Bertram and M. Sue Crowley, “Teaching about Sexual Violence in Higher Education: Moving from Concern to Conscious Resistance,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 33, no. 1 (2012): 63-82.

21

Imagining a Better Future: An Introduction to Teaching and Learning about Settler Colonialism in Canada

Andrea Eidinger and Sarah York-Bertram

“If you come here to help me, you’re wasting your time. If you come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” – Lilla Watson

We wish to acknowledge that this blog post would not have been possible without the work of Indigenous scholars, many of whom are listed below, who have been researching and writing in this field for decades. We are deeply indebted to them for their generosity and patience.

Like so many others, both Sarah and Andrea have been appalled, angered, and outraged by the Stanley decision, as well as the way in which so many people are in denial about anti-Indigenous racism in this country.  While we are heartened to see all of the great discussions online, we are alarmed to see that many individuals do not know or understand how settler colonialism has shaped the history and present of this place we now call Canada. As settlers, scholars, and historians, we believe that it is our responsibility to help rectify this situation. We also believe that we need to keep these conversations going, beyond the Stanley decision, and that they should be an integral part of the teaching and learning of history in this country. Further, we believe that it is important that we continually and actively fight against racism in all its forms. Anti-racism is an active approach to unpacking, accounting for, and dismantling systemic racism. It’s not about simply abstaining from being racist, it’s about doing what’s necessary to build an equitable, de-colonial culture and society that all humans can thrive in. What follows are guidelines, resources, and frequently asked questions that are informed by anti-racist and decolonial approaches to teaching about settler colonialism in Canada. This blog post istargeted specifically towards educators who want to increase their knowledge of the subject as well as integrate it into their teaching practice. However, it is our hope that this guide will also be of use to any individual who is interested in helping to imagine a better future for us all.

A Quick Word on the Meaning of the Term “Settler”

A lot of people in Canada take offence to being called “settlers” even though the term is not derogatory. Being a settler means that you are non-Indigenous and that you or your ancestors came and settled in a land that had been inhabited by Indigenous people (think: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc.). However, it is important to recognize that while the term is not derogatory, it can often be very difficult to hear. Many people, particularly when first learning about the subject of settler colonialism, have strong and negative reactions to it. Andrea recalls yelling at the person who first called her a settler (thankfully Emma forgave me!), and Sarah recalls feeling like the rug had been ripped out from under her.  Most of us like to think that we are good people, and being told that we’re complicit in a colonial project can be emotionally wrenching. So we would like to encourage those who are interested in learning about this subject to make space for their feelings, recognizing them without judgement, and, whenever possible, to extend the same consideration to others. This is not to suggest that racist behaviour is acceptable under any circumstances, but, rather, that each person is on their own journey. We embrace the philosophy of love as political resistance whenever possible. However, part of this radical love is being open to learning and growing, even when it is painful.

What is Settler Colonialism?

Simply put, settler colonialismis a term that is used to describe the history and ongoing processes/structures whereby one group of people (settlers) are brought in to replace an existing Indigenous population, usually as part of imperial projects. Settler colonialism can be distinguished from other forms of colonialism by the following characteristics:

1. Settlers intend to permanently occupy, and assert their sovereignty, over Indigenous lands.

2. This invasion is structural rather than a single event, designed to ensure the elimination of Indigenous populations and control of their lands through the imposition of a new governmental/legal system.

3. The goal of settler colonialism is to eliminate colonial difference by eliminating Indigenous peoples, thereby establishing settler right to Indigenous lands.

Though often assumed to be a historical process, settler colonialism as a project is always partial, unfinished, and in-progress. Examples include Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Colonization, settlement, and the creation of nation-states like the ones mentioned above depend upon particular historical narratives that reinforce or justify settler occupation of Indigenous lands. These narratives seek to reinforce the idea that these lands “belong” to settlers and that settlers “belong” on this land.  Therefore, the rewriting of history is a key part of settler colonialism. This often rests on an artificial temporal division that divides a location’s history into two distinct periods: before and after settlement. Central to the “before” time is the idea that the lands in question were either empty or not being used (referred to as the Doctrine of Discovery/Terra Nullius(literally, empty lands). {1}

{1} Chelsea Vowel, Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada(Newburyport: Portage and Main Press, 2017), chapter 26 and Henry Yu, “A Provocation: Anti-Asian Exclusion and the Making and Unmaking of White Supremacy in Canada,” in Dominions of Race: Rethinking Canada’s International History, eds. Laura Madokoro, Francine McKenzie, and David Meren, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017), 25-37.

A (Brief) History of Settler Colonialism in Canada

Most of us are familiar with the traditional narrative. Once upon a time, North America was basically empty of humans. Then some people came across the Bering Land Bridge, and started moving across the continent. We call these people Native Americans. Some of them practiced agriculture, while others were hunter-gatherers. But then, European explorers arrived and “discovered” the New World. The colonists who came were intrepid adventurers, determined to make a new life for themselves through hard work and perseverance. There will often be some mention of Louis Riel after this point. But afterwards, while there are some variations depending on where went to school, Native peoples essentially vanish from the narrative. Aside from a short discussion of Louis Riel, Native peoples essentially vanish from the narrative.

While there are myriad problems with this narrative, the most important part is that it is not accurate. This is the kind of history that results when only sources from settlers are used, and these sources are not interrogated regarding their intentions.

So what really happened? Here’s what we know:

Indigenous peoples have lived on Turtle Island (A.K.A. what settlers call North America) since time immemorial (more on this later). The continent was highly populated, the people culturally & ethnically diverse.It was a diplomatically complex space inhabited by a wide range of Indigenous peoples who had systems of law, trade, and governance. These societies were as complex and sophisticated as other societies at the time.

After contact, the French & British began to send settlers to what is now Canada in order to benefit from its resources. Britain and France had differing approaches to Indigenous relations but when Britain eventually took over in 1763, British law began to develop different categories that reflected their understanding of race. Through the Indian Act, the crown divided inhabitants of Canada into two categories: Indigenous people and non-Indigenous settlers. While Turtle Island prior to contact was as complex and sophisticated as Europe at the time, the Indian Actnegated Indigenous diversity and reduced the people of Turtle Island to the category of “Indian.” By the same mechanism, all non-Indigenous people who came to Canada for economic benefit were settlers.

Some, though not all, Indigenous groups signed Treaties which constituted agreements that Indigenous and non-Indigenous settlers would share the resources of the lands in good faith, that non-Indigenous settlers wouldn’t take more than what they needed, and that the relationships would be respectful. However, this isn’t what happened. Even after making many agreements the crown actively and violently broke its agreements with Indigenous leadership in order to achieve racial  and economic dominance, and to assimilate Indigenous people into British/settler culture.

Expert Tip: A legacy of Canada’s settler colonial history is the ways Canadians continue to pay the royal family money. According to Business Insider, Canada paid the family $20.86 million in 2015, for example. And we’re just ONE of the commonwealth nations who gives them money.

The category “settler” was legally solidified in Canada through the construction of legal binaries developed by the Indian Act. That is, not only does being a settler describe a particular history of migration and economic relationship; in Canada, it’s also an effect of the law.

General Guidelines When Learning about Settler Colonialism

1. Do not act out of guilt, but rather out of a genuine interest in challenging the larger oppressive power structures;
2. Understand that they are secondary to the Indigenous people that they are working with and that they seek to serve. They and their needs must take a back seat;
– Lynn Gehl, “My Ally Bill of Responsibilities.”

Andrea and Sarah have both been learning  and teaching about settler colonialism for several years. The following recommendations are based on our own experiences and a lot of trial and error. We do not wish to present ourselves as experts in this area, nor are these guidelines to be taken as authoritative.

- Accept that you will make mistakes and upset people as you learn.

- Accept that you will be corrected by those more knowledgeable than you. Be gracious, thank your corrector, and apply the correction.

- Do not waste time feeling guilty. This is inherently selfish, and does no good. Act instead.

- Do not burden Indigenous peoples with your feelings. Do not go to them seeking guidance or validation. It is not their job to educate you or make you feel better. Be considerate of the fact that they already carry a heavy burden of emotional labour. Do not add to it.

- Self-educate. Where do you live? Are you on unceded land? Are you on Treaty land? If you’re on Treaty land, that makes you part of the Treaty. Learn what your responsibilities are. If you’re on unceded land, look into why it is unceded, what that means, and how you can act in solidarity with Indigenous people in your area.

- Learn the terminology and use it. Don’t be afraid to practice in regular conversation.

- When writing about Indigenous peoples, comply with the following guidelines from the Journalists for Human Rights’ Indigenous Style Guide.

- Whenever possible, always be specific about the group, people, community, or nation you are referring to.

- Defer to the community or individual(s)’ preferences on being identified.

- Otherwise, use the correct Indigenous terms for groups, communities, and nations ( or example, Kanien’kehá:ka rather than Mohawk).

- Avoid saying things like:

- Canada’s Indigenous Peoples

- Indigenous Canadians

- Native Canadians

- In general, include an Indigenous person’s nation or community in their name. For example, Frank Calder (Nisga’a) rather than just Frank Calder.

- Learn how to properly pronounce Indigenous words and phrases (Youtube can be very helpful for this).

Guidelines and Recommendations for Teaching about Settler Colonialism

The same caveats apply here.

- Allow your Indigenous students to opt-out. Not only are they constantly bombarded with this information on a regular basis, but they do not need to be put in a position of teaching their peers about their historic and continued oppression. Keep in mind also that many subjects that are discussed in history classes have personal meaning for many Indigenous students, so it’s a good idea to give them a head’s up about when you will be discussing these topics (like residential schools or the Numbered Treaties), and give them permission to miss class if they want.

- Avoid turning class discussions into “both sides” debates (especially role-playing court cases). These debates tend to alienate Indigenous students and re-perpetuate the impacts of settler colonialism.

- Some good discussion ground rules that are frequently used in similar contexts include:

- 1. Listen actively — respect others when they are talking.

- 2. Speak from your own experience instead of generalizing (“I” instead of “they,” “we,” and “you”).

- 3. Do not be afraid to respectfully challenge one another by asking questions, but refrain from personal attacks — focus on ideas.

- 4. Participate to the fullest of your ability — community growth depends on the inclusion of every individual voice.

- 5. The goal is not to agree — it is to gain a deeper understanding. {2}

- It often helps to include some kind of warning at the beginning of the lecture, particularly if you come from a marginalized group. For instance here is the one that Andrea uses:

- You are free to disagree with my comments in this lecture.

- This lecture is informed by the common consensus among Canadian historians with respect to the history of colonialism in Canada

- Particularly since the publication of the TRC findings, scholars and the general public alike have been tasked with decolonization.

- Anticipate that, for some students, this topic will be emotionally difficult. Make space for all of the feelings, good and bad. Provide emotional aftercare (special office hours for people who want to talk, etc…)

- Ground your discussion in the place you live in or teach in. This will help make the topic much more immediate and relevant to your students.

- Once students have an understanding of what settler colonialism is, have them consider the way it continues in the present.

- Take care of yourself. Understand that a lot of emotional labour goes into facilitating these necessary and sometimes difficult discussions.

{2} These guidelines appear in numerous forms across the internet. We have reproduced them here, but would like to be clear that we did not come up with them. For more information, please go here.

Student FAQs and How to Answer Them

These are some of the most common questions we’ve received on this subject from students.

- Didn’t we win the war/conquer Indigenous peoples?

No, “we” didn’t.  There was no single moment or battle that has shaped the course of Indigenous and settler relationships in this place that we call Canada. Keep in mind that contact and colonialism occurred over the course of more than five centuries, with some Inuit communities not contacted by settlers until the 1920s. It’s impossible to generalize across such vast distances and times. It would be more accurate to say that starting in the late 18th century, the British (and later Canadian) governments embarked on a mission to assimilate and eliminate Indigenous peoples by whatever means necessary, be it forcible enfranchisement, starvation, or genocide. While these efforts have been devastating on Indigenous peoples, the process has always been partial and incomplete. Indigenous peoples have always fought against and resisted these pressures, and continue to do so to this day.

- Didn’t the British/Canadian government purchase this land from Indigenous peoples?

Nope. Again, it’s impossible to generalize in this case due to the the vast geographic and temporal ranges. When individuals talk  about “purchasing land,” they are often referring to the treaty process. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the treaty process actually involved.  The first thing to keep in mind is that settlers and Indigenous peoples have two different attitudes regarding the meaning of treaties. Settlers believed that land can be owned, and subdivided into parcels. They did not recognize that Indigenous peoples held title to the land, but in order to prevent any problems down the road, they wanted Indigenous peoples to surrender any claims to the land in return for gifts or annual payments. Indigenous peoples believe that no one can own the land, because it is divinely created. In their eyes, treaties confirmed that they held the land, as stewards for future generations. They sought to secure and protect land for the future, while allowing some settlers to live alongside them. Thus treaties were intended as pacts of friendship, peace, and mutual support, not the abandonment of their rights and interests.

For example, in Eastern Canada, Indigenous peoples and settlers (first the French, then the British) signed several agreements outlining how they could share the land. One of the most famous of these agreements is the Two Row Wampum, which visually depicts two boats going down a stream side by side, never intersecting. One boat represents Indigenous peoples, while the other represents settlers. Each group governed themselves, and shared the land on the basis of friendship and respect.

The situation is more complex elsewhere in Canada. Much of Ontario, the Prairies, parts of Northern Canada, as well as much of Vancouver Island, are now covered by treaties signed between Indigenous communities and settler governments throughout the nineteenth and early 20th centuries (Nunavut being an exception). Many Indigenous communities were forced into signing these treaties in order to receive assistance and protection, since their way of life was being systematically destroyed by the Canadian government. What’s more, while Indigenous peoples entered into these agreements in good faith, representatives from the Canadian government did not. They routinely broke promises that they made, since their main objective was to open these lands for more settlers.

It is important to remember as well that many parts of Canada, including most of BC, are not covered by treaties or land sharing agreements. Settlers living in these areas are, by their own laws, illegal squatters. However, many Indigenous communities and the provincial and federal governments are in the process of negotiating treaties to cover these areas.

- Can’t Indigenous peoples just make stuff up in their oral histories to get what they want?

The short answer is no. This is an attitude based both on a fundamental misunderstanding of Indigenous oral tradition, as well as how primary sources work. First of all, most Indigenous communities in this place we now call Canada record their histories orally. In some communities, certain individuals will be tasked with remembering these histories, and ensuring that they are passed on accurately to future generations. These are not stories that are told for entertainment purposes, but rather to record and transmit important information that is vital for the continued survival of Indigenous communities. The idea that someone would just “make something up to get what they want” is a violation of this sacred trust.

What’s more, as archaeologists, historians, and other scholars have begun working with Indigenous peoples, particularly with elders and knowledge keepers, they’ve discovered that Indigenous oral traditions line up exactly with both historical accounts as well as scientific evidence of past environmental events. There are numerous examples, with the Franklin Expedition being only one of the most recent.

Second, some individuals believe that written texts are inherently more “trustworthy” than oral histories. But this is not correct. The information that a person records is shaped not only by their worldview, but also the message they are trying to send, who the intended recipients are, and a whole host of other factors. For instance, if you were writing a report to your boss, you usually want to depict events in a flattering light. But this might not actually reflect reality.

- Aren’t we all immigrants, including Indigenous peoples?

No. Indigenous oral tradition records that Indigenous peoples have been here since time immemorial. What this means is that Indigenous peoples have always lived in North America, or for so long that the exact number of years is irrelevant. While there are settlers alive today whose ancestors came to North America five hundred years ago, this isn’t really comparable to the fact that Indigenous peoples have lived, worked, and died on this continent for tens of thousands of years.

Many people who bring up this question also talk about the Bering Land Straight theory. There is currently no historical or scientific consensus on how or when Indigenous peoples came to North America (although we are definitely sure that Europeans didn’t arrive first). As many scholars have noted, the debate on “when” Indigenous peoples came, as well as announcements of new “discoveries” about ancient archaeological sites are inherently problematic because they privilege scientific information over Indigenous ways of knowing. As one scholar put it,“‘we’ve always been here’ [should be] good enough.”

- What is the relationship of other oppressed racialized people to settler colonialism? For example, what about Chinese people who were targeted by discriminatory and racist laws?

Strictly speaking, all peoples who are not Indigenous, fall under the category of “settler.” But the reality is a lot more complicated.

In Canada, it is English speaking white people who hold institutional power. That means that those of us who are white and English speaking benefit from racism and are protected from feeling its effects.

Black peoples and people of colour don’t hold the institutional power that whiteness confers to white people. The ancestors of many of these individuals came to Canada against their will, (such as as African slaves); as a result, their relationship to Indigenous people in Canada is different than what we’re describing here. Others came to Canada as refugees, fleeing oppression in their homelands. Each of these peoples have their own distinct histories and relationships with Indigenous peoples, and, further, “settler colonialism and antiblackness [are] entwined historical and contemporary social structures.”Some scholars in this area argue that Black peoples and people of colour should still be considered settlers, because they do benefit from settler colonialism (albeit not to the same extent as white settlers). However, other scholars argue that this designation ignores the complicated histories of Black peoples and people of colour and the fact that settler societies like Canada are deeply racist, and unfairly assigns blame to people who did not come to North America by choice.

However, as two white women, we are neither qualified nor in a position to make a judgement call here.

Do More: Decolonizing Your Syllabus

Talking about settler colonialism is a good place to start. But we would also encourage you to go further by rethinking how and what you teach more generally. This subject is deserving of its own blog post, but here are some suggestions to get you started:

- De-centre the historical experiences of settlers.

- Break away from that more traditional historical narrative! Andrea likes to start her pre-confederation surveys, for example, by talking about the American World System around the year 1000 C.E.

- Similarly, integrate Indigenous history throughout your course, no matter what your topic is. Make Indigenous peoples the centre.

- Emphasize Indigenous agency, resistance, and activism whenever possible.

- Talk about the historical narratives that reinforce settler colonialism in the present.

- Use readings by Indigenous authors and show films with Indigenous directors, writers, and actors.

- Take the UBC MOOC on “Reconciliation through Indigenous Education.”Not only is it free, but you can complete it at your own pace!

Becoming an Ally/Concrete Actions

A discussion of allyship is beyond the scope of this blog post. Keylsey Raynard’s piece on a recent talk by Chantelle Bryson, “Allyship in the Context of Indigenous Rights,”contains a lot of useful information. As Bryson notes, you cannot give yourself the title of “ally.” Instead, “with a continuous commitment to building relationships with Indigenous peoples and communities, you may be invited to act as an ally and to use your privilege to amplify the voices and concerns of others.” If you seek to become an ally, Bryson outlines three particularly important recommendations:

1. Do “continually advocate for discussions about Indigenous peoples to be centered around the actual lived experiencesof these communities and the sources that support these experiences.”

2. Do talk to other non-indigenous people about “privilege, oppression, and colonialism.”

3. And finally, don’t take up space. Sometimes the most important thing to do is “[pass] the mic and [get] out of the way.”

For more information on concrete actions you can take in your journey to become an ally, we recommend the following sources:

- Forge connections with your Indigenous neighbhours

- ReconciliACTION – How Settlers Can Support Indigenous Peoples Daily

- A Statement on Structural Racism in Canada

- 150 Acts of Reconciliation for the Last 150 Days of Canada’s 150

- Montreal, Urban Aboriginal Community Strategy Network, Indigenous Ally Toolkit

Recommendations for Learning More

* Particularly important works. If you can only read a couple of things, read these.

Where possible, links have been provided.

Settler Colonialism in Canada

- Kristine Alexander, “Childhood and Colonialism in Canadian History,” History Compass14, no. 9 (2016): 397-406.

- An Antane-Kapeh, Je Suis une Maudite Sauvagesse/Eukuan Nin Matshimanitu Innu-Iskueu, (Ottawa: Leméac, 1976).

- *Emma Battell Lowman and Adam J. Barker, Settler: Identity and Colonialism in 21stCentury Canada(Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2015).

- Marie Battiste, Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit,(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013).

- Deni Ellis Béchard and Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, Kuei, je te salue: conversation sur le racisme, (Montreal:  Les Éditions Écosociété, 2016).

- Sean Carleton, “Colonizing Minds: Public Education, the ‘Textbook Indian,’ and Settler Colonialism in British Columbia, 1920-1970,” BC Studiesnop. 169 (Spring 2011): 101-130.

- Ryan Eyford, White Settler Reserve: New Iceland and the Colonization of the Canadian West(Vancouver: UBC Pres, 2016).

- Adam Gaudry, “Fantasies of Sovereignty: Deconstructing British and Canadian Claims to Ownership of the Historic North-West,” Native American and Indigenous Studies3, no. 1 (2016): 46-74.

- Patrice Groulx, Pièges de la mémoire: Dollard des Ormeaux, les Amérindiens et nous (Hull: Vents D’Ouest, 1998).

- Emma LaRocque, When The Other Is Me: Native Resistance Discourse, 1850-1990(Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2010).

- *Arthur Manuel, Unsettling Canada: Rebuilding Indigenous Nations(Toronto: Between the Lines, 2015).

- Parts 1, 2, and 3 are particularly well-suited for undergraduate students as well

- *Arthur Manuel, with Ronald M. Derrickson, The Reconciliation Manifesto: Recovering the Land, Rebuilding the Economy(Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, 2017).

- Lee Maracle, My Conversations with Canadians(Toronto: BookThug, 2017).

- *Paulette Regan and Taiaiake Alfred, Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014).

- Sarah Rotz, “‘They took our beads, it was a fair trade, get over it’: Settler Colonial Logics, Racial Hierarchies and Material Dominance in Canada,” Geoforum82 (2017): 158-169.

- Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Life Across the Borders of Settler States (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2014).

- Murray Sinclair, What We Have Learned: Principles of Truth and Reconciliation (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2015.)

- Owen Toews, Stolen City: Racial Capitalism and the Making of Winnipeg(Winnipeg: ARP Books, forthcoming).

- Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society1, no. 1 (2012): 1-40.

- *Chelsea Vowel, Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada(Newburyport: Portage and Main Press, 2017).

- Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research8, no. 4 (December 2006): 387–409.

Settler Colonialism Outside Canada

- Vine Deloria Jr., Custer Died For Your Sins,(New York: Macmillian, 1969).

- Laura Hurwitz and Shawn Bourque, “Settler Colonialism Primer,” Unsettling America: Decolonization in Theory and Practice, June 6, 2014.

- Aileen Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty,(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015).

- Mark Rifkin, Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017)

- L. Veracini, “Understanding colonialism and settler colonialism as distinct formation,”. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 16 no. 5 (2014):615–33.

Additional resources

- Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples

- Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action

- United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

- Indigenous Canada Online Course

- Media Indigena Podcast

- The Henceforward Podcast

- The Think Indigenous Podcast

- The University of Alberta Faculty of Law Faculty Blog

- âpihtawikosisân

- Native-Land.ca

- Facing Canada

Some Recommendations for Student Readings

*This is a very partial list of both personal favourites, and recommendations from friends and colleagues (see below for acknowledgements!)

- Adam Barker, “Deathscapes of Settler Colonialism: The Necro-Settlement of Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada,” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, prepublished January 23, 2018: 1-17.

- Kristin Burnett, Travis Hay, and Lori Chambers, “Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Peoples and Food: Federal Indian policies and nutrition programs in the Canadian North since 1945,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History17, no. 2 (Summer 2016).

- Emilie Cameron, “Indigenous Spectrality and the Politics of Post-Colonial Ghost Stories,” Cultural Geographies15, no. 2 (2008): 383-393.

- Sarah Carter, Imperial Plots: Women, Land, and the Spadework of British Colonialism on the Canadian Prairies, (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2016).

- Adam Gaudry and Darryl Leroux, “White Settler Revisioning and Making Métis Everywhere: The Evocation of Métissage in Quebec and Nova Scotia,” Critical Ethnic Studies 3, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 116-142.Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst, “Colonial Encounters at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: “Unsettling” the Personal Photograph Albums of Andrew Onderdonk and Benjamin Leeson,” Journal Of Canadian Studies49, no. 2 (Spring 2016): 227-267

- Victoria Jackson, “Silent Diplomacy: Wendat Boys’ ‘Adoptions’ at the Jesuits Seminary 1636-1642,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association27, no. 1 (2016): 139-168.

- John S. Long, Richard J. Preston, Katrina Srigley, Lorraine Sutherland, “Sharing the Land at Moose Factory in 1763,” Ontario History109, no. 1 (Autumn 2017): 238-262.

- Adele Perry, Aqueduct: Colonialism, Resources, and the Histories We Remember(Winnipeg: ARP, 2016)

- Adele Perry, Colonial Relations: The Douglas-Connolly Family and the Nineteenth Century Imperial World, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

- Sharon Wall, “Totem Poles, Teepees, and Token Traditions : ‘Playing Indian’ at Ontario Summer Camp, 1920-1955,” Canadian Historical Review86, no. 3 (205): 513-544.

Resources for Talking About the Stanley Decision

- Idle No More – Discussion Guide: Justice for Colten Boushie

- Groundwork for Change – Justice for Colten

- The Keyboard Warriors Handbook to #JusticeforColten

Films

- 270 Years of Resistance

- Angry Inuk

- Colonization Road

- The Pass System

- ‘Reel Injun’

- @shuabert’s list of films by Indigenous directors, writers, and actors

Really Smart and Awesome People to Follow on Twitter

- Chelsea Vowel

- Darryl Leroux

- Chris Andersen

- Kim TallBear

- Daniel Heath Justice

- Alicia Elliott

- Joanne Hammond

- Erica Violet Lee

- Veldon Coburn

- Robert Jago

- Paul Seesequasis

- Ian Mosby

- Ryan McMahon

- Eve Tuck

- Zoe Todd

- Kelly Black

- Sarah Hunt

- Jesse Wente

- Adam Barker

- Emma Battell Lowman

- Sheila Larocque

- Idle No More

- Russ Diabo

We would like to extend a special thanks to Catherine Larochelle, @rcormeau, Karina Vernon, Sean Carleton, Ian Mosby, Kristine Alexander, Adele Perry, Sarah Rain, Sam Mclean, Anne Janhunen, Georgia Sitara, Krystl Raven, Carling Beninger, Heather Stanley, Kristian Hogan, Pete Anderson, Erin Millions, Maddie Knickerbocker, Skylee-Storm Hogan, Andrew Watson, and Amy Blanding for their help compiling this list of resources.  Extra special thanks to Maddie Knickerbocker, whose guidance has been invaluable in the writing of this blog post. Seriously, our community is awesome, and we are privileged to be a part of it.

22

Paved with Good Intentions: Simply Requiring Indigenous Content is Not Enough

Adam Gaudry

Over the past year, the University of Winnipeg and Lakehead University have mandated that incoming undergraduate students complete an Indigenous degree requirement before graduating. This requirement takes the form of an Indigenous content class chosen from a number of options relevant to the student’s degree program. Given the popular response, many other universities are following suit, a byproduct of both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s “Calls to Action” and an arms race to be at the forefront of progressive curricular reform.

Generally speaking, this is a good thing, and I believe that this is an effective strategy, especially at universities like these with substantial capacity to provide this curriculum. It is not my intent to critique those universities who have taken the lead on this, but I think that universities without this experience must move ahead cautiously. In the rush to get students learning about Indigenous-Canada relations, little friendly criticism has challenged this popular desire for curricular change. A sobering analysis by Daniel Heath Justice, however, shows just how difficult this project really is, and how poor implementation of a requirement could actually work against this goal. The stakes are high, much higher than benefiting good public relations in mandating an “Indigenization” program. In implementing an Indigenous content requirement universities need to think long and hard about how to do this effectively.

Indigenous content requirements aren’t actually new: they’ve been around for a while, in some cases, decades. Older content requirements were usually program-specific or a prerequisite for entry into a professional degree. At the University of Saskatchewan, where I work in the Department of Indigenous Studies, Education, Nursing, Aboriginal Public Administration, and Social Work[1] students are required to take two Indigenous Studies courses to complete their degrees (all programs which train front-line workers in a province with a large Indigenous population). What these new proposals do, then, is expand the content requirement to a wider range of students—particularly into the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences—where the justification for its implementation is more intellectual (this is something you should know) rather rationalized as job training (this is something you’ll need to know to practice your profession effectively).

For the past three years, I have taught or co-taught one of these required Indigenous content courses, a class that contains students either there to fulfill a requirement or complete an interest-based elective. This class is vitally important and, when most effective, we inspire students to pursue advanced classes with Indigenous content. At its best, it has the potential to be transformative. There are, of course, students who simply go through the motions, are generally disinterested, or dislike the fact the requirement exists, but I’ve faced little outright resistance and encountered mostly open-minded individuals. As a rule, I believe that students emerge from the class with a broader knowledge base, ultimately fulfilling the purpose of the requirement. However, my department has the benefit of decades of experience teaching for this requirement, along with a longstanding normalization of this kind of class. We also have a substantial and vocal Indigenous student body at the University of Saskatchewan (roughly 12% of the student population, with three consecutive Indigenous student union presidents), and the support of deans and presidents for these requirements.

Not every university has a similar dynamic, and even here, as we envision expanding our Indigenous content requirement to every undergraduate degree at the university, we do so very carefully. I’ve been involved in several administrative processes for mandating a larger requirement over the past three years, and I believe there are three key components to effective and purposeful implementation of an Indigenous content degree requirement at a Canadian university. Universities need:

- A clear and well-articulated rationale for pursuing this course of action that is communicated to the university community and general public

- A critical mass of Indigenous content experts working as course instructors with enough job security and support to weather a potentially challenging classroom environment

- Support for existing Indigenous content programs who are already doing this work (and ensuring that these courses are relevant for Indigenous students too)

#1 – A well-articulated rationale for the Indigenous-content requirement

University administrations need to be very clear on the purpose of Indigenous-content requirements. This is easier for some programs than others: most prairie-based education or social work programs require these classes, given the large number of Indigenous youth their students will be working with. It’s good professional practice. However, explaining to a chemistry student that an Indigenous studies course will turn them into a “better citizen” is perhaps an abstract justification that requires more communication. While it is increasingly clear that Indigenous-Canada relations is the defining political issue of our time, many people don’t wish to challenge the prevailing social and political dynamic we’re living with.

Universities, then, need to do a great deal of communicating on why these new requirements are being launched. This may result in a public education campaign, but it also necessitates counteracting conservative narratives about returning to “the essentials,” by which they mean a classical European education. While many university administrators may be committed to Indigenization, they may not be able to defend it as rigorously as they need to. So, administrative education is also a key component of an Indigenous content requirement. Administrators, faculty, and staff all need to know enough about the importance of these proposals to effectively defend them. Thus, having a clear message on why this kind of curricular change is necessary (and inevitable) will go a long way in making this effective—and having administrative support at all levels is vital to its success.

#2 – Courses taught by experts

My former PhD supervisor ends each course by telling his students “now you know enough to be dangerous.” In other words, they now know enough to sound like they understand what they are talking about, but don’t yet know the limits of their knowledge. While there are many outstanding teachers out there, generally speaking, the public school system does not adequately prepare university students for critical engagement on these matters, when it does teach Indigenous issues at all. Every year, I read well-meaning essays that argue that Indigenous people didn’t understand the treaties they were negotiating (i.e. they weren’t politically sophisticated enough) or were not fluent in English so didn’t know what they’d agreed to (even though Treaty 6 was negotiated in Cree). It seems the default for unprepared instructors is to go with what they already know, and what they usually know is wrong. If anything, this sets us all back, because now students have learned misinformation from authority figures, and it would have generally been better to not teach it at all. We can’t reproduce this at the post-secondary level.

The absolute worst-case scenario is that Indigenous content requirements are fulfilled by any course remotely dealing with some sort of Indigenous issue, without the instructor having any particular expertise. Qualified individuals, those who have sufficient training to deconstruct historical narratives, to breakdown contemporary stereotypes, and encourage the students to undertake critical self-examination must teach these courses. One long-standing myth is that Indigenous dispossession and marginalization is the result of settler ignorance, and the corrective for this is more education. Why this solution is generally correct, the identification of the problem is not. Dispossession and marginalization are the result of colonialism not ignorance, an active process that replicates the privilege and power of some at the expense of others. The problem is an unjust and exploitative power imbalance—and the defence of it—not that people don’t realize its there. Are Canadians really that blind to the poverty, exploitation, and dispossession of Indigenous peoples? No. But most have come to accept it as part of the natural order of things and thus rationalize its existence. The problem, then, isn’t one of ignorance, but an all-to-easy justification of the social order.

Those of us who teach university-level Indigenous issues consistently face entrenched ideologies that blame Indigenous peoples for the policies thrust upon us and see us as incapable of proper social development. In introductory courses, the goal is mostly to un-teach these ideological positions. That is perhaps the most erroneous assumption of Indigenous content requirements: the goal is to unlearn a bunch of things and learn a little bit in its place. In my experience, effective learning is rarely accomplished in a single Indigenous studies course and so the goal is often to get students taking additional classes.

Because of this, every Indigenous-content course is not necessarily the right fit to fulfill this requirement. Courses that allow students to “gain a better appreciation for Indigenous culture” may not accomplish the intended goal, as it is not geared towards this vital unlearning element. Since we’re not really attempting to overcome ignorance, but to break down the rationalization of a colonial relationship, not all Indigenous content courses should be treated equally. Eligible courses for these requirements must be carefully selected, and will be much smaller in number than they first appear. Putting the right people in place, and supporting them to succeed on a larger scale than they’re currently teaching is vital to implementing a requirement effectively.

#3.1 – Support existing Indigenous programming and students

While “Indigenizing the academy” is now en vogue in academia, most Indigenous faculty have been researching and teaching these topics for a while. Rather than reinventing the wheel, expanding available resources to these programs is the easiest and most effective way to implement a new Indigenous content requirement. A lot of these programs are probably already providing courses required for other programs, like my department is. Indigenous Studies units, however, tend to be under-resourced and may suffer if they are expected to service an influx of new students. Indigenous Studies programs should not have to choose between increased enrollment and their core identities as units with majors and minors of their own. In preparing for an Indigenous content requirement, universities should be prepared to allocate additional resources to Indigenous Studies units. Without expanded resources and the capacity to provide enough student spaces to meet the new needs, many individual content requirements will fall to less qualified and less rigorous programs, which may, again, reinforce the well-entrenched mistruths of this colonial relationship.

If universities don’t have the staff in place to execute this, they need to hire them. Tenure-track experts and knowledge holders and preferably Indigenous. This is one of the few problems that administrators can fix simply by investing money. If universities hire enough Indigenous faculty and provide them the support to succeed, they’ll likely put in place the kind of programming that is required. The ongoing worry of many Indigenous faculty is that many non-expert units will begin teaching courses that qualify for this requirement as a way to increase enrollment, attempting to capitalize from more butts in seats. If English, History, Political Science, Philosophy, and Sociology units endeavour to develop courses on these topics, and they don’t have someone who can teach it, they need to hire someone who does. While many universities are now prioritizing the hiring of Indigenous faculty, these requirements necessitate further prioritization, ensuring that Indigenous faculty can support one another and be hired into academic units where they are not the lone Indigenous voice.

All of this requires an unwavering financial commitment from the higher-ups. Universities need to see this as a long-term process, as it is going to take decades for the Canadian public to unlearn colonial ideologies, and decades more to build an equitable relationship between the many peoples who now share this land. Universities need to be prepared to see this past this optimistic moment we’re living in, and recognize that the Canadian default position is one of hostility to ongoing Indigenous existence as independent peoples.

#3.2 – Make this relevant to Indigenous students, too

The unspoken target audience of Indigenous content requirements is non-Indigenous students. With the exception of First Nations University, every provincially accredited Canadian university has a non-Indigenous majority, and so this will result in an influx of non-Indigenous students into spaces that formerly were an Indigenous-centered space. If done improperly, educating a large number of non-Indigenous students can come at the expense of Indigenous ones. These content requirements cannot centre non-Indigenous students and their learning experiences, they must privilege Indigenous experiences and provide spaces for Indigenous student voices to be both heard and respected. These classrooms must be safe spaces, with seasoned instructors capable of managing the discussion of contentious or difficult topics. The comfort of non-Indigenous students cannot come at the expense of the hard-won space of Indigenous people in the academy. If universities are going to discuss this option, the conversation needs to prioritize the needs of the Indigenous student body—no matter how large or small—to avoid once again putting the needs of Canadians above those of Indigenous people. This would, again, reinforce all that we should be undoing.

Despite these challenges, we’re at a unique historical moment when profound change is possible. We have a duty to fundamentally rethink the role of the university in making positive social change. Many universities feel the need to move in the direction of Indigenous content requirements, but they need to do so effectively, and in a way that fits with the large-scale societal goals of reconciliation and restitution. We need administrative infrastructure, we need expanded Indigenous programming, and we need more Indigenous faculty. Without a firm commitment and careful implementation—backed up with the requisite funding—we risk further entrenching the kind of colonial relationship we’re now supposedly committed to transforming.

[i] At the University of Regina’s Saskatoon campus.

23

Doing The Work: The Historian’s Place in Indigenization and Decolonization

Map of Turtle Island with Decolonize written across it. Public Domain.

Skylee-Storm Hogan and Krista McCracken

Many post-secondary institutions and heritage organizations are talking about indigenization and decolonization. Despite the  frequent use of these words there are still many questions about what the terms mean and how they can be moved into practice.

Earlier this month Dr. Shuaneen Pete spoke at Algoma University on “Indigenization in Canadian Universities and Colleges”.  Her talk spoke volumes about the long history of Indigenization and new approaches to this work in the post-secondary sector.  Pete worked closely with the University of Regina to develop their institutional definition of Indigenization which defines the term as:

The transformation of the existing academy by including Indigenous knowledges, voices, critiques, scholars, students and materials as well as the establishment of physical and epistemic spaces that facilitate the ethical stewardship of a plurality of Indigenous knowledges and practices so thoroughly as to constitute an essential element of the university. It is not limited to Indigenous people, but encompasses all students and faculty, for the benefit of our academic integrity and our social viability

Approaches to Indigenization can vary greatly between institutions but often involve the integration of Indigenous cultures, heritage, and knowledge.  In some cases this has involved required courses with Indigenous content or the incorporation of Indigenous content across all faculties.  However as Adam Gaudry pointed out in his Active History post, “Paved with Good Intentions: Simply Requiring Indigenous Content is Not Enough” mandatory Indigenous courses are not new, can be problematic if they are not facilitated correctly, and should be part of larger institutional changes.  Indigenous survey courses often fall into the traps of treating culture as a cure-all, looking at Indigenous communities without diversity, or framing Indigenous people as stuck in time.

In other instances Indigenization has been approached as an increasing focus on Indigenous student success or resulted in the building of dedicated Indigenous spaces on campuses. While this is a worthy cause, Indigenous students face unique barriers in post-secondary institutions which need to be addressed and dedicated Indigenous spaces often come at the expense of students becoming separated or othered along cultural, ideological, socioeconomic and colour lines. Indigenization cannot be attempted without first making space to decolonize what types of knowledge the academy sees as legitimate, otherwise projects have the potential to become tokens used to absolve settler guilt.

Decolonizing often means identifying colonial systems, structures and relationships and working to challenge those systems.  Decolonizing frequently goes hand-in-hand with Indigenization and is a response to the inherent colonialism in Canada.  Decolonizing practices work to transform what is important in settler society and involve long-term structural changes.

In Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada  Paulette Regan argued that

Decolonization is not “integration” or the token inclusion of Indigenous ceremony. Rather, it involves a paradigm shift from a culture of denial to the making of space for Indigenous political philosophies and knowledge systems as they resurge, thereby shifting cultural perceptions and power relations in real ways. (p. 189)

Decolonial pedagogies reflect a desire to help students learn and recognize existing structures of colonialism and to engage in activities that challenge those structures.  It’s impossible to change a structure if you don’t understand how it exists – decolonial education practices start at the very basic and focus on explaining cultural difference and colonialism.  Once this understanding has been established the reclaiming, reshaping, and transforming spaces and structures to meet the needs to Indigenous communities can begin.

So what can historians do to decolonize and Indigenize their professional practices?  The following list is by no means exhaustive but it is a starting point of a conversation on ways to change teaching and research practices.

- Indigenize your syllabus through creating an #inclusivesyllabus that includes readings and guest lectures by Indigenous scholars and community based voices

- This also means exploring diverse Indigenous voices in your syllabus (Inuit, Métis, bi-racial, urban communities, two-spirit, and others).  There is a huge range of diversity within Canada’s Indigenous communities and one experience doesn’t speak for them all.

- Include self-location exercises as part of your courses.  This type of exercise might include a discussion based around questions such as:

- What brought your ancestors to this land?

- Do you know the history of the land you live/work on? Is that encompassing indigenous histories or just settler narratives?

- Have your family or ancestors been impacted by colonization, oppression, structural violence or war?

- How have you as a settler benefited from any of those systems in North America?

- What does reconciliation mean/look like to you? How can you foster reconciliation in your day-to-day life?

- Acknowledge the traditional land you’re residing on as part of this location exercise.  Unsure of where you’re located?  See the CAUT Guide to Acknowledging Traditional Territory.

- As Anne Janhunen has argued that “[o]ne of the most effective ways we can challenge settler colonialism is to examine it within our local contexts, by asking questions such as ‘what are the Indigenous histories of this area, and how have they been overlooked or erased within local historical narratives?”  Ask and discuss these questions in the classroom and in any local history interpretation you undertake.

- Consider how you are discussing historical topics that are also present day social justice issues (treaty relationships, colonization and present day land use, residential schools, the pass system etc).

- Do the work.  Marginalized communities should not be expected to teach about the basics of colonialism, racism, and white privilege.

- Do the research and control the space. Do not expect Indigenous students to fill in syllabus gaps when addressing Indigenous issues in the classroom that you have not fully researched. Do not let settler students create a hostile environment to which Indigenous students are left to fend for themselves; this is colonial violence.

- Learntheprotocols for working with Indigenous communities and knowledge keepers in your region.

- Understand that Elders and Traditional Knowledge Keepers should not be expected to work for free.  Provide an honorarium if you’re inviting them to speak to your class. Also understand that building relationships with Elders and communities can take years.

- Practice “Nothing about us, without us” in your research.  Work shouldn’t be done about Indigenous communities it should be done in partnership with them.

- Consider co-teaching with an Indigenous community member

- Consider creative and non-classroom based projects that allow students to engage with course content in different ways (Eg. visiting a local friendship centre, using art based reflective assignments, integrating land based learning etc)

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada explicitly called on Canadian universities and colleges to create programs in Indigenous languages and to change existing programming in medical, nursing, education and law schools to include the history of residential schools.  A number of the broader Calls to Action also implicate post-secondary institutions in larger national relationships with Indigenous communities.  How each school, historian, and scholar tackles decolonization and Indigenization is going to be different but in many cases we don’t need to work from scratch and can build off existing examples of good practice.

24

150 Acts of Reconciliation for the Last 150 Days of Canada’s 150

Crystal Fraser and Sara Komarnisky

(To learn more or purchase a 150Acts poster, please visit 150acts.weebly.com)

On August 4th, there are 150 days left in 2017 – the year of Canada’s 150th birthday. There have been robust discussions this year around reconciliation and we would like to contribute to the conversation. Together, we have written 150 Acts of Reconciliation for the last 150 days of 2017. Many of these are small, everyday acts that average Canadians can undertake, but others are more provocative that encourage people to think about Indigenous-settler relationships in new ways. We encourage you to use #150Acts to share your engagement with each item on the list. To download a printable .pdf version of this list, click here.

Poster #05 of the Graphic History Collective’s series Remember l Resists l Redraw: A Radical History Poster Project. Text: Erica Violet Lee. Artwork: Anonymous (by request).

1. Learn the land acknowledgement in your region.

2. Find your local reconciliation organization.

3. If there isn’t one, consider joining together with others to start one.

4. Attend a cultural event, such as a pow wow (yes, all folks are invited to these!).

5. Purchase an item from an Indigenous artist. For instance, if you are interested in owning a dreamcatcher or a pair of moccasins, find an Indigenous artist who can craft these items for you and provide you with information about these special creations.

6. Download an Indigenous podcast, like Ryan McMahon’s Red Man Laughing or Molly Swain and Chelsea Vowel’s Métis in Space.

7. Read an autobiography written by an Indigenous person. A couple of ideas include Augie Merasty’s The Education of Augie Merasty, Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton’s Fatty Legs: A True Story, and Mini Adola Freeman’s Life Among the Qallunaat.

8. Find out if there was a residential school where you live.

9. Memorize its name and visit its former site.

10. Watch CBC’s Eighth Fire.

11. Choose one plant or flower in your area and learn how Indigenous people use(d) it.

12. Visit your local museum, particularly its section on Indigenous people. If it does not have one, ask the staff why not.

13. Learn a greeting in a local Indigenous language.

14. Register for the University of Alberta’s online MOOC, called “Indigenous Canada,” for free.

15. Initiate a conversation with a friend about an Indigenous issue in the news.

16. Support Black Lives Matter.

17. Eat at an Indigenous restaurant, café, or food truck.

18. Read about the Cornwallis Statue in Halifax.

19. Seriously consider your own position as a settler Canadian. Do you uphold practices that contribute to the marginalization of Indigenous peoples?

20. Learn why headdresses are not appropriate to wear at music festivals (or outside of Indigenous ceremony).

21. Find a book that delves into Indigenous local histories.

22. Donate to the Emerging Indigenous Voices award.

23. Although Gord Downie significantly contributed to the conversation about residential schools, consider why some Indigenous people might not support his project.

24. Visit a local Indigenous writer- or artist-in-residence.

25. When discussing LGBTQ issues, always include two-spirited peoples (LGBTQ2S*).

26. Invite your local reconciliation organization to hold a KAIROS Blanket Exercise at your place of employment.

27. Buy some books for your children that explain the histories and legacies of residential school (see CBC’s list of suggestions).

28. Ask yourself if stereotypes about Indigenous people align with your beliefs (for more on stereotypes, refer to Chelsea Vowel’s Indigenous Writes [2016]).

29. Educate yourself around the issue of carding and consider why this is an important issue for urban Indigenous populations.

30. Learn your family history. Know where your ancestors came from and when they arrived in Canada.

31. In addition, understand how your family story is part of a larger system that sought to dispossess Indigenous people from their ancestral lands.

32. Listen more. Talk less.

33. Ask your child’s school to give a daily land acknowledgement. If the Canadian national anthem is sung at their school, ask that the acknowledgement come before the anthem.

34. Acknowledge that as a nation, Canadians choose which histories are celebrated and which ones are erased.

35. Learn the difference between Indigenous, Aboriginal, First Nation, Métis, and Inuit.

36. Support local Indigenous authors by purchasing their books.

37. Research why Joseph Boyden is not Indigenous.

38. Watch an educational documentary, such as We Were Children or The Pass System.

39. Gently counter racist or stereotypical comments with fact-based information whether you are at a party, the office, or the gym.

40. Write your local councilor, MLA, or MP about the flying of Indigenous flags at local, provincial/territorial, or federal buildings.

41. Understand and acknowledge that Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, was an architect of genocide. Say that aloud with us. “John A. Macdonald was an architect of genocide.”

42. Write a letter to your local RCMP Officer in Charge or local Police Chief to inquire about how the police force is actively engaged in fostering connections with local Indigenous communities. If they are not doing so, ask that they start.

43. Show your support on social media. ‘Like’ pages and ‘share’ posts that support Indigenous endeavours.

44. Listen to Indigenous music. If you do not know any, listen to CBC’s Reclaimed. Or start with an album by Tanya Tagaq or Leonard Sumner.

45. Find the Indigenous section at your local library.

46. Read the TRC. Seriously. Start with the Calls to Action, then the Executive Summary. You can even listen to it online at #ReadtheTRC. Better yet, invite your friends or colleagues to read it with you.

47. Go and see Indigenous scholars and intellectuals speak.

48. Hire Indigenous people for positions at your workplace.

49. If you live in an area where there is a Treaty relationship, read the treaty document.

50. Write to your municipal, provincial, and federal representatives and ask them how they are implementing the Calls to Action.

51. Follow up with your representatives about the Calls to Action.

52. Read Marilyn Poitras’ reasons for resigning her Commissioner’s position with the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ Inquiry.

53. Find an organization locally that has upcoming programming where you can learn more. In many areas, this is the Native Friendship Centre.

54. Learn about how the child welfare system is failing Indigenous families. Write a letter to your elected representative asking for change.

55. Remember when Stephen Harper’s government sent body bags to the Wasagamack First Nation during the H1N1 influenza outbreak instead of trained medical professionals with vaccines?

56. Did you know there was a separate and inferior health care system for Indigenous peoples? Read Maureen Lux’s book, Separate Beds (2016).

57. Be aware that Indigenous people were restricted from voting in federal elections until 1960.

58. Do you have access to clean drinking water? You are lucky. Also, ‘luck’ really has nothing to do with it; these conditions were historically engineered.

59. In a country that is ‘safe,’ such as Canada, 57% of Indigenous women are sexually assaulted during their lifetimes.

60. Recall that First Nations people were forced to choose between maintaining their Status under the Indian Act and going to university or serving in the armed forces, and women lost their status by marrying a non-Indigenous person.

61. Find out who was forced out of your area before you moved there, whether centuries ago or more recently with new housing developments.

62. Imagine living for six weeks on a hunger strike, with no sustenance but broth. To get a meeting with the prime minister. Hello, Chief Theresa Spence.

63. Write to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and ask that the government implement the promises he made to Indigenous people in the 2015 election.

64. Does your child have a school nearby? Realize that it receives better funding that on-reserve schools. By at least 30%.

65. Actively seek out Indigenous heroes and role models. How about Dr. Nadine Caron, the first First Nations woman to become a surgeon? Or Mohawk athlete Waneek Horn-Miller? Or a historical figure, such as Thanadelthur?

66. Do you have an Indigenous political candidate in your area? Even though they might not be affiliated with your political party of choice, phone or email them and start a conversation.

67. Who was the last Indigenous person to win the Polaris Prize?

68. Support the rights of Indigenous nations to exercise their sovereignty. For example, learn about the Haudenosaunee Confederacy passport.

69. Recognize that Indigenous legal orders and laws guiding society existed in this land before the authority of the Canadian nation state.

70. When travelling, know whose land you are visiting while on vacation or travelling for work.

71. Do more than google.

72. If you are talking about or researching Indigenous peoples, have you included any of their voices?

73. Support Indigenous parents by learning the issues that they are faced with, which are often scenarios that settler Canadians take for granted. For instance, the use of Indigenous names on government documents and how that can be problematic. But also how these ‘issues’ can be resolved by speaking out!

74. #NODAPL.

75. Yes, this all might seem scary! Keep going, if you are committed.

76. Acknowledge that current (and sometimes vexed) First Nations politics are governed by the Indian Act.

77. Learn about why the opinions of Senator Lynn Beyak are problematic.

78. Consider the diverse family forms that existed here before settlers arrived. This included strong matrilineal families in various forms, such as polyamorous relations.

79. Did you know that in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, territorial law acknowledges Indigenous custom adoptions?

80. Write Robert-Falcon Ouellette a letter of support for speaking Cree in the House of Commons.

81. This year was the twenty-seventh anniversary of the so-called ‘Oka Crisis.’ What do you know about it?

82. Ever wonder why only English and French are Canada’s official languages when there are at least sixty Indigenous languages in this land?

83. Read about the Daniels Decision and why it is important.

84. Learn about Chanie Wenjack’s story by watching this Heritage Minute. Know that his story was shared by thousands of other Indigenous children.

85. Remember that good intentions can be harmful too.

86. Did you know that Indigenous peoples had sophisticated ways of caring for our landscapes to prevent massive fires, floods, and other natural disasters? Learn more about these methods.

87. That fish you are going to catch during this long weekend? Learn the Indigenous word for it and local teachings about it.

88. Did you know that two remarkably successful Hollywood films included Indigenous actors? Watch The Revenant’s Melaw Nakeh’ko and Wonder Woman’s Eugene Brave Rock!

89. Watch Alethea Arnaquq-Baril’s Angry Inuk.

90. Hold businesses accountable to your personal ethics and ideologies.

91. Do not assume that you are entitled to attend a local sweat or other spiritual ceremony.

92. BUT if you are invited to ceremony – definitely go. This is an honour!

93. If you actually want to see the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people change, and commit to making reconciliation a part of your every-day ethos.

94. When visiting a museum, do so critically. Ask who tells the story, how that item got there, and what processes are in place around repatriation.

95. Consider the line between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. Chelsea Vowel has a good blogpost about this.

96. Follow @Resistance150 on Twitter and learn why Canada 150 is not something to celebrate for many Indigenous peoples. After all, Canada does not celebrate the fact that Indigenous Nations have existed in this land since Time Immemorial.

97. Observe what is celebrated and recognized in the monuments, parks, and street names in your city. Think about how public history could be told differently.

98. Learn the original names of places. Learn what places were and are important to Indigenous people.

99. Discover the world of Indigenous blogging. Zoe Todd, Erica Violet Lee, Billy-Ray Belcourt, and Chelsea Vowel are among the best.

100. Consider the words that you use. For example, do not call your group of friends a “tribe,” describe a meeting as a “pow-wow,” or call a non-Indigenous leader “Chief.”

101. Learn the stories behind some of your favourite music. For example, read about how Lillian Shirt’s grandmother may have inspired the song “Imagine” by John Lennon.

102. Visit the website of the nearest First Nation(s) or Indigenous communities. Read their short introduction and history.

103. Find opportunities to learn about how Indigenous people experience the place where you live. Look for a local speaker’s series or an online resource.

104. Volunteer your time to an Indigenous non-profit organization.

105. Support Indigenous media (newspapers, radio stations, social media sites, and TV stations).

106. If you read a news story that feeds into stereotypes, write a letter to complain and ask for Indigenous perspectives on local, national, and international news.

107. Read the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Our government has committed to implementing it.

108. Read the Indian Act.

109. Read the report on the Royal Commission of Aboriginal Peoples.

110. Is there any public art by Indigenous artists in your area? If so, visit it and learn about the artists.

111. Read In This Together: Fifteen True Stories of Real Reconciliation (2016) and write down your own “lightbulb” moment when you realized the harsh reality of colonization in Canada.

112. Make reconciliation a family project and complete items on this list together. Bring your children to events, learn words in an Indigenous language together, and organize a youth blanket exercise, for example.

113. Start your own Heart Garden with messages of support for residential school survivors.

114. Start to learn and understand cultural protocol. Know this will change according to Indigenous nation and region.

115. Commit to being a lifelong student beyond Canada 150.

116. Look up and learn about an Indigenous athlete. We have NHL players and Olympians among the mix!

117. The Bering Land bridge is one way of telling migration history. But Indigenous people have their own explanation of ancient histories and that needs to be respected. Read about these conversations here and here.

118. Share this list on social media.

119. Look for and share the positive stories about Indigenous people, not just the negative ones.

120. Invite local Indigenous people in to your event or organization.

121. Know that when you are inviting an Indigenous person in, they are often overburdened and overworked.

122. Give an honorarium if you expect an Indigenous person to contribute their time and effort.

123. Cite Indigenous authors and academics in your work.

124. Consider using Indigenous research methodologies in your work. Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies (1999) is the singular most important book for this.

125. Want to incorporate Indigenous elements or policies into your workplace? Hire an Indigenous consultant.

126. Ask yourself how to support Indigenous families who have lost loved ones as the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls unravels.

127. Seek opportunities to collaborate that span forms of both Indigenous knowledge and western knowledge.

128. Update your email signature to reflect the territory you live and work on.

129. Encourage the institution you work for or study at to formally acknowledge the territory.

130. Check out Remember, Resist, Redraw: A Radical History Poster Project. Find more about the project here and support the cause here.

131. Make a financial donation to a local Indigenous organization.

132. Get behind the initiatives to rename Langevin Block and Ryerson University and learn why this is important.

133. Support initiatives to change the racist names of sports teams. Learn why this is so important to many Indigenous people.

134. Support and celebrate the persistence of land-based economies, such as the seal hunt.

135. Read fiction by Indigenous authors. A good place to start is the most recent copy of The Malahat Review, which you can read online for free, here.

136. If you own property, revisit the documents that gave you ‘title’ to your land. Think about who has the authority to grant this title and who does not.

137. Order a “Colonialism 150” t-shirt here.

138. Next time you want to talk to an Indigenous person about their background, try your best not to frame the discussion in terms of blood quantum (i.e. how “much” Indigenous or white blood they have). Instead, ask what community they belong to and learn the name of their people.

139. Actively commit to eliminating stereotypes about Indigenous identities by gently correcting people. For instance, being “mixed blood” does not make one Métis.

140. Make a financial or in-kind contribution to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

141. Contact your alma mater and inquire about the number of Indigenous people on the Board of Governors or the Senate.

142. Check out some of the videos by the 1491s for a laugh.

143. Visit Walking With Our Sisters website and discover if they are coming to your region.

144. Read about the story of one missing or murdered Indigenous woman in your region.

145. Memorize her name and learn about her life.

146. Familiarize yourself with Cindy Blackstock’s important work.

147. Find out if your local hospital has an All Nations Healing room or something similar. If not, ask your employer to help fund one.

148. Here is a shout out to all the amazing aunties, kokums, jijuus, and aagaas! Hai cho’o for your continued guidance and support.

149. Understand that reconciliation is not about “feeling guilty.” It is about knowledge, action, and justice.

150. Why stop at 150? After all, Indigenous nations are celebrating millennia on this land. Build on this list or start and share your own.

25

Reconciliation in the Classroom: The #150 Acts as a Pedagogical Tool

Catherine Larochelle, translated by Andrea Eidinger

Crystal Gail Fraser and Sara Komarnisky. Photo credit: Sara Komarnisky.

In the winter of 2018, I had the opportunity to teach HST2444, Autochtones, État et société au Canada at the Université de Montréal. Over the course of the entire semester, I relied extensively on media in both my classes and weekly discussions, including the poster series Remember/Resist/Redraw, and some of the short videos from Wapikoni mobile. Both proved to be extremely useful pedagogical tools that resulted in vigorous, and I would add, necessary, conversations about Canadian historical narratives. Towards the end of the semester, I had my students read the 150 Acts of Reconciliation, by Crystal Gail Fraser and Sara Komarnisky. Originally published on ActiveHistory (and later in French on HistoireEngagée.ca) in summer 2017, #150Acts listed out 150 acts of reconciliation that any Canadians could undertake in the last 150 days of the Canada150 celebrations. As Fraser and Komarnisky noted, the TRC’s Calls to Action were mostly aimed at institutions, and many Canadians did not feel that they applied to them personally. Instead, Fraser and Komarnisky wanted to illustrate that reconciliation can be practiced in different ways and at multiple levels.

Today I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on my experience using this list in a classroom setting, and in doing so explain why I believe that it is such a valuable and useful tool for talking about reconciliation with students, regardless of the subject matter of the course.

Two Exercises for Reflection on Reconciliation

Even though I had required that students read the list prior to coming to class, I began the day’s discussion by distributing hard copies of it, and asking students to reread it and identify which actions:

A – were accomplished within the course

B – had already been completed by reading the list

C – seemed impossible or difficult to complete

D – they did not understand

E – they hoped to complete in the short or medium term.

I had several goals in mind when designing this exercise. Namely, I wanted my students to think critically about the material I covered in class within a larger social and political perspective. My students were able to see how much of the historical knowledge that was covered in HST 244 (for example, in actions #57, #60, #81 or #83[i]) would be required for the decolonization of traditional narratives of Canadian and Quebec history, a decolonization that is essential for true reconciliation with the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (North America). My students were both shocked, and frustrated, to learn about the many aspects of Canadian history that they had never been exposed to in their previous educational experience.

Reading this list in class also allowed us to discuss the relationship between history and the real challenges in mediating the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the descendants of settlers and immigrants in Canada (for example, consider action #29, on policing practices[ii]).  Action #95[iii], meanwhile, gave us the opportunity to talk about the issue of cultural appropriation and to understand current debates about what we had learned regarding nineteenth- and twentieth-century Indigenous performances. With action #138,[iv] on the origins and question of blood quantum, we discussed the issues around Indigenous identity that we studied in the same session as the Powley and Daniels decisions (action #83).

Finally, and most importantly, reading this list opened a space for discussion around the fact that reconciliation was not simply about having good intentions (action #85), and, what’s more, “reconciliation is not about “feeling guilty.” It is about knowledge, action, and justice” (action #149).

I left the second exercise until the near end of class. By that point, I’d separated my students into teams of three, and asked each to complete one quick action: learning about the new territorial acknowledgement that the Université de Montréal had recently adopted (#1), learn about the debate over the Cornwallis statue in Halifax (#18) as well as those over places named after Langevin or Ryerson (#132), lear about the last Indigenous person to win the Polaris Prize (#67) and learn about one Indigenous athlete (#116). The students were given fifteen minutes to do their research, and then each team presented their findings to the rest of the class.

This little exercise resulted in discussions that were far more profound and robust that I could have ever anticipated. During the presentation on the territorial acknowledgement at the Université de Montréal, students analyzed and problematized the Quebecois historiography regarding Indigenous/French settler relations, and how this was echoed in the language of the acknowledgement. The debates regarding the Cornwallis statue, the Langevin building, and Ryerson University resulted in discussions about public history (action #97) and sites of commemorations (the issue of confederate monuments in the United States was also brought up). The diverse and complex discussions that resulted from this exercise made me realize that the #150Acts provided a framework around which to discuss reconciliation and settler colonialism, while also serving as a starting point for broader discussions about the problems facing the discipline of history itself.

A Return to the List

Following this session, I compiled the lists created by the students in the first exercise, and I paid particular attention to those actions that were identified as “impossible or difficult to complete” as well as those “items they did not understand.” I noticed that the same few actions appeared multiple times. For instance, the various actions that required writing to one’s representatives or to police forces (#40, #42, #50 et #63[v]) were frequently identified as “impossible or difficult to complete.” In the following class, after reviewing some of the actions that many students had difficulty understanding (for instance, #26 or #113[vi]), I asked my students why certain actions were characterized as difficult on their lists. This resulted in a discussion about democracy, human rights, and citizens’ responsibilities, a discussion which, to my mind, should be central in any history course.

Beyond Indigenous History

The pedagogical potential of the #150Acts as laid out by Fraser and Komarnisky is immense. Its usefulness extends far beyond courses on Indigenous history alone; it is relevant, and even necessary, to any course on the history of Canada or Quebec. The list offers an excellent opportunity to discuss relations between Canadian settlers and Indigenous peoples. The list is also a extremely useful tool for critically considering reconciliation and responding to the TRC’s Calls to Action.

Further, I believe that this list has much to offer even outside of the field of Canadian history. As I’ve noted above, the list offers several concrete examples that pertain to some of the biggest issues facing the discipline of history today, particularly in relation to public history and the writing of history. This list is, without a doubt, an important tool for any history survey course. In fact, about that, I have plans for September 2018….

[i] The actions are as follows: #57: “Be aware that Indigenous people were restricted from voting in federal elections until 1960; #60: “Recall that First Nations people were forced to choose between maintaining their Status under the Indian Act and going to university or serving in the armed forces, and women lost their status by marrying a non-Indigenous person”; #81: “This year was the twenty-seventh anniversary of the so-called ‘Oka Crisis.’ What do you know about it?”; and #83: “Read about the Daniels Decision and why it is important.”

[ii] “Educate yourself around the issue of carding and consider why this is an important issue for urban Indigenous populations.”

[ii] “Consider the line between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. Chelsea Vowel has a good blogpost about this.”

[iv] “Next time you want to talk to an Indigenous person about their background, try your best not to frame the discussion in terms of blood quantum (i.e. how “much” Indigenous or white blood they have). Instead, ask what community they belong to and learn the name of their people.”

[v] The actions are as follows: #40 “Write your local councillor, MLA, or MP about the flying of Indigenous flags at local, provincial/territorial, or federal buildings.”; #42 “Write a letter to your local RCMP Officer in Charge or local Police Chief to inquire about how the police force is actively engaged in fostering connections with local Indigenous communities. If they are not doing so, ask that they start”; #50 Write to your municipal, provincial, and federal representatives and ask them how they are implementing the Calls to Action”; and #63 Write to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and ask that the government implement the promises he made to Indigenous people in the 2015 election.”

[vi] Action #26: “Invite your local reconciliation organization to hold a KAIROS Blanket Exercise at your place of employment;” action #113: “Start your own Heart Garden with messages of support for residential school survivors.”

26

How and When to Invite Indigenous Speakers to the Classroom

Skylee-Storm Hogan and Krista McCracken, with Andrea Eidinger

Photograph of Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre educational programming.

In recent years, particularly since the publication of the TRC Calls to Action , there has been an increasing push to integrate Indigenous content into elementary and secondary classrooms across the country. While we believe that this work is essential, recent news reports have given us cause for concern. From the ongoing debates about Quebec’s latest high school history textbooks to the Ford government’s cancelling of the TRC curriculum writing session , there has been a significant pushback against the inclusion of Indigenous content.

Further, while provinces like BC and Alberta are working to integrate Indigenous content into their curriculums, they often fail to properly prepare educators. Several studies have shown that while many settler educators want to include more content about Indigenous history and culture, they often lack the confidence and training to do so. Some well-intentioned teachers either decline to include Indigenous content out of fear of offending anyone or misappropriate Indigenous stories, traditions, and even ceremonies. And in some cases, the results have been extremely problematic or even disastrous (content warning: racist language), and Indigenous educators are often faced with taking up the burden.

With this in mind, we are launching a new Beyond the Lecture mini-series, specifically dedicated to the issue of teaching Indigenous history and the inclusion of Indigenous content in the classroom. Our goal is to provide resources for educators at all levels to help navigate the often fraught terrain of teaching Indigenous content.

For the first post in this mini-series, we decided to tackle the issue of inviting Indigenous speakers into classrooms. To that end, Andrea compiled a list of commonly-asked questions about how and when to invite Indigenous speakers, and Skylee-Storm and Krista have written detailed responses.

When is it appropriate for settler educators to invite Indigenous speakers into the classroom?

This depends a lot on the type of Indigenous speaker you are inviting, your relationship with them, and the context of the class. For example, the circumstances where you might invite an Indigenous colleague into your class to provide a guest lecture are going to be very different from when and how you might invite a traditional knowledge keeper or Elder into your classroom.

It is appropriate to invite speakers into your classroom when touching on topic that are specifically focuses on Indigenous lives, especially if there is not a lot of information on this topic from Indigenous authors. The readings and supplementary information will not give an accurate picture on the Indigenous perspective of their own lives. In classes where Indigenous traditions, ceremonies, stories, or life teachings are discussed it is always necessary to have an elder. No amount of time spent with Indigenous people gives non-Indigenous people the right to practice those things or explain those things themselves.

Are there different protocols for Elders, Survivors, colleagues, or educational liaisons?

Yes, and these protocols are also going to vary by community and geographic region. The Deepening Knowledge Project has developed a guide on inviting Elders into education settings . This guide also provides background on information on the traditional role of Elders.

What are some of the benefits of having Indigenous speakers in the classroom?

It is crucial that institutions make space for more Indigenous perspectives within the classroom and inviting Indigenous speakers is one way to do that work. For classes that deal specifically with Indigenous ways of knowing, Indigenous social issues, or healthcare it is beneficial to have an Indigenous speaker to bring important context and perspective in those areas.

It is easy for Indigenous lives to be reduced to statistics and those do not paint a whole picture for students. For non-Indigenous students this can lead to an oversimplified, colonially beneficial view of contemporary Indigenous life and identity in Canada. For Indigenous students in these courses, it puts them in the shoes of an educator when they should be a student. It is not the job of Indigenous students to educate the instructor or their peers while taking a course, but when there are inaccuracies or generalizations these students must always be prepared to represent hundreds of cultures.

What kind of logistics are involved in inviting a guest Indigenous speaker into the classroom, in terms of how much notice to provide, financial compensation, etc…?

Provide as much notice as possible and be respectful of the speaker’s time and effort.

If you are asking an Elder into your classroom ideally this should be done in person.  Some Elders will accept tobacco when you ask them to share knowledge, but this is not always true and cultural protocols vary greatly between geographic regions. When in doubt speak with your institutions Indigenous initiatives department or a colleague before making your request.

If you are making the request by phone or email you can let the individual know you have tobacco or a gift to offer when you see them.

Make sure someone is responsible for the guest’s entire visit. This means making sure that the individual has transportation to the event, is greeted upon arrival, parking fees are covered/accessible parking provided if needed, and there is some assisting with all on-campus logistics such as food and drink.

What kinds of tobacco and/or gifts are appropriate? Are there certain things to be aware of when purchasing tobacco?

Carleton’s Centre for Indigenous Initiative has developed a guide that discusses how to make a tobacco tie and offering. Where possible tobacco should be locally grown, if that is not possible you can use commercially available tobacco that has no additives. Note that tobacco offerings are not universal across Indigenous communities.  For example, most Inuit communities do not have a tradition of tobacco offerings and as such providing a small gift when you make your request would be more appropriate.

A handmade gift, artwork or item by a local Indigenous artist are appropriate gifts in many cases. Likewise, locally produced maple syrup, wild rice, or other traditionally harvested food is an appropriate gift.

What are some institutional pitfalls that we need to be aware of when it comes to inviting Indigenous speakers?

One of the challenges many institutions face is that their honorarium policies only allow for a very low financial gift to be provided. In cases where departments are seeking to provide greater financial compensation to an Indigenous speaker they are often required to complete additional independent contractor forms, or ask the Indigenous speaker to complete financial forms.  Where possible placing this additional paperwork burden on invited guest should be avoided.

Likewise, all travel and accommodations should be paid for in advance by the University.  You should not invite an Indigenous speaker and expect them to pay for anything out of pocket or wait for reimbursement. This might mean challenging institutional policies.

Looking at policies across Universities highlights the differences in institutional approaches to working with Indigenous speakers. Some institutions have established that it is inappropriate to ask Indigenous knowledge keepers for their social insurance number and you should not ask them to sign a receipt for monetary gifts. Other institutions require that information to be collected as per their accounting policies.

It is also important to keep in mind that many elders require aids or helpers while they travel, or to perform ceremony. You should accommodate a helper if it is required by that elder, offering to substitute a helper may not always be an option especially for ceremonial roles.

What can I do if I want to invite an local Indigenous speaker, but I don’t have an established relationship with any local Indigenous communities?

Increasingly, many campuses are developing formal relationships with local Indigenous communities and elders. This may be in the form of an Indigenous liaison department, an Indigenous student life department, or an Indigenous support department.  Look to see what people and departments on your campus are already doing this work and ask them for advice.

The important thing here is to realize that relationship building takes work and time.  You should be prepared to do the work and but in the effort. Start by learning about the Indigenous communities around you, learn about both historical and contemporary Indigenous peoples in your region. Be prepared to assess your role and your institution’s role in reconciliation, ask what you are doing for local Indigenous communities and how you can do more.

What can educators do to prepare themselves before an Indigenous speaker’s visit?

Do the work.  Have you taken the University of Alberta Indigenous Canada MOOC or the UBC Reconciliation Through Indigenous MOOC ? Have you read the TRC final report ? Have you read a range of works by Indigenous authors? If not, maybe start with Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada by Chelsea Vowel or Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City by Tanya Talaga.

How can educators go about educating their students in proper protocol and respectful behaviour prior to a visit by an Indigenous speaker?

Provide background readings on the topic that your visiting speaker will be discussing.  Likewise, it might be helpful to have a class discussion or question session prior to the speaker’s visit — this can help provide students with background information while also breaking down stereotypes. If you have time, incorporating a variation of the decolonizEd timeline activity can be a really powerful way to talk about colonialism and Indigenous-Settler relations.

If you have the ability and time to incorporate a film viewing into your course there are several available through the National Film Board’s Indigenous Cinema Collection . There is also a collection of short documentaries compiled on CBC’s Through Our Eyes series. Having students engage with these films can help change perceptions on the various forms of Indigenous identity and deconstruct stereotypes.

What kinds of special considerations, if any, are needed when inviting Residential School or Sixties Scoop Survivors?

If you are asking a Residential School or Sixties Scoop Survivor to speak about their experience you should also be asking them what type of supports they would like in place for their talk. Would like like a health or cultural support person present? Do they want to be able to smudge prior to speaking?

You also need to think about building supports for your students, particularly Indigenous students who might be in your class. First hand accounts about Residential Schools can be traumatic and triggering for intergenerational Survivors, you need to make sure you aren’t causing unintentional harm to your Indigenous students.

What happens if a student causes a disruption or is rude to the Indigenous speaker?

Question periods are great ways for students to understand the issue more completely and for the instructor to gauge where the gaps in information have formed. If students or colleagues are dismissive in comment or question periods it is important as the instructor to support the Indigenous speaker to the best of your ability.

It is common for the lived experiences of trauma, racism, and violence to be dismissed by those holding privilege or those without an accurate understanding of the contemporary realities facing many Indigenous communities across Turtle Island. You must never allow this student to feel correct in this assumption. Many times when people hear these stories they may feel anger, they may feel like they are being accused of something, and they undoubtedly have their own life struggles which may lead to comments such as: “It happened a long time ago, get over it”. Further class reflection on blame and privilege positionality might be needed.

If students are responding inappropriately to ceremony, ignoring protocol maliciously, or questioning Indigenous spiritual practices it is important to call them out. If they do not seem to care about respecting the space it may be necessary to remove them from the space. It is the student’s right to ask questions and have their own beliefs. However, it is racially and colonially violent to allow students to mock and degrade a people who have already been though these things under state order.

If the student is extremely out of line shut them down as quickly as possible. Apologize to the speaker. It may be necessary to provide the speaker with space for medicine. If possible, create a space and time for restorative measures. Having the class gather with yourself and the speaker to form a talking circle could be an option for repairing relationships. It is also a great way to have students process why those behaviours are harmful and how those ideas further perpetuate racism and colonialism.

What are some common mistakes that settler educators make when it comes to inviting Indigenous speakers?

Not paying them. Seriously, you need to pay folks for their time. Likewise, not every everyone is comfortable in front of a classroom setting. Do not make assumptions about folks wanting to speak to your class.

How can sessional instructors invite Indigenous speakers, when so many lack sufficient resources to do so respectfully?

One way to do this is to work with other colleagues in your department or institution to bring Indigenous speakers in for a larger event. This allows for the some of the logistical burden to be spread among other faculty.

If it’s not possible to bring an Indigenous speaker in, what are some other ways that educators can incorporate Indigenous voices into the classroom?

There are a number of great articles and audio-visual material that have been created by Indigenous scholars and Indigenous communities.  If you are not able to bring an Indigenous speaker into class, you can start by adding more Indigenous voices to your syllabus.

Some resources to get you started:

- Indigenous Studies Portal, University of Saskatchewan

- Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society open-access journal

- Shekon Neechie

- Our Stories…Our Strength video collection

Are there any special considerations when it comes to educational levels? Are there different protocols or guidelines for elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels?

Make sure that the speaker you invite is familiar with the education level you are teaching. It might be helpful to provide the speaker with information on what you have spoken about in class already, so they aware of the students’ knowledge level.

Increasingly, at the elementary and secondary levels school boards have dedicated Indigenous liaison teachers or administration staff. If you are unsure of how to go about contacting a local Indigenous community or speaker I would suggest starting by seeing what resources are available through your school board.

Are there any additional resources you can recommend?

Some institutions have developed policies which can provide guidance for inviting Elders and Traditional Knowledge Keepers into University spaces.  These are worth taking a look at and encouraging your own institution to create a similar policy.

- University of Manitoba, Cultural Protocols & Policies for Working with Elders

- Carleton, Centre for Indigenous Initiatives, Guidelines for Working with Elders

- University of Winnipeg, Elder Protocols (PDF)

- University of Alberta, Elder Protocols and Guidelines (PDF)

In terms of locating a speaker, particularly for a larger event, the International Indigenous Speakers Bureau can be a helpful resource.

27

A Short History of Treaty Nomenclature in Ontario

Daniel Laxer, Jean-Pierre Morin, Alison Norman

Map of Treaties in Ontario

Have you ever wondered why the treaty for the territory you live on is named as it is? Why are some numbered and some named after people? Why is the Toronto Purchase also known as Treaty 13? Why are there two Treaty 3s in Ontario? No doubt that Ontario’s treaty history is the most complicated in the country, with the most treaties and the most varied naming conventions. This article is an attempt to clarify some of the messiness.Treaty making has a long and complicated history in Ontario.Historians have identified three phases of treaty making between the Crown and Indigenous people that date to the seventeenth century: commercial compacts of the fur trade, peace & friendship treaties related to military alliances, and territorial treaties related to land surrenders. This demonstrates a long treaty making tradition that followed Indigenous protocols (exchanging gifts, wampum, feasting, etc.), the territorial treaties began in earnest after new guidelines and protocols were established by the Royal Proclamation in 1763 .

Especially after the War of American Independence in 1783, a series of land agreements were negotiated by Indian Department officials on behalf of the Crown with the different Anishinaabe peoples inhabiting the lands along the north shore of St. Lawrence River and Lakes Erie and Ontario so that Loyalists could settle and farm in Upper Canada. By the outbreak of the War of 1812, some 15 land cession treaties had been signed. In the response to the rapid influx of new settlers to Upper Canada after the war, nine more treaties were concluded, opening the interior lands to a new wave of settlement. The results are what we now call the Upper Canada or pre-Confederation Treaties.

At this point we should clarify the terminology. Although they often all get categorized as “treaties” today, in the 19th century the land deals were recorded in granular fashion with each deed, grant, surrender, cession, etc. recorded as such. A series of such land deals were often considered part of the same general treaty, and this is the logic behind the letters or fractions that can follow, for instance with Treaty 3 or 13, which have 3 ½, 3 ¾, 13A, etc.

The signature page from the Head of the Lake Purchase

To add a complicating factor, there are two distinct numbering systems in Ontario: one for pre-Confederation, one for post-Confederation. The former covers the century from the 1760s to 1860s, and many of these treaties, of which there are hundreds, are obscurely documented: No. 1 was signed in 1781 at a crucial cross-roads of the Great Lakes, Michilimackinac, but it is little known today because the land ultimately ended up in the United States. The latter numbering system covers the post-Confederation period. This is the system of “numbered treaties” most familiar to Canadians, stretching from Northern Ontario across the prairie provinces.

An important transition happened in the mid 19th century. As resource extraction moved northwards, two treaties with the Anishnaabe of Lake Superior and Lake Huron were concluded, known as the Robinson-Superior and Robinson-Huron Treaties in 1850. This model of concluding agreements with numerous bands for large tracts of lands, often including annuities and hunting and harvesting rights in traditional territories, would become the formula for the post-Confederation “numbered treaties”. Most of the remaining unceded lands of Canada-West around Georgian Bay were also covered by treaties with agreements for the Saugeen (Bruce) Peninsula in 1854 and for Manitoulin Island in 1862. After Confederation, the new Dominion of Canada concluded three separate treaties covering the northern regions of Ontario: Treaty 3 (1873), Treaty 5 (1875 and 1906), and Treaty 9 (1905 and 1929-30) In 1923, two more treaties, the Williams Treaties, covering sections of the north shore of Lake Ontario and central Ontario were negotiated to deal with uncertainties left behind by earlier agreements.

Many treaties are named after the Crown’s lead treaty commissioner. This is the case with the following Ontario treaties:

Williams Treaties: Angus S. Williams

Johnson-Butler Purchase: Sir John Johnson and Colonel John Butler

Robinson-Huron/Superior Treaty: William Benjamin Robinson

The numbered treaties in Ontario often have colloquial names, like Treaty 9 – “the James Bay Treaty”, or Treaty 3 – “the Northwest Angle Treaty”. Many people still use these today. The only treaty (that we’re aware of) named after an Indigenous person is Treaty 19, or “the Ajetance Purchase”, signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit in 1818, and named for Chief James Ajetance (or Ajetans). A rather unusual colloquial treaty name is the “Gunshot Purchase,” also known as the Johnson-Butler Purchase, which was supposed to include all of the land within earshot of the sound of a musket fired along the shoreline.

IT 148 – The Huron-Robinson Treaty

The complicated history of the numbering systems are tied to the record-keeping of the Department of Indian Affairs as part of the Indian Treaties and Surrenders (ITS) collection. While the records of the Department of Indian Affairs, RG10, hold many copies of these treaties,  they were originally held as a distinct collection of materials. The collection was organized by departmental officials in the 1880s with the documents originally sorted chronologically with the oldest document being listed as “ITS 1” and all others numbered consecutively. As John Lesley notes in his essay (link below) on the collection for Library and Archives Canada (LAC), the numbering system is somewhat quirky. In one example, a copy of a treaty at Niagara concluded in 1781 between Guy Johnson and Mississauga and Chippewa of the western region of Lake Ontario was lost but located in 1896 by the Department of Crown Lands in Toronto. Because there was no obvious treaty to which it could be appended, it was added at the end of the sequence, as Treaty 381. It should be noted that the ITS collection also has a number of related documents to the treaties such as maps, annuity pay lists, and reports.

New tools like this map and this map are providing Ontarians with more learning opportunities into this important topic. If we are all to be treaty peoples, as is emphasized in citizenship oaths and educational campaigns, we must all learn about this history, the shared collective history of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples on this land. The TRC Calls to Action include calls for public servants to learn more about treaties, and for governments to make curriculum on numerous subject, including treaties (Nos. 57 & 62 respectively). We hope this article helps explain some of the complexities regarding how treaties are named.

1

Afterward

Samantha Cutrara

Normal School, children leaving for holidays, Photograph by John Boyd, June 26, 1925. City of Toronto Archives.

The essays in this collection seek to bridge the divide between our research expertise and how we impart the knowledge and passion we get from this expertise in our classrooms. Undergraduate and graduate programs in History are not designed to teach historians how to teach, so if and when we get in front of a classroom, we can often draw on our experience as students to help guide this work. And for many of us, drawing on our experience as students means setting up our classrooms to mimic a traditional lecture-style class that may not resonate with our students nor the passion we feel for our research. We may feel that we need to go “beyond the lecture” in how we teach history, but what this may look like and how we’d go about it could feel very unfamiliar and intimidating. While traditionally it may have been assumed that the goal of an undergraduate history course was to foster appreciation of the past and the work of historians, the work of teaching and learning today is more nuanced and complicated – as we know from being both a teacher and a student.

While my undergraduate degree was in History, my graduate degrees were in Education and thus I rarely engaged in History without also connecting it to how it could be, or was taught. My work, more broadly, continues to focus on the nexus between the two. So, while things like learning theory, SoTL or STLHE, may be new to some, instructional theory and instructional design are neither new nor revolutionary to those who have been working with educational theory. This work is grounded in decades of formal research and centuries of teaching experience and practice. I have found that engaging these ideas with the study and practice of History allows for more robust way to think about History and its connection to the world around us.

In particular, I like to use educational researcher Joseph Novak’s conception of “meaningful learning” as a way to clearly summarize principles of learning in regards to history. Novak is an educational psychologist who worked with noted cognitive theorist David Ausubel in the 1960s and drew on this work in the 1970s to develop concept mapping as a method for demonstrating learning. For Novak, concept mapping is a method that leads to “meaningful learning”: the constructive integration of thinking, feeling, and acting leading to empowerment for commitment and responsibility. While Novak comes from a traditional educational theory background, elements of his definition of “meaningful learning” can also be found in works of critical and radical educators interested in transforming schools into emancipatory sites of education such as Paulo Freire, who Novak cites directly.

According to the meaningful learning theory, meaningful learning is able to occur when three things happen:

First: The content has to connect with what the learner already knows. Learning does not happen in a vacuum. New content has to be scaffolded onto a learner’s cognitive structure in order for the new content to stick. Sometimes connecting to prior knowledge means connecting with a false or inaccurate narrative in order to in order to dispel with more accurate information, other times this connection just provides depth and breadth to information they already have. But this connection to prior knowledge is key for any and all learning. Instructional methods that connect to students’ prior knowledge can include games, reading supports, field trips, discussions, but there are more ways for us to do this in classroom. What knowledge are your students bringing into the classroom? What instructional strategies can you use to bring these out?

Second: The learner has to make the choice to learn. Another way to say this is that the learner needs to feel that learning is safe for them; that adding to or expanding their prior knowledge won’t challenge or betray the cultural or social connections they hold. If a learner does not feel like the learning environment is safe for them, they will shut down and make the active choice to resist learning. Herbert Kohl’s classic essay “I won’t learn from you” is a really nice rumination of this point. Some ways to make the learning environment safe in the history classroom is to simply acknowledge that history is personal, or that some topics need greater guidance for working through than others, or that there is content that should be holistic and respectfully taught rather than quickly added to a lecture. Safety for student is also tied to pedagogy. Students can make the choice to learn if the learning environment is set up in ways that are familiar and comfortable for them; if they feel that they can engage in learning new information in new ways without seeming “stupid.” So, for example, if we make use of online and digital learning environments or if we create supports to guide students in their reading, we are setting up conditions for students to engage with materials in ways that may be more individual to them, and thus more safe. There are many more ways that we can create space for students’ safety and choice in the Canadian history classroom. What are ways we can bring this idea of student choice into our classrooms more holistically?

Finally: For meaningful learning to occur, not just general learning, the content itself has to be meaningful. While Novak does not define explicitly what he means by “meaningful,” I like to think of it as content that has connections to students’ lives now and in the future both inside and outside the classroom in and for the wider world. Meaningful content is always defined and redefined as we learn more as historians, as we get to know our students, and as we respond to the world around us. In particular, at this moment in time we can see meaningful learning opportunities in how we are able to expand our notions of Canada in ways that Indigenize and decolonize our understanding of this land and Canadian history. Many historians are also active in public history and demonstrating “real-life” avenues for bringing history to the service of the public. History can also be meaningful in the projects we set our students up to create and in the opportunities we provide to them to bring primary sources together. However, meaningful student learning can, and should, be meaningful for you as well. Investment in and excitement for classroom practice is infectious. If you are teaching with enthusiasm, as many of the instructors featured in this collection are, your classroom will soon become a place that does not just provide meaning, but is meaningful as well. What other dimensions of “meaningfulness” can we bring to our classrooms?

This collection has brought together examples of the ways in which your teaching and learning strategies in the higher education history classroom can enhance your students’ experiences learning history, as well as enhance the ways history can be conceptualized and defined. As historians, educators, and academics, our abilities to think and communicate come down to the ways we build and develop networks of evidence, collegiality, and innovation, all of which can be practiced and developed in the classroom. It is so easy to think of our students as the ones in need of information and our job in the classroom is to give them this information. But the classroom is a space where knowledge is co-created and a thus place where we can learn the nuances of our arguments along with our students. Being open to the ways we can both teach and learn in our classrooms, allows opporutnity for your research to grow and take on new life – it allows for our pedagogy to go “beyond the lecture,” it allows for our research and analytic arguments to as well.

The collection is not exhaustive for going “beyond the lecture,” but it does provide many rich examples for the possibilities for meaningful learning in traditional history lectures and seminars. By thinking about the principles of meaningful learning in your classroom – the connections to prior knowledge, the safety for the student, and the incorporation of meaningful material – it can better enhance what we do in the classroom and, as a result, the history that will be produced in the future.

2

Additional Resources

Teaching Canadian History

- Active History’s Beyond the Lecture Series

- BC Open Textbooks Canadian History: Pre-Confederation

- BC Open Textbooks Canadian History: Post-Confederation

- Environmental History – Teaching Environmental History: Canada in Context

- Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History

- Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History Mystery Quests

- The Governor’s Letters

- Where are the Children?

- Ersi Canada Education World War One

- Historical Thinking Project

- Unwritten Histories’ A Guide to Online Resources for Teaching and Learning Loyalist History

- Unwritten Histories’ A Guide to Online Resources for Teaching and Learning about Black History in Canada

- Unwritten Histories’ A Guide to Online Resources for Teaching and Learning about WW1 in Canada

- Unwritten Histories’ A Beginner’s Guide to Online Canadian Historical Images

- Unwritten Histories’ A Guide to Peer-Reviewed Journals in Canadian History

- Unwritten Histories’ Active Learning Strategies for Canadian History

- Canadian Historical Association Syllabi Central

Teaching History

- Teaching United States History

- History@Work

- American Historical Association Teaching and Learning

- Doing Digital Humanities and Social Sciences in Your Classroom

Teaching And Learning

- Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

- Teaching and Learning Centres

- Hook and Eye

- Conditionally Accepted