Revisiting The Shocking Truth About Indians in Textbooks

Field: Social Sciences (Social Sciences)

Revisiting The Shocking Truth About Indians in Textbooks Sean Carleton (bio) Manitoba Indian Brotherhood. The Shocking Truth About Indians in Textbooks. 1974. Manitoba Indigenous Cultural Education Centre Inc., 2016. 186 pp. $30.00 pb. ISBN 9780995219908. One of the most shocking things about the reprint of the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood’s 1974 landmark study, The Shocking Truth About Indians in Textbooks, is that, after almost a half-century, its analysis and recommendations are still relevant. The project, originally led by the then Education Liaison of the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood (MIB), Dr. Verna Kirkness, showed how history and social studies textbooks in Manitoba elementary schools in the 1970s presented “biased and inadequate” representations of Indigenous peoples that justified colonialism and Canadian nation building to Indigenous and non-Indigenous children as commonsensical (5). Moreover, the MIB argued that the “derogatory and incomplete picture of the Canadian Indian” found in authorized textbooks significantly contributed to poor relations between Indigenous peoples and settlers in the province (7). Returning to this seminal study reminds us, as Kirkness suggests in the reprint’s new preface, that while officials have altered school materials in Canada slightly since the 1970s, young people continue to learn about Canadian history generally, and about Indigenous peoples specifically, in selective ways that cultivate misunderstanding and support ongoing colonial oppression. After the Second World War, notable figures such as Chief Dan George publicly criticized Canadian educational materials, including textbooks, for perpetuating racist stereotypes about Indigenous peoples; however, popular criticisms often failed to detail the extent of the problem and did not offer a clear vision of what a more balanced account of the past and present should look like. As a result, the MIB undertook a [End Page 162]quantitative examination and analysis of fifteen history and social studies textbooks authorized by the Manitoba government for use in grades four, five, and six. The MIB interrogated each textbook individually using three methods of examination: content analysis, evaluation coefficient analysis (a quantitative measure also known as E.C.O.), and picture analysis. In addition, borrowing from Garnet McDiarmid and David Pratt’s Teaching Prejudice, the MIB looked for ten different kinds of bias, ranging from the omission of Indigenous peoples and perspectives to their selective representation in ways that legitimized colonialism (9–10). The study is especially significant because rather than just quantifying bias, it analyzed why the material under review was problematic and presented solutions as to what could be done differently. In the analysis sections, the MIB drew on and cited the budding ethnohistorical literature of the 1970s to try to complicate the story of “contact” presented in the textbooks and tease out a more nuanced interpretation of early Indigenous-settler relations in Canada. The result is a blueprint for educational reform, a comprehensive evaluation of the shocking ways in which Indigenous peoples were represented in officially authorized textbooks for children in Manitoba. The Shocking Truth About Indians in Textbooksshows how the story of Canada presented in Manitoba’s history and social studies textbooks glorified European explorers and vilified Indigenous peoples. Figures such as Christopher Columbus and Jacques Cartier were celebrated as great “Discoverers” who brought civilization and culture to the largely “barbarous,” “bloodthirsty,” and “inferior” original inhabitants of the Americas. In contrast, figures like Obwandiyag (Pontiac) and Louis Riel were demonized for their roles in helping to organize anti-colonial resistance movements. Such “hostile” figures were portrayed by textbook authors as barriers to Canadian nation building that needed to be overcome. The MIB showed how “Bias by Defamation” was one of the tactics commonly used against Indigenous peoples in textbooks. For example, in describing the actions of Pontiac, one book claimed: “Although Pontiac was not punished for his conspiracy against the British, he was no longer the great chief he pretended to be, for now no man trusted him” (31). The MIB refuted this claim by pointing out that“[t]his presentation is unfair and derogatory. Pontiac had a genius for military strategy and the ability to unite his people against an outside threat, qualities found in few men” (31). Riel was also a target of character defamation. One book argued that “although Riel was clever, he was also hasty...