The kinds of assimilatory activities run by the YWCA, and other volunteer associations, were about providing material and ideological support for the Residential School and Indian Hospital system in Canada. The goal was to assimilate Indigenous patients and youth to European-Canadian life outside of Indian Hospitals and Residential Schools, including potential places of employment. We see this in a January 1964 report that reads “The girls from the Upgrading Class and the University girls somehow got into a chat session. It was wonderful to see the young ones who are just starting out gain encouragement and hope from just watching and talking with the ones who have obviously ‘made it’.”[12] The measure of Indigenous Peoples’ “making it” became assimilation through integration requiring the removal and disconnection of Indigenous Peoples from their culture, communities, and land. As in the Habkirk and Ferguson blog, our research implicates the everyday work of service organizations and their volunteers in supporting the colonial project. Where there were shortfalls of money or goods, we see women’s philanthropic work filling gaps. Knowing these histories and acknowledging these connections is integral to enacting Reconciliation because the “burden of truth-telling should not be placed on the shoulders of survivors. Reconciliation requires institutions, governments, and individuals to live up to their own responsibilities and complete and fulfill the TRC’s 94 calls to action. We must all learn the true history of Residential Schools, listen to Survivors and take a stand against those who would deny, distort and minimalize this history.”
As I reflect further on archives and western approaches to historical research, it is clear that institutions of colonial memory are consistently used against Indigenous Peoples as a weapon. This unjust weaponization comes from what is considered accurate information, who has access to its collection, management, and manipulation, and who has the right to challenge its validity. When it comes to representation of Indigenous Peoples in the archives, the responsibility of ‘the what’ and ‘the who’ has often rested solely within documentation obtained from colonial governments and their agents.
All Catholic and Protestant churches in Canada need to undertake this painful work of disentangling the spiritual call to service from the presence of imperialism, colonialism, racism, and white supremacy and hold themselves accountable for supporting the genocidal Residential School program. Although our team members are mapping a way forward to hold the members of this diocese accountable by providing answers to their questions on their journey towards reconciliation, this reflection work needs to be done by individual dioceses, churches, and settlers, as long as they remain open, willing to learn, and brave throughout our research investigations.
Tuck and Yang’s Decolonization is not a metaphor provides an interesting touchpoint to identify a pattern of “settler moves to innocence.” What does this mean, and what is the pattern? As Indigenous peoples are literally removed from the land and disposed of its resources such as hunting and fishing, but also access to natural resource revenue, they are also figuratively removed and replaced with appropriated words, such as Sakaw. This is an instance that Tuck describes as “settler nativism” where setters attempt to “deflect” their identity by appropriating, in this instance, Indigenous words to be used as place names. There are many instances of this in Canada – itself a place name rooted in an Iroquoian language
This pattern is rooted in colonial and patriarchal power. The settler claims control the land through displacement and replacement of Indigenous peoples. In this specific instance, the Papaschase First Nation who occupied Reserve 136. Settlers, such as those on the Names Advisory Committee and City Council, then use Indigenous words (i.e. Sakaw) as place names to assuage feelings of guilt. This “move to innocence” allows for a feeling of moral resolution without addressing the ongoing colonial structures that led to the theft of land in the first place.
To date what has become painfully clear is that the responsibility and burden of truth telling has fallen largely on Indigenous Peoples, communities, and Nations. Survivors have been forced to continue to fight the church and state in court to have their records released and their experiences validated. We only have to consider the infamous St. Anne’s Residential School, where Survivors are in a legal battle for their records. According to Veldon Coburn, the continued failure of Indigenous and Northern Affairs[3] to release these illustrates,
There is no difference between the suppression of the truth and denial of the truth. Both tactics – whether deployed to advance reconciliation or resist it – subordinate Indigenous Peoples and their truth of Residential Schools and the integral part this system of cultural genocide played in colonialism.
![Photo of a typed passage. It reads "Anecdotes by Ruth Fadum. G[redacted], Ward 5A, a little girl was in a body cast. She had T.B. of the spine. She was in a crib with a cover on to keep her in it. When Governor General, The Rt. Hon. Mr. Massey visited, she quietly looked at him, with her mischievous eyes, and he said, "I'll bet you're a holy terror when I'm not here." This was so true because she found all kinds of ways to lower the side of her crib and get out. [Redacted] was sent down from..." The remainder of the text is cut off.](https://i0.wp.com/activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Provincial-Archives-of-Alberta-PR-1991-0443-21-redacted-1-scaled.jpg?resize=176%2C176&ssl=1)
