A resource guide for the Righting Canada’s Wrongs Indigenous Studies set that provides lessons in historical thinking.
The Righting Canada's Wrongs Indigenous Studies set series is devoted to the exploration of racist and discriminatory government policies and actions against Indigenous peoples through our history, the fight for acknowledgement and justice and the eventual apologies and restitution of subsequent governments. The books in this series make a valuable addition to any classroom or library looking for kid-friendly and appealing resources on Indigenous Studies and equal rights in Canada. The engaging and curriculum-based lessons in this Resource Guide will help students to further understand some of the important events in Canada's history that helped shape our current multicultural society. Educators will find support for teaching about Canada's past and ongoing treatment of Indigenous Peoples and how to approach the topic of, colonization, racism and discrimination. As well, students will learn about the important cultures and traditions that have continued in the face of colonization.
About the Authors
Lindsay Gibson Roland Case Pamela Hickman
DR. ROLAND CASE is executive director and co-founder of The Critical Thinking Consortium. Roland has edited or authored over 100 published works. In addition to his teaching career as an elementary school teacher and as a university professor, Roland has worked with 17,000 classroom teachers across Canada and in the United States, England, Israel, Russia, India, Finland and Hong Kong to support the infusion of critical thinking. Roland is the 2006 recipient of CUFAs Distinguished Academics Career Achievement Award.
ILAN DANJOUX is a recent PhD graduate who examined the predictive power of Middle East political cartoons. He has fifteen years of teaching experience and curriculum design at every level of education, ranging from preschool to Masters programs. Ilan helped develop York University’s first online courses, operated an online education website and designed online learning modules for the University of Leicester.
LINDSAY GIBSON is involved with the Canada-wide Historical Thinking Project and is a member of the Graduate Committee for The History Education Network. He has taught social studies methods courses to pre-service teachers in the Bachelor of Education program at the University of British Columbia and the University of British Columbia Okanagan. Lindsay taught secondary school history and social studies in Kelowna, BC, for ten years and returned to the classroom part-time in the spring of 2012.
PAMELA HICKMAN is the author of over forty non-fiction books for children, including winners of the Green Prize for Sustainable Literature, the Best Book Award from the Society of School Librarians International and the Canadian Authors Association Lilla Sterling Memorial Award. She co-authored the first book in this series, Righting Canada's Wrongs: Japanese Canadian Internment in the Second World War. She lives in Canning, Nova Scotia.
A ground-breaking account of multiple forced relocations by the Canadian government of Inuit communities and individuals. All have been the subject of apologies, but are little known beyond the Arctic. The Inuit community has proven resilient to many attempts at assimilation, relocation and evacuation to the south.
In a highly visual and appealing format for young readers, this book explores the many forced relocation of Inuit families and communities in the Canadian Arctic from the 1950s to the 1990s. Governments promoted and forced relocation based on misinformation and racist attitudes. These actions changed Inuit lives forever. This book documents the Inuit experience and the resilience and strength they displayed in the face of these measures. Years afterwards, there have been multiple apologies by the Canadian government for its actions, and some measure of restitution for the harms caused.
Included in the book are accounts of a community forced to move to the High Arctic where they found themselves with little food and almost no shelter, of children suddenly taken away from their families and communities to be transported to hospitals for treatment for tuberculosis, and of the notorious slaughter by RCMP officers of hundreds of sled dogs in Arctic settlements.
Though apologies have been made, Inuit in northern Canada still face conditions of inadequate housing, schools that fail to teach their language, and epidemics of infectious diseases like TB. Yet still, the Inuit have achieved a measure of self-government, control over resource development, while they enrich cultural life through music, film, art and literature.
This book enables readers to understand the colonialism and racism that remain embedded in Canadian society today, and the successful resistance of Inuit to assimilation and loss of cultural identity.
Like other volumes in the Righting Canada’s Wrongs series, this book uses a variety of visuals, first-person accounts, short texts and extracts from documents to appeal to a wide range of young readers.
 An examination of the Sixties Scoop—a child welfare policy in Canada that saw the removal of Indigenous children from their families, often by force.
Starting in 1951, Indigenous children in Canada were taken by social welfare agencies from their families and placed in the care of non-Indigenous families. These children grew up without their birth families, cultural roots, and language. Many tried to run away and some died in the attempt. The taking of the children is known as the Sixties Scoop, though the policies and practices started before the 1960s and lasted long after. Today, Indigenous children are shockingly over-represented in the child welfare system across Canada.
Indigenous communities organized and fought back for their children. In 1985, an official government report condemned the practice.
In the 1990s, lawsuits were filed against the governments who had supported taking the children. In 2018 and 2019, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba apologized for their roles. In 2020, the Canadian government agreed to a settlement for survivors of the Scoop.
Through hundreds of photos and primary documents, readers meet many survivors of the Scoop. They learn how Indigenous communities fought back to save their children and won, and how Indigenous communities across Canada are working towards healing today.
This updated edition includes the findings of unmarked graves at residential schools and examines the work still to be done to implement the Calls to Action of the TRC Report
"If I were purchasing materials for a high school library, I would buy at least 2 copies, and I would urge Social Studies and Aboriginal Studies classroom teachers to have at least one copy on their bookselves. Perhaps the strongest work to date in the Righting Canada's Wrongs series, Residential Schools underscores the importance of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's work... Highly Recommended." — CM: Canadian Review of Materials
In 1857, the Gradual Civilization Act was passed in Canada with the aim of assimilating Indigenous people. In 1879, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald commissioned a report that led to residential schools across Canada. First Nations and Inuit children were taken from their families and sent to residential schools where they were dressed in uniforms, their hair was cut, they were forbidden to speak their native language and they were often subjected to physical and psychological abuse. The schools were run by churches and funded by the federal government.
The last federally funded residential school closed in 1996. The horrors that many children endured at residential schools did not go away. It took decades for people to speak out, but with the support of the Assembly of First Nations and Inuit organizations, former residential school students took the federal government and the churches to court.
Their cases led to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history. In 2008, Prime Minister Harper formally apologized to former native residential school students for the atrocities they suffered and the role the government played in setting up the school system. The agreement included the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has worked to document the experience. More than five years after the TRC Report was released, there have been reports of unmarked graves of children being discovered at the site of former residential schools. This updated edition includes some of those findings and examines what has and what still has to be done in regards to the TRC Report’s Calls to Action.
This title is also available in immersion French: Les pensionnats indiens (ISBN - 9781459419667).
A newly updated edition explains how prejudice and racism led to the roundup and internment of hundreds of loyal Italian Canadians during the Second World War and includes the federal government’s apology for the internment in 2021.
In the 1960s, after ignoring the Black community’s repeated petitions for basic services, the City of Halifax bulldozed Africville in the name of urban renewal.
For educators seeking to build anti-racism learning into Canadian history classes, this 10-book set of classroom materials is an invaluable resource. Each book addresses a major instance of official racism and discrimination spanning more than 150 years. Also included is a free teachers guide to help integrate these titles into class curriculums.
$349.95, Set
Interest ages: 13-18
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