TORONTO, June 16, 2009 -- Many non-Aboriginal Canadians are bewildered or angered by Aboriginal activism including actions such as blockades because they have been raised with romantic images of Aboriginals as people from the past, says York University professor Susan Dion.

As National Aboriginal Day approaches, she says, it is time to re-tell the stories of First Nations people from their point of view.

“There are these eruptions − Burnt Church, Oka, and Ipperwash − and people are shaking their heads. But the majority of Canadians don’t know the history,” says Dion, a professor in York’s Faculty of Education. ” Aboriginal people are seen as pitiful, as caretakers of the earth, or as militant Others. Canadians resist an understanding of history that positions Aboriginal people as human agents actively resisting oppression by dominant society.”

The stories that most children have learned at school fuels this ignorance, says Dion, who was troubled by it as an elementary school teacher. Set in pre-colonial times, the stories portray Aboriginals in canoes or in teepees wrapped in buckskin and feathers, and non-Aboriginals as explorers and conquerors of savages.

To Dion, whose mother is Aboriginal (Lenape/Potawatami), the portrayal of her people was all wrong. Teachers meant well but were not in a position to recognize the depth of their ignorance, she says. Many non-Aboriginal Canadians have preferred to think of Aboriginals as “perfect strangers,” leaving them with no sense of responsibility and no guilt.

In her book, braiding histories: Learning from Aboriginal Peoples’ Experiences & Perspectives (UBC Press, 2009), Dion discusses how some of the most common stories have been taught in schools and tackles the difficult problem of how to teach about the traumatic post-contact history of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.

Dion and her brother Michael, who worked together on the stories that form part of the book, re-tell the story of Shanawdithit, the last-known survivor of the Beothuk First Nations people who lived on the land now known as Newfoundland. Shanawdithit was captured by people who took her to live in St. John’s. According to the story schoolchildren have been taught, she gave her captors two stones before dying − taken as a sign of her generous and forgiving nature. Susan and Michael Dion re-tell the story from an Aboriginal perspective. They believe her gift of the stones was a reminder that the land belonged to the Beothuk and although it had been stolen from them, their presence would always remain there.

Dion also included her mother’s experiences. Born in 1930, she lost her Indian status and all treaty rights when her father enlisted in the Canadian army. She struggled to assimilate and found it difficult to tell her own children about her early life, when Indians were considered savages. 

Progress has been made in the past 20 years or so, says Dion, and there is much more attention to First Nations perspectives, with the creation of Nunavut, increased attention to Aboriginal Education, and the inclusion of First Nations in constitutional conferences, for example.

Re-telling Aboriginal stories from an Aboriginal point of view is an important way to bring about more of this change, Dion says. She believes humanizing Aboriginal people and hearing the stories of our braided histories will contribute to new and better relationships.

“It’s not just important for schoolkids. It’s important for all Canadians to have an understanding of our shared history so that non-Aboriginal people can understand our actions,” says Dion. “It’s important to understand what they don’t know.”

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Media Contact:
Janice Walls, Media Relations, York University, 416 736 2100 x22101 / wallsj@yorku.ca