Contemporary Productions of Colonial Identities Through Liberal Discourses of Educational Reform

Contemporary Productions of Colonial Identities
LISA COMEAU
Contemporary Productions of Colonial

Identities through Liberal Discourses of
Educational Reform
LISA COMEAU
University of Regina
To speak of colonial identities is to invoke history. While history is
interesting enough in itself in white settler societies, I refer to it in this
paper to suggest that what happens in Canadian education, specifically in
the example of Saskatchewan, is really not so different from its historical
antecedents, as much as a surface glance and a separation of time might
suggest otherwise. This is not to deny the significant ruptures in discourses
from past to present. In late 19th and early 20th century Canada, discourses
of race and racial and national purity were central in thinking about
education. Languages spoken, faiths professed, and the daily ways of living
of some groups of people were targeted for consumption (in the sense of the
swallowing up, or the overtaking of something), and replacement by
British, Protestant, and middle class ways of living marked by temperence,
sexual restraint, and other forms of self-control. In contemporary Canada,
we speak much less openly about race. As seen in an official articulation
of the discourse of multiculturalism (Government of Canada, 2002),
the language of race is subjugated by the discourses of culture and
multiculturalism. In this contemporary context, cultural practices remain
targeted for consumption. Although it bears recognition that what are
considered problematic aspects of some cultures remain targets of reform,
today in Canada, consumption of culture now refers primarily to the
acquisition of the commodities that cultural differences have become. In
this paper, I will argue that the consumption of racial differences then,
Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies
Volume 3 Number 2 Fall 2005
and of cultural differences now, have been and continue to be justified by

the consumers sense of moral responsibility and entitlement. I will argue
further that contemporary discursive practices of educational reform in
Saskatchewan, as articulated in current education policy documents and
recommendations for reform, re/produce colonial power relations as the
consumption of cultural differences, by a dominant and normative white
Anglo center, in the name of the well-being of cultural Others and the
nation as a whole.
History and Colonial Education
It is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a detailed history of education

in Canada. My reading of authors dealing with education in Canada during
the late 1800s to early 1900s (Anderson, 1918; Stanley, 1991; Valverde,
1991), in the context of the work of authors dealing with education during
approximately the same historical period in colonies other than Canada
(Bacchus, 1994; Stoler, 1995), suggests the possibility of recognizing a
general colonial ethos during this period that I will refer to as the nationbuilding period in Canada. I understand colonial education to be both the
expression of, and a crucial means of producing this general colonial ethos.
In short, 19th century colonials, and the policies, laws and institutions they
produced, were inherently white-supremacist, patriarchal, and bourgeois
in nature. At the very core of this ethos was the inviolable conviction of the
supremacy of imperial white, Protestant, bourgeois, and masculine values,
ideals and ways of living.
As the following quote from French colonial Jules Harmand makes
very explicit, historically, the conviction of white racial superiority
underlay colonizers sense of moral superiority and by extension moral
responsibility.
It is necessary, then, to accept as a principle and point of departure the fact that
there is a hierarchy of races and civilizations, and that we belong to the superior
race and civilization, still recognizing that, while superiority confers rights, it
imposes strict obligations in return. The basic legitimation of conquest over
native peoples is the conviction of our superiority, not merely our mechanical,
economic and military superiority, but our moral superiority [italics added].
Our dignity rests on that quality, and it underlies our right to direct the rest of
humanity. Material power is nothing but a means to that end. (Harmand, 1910,
cited in Said, 1993, p. 17.)
Based on this was the belief in the divinely ordained moral imperative to
assimilate all others, to the varying degrees believed possible. It appears
that in Canada, this sense of moral responsibility justified efforts of the
colonial discursive apparatus which included education, the penal system,
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the health and mental health system, the immigration system, and Christian
churches, to:
produce Canada as a nation and a citizenry that was white, middle
class, English speaking and protestant [the construction of the colonizer
identity] and
to protect Canada and Canadian citizens from the threat of degeneracy
said to be posed by racialized, classed and gendered Others [the
construction of the colonized identity].
Colonial education in Canada seems to have been approached in 3 different

ways relative to 3 different groups of people. Colonial education consisted
of:
character education was to nurture the inherent yet fragile character

of those Canadians who were middle class, protestant, Englishspeaking, and not least, white.
assimilative education designed to to consumein the sense

ofswallow up, make disappearnon-British European cultural
identities.
finally, segregated education and residential schooling was available

for non-white immigrants and First Nations people. This education
complemented the imposition of political and economic measures
designed to subjugate and render economic competition with white
settlers impossible.
In this first section of this paper, I will elaborate on these approaches to

education in order to support my initial point that during the late 1800searly 1900s in Canada, the consumptionin the sense of eradicationof
those cultural practices considered undesirable because not British, was
central to the project of building a white, Anglo nation and citizenry of
the British Empire. This, in turn, lays the foundation for my argument
in the second section of the paper, that consumption of commodified
cultural differences remains central to the way Canadian national identity
is imagined. Moreover, this consumption continues to position white,
middle class Canadians as normal, normative, and good by virtue of
their consumption of Other cultures.
Character Education for White, Anglo Canadians
In the years around the turn of the 20th century, the notion of character was
central to thinking about differences between human beings. Character was
believed to be a matter of breedingan accident of birth . Good character
was contingent upon being born in the British race. You were either born
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into itand with the potential to develop it (through education)or you

werent.
Ideal Canadian citizens were those who were born into the British race.
They spoke English, proclaimed a Protestant faith, were middle-class, and
had white skin. They lived in specific ways characterized by self-control,
self-discipline, self-determination self-mastery (Stoler, 1995, p. 8).
They embraced property ownership, rootedness and an orderly family
life (Stoler, 1995, p. 128). They were well-to-do; Church-going; Englishspeaking (Anderson, 1918, p. 27).
Character was also seen to be the link between the individual, the
nation, and Empire. In his 1893 foreward to Round the Empire, Lord Roseberg
wrote:
A collection of states spread over every region of the earth, but owning one head
and one flag, is even more important as an influence than as an Empire.With
the Empire statesmen are mainly concerned; in the influence every individual
can and must have a part. Influence is based on character; and it is on the
character of each child that grows into manhood within British limits that the
future of our Empire rests. (cited in Stanley, 1991, p. 226)
As Valverde writes, an individual without character was a miniature

mob: disorganized, immoral, and unhealthy as well as an inefficient
member of the collectivity (1991, p. 27). Therefore in Canada, the concern
was not only to populate the country with people skilled enough to build
a thriving national economy. Rather, central to the issue of nation-building
was the concern to populate the country with people who possessed the
appropriate ethical subjectivit[ies] (Valverde, 1991, p. 17). Canadians
were to be people of good characteras clear, clean and white as Canadas
pristine water and air and its snow-capped mountains. Canadians were
to be pure not only in bodythrough physical hygiene, temperence and
sexual modestybut more importantly, they were to be pure in spirit, as
modelled by the colonizing peoples.
Although good character was considered a question of breeding, this
birthright was also believed to be vulnerable to degrading influence from
degenerate Others. Therefore, children born into good character were seen
to require a curriculum of rigorous character-building. This was true not
only of Canada, but other European colonies such as the Dutch East Indies
(Stoler, 1995), and British West Indies (Bacchus, 1994). As Valverde writes,
the production of self [through] character-building was an inner,
subjective task. It involved learning to lead a morally and physically pure
life, not only for the sake of individual health and salvation but for the sake
of the nation (1991, p. 27).
Historically, this was the production of the colonizer identitythe best,
most desirable, normative people were white, British, English-speaking
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Protestants. Moreover, their dominance and normativity was contingent

on the degeneracy of Others, and their moral responsibility, born of the
conviction of their racial superiority, manifested in the conquest and
colonizing of Others.
Education for Assimilable Others
[S]ome may be convinced that the sty makes the pig. There can be no question
but that the pig makes the sty, and to prevent sty conditions the porcine nature
must be transformed. (S.W. Dean, 1914, cited in Valverde, 1991, p. 47)
As this 1914 quote from S.W. Dean, a Methodist missionary suggests,

flaws in some peoples characters (like being non-white, poor, and female)
rather than socio-economic injustices were considered to be responsible
for social problems ranging from poverty to prostitution. Hence, it was
believed that such social problems would be solved not through social
and economic reform, but through the discursive practices of character
education and moral reform. These practices served both to re/produce
the dominance, normativity, and moral goodness of the colonizer, and to
simultaneously produce non-British European immigrants as well as nonEuropean immigrants and indigenous people as racially degenerate, and
hence as dangerous to the well-being of the new country and citizens.
Because the colonizers claim to moral superiority was confirmed by
Christianity, the triple efforts of deculturation, assimilation and policing
that Carlson (1997) ascribes to colonial education, were framed as moral
obligation, and taken up with missionary zeal.
During the late 1800s and early 1900s, many non-British immigrants
were not wanted in Canada and were not desirable as Canadian citizens. As a
vast and fledgling nation, Canada needed to protect its sovereignty through
the building of a railroad, the clearing and planting of the prairies, and the
settling of towns and cities (Boyko, 1998; Francis, 1997). Thus, non-British
immigrants were admitted to the country largely because their numbers
and their labour were needed to do the job of nation-building. However,
the following 1910 quote from Rev. Samuel Dwight Chown, General
Superintendent of the Methodist Church is an example of discourses of the
time that produced non-Anglos as racially degenerate therefore threatening
to the health of Canadian citizens, and the nation itself:
While many of our non-Anglosaxon population are amongst the best of the
people from their native lands it is lamentable that such large numbers
have come to Canada during the last decade bringing a laxity of morals, an
ignorance, a superstition and an absence of high ideals of personal character or
of national life [and] may constitute a danger to themselves and a menace to
our national life 35 . (cited in Valverde, 1991, p. 53)
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Moreover, it was accepted that the paramount factor in racial fusion

is undoubtedly the education of the children of these non-English races
(Anderson, 1918, p. 89). Therefore assimilative education designed both to
deculturate and assimilate non-British, but white, European immigrants
to the English language, and to British ideals and ways of living, were
accepted as a vital means of protecting Canada and Canadians from
the threat of degeneracy. Rooted in the conviction of British superiority,
assimilative education was also accepted as an act of moral generosity,
hence confirming the colonizers claim of superiority. As an example of
this, German Mennonites were not regarded as ideal potential Canadians
specifically because of their tendency to resist assimilative education,
insisting instead on their legal right to educate their own children in their
own language and faith tradition.
J.T.M. Anderson, a Saskatchewan Inspector of Schools and later to
become Premier of Saskatchewan during the years 19291934, insisted in
1918 that no tolerant citizen asks that the Mennonite schools be forthwith
abolished (1918, p. 223). Anderson nevertheless urged Canadians to
insist upon the state exercising its right to see that every one of these NewCanadians obtains what in free Canada should surely be ones birthright
a public school education! (1918, p. 34). Therefore, Canadian colonial
identity as morally magnanimous is confirmed through the insistence on
fulfilling Mennonite rightsnot to educate their own children in their own
language and faith tradition as provided for in the law of the time, but to be
improved as human beings through assimilation to British ways of living.
Canadians like Anderson were so convinced of British superiority and
the attendant moral obligation to assimilate Others, that it was believed
necessary to rectify mistakes, such as laws allowing for parochial schools,
even at the expense of giving offence to a minority.They will before
many years thank us for our work (Anderson, 1918, p. 7879).
Education for Unassimilable Others
To assimilate Europeans is one problem; to assimilate Asiatics quite a different

problem. (Braithwaite cited in Stanley, 1991, p. 195)
What was at stake was raceand race referred not only to country
of origin, but also quite simply to skin colour. Race was understood in
biologically essential waysit was believed to be carried in the blood, and
the blood of non-white skinned people was considered degenerate. On this
point, Stanley cites Ernest McGaffey, 1912:
Racially he [the Oriental] is as opposite to the Anglo-Saxon in life, thought,
religion, temperament, taste, morals, and modes, as ice is to fire. AND HE
CAN NEVER BE OTHERWISE. He cannot be changed, even by centuries of
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contact, any more than the leopard can change his spots... racially, the yellow
man can never become a white man. (1991, p. 194, original emphasis)
Thus some immigrants were considered assimilable, because language

and faith could be taught. But skin colour couldnt be taught; therefore
for some dominantly positioned people, people who were non-European,
non-Christian, and non-white, were simply considered unassimilable.
Even intermarriage was not considered a viable means of assimilation,
because color is not assimilated through intermarriage (Stanley, 1991,
p. 193). While good character was considered flexible enough as to
be developed in those who were born with enough potential for it, the
character of non-white people was considered fixed and immutableno
amount of education could make them white.
Implications for non-white, non-European, non-Christian immigrants
The easiest way to deal with the threat of racial degeneracy posed by
non-white, non-European and non-Christian immigrants, was simply to
refuse to let such people into the country. Canadian history is replete with
examples of immigration policies designed to do exactly that (Ashworth,
1979; Boyko, 1998; Ormond & McKague, 1991). For those who were already
here, life was made incredibly difficult: race riots were not uncommon,
schools for non-white children were segregated, and a major aim was to
prevent unassimilable immigrants from becoming economically competitive with
white settlers. The intention seemed to be that if things were bad enough in
Canada, undesirable immigrants would leave (Ashworth, 1979; Boyko,
1998).
Implications for First Nations people.
These white supremacist beliefs applied as much to First Nations people

as to non-white immigrants. However, because First Nations people were
already here, they could not simply be denied entry. They were hereand
their very presence, their refusal to just vanish (as the vanishing Indian
discourse of the time would have them do) was the essence of the Indian
problem of the time. The ideology of white supremacy together with their
insistent presence produced Indigenous people in Canada, as in other
colonies around the world, as the embodiment of the internal enemy
(Foucault cited in Stoler, 1995). Unremitting effort[s] (Said, 1993, p. 168)
were made to ensure that Canada and Canadians would be protected
from the alleged threat within their midst. Such efforts took the form of
imposed political and economic limitations such as the pass system and
permit system. Under these laws, Indians were not permitted to leave
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their reserve, or to sell produce or purchase items required for agricultural

labour without the consent of the Indian agent. Carters examples of Plains
Cree history (1986) demonstrates that contrary to explanations given at the
time, their failure to farm successfully was not because they were racially
ill-suited to it or because they were evolutionarily not ready for farming.
Rather, their failure was imposed on them by specific policies and practices
of the Canadian government. It was made impossible for Plains Cree
people to succeed at farming. Like non-white immigrants, First Nations
people were prevented from self-sustainability and economic competition
with white settlers.
It was in this political and economic climate that amendments to the
Indian Act mandated the attendance at Residential School of First Nations
children from 616. It is generally well-accepted that assimilation was the
objective of these schools. However, the words of a 1904 Indian Department
memo, it was never the policy of the department, nor the design of the
industrial school to turn out Indian pupils to compete with the whites
(cited in Deiter, 1999, p. 16).
Paralleling the means taken to prevent agricultural success, this memo
states very clearly that residential schools were not intended to give First
Nations students the skills needed to live independently and well in the socalled white mans world. Rather, they were designed to teach the basic
language and faith requirements of civilization. In this way, residential
schools for First Nations children might serve to protect white settlers from
the threat of indigenous racial degeneracy. Residential schools provided
the added bonus of producing an underclass of farm labourers and house
servants for white settlers.
Educational Reform in Contemporary Saskatchewan
At first glance, contemporary Canadian understandings of differences

between people, the implications of such differences on national identity
and well-being, and how such differences ought to be taken up in
education, appear to be very much different than they were 100 years ago.
Race discourses have largely been replaced with discourses of culture and
multiculturalism. Canada now holds a special place among nations as an
example of such liberal virtues as equality of individuals, multicultural
tolerance, and inclusion (Canadian Heritage, 2002, Respecting our
Differences section, para. 1). Multiculturalism has been placed on high
moral ground, with multicultural discourses such as inclusion and tolerance
of difference encouraging what Wetherell and Potter refer to as the moral
identity of tolerance (1992, p. 211). Moreover, in Canada, multiculturalism
is widely seen as a sort of antidote to the racism and ethnic conflict seen
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to plague other parts of the world (Canadian Heritage, 2002, Valuing our
Diversity section, para. 3). The rupture from then to now is also reflected in
public education documents with the deep embedding of these discourses
of multiculturalism and cultural difference in Saskatchewan Learnings
policies, goals, curricula, and suggested teacher practices (Saskatchewan
Education, 1994; Saskatchewan Education, Training and Employment,
1995; Saskatchewan Education, 1996; Saskatchewan Education, 2002).
Multicultural education is promoted as the solution to the problem of
racism (Saskatchewan Education, 1994; Saskatchewan Education, 2002),
and Aboriginal education is promoted as part of the solution to the socially
toxic(Garbarino cited in Tymchak, 2001, p. 82) socio-economic and
psychological factors that are deemed responsible for placing Aboriginal
and poor students at risk of school incompletion (Saskatchewan
Education, 1996; Tymchak, 2001, p. 125).
In this section, I explore the ways in which education in Saskatchewan
continues to function as part of the larger discursive apparatus positioning
some groups of people as dominant and normative, while constructing Other
identities as dysfunctional, at risk, and dangerous to themselves and to the
community as a whole. Regarding the pastoral pedagogy orientation of
Canadian Social Science curricula, Cavanaugh argues that the Canadian
child is constituted as future agent of global care, and the Third World
recipient of that care (who is both a living subject and a Canadian social
fiction) is constructed to be in need of care (2001, p. 402). I argue that this
benevolent, yet colonizing, pedagogy of care (Cavanaugh, 2001, p. 403)
is taken up in multicultural education and performed through the Canadian
celebration of cultural differences and the literal consumption of
cultural commodities at various perogies, eggrolls and bannock events.
Such contemporary discursive practices of multiculturalism confirm both
the normativity and the moral righteousness of those dominantly positioned
Canadians who perform themselves as non-racist through their interest in,
tolerance and even celebration of the cultural differences of Others.
Ripe for Consumption: Culture as Problem, Culture as Solution
Stoler (1995) suggests that since the 19th century, the culture concept
has been connected to race, and has been used to do the political work
of providing the psychological scaffolding for exploitation. I suggest
further that the culture concept has since become a bifurcated one, and that
culture, as both problem and solution, is ripe for consumption. Through the
failure to see themselves as having either race or culture (Bannerji, 1997,
2000; Goldstein, 2001; Mackey, 1999; McIntosh, 1988/92; McIntyre, 1997;
Sleeter, 1993; St. Denis, 2002), and through the conferral of race and culture
17
as properties of Otherness (Bannerji, 1997, 2000; hooks, 1992; Mackey, 1999;

Sleeter, 1993; St. Denis, 2002), to be consumed in various ways, colonial
identities and colonial power relations are re/produced.
Where racial degeneracy used to be cited as the explanation for non-white
European immigrants and Aboriginal peoples inability to live properly,
culture has replaced race as a determinate quality. In Razacks words,
cultural differences perform the same function as a more biological notion
of race once did: they mark inferiority (1998, p. 19). Thus contemporary
discourses of cultural deficiency blame poor and Aboriginal victims for
their poverty and social marginalization. This is the discourse of culture
as at risk or dysfunctional or otherwise problematic and subversive
to the mainstream. This manifestation of culture is considered intolerable,
endangering to children born into it, and dangerous to the social body. A
second manifestation of culture is that of traditional (Tymchak, 2001, p.
104), or authentic culture (Bannerji, 1997, 2000; Saskatchewan Education,
1996, St. Denis, 2002). This is the form of culture that is tolerated and
celebrated (Government. of Canada, 2002; Saskatchewan Education, 1994;
Saskatchewan Learning, 2002). St. Denis, an indigenous scholar writing
specifically about Saskatchewan education, shows that in the particular
case of Aboriginal culture, traditional culture is the form of culture that
various government documents and Aboriginal organizations claim
theres not enough of (2002). It is this traditional culture that is proposed
as the solution to the problem of cultural dissonance (St. Denis, 2002),
Aboriginal students consequent incompletion of school (Saskatchewan
Education, Training and Employment, 1995; Saskatchewan Education 1996;
Tymchak, 2001), and in turn, [their consequent] non-participation in
the labour market, and correlative probability of entrapment in a cycle
of unemployment, poverty, welfare, and running afoul of the justice
system (Tymchak, 2001, p.12). Herein is a cyclical connection between
the two discourses of culture: without traditional culture, dysfunctional
culture will reproduce itself from generation to generation. Traditional
culture is assigned the responsibility of breaking the cycle, thus making
life better and safer for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people alike. This
is strikingly similar to Wetherell and Potters (1992) findings of white
New Zealanders dual understanding of Maori culture-as-heritage and
culture-as-therapy, according to which Maori culture is claimed to be
a crucial element in solutions to Maori poverty and marginalization. In
Canada, both discourses of culture perform the political work of keeping
Aboriginal people, poor people, and white, middle class people in their
respective places of marginalized to the dominant, and invisible-becausenormative, center. Both discourses are generally well-known and accepted
by Canadians. Both discourses produce the Indian as cultural (St. Denis,
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2002). Both discourses connect specifically to ways of living, and both

discourses appear repeatedly in Saskatchewan Learning documents.
When culture is produced as both the problem, and the solution to the
problem (see also St. Denis, 2002), white middle class ways of living remain
normative, raceless, cultureless, and allegedly vulnerabletoday, as they
were 100 years ago.
Culture as the problem: The discourse of at risk Aboriginality.
St. Denis (2002) shows how educational thinking has psychologized and
commodified culture since the mid 1960s. Culture is seen to consist of the
attitudes, values, beliefs and practices of a group of people that can be
taken up or not, largely as a matter of personal choice (Sleeter, 1993). In the
19th century, the characteristics of culture considered degenerate, therefore
dangerous, included precisely those characteristics that were reasons for
exclusion from the bourgeoisie. These include the lack of good reason and
character class breeding [and] managed passions, self-discipline
over unruly drives and the education of sentiment and desire as well
(Stoler, 1995, p. 130). It appears that precisely these characteristics continue
to be produced as dangerous, to place Aboriginal and poor children at
risk, and to justify the exclusion of some people from normative, white
middle class respectability (Fellows and Razack, 1998; Schick, 2000) in
contemporary Canada.
As St. Denis argues, the ways that many Aboriginal and poor people live
are considered to be culturally informed choices rather than the effects of
systemic racism and poverty (2002). For instance, St. Denis (2002) shows the
repetition in government documents of the idea that the system of values of
some Indian communities tends to devalue formal education (Hawthorne
1967 cited in St. Denis, 2002, p. 51). This idea persists in contemporary
Saskatchewan Learning policies as evidenced in the acknowledgement in
the Community Schools policy document, of the challenge [emphasis added]
of involving parents who have traditionally [emphasis added] not played
an active role in the education of their children (Saskatchewan Learning,
1996, p. 8). Supporting the idea of the cultural devaluing of education is the
metaphor of two worlds (St. Denis, 2002), in which a gap exists between
Aboriginal and dominant society culture, which must be bridged in order
for Aboriginal students to acquire the skills to be successful in the white
mans world. In the more recent Report of the Task Force and Public Dialogue
on the Role of the School (Tymchak, 2001), the foundational document for
educational reforms to SchoolPLUS currently underway in Saskatchewan,
10 of the 14 tectonic factors described reflect disproportionately the life
situations of Aboriginal and poor children. These include: demographic shift
19
(the increasing proportion of school-aged children of Aboriginal ancestry);

poverty; family changes (especially single mother (and employed mother)
homes; student mobility (high transience rate); high special needs rate;
increasing ratio of at risk indicators; cross-cultural issues; curriculum
reform; human services integration; student attitudes and behaviours
including behavior disorders such as emotional disturbances and suicide
(Tymchak, 2001, p. 6). An eleventh issue not included among the tectonic
factors is the issue of hidden youththose students not in school at alla
situation which demands intervention on a more massive scale, and in a
more determined manner (Tymchak, 2001, p. 83). This issue also reflects
Aboriginal youth disproportionately, and again, confirms the idea that
education is devalued by Aboriginal people.
I take this as evidence that the discourse of racial degeneracy has been
largely replaced by the discourse of at risk Aboriginal culture. I propose
further that Aboriginal and poor children in the 20th and now 21st century,
continue to be constructed as endangered, now by their culturesor lack
thereofrather than their race, and as threats to the well-being of Canadian
society as a whole. Indeed, these are precisely the children identified in
the very title of Saskatchewans community school policy; they are the
at risk and Indian and Mtis students (Saskatchewan Education, 1996).
The indicators of social crisis or tectonic factors presented in the Role
of the School Report (Tymchak, 2001) are criminalized and pathologized,
and they are the targets of educational change lest, as noted above, they
lead to children taking up the pathological lifestyles of their parents.
Hence, as in the 19th century, aboriginal and poor children continue to
be produced as the internal enemy (Stoler, 1995). The threat posed is
no longer articulated as one of racial dilution. Rather it is recognized
primarily as a socio-economic threat. The discourse of the injustice of
the hard-working Canadian taxpayer having to support free-loading
Indians is very popular (Canadian Taxpayers Federation, 2003). A similar
discourse about welfare recipients in general is also common (Wardhaugh,
2003), as is the discourse that white Canadians are victimized by the
implementation of race-based privileges for Indians (Pankiw, 2003).
These discourses articulate with other discourses about irresponsible,
incompetent and corrupt Indian Bands and Aboriginal businesses; with
discourses about the unfairness of special hunting and fishing rights for
Natives; with fear about the legal realities of the Treaty Land Entitlement in
Saskatchewan; with fear and anger about various Land Claims processes
across the country; with concern about the ongoing process of financial
compensation for residential school survivors; and so forth. These various
discourses all serve to construct Aboriginal people as a major economic
threat to the Canadian body.
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Compensatory education andmore character education.
As it was in the late 19th and early 20th century, education is again invoked
as the way to consume the threat posed by at risk Aboriginal and poor
children. Stoler notes that the 19th century Dutch campaign for popular
education was framed as a reform of an orderless morally corrupt society
[and that] reform rested on the instillment of personal self-discipline as
well as collective moral control (Lenders, cited in Stoler, 1995, p. 119). More
than a century later, the Task Force on the Role of the School recognizes its
project as more than accommodation and adjustmentwe are in the throes
of creating a new society! (Tymchak, 2001, p. 39).
Many of the specific changes recommended by the Task Force are forms
of compensatory educationeducation designed to make up for peoples
weaknesses, for instance, in their ability to make good choices around
issues ranging from career, to sexual activity and drug use. Moreover, in
considering the question of the purpose of schools, the Task Force was
reminded that:
the primary good at which schools should aim is the humanization [italics
added] of children and young people or of helping them become persons more
fully. [italics added]
[Moreover, the role of the school is] to empower individuals to make

greater sense of the world and of who they are, a progressive initiation into
the achievements of human mind and spirit. These achievements include
the natural sciences, the human or social sciences, mathematics, literature
and fine arts, moral understanding [italics added], and religious or spiritual
understanding. (Stewart, cited in Tymchak, 2001, p. 38)
Of course, this canon has been soundly critiqued by various scholars

including feminist theorists, post-structuralists, post-colonialists, critical
anthropologists, as androcentric and Eurocentric (Harding, 1996; Haraway,
1988; Rosaldo, 1989).
Unlike late 19th century thinking, the Role of the School Report no
longer dismisses anyone as beyond the reach of a purposeful program of
character formation. In concluding a discussion on student attitudes and
behaviours, the Task Force stated its strong belief
that the needs of children and youth today have created for us as a society, and
for our schools, an imperative with respect to character formation that we ignore
at our peril [italics added]. We see the need to bring fresh vigor to the task of
promoting character education in our schools. We see this as a positive task
that involves nurturing and promoting values, ideals and wisdom, rather than
merely facilitating discussion and clarifying values (Tymchak, 2001, p. 106).
The Task Force does recognize that many oppressive values have also
been perpetuated by such means, especially relating to race and gender
21
(Tymchak, 2001, p. 104), however it remains unclear how character

formation in the 21st century will avoid these systemic barriers.
Culture as the solution: The discourse of traditional Aboriginality.
Since the National Indian Brotherhoods call for Indian Control of Indian
Education (1972), Aboriginal cultural revitalization has been a major
concern in education, and has been seen as rectifying the deculturation
perpetrated in Residential Schools. To a large extent, this inclusion is an
important counter-balance to the exclusion imposed in history. As St. Denis
(2002) attests, attendance at various Teacher Education Programs (TEPS)
designed to educate Aboriginal teachers, can and does instill a sense of
pride in heritage that is new for many First Nations and Mtis students.
In addition to the work of the TEPS, provincial policy and curriculum
documents in Saskatchewan have been looking at increasing Aboriginal
content and developing partnerships with Aboriginal parents since the
1980s. The Role of the School Report certainly continues in this direction.
I suggest that cultural revitalization is not as transparent as it may seem.
In the context of Canadian multiculturalism, culture ceases to be an organic
process, a way of living that is dynamic and flexible, and to which all people
are subject. Rather, culture is regarded as the property of Others, while
dominantly positioned people remain Canadian Canadians (Mackey, 1999,
p.3), or just normal. The multicultural focus on cultural diversity and its
encouragement of people to retain their traditional cultures commodifies culture
(St. Denis, 2002, p.5). Moreover, the discourse of multiculturalism essentializes
Other cultures, usually in some primitive and romantic (St. Denis, 2002, p.
29) formulation. In Saids words, this object [culture] is a fact which, if it
develops, changes, or otherwise transforms itself in the way that civilizations
frequently do, nevertheless is fundamentally, even ontologically stable
(1978, p. 32). Traditional culture is considered to be pre-contact culture
culture not influenced by assimilation to modern, Eurowestern culture. In
Saskatchewan, traditional culture includes such historical artifacts as tipis
and buffalo, as well as life models such as the medicine wheel, and social and
spiritual practices such as Pow Wows and various ceremonies. Commodified
and objectified, traditional culture thus becomes available for consumption
an object of knowledge to be taught and learned about in classrooms.
The front page of the Regina Leader-Post on February 5, 2003, featured a
large picture of precisely this type of lesson. In it were several visibly white
children, some with war painted faces, some with Halloween costume
feather bonnets and plastic bows and arrows, and others sitting on colourful,
woven South American rugs in front of large construction paper tipis. The
caption below identified them as a Regina grade 4 class learning about
22
LISA COMEAU
Plains Cree culture. This picture served as an invitation to all of Regina

to participate in this consumption of traditional culture, and in so doing,
perform themselves as tolerant, liberal, and essentially good people. It
also confirmed the knowledge of who real Indians areor were.
The discourse of traditional or authentic culture is also available to be
taken up by First Nations people themselves, and in this context, arguably
serves a gate-keeping function such that participation in traditional
practices confers authenticity to group insiders, while undermining the
perceived legitimacy of those Aboriginal people who dont participate.
Sometimes, even success in the white mans world is enough proof of
assimilation to result in the ascription of the label apple: red on the outside,
white on the inside. I suspect that even those people whose lives are marked
by the poverty and social dysfunctions discussed earlier in this paper may
be considered more truly Indian than those First Nations people with
university degrees and mortgages on well-kept houses in nice suburbs.
Conclusion
Many well-intentioned people work very hard to reform policies and

procedures with the objective of helping people to break the cycles in which
theyre stuck. However, this work is fuelled not only by good intentions,
but also by an acceptance that some groups of people are dysfunctional
that they are the source of their own problems. This is supplemented with
the pastoral ethic that we need to help them because they are incapable
of living well without our intervention. In this paper, Ive explored the
ways that contemporary discourses of culture do similar political work
as historical discourses of race with the effect that some groups of people
continue to occupy marginalized positions in society, while other groups
continue to maintain their positions of dominance, normativity, and
ultimately, goodness. As much as many of us are intent on redressing the
social injustices of our colonial history, the liberal discourses we espouse
have the effect not only of re/producing colonial and racist power relations
and identities, but of working to mask this process. In the end, those who
are complicit in this re/production through their well-meaning practices of
cultural consumption still enjoy the comfort of the moral high ground.
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