Some Reflections on J.R. Miller – Energetic Historical past

As a green-as-grass graduate pupil, I believed that it was in regards to the coolest factor I had ever learn. The title alone was definitely worth the worth of admission. What did two characters from Shakespeare’s Henry IV need to do with Canada’s “Indian” coverage within the late Victorian period? So much, in reality.

When Owen Glendower pronounces that he can “name the spirits from the vasty deep,” Hotspur replies, “However will they arrive?” In different phrases, what issues, in line with Hotspur, is the response, not the decision, or the end result, not the intent.

Riffing on Shakespeare, Dr. Miller – as I’d have addressed him in these days – examined the distinction between the intent of presidency insurance policies and the end result of these insurance policies. Lengthy story quick, he confirmed that Indigenous peoples, in his phrases, “resisted, evaded, and defied” a sequence of insurance policies that took goal at their suppression and assimilation.

“Owen Glendower, Hotspur, and Canadian Indian Coverage” effortlessly mixed authentic analysis and clear writing to achieve broad conclusions, or so it appeared to me, though I now know that tutorial writing is bloody laborious and by no means easy.

Jim’s 1990 article, which was later re-printed in a reader for undergraduate college students, challenged our understanding of Indigenous historical past: Indigenous peoples weren’t passive victims, they had been lively brokers.

Two years later, in 1995, I “met” Jim for a second time. Once more, I say “met” as a result of I had but to really meet him. For a paper I used to be writing on the Canadian historian Donald Creighton, I spent an extended, scorching summer season on the Nationwide Archives, as we speak referred to as Library and Archives Canada. Tucked into the Creighton papers was a sequence of letters between Donald Creighton and a younger Jim Miller, then a PhD pupil on the College of Toronto.

It’s clear from the correspondence that Donald Creighton thought very extremely of Mr. Miller, as he referred to as him. He was good, hardworking, and centered on his analysis and writing. And when the time got here, Creighton wrote a beneficiant letter of reference that helped his final PhD pupil land a everlasting place on the College of Saskatchewan.

A couple of months later, I gave my first tutorial paper on the annual assembly of the Canadian Historic Affiliation on, nicely, Donald Creighton. Afterwards, somebody launched me to Jim, who had attended my discuss! I used to be starstruck, and mumbled one thing incomprehensible.

Though Jim might have been a star, he didn’t comport himself like a star, which is to say that he didn’t parade his studying or his tutorial stripes. He was sort, respectable, and solicitous, and he immediately put me comfy.

Curiously sufficient, Jim and I’d cross paths on the Canadian Historic Affiliation that fall, and, for the following couple of years, we labored carefully collectively. I used to be the English-language Secretary, and he was the president.

Watching him chair conferences, navigate troublesome conversations, and discover consensus on contentious matters, I realized loads about tutorial management and the significance of listening.

I additionally realized a worthwhile lesson in main by instance, which I keep in mind very clearly. Shingwauk’s Imaginative and prescient: A Historical past of Native Residential Faculties had simply been revealed. It’s a outstanding piece of scholarship which we devoured as graduate college students on the College of Ottawa.

J.R. Miller’s seminal work, Shingwauk’s Imaginative and prescient: A Historical past of Native Residential Faculties

Virtually actually, it could have been a finalist for what was then referred to as the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for the Finest Guide in Canadian Historical past. And who is aware of, it might have even received.

However as president of the Canadian Historic Affiliation, Jim knew that he couldn’t presumably settle for the award despite the fact that prize juries function at arm’s size, and so he made it clear that he had instructed his writer, the College of Toronto Press, to not submit his guide for the Macdonald Prize. I used to be terribly impressed by his integrity and his instance.

Quick ahead 10 years, I had completed my PhD, secured an instructional place, and resumed my analysis on Donald Creighton. I despatched a proper word to Jim, requesting an interview, and he agreed. Assembly in his workplace on the College of Saskatchewan, we spent an exquisite couple of hours speaking in regards to the College of Toronto, Donald Creighton, and the writing of Canadian historical past.

When my guide was lastly revealed, I despatched him a duplicate to say thanks. A couple of weeks later, he despatched me a beneficiant word. It was clear that he had learn the factor, which meant loads to me on the time. All these years later, it nonetheless does.

Jim and I continued to alternate occasional e-mails about this and that. I’m not going to fake that I used to be a confidant, as a result of I wasn’t. However re-reading these e-mails, I’m struck by his important generosity and kindness. He was one of many good ones.

There was one e-mail, nonetheless, that I didn’t learn, as a result of I by no means despatched it. After the CHA launched its 2021 Canada Day assertion describing the historic therapy of Indigenous Peoples as genocide, Jim signed a counter assertion that acknowledged “the historic and ongoing legacies of residential faculties and different types of tried assimilation” however stopped in need of describing them as genocidal. He was closely criticized and referred to as a residential college denier.

Chatting with Jim’s household and shut associates, I collect that it was all very painful. Nobody needed to interact with him, preferring as an alternative to dismiss him.

I want had reached out to apologize for the intemperate local weather, and to inform him to not let it get him down. However I didn’t, and now it’s too late.

After Jim’s demise, I did what historians do. I took his books off my cabinets and dipped into them, particularly Shingwauk’s Imaginative and prescient, a guide that takes its title from Chief Augustine Shingwauk’s 1832 imaginative and prescient of a “educating wigwam” in what’s now northern Ontario. In fact, Shingwauk’s imaginative and prescient of a educating wigwam was very completely different than the eventual Sault Ste. Marie mission and faculty that, in Jim’s phrases, “oppressed and tried to assimilate” Shingwauk’s folks.

Though it had been years since I cracked its backbone, I used to be immediately reminded of why my associates and I had eaten it up. The analysis is outstanding, and the writing is impeccable.

However Shingwauk’s Imaginative and prescient wasn’t solely a scholarly challenge. It was additionally an ethical challenge premised on notions of understanding, respect, and what we now name reconciliation.

“Native peoples in Canada,” Jim concluded, “nonetheless have a imaginative and prescient of the wholesome and efficient training of their kids and the event of their communities, and so they nonetheless look to the individuals who have usurped their lands for help in bringing it to actuality. Now, as at all times via the historical past of Native coverage and residential faculties, it’s as much as the Euro-Canadian majority to resolve if they may assist or hinder, facilitate or oppress, help or tyrannize. Will or not it’s the conclusion of Shingwauk’s imaginative and prescient, or one other episode of the Native nightmare?”

It was an enormous query, and for that matter, it nonetheless is.

And that’s when it dawned on me. Shingwauk’s imaginative and prescient of a educating wigwam was additionally Jim’s imaginative and prescient of a greater and fairer Canada, of a rustic that, if it might’t change its previous, can think about a distinct future.

Donald Wright is performing Chair of Historic Research and Professor within the Division of Political Science on the College of New Brunswick