By Sean Carleton, Crystal Gail Fraser, Jackson Pind
Because the 2025 federal election marketing campaign intensifies, some pundits are denigrating Robert Carney, father of Prime Minister Mark Carney, for his function in colonial schooling for Indigenous Peoples and his previous feedback defending residential colleges.
Robert Carney died in 2009, however some writers—who’ve beforehand celebrated him for defending the Catholic Church and residential education—are actually criticizing his prior feedback in hopes they will injury Mark Carney’s political marketing campaign.
Retailers concerned within the residential college denialist motion—e.g. Western Normal, Insurgent Information, Woke Watch Canada and so forth.—have printed articles making an attempt to hyperlink Mark Carney, by affiliation, to his father’s residential college denialism. Mockingly, many of those pundits declare that residential college denialism doesn’t exist. But, in the identical breath, some are going as far as to invest whether or not the Prime Minister himself is likely to be a residential college denialist as a result of he has stated little about his father particularly or fact and reconciliation usually.
Lots of the articles current details about Robert Carney’s connections to education programs for Indigenous Peoples; nonetheless, they accomplish that in deceptive and dishonest ways in which twists the advanced fact about colonialism and education in Canada.
Even damaged clocks are proper twice a day; that’s additionally a truth, however we don’t set our watches to them to inform the time, lest we be misled.
As historians (two Indigenous, one settler) of education and colonialism, now we have a accountability to answer this difficulty to information public dialogue in productive methods.
Fact and Reconciliation Management
To be clear, all three of us problem Robert Carney’s printed writings and agree that a few of his conclusions align with residential college denialism, understood because the twisting, downplaying, or minimizing of truths associated to residential education to guard church and state and the colonial established order. Particularly, Robert Carney’s concentrate on emphasizing the positives of residential education to defend the system as a complete, a type of bias often known as false stability, is one thing Daniel Heath Justice and Sean Carleton have outlined as one of the crucial widespread denialist speaking factors. Furthermore, we’re involved with Mark Carney’s obvious refusal to sit down down with APTN—Canada’s solely Indigenous broadcaster—to make his dedication to fact and reconciliation clear to Canadians.
Total, we imagine that Canadians can, and may, scrutinize Robert Carney’s previous views on education for Indigenous Peoples, press Mark Carney to make clear his dedication to fact and reconciliation, and problem the twisting of fact by residential college denialists. Doing all these items can reveal fact and reconciliation management and assist construct a extra honourable future.
Not like the denialists, then, our process is to information public understanding with nuanced, historic work that promotes empathy, understanding, therapeutic, and justice.
In that spirit, here’s what we learn about Robert Carney’s involvement in colonial schooling.
Education in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories
Like many distinguished politicians, from John A. Macdonald to Jean Chrétien, Robert Carney is complicit within the wider net of education concentrating on Indigenous youngsters.
Robert Carney labored within the Northwest Territories, in schooling, holding a number of positions at numerous instances between the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Seventies. Robert Carney held senior roles in northern schooling throughout numerous federal and territorial departments in the course of the mid-to-late twentieth century, shaping instructional insurance policies and packages.
He served as principal (beginning in 1962) of the Joseph Burr Tyrrell Faculty (JBT) in Fort Smith. A Catholic day college was first established there for “Indian and Métis” youngsters, and a few settler youngsters as nicely, in 1915. Given the sparse inhabitants in Fort Smith, day and public education typically overlapped, and Catholic and Anglican missionaries battled over scholar enrolment.
When the Catholic college closed within the Nineteen Fifties, JBT opened as a federal “mixed” college—Indian day college and public college—and it was at this college, attended by Indigenous and settler college students, the place Robert Carney labored.
There have been additionally two residential colleges in Fort Smith: Breynat Corridor (1957–1975) and Grandin School (1960–1985). Breynat Corridor, situated beside JBT, operated as a hostel the place some youngsters had been despatched to JBT as day students. Carney, nonetheless, was not the principal of Breynat Corridor, Grandin School, or some other residential college in Canada.
Later in his profession, he earned a PhD in Instructional Foundations from the College of Alberta and wrote many articles in regards to the historical past of education within the Northwest Territories. He even served on the editorial board of the Canadian Journal of Native Schooling. As a professor and division chair, Robert Carney typically spoke positively about Indian day and residential colleges. He criticized Celia Haig-Brown’s ground-breaking e-book, Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential Faculty, for focusing an excessive amount of on trauma. He additionally dismissed the Royal Fee on Aboriginal Peoples’ report as being one-sided. His sentiments had been in opposition to what Survivors had been telling Canada about their experiences of being institutionalized at residential colleges.
As Niigaan Sinclair has lately written, these feedback by Robert Carney will be understood as “a person defending his problematic legacy with Canada’s systemic mistreatment of Indigenous peoples.”
Fathers should not sons, in fact, and a few Fort Smith Elders imagine that Mark Carney’s connection to the North and their group could possibly be “what is required” to maneuver ahead with therapeutic and justice.
Creating an Honourable Future
As historians of colonial education, we should level out that we nonetheless know comparatively little in regards to the Joseph Burr Tyrrell Faculty and Robert Carney’s connection. There’s a paucity of publicly out there paperwork.
On this context, there’s a hazard of denialists stringing collectively fragments of historical past out of context in dishonest and disingenuous ways in which clouds public understanding. For instance, Insurgent Information included a graphic of Robert Carney’s message as principal at JBT—with no date or supply—in a bit that conflates day and residential education, giving the reader the misunderstanding that he was the principal of an Indian residential college. That is false, however it has been shared on social media.
We nonetheless have no idea sufficient in regards to the workings and experiences of Indian residential and day colleges usually, and within the North particularly. Data have been withheld and people accessed have typically been misunderstood.
Denialists are exploiting these gaps in data—and it’s Survivors and their households and Indigenous communities that in the end undergo essentially the most when the reality is twisted to guard the colonial established order.
We hope that Canada and Canadians’ dedication to fact and reconciliation and combating residential college denialism will proceed, courageously, past this election cycle. Solely by understanding the teachings of the previous, somewhat than defending a distorted model of it, will we create a extra honourable and simply future.
Sean Carleton is an affiliate professor of historical past and Indigenous research on the College of Manitoba.
Crystal Gail Fraser is an affiliate professor of historical past and Indigenous research on the College of Alberta.
Jackson Pind is an assistant professor of Indigenous methodologies on the Chanie Wenjack Faculty of Indigenous Research, Trent College.
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