Indigenous Schooling and Resistance in Canada: the Building of the Mattagami Reserve Day School, 1934-1949

• In Event: 479 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 11. Globalization and Inequality

Abstract

This case study examines the construction of a day school for indigenous children in Gogama, Ontario, Canada from 1934-1949. The largely Oji-Cree community in Gogama, Ontario, had been forced to remove themselves from Gogama to the reserve in the early 1930s, resulting in a lack of schooling for children in the community. Before the relocation, the children in the community had received integrated education at the public school in Gogama with non-indigenous children. After the relocation, there was no schooling available at all. For a variety of often contradictory reasons, the local indigenous community in the Mattagami Reserve, the local Indian Agent, and the local missionary campaigned for the building of a day school on the reserve. Several years later, the request was granted and the day school was built. Through the content analysis of archival data, I investigate the process by which the school was built, finding that local actors resisted the state through everyday decision-making on labor processes, especially in choosing between action and non-action. I examine this in the context of contemporary discussions within indigenous studies on forms of resistance, the role of educational systems, narratives of work, and complex relationships between local actors (the community on the Mattagami reserve, Indian Agents, and missionaries) and the institutions of the state, Christianity, and corporations.

Author

• Cameron Riopelle, University of Illinois