THE BATTLEFORDS — Despite being a petite, dark-haired, brown woman by Canadian standards, in her home country of Chile, Manuela Valle-Castro is considered a tall, white blonde and she’s in the dominant majority.
“I am a respectable, regular Chilean … we see ourselves as white,” she tells a group of six community leaders at an anti-racism training workshop on March 7.
Her workshop partner and fellow academic, Becky Sasakamoose, an Indigenous woman and 60s scoop survivor from Atakahkoop First Nation, finds the story funny along with the rest of the group. Valle-Castro, less so.
Sitting at a table in the basement of the Don Ross Centre at the trauma-informed anti-racism workshop hosted by the Battlefords Regional Community Coalition — an organization signed into existence by the mayors of Battleford and North Battleford and leaders of five local First Nations — attendees are told that the day-long event won’t be scary. “So, we’re also not going to yell at white people,” Valle-Castro adds, laughing.
“So, we’re also not going to yell at white people,” Valle-Castro adds, laughing.
They ask the group to tell people that they survived. That everyone is going to be OK, no one is going to be made to feel guilty or responsible for things that have happened.
“Really, we’re not like watering down anything because we’re really invested in changing outcomes for everybody, not just Indigenous kids, [but] all our future generations … deserve a better legacy,” Valle-Castro added.
“It’s really going to take all of us as a society to own this issue [colonialism and racism] and move forward in a loving, compassionate way,” she adds.
Deconstructing false narratives around colonialism in Canada
Do a few bad apples spoil the bunch? Sasakamoose used to think so. After university, her first job as an adult at 22 was with the RCMP.
“I used to think — because that’s what they told us — that a few bad apples spoil the bunch … so I used to think that racism just seeped into organizations, that it was just a few bad apples,” she said.
The follow-up mindset is that if those few bad apples can be rooted out and removed from systems of power (the RCMP, the education system, the justice system, government, local non-profits) then racism will go away. But because of that approach, due partly because of a lack of information about what racism is, that idea has been maintained for a long time.
“I really didn’t even know what racism is because we learned that it’s a feeling of hatred, or when you say racial slurs or use violence against a person with a different skin colour.
“We often learn that it’s like bullying … 99 per cent of the people I meet are good people, right?”
But is that true? We'll come back to this in a minute.
Sasakamoose's mother is British; the first generation in her family to be born in Canada. Her grandfather is a pioneer, a settler who cleared the land and brought his family over.
“My grandfather … had family members and babies die during the depression. So they have this tie and entitlement to the land that I grew up understanding and thinking,” she said, explaining that she was adopted by a white family south of Saskatoon.
“So, my mother, who is British, believes — because this is what they do in England — is that if you send your children away to schools it’s a sign of affluence,” she added.
“It’s very much this false narrative that we are doing something good for Indigenous people when in reality, we learned … that (residential schools and the 60s scoop) are assimilation, removing Indigeneity which is our language, culture, heritage, and what is really important, is spiritually.”
One of the myths that Sasakamoose believed throughout her life was that she was given away to white parents (via the foster care system) as a way for her to have a better life.
“What does a better life mean? What is a better life?” she added.
“My parents are kind, loving, generous people ... but yet were still part of one of the most racist acts in Canadian history.”
Despite the nature of the 60s Scoop, neither her parents nor Sasakamoose knew about it
“When you don’t have access to information you cannot understand the nature … of what is happening,” she said, noting that although things are changing for the better, there are still tons, and tons, and tons of work to be done.
These misconceptions about Indigenous people, (that they needed to be educated) came from ‘mainstream society. A mainstream society she says comes directly from colonial societies from Europe, like England, Germany, Spain, etc...
“Systems and structures were imposed upon Indigenous people.”
Understanding the systemic nature of prejudice in Canada
When Canada was founded as a country, who built it? Not in a literal sense, but who wrote our laws, built our schools, and wrote the policies that governed them, that decided what was socially acceptable to do and what constituted ‘real’ medicine or education?
“We’re not saying there are evil people [at the top of these systems] saying, ‘how can we exploit these people,’ not at all. The problem that at the time our colonial institutions were created, the only people that counted as people according to the British North American Act, were white, male British subjects over the age of 21 who owned property,” Valle-Castro said.
This demographic was eight per cent of the population. Obviously, Valle-Castro said, the systems are going to be biased to address their needs first.
The blueprint was built for them, Valle-Castro adds. There is a misconception that the systems are neutral. That everyone starts on a level playing field and competes with the same skills. Both Sasakamoose and Valle-Castro say that’s not the case.
“Race and racism is not about colour, it really isn’t … it’s almost a smokescreen for power and being able to maintain that power,” Sasakamoose said.
In Canada, the context for systemic racism is to eliminate the Indigenous title to the land (to allow for settlers to live here) and in the U.S. it’s to exploit black people out of their labour.
Though often gone are the days when direct racism and prejudice happens on the street corner, systemic racism is when systems and policies (again, the RCMP, universities, government, non-profits, schools, etc…) were created and still allow the status quo to be upheld where things are hard to change.
How easy is it to get a job without a diploma? Why do our elected leaders have to make decisions about Indigenous people despite having no understanding of racism (at no fault of their own) or because they have no lived experience? Why is curly hair often seen as unprofessional?
What about where Indigenous ways of justice are ignored in favour of settler punishment-based ones? Or where Indigenous people are often discriminated against in Canadian hospitals?
"Every structure has said it’s better than Indigenous systems," she said, referencing the lack of Indigenous education, healthcare and justice system.
“The system is not broken, it was actually designed this way … our systems are not designed to be able to make a difference."
But why don’t things like civil rights or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs never work to end systemic racism?
There is idea that settler ways of life are better, Sasakamoose explains. A ‘settler’ supremacy is baked into our systems and non-traditional ways of life are often looked down on because of that.
The problem, Sasakamoose explains, is not that there aren’t enough Indigenous women in universities or the RCMP, but that those systems were designed to exclude Indigenous ways of life and thought.
Society shouldn't be trying to fit Indigenous people into settler-based systems, continually pushing (albeit very quietly) that settler systems are better, rather than changing our systems to not be white ones.
For real transformation to occur, they say, people need to become not just better caterpillars, but butterflies.
“It comes across as a very benevolent intention. It’s just that it’s misinformed. And then the outcomes [of DEI or other police that are made by people who don’t know what needs to be done] reinforce that idea. ‘See, people still don’t succeed, they need more help.’
"Colonial approaches will not yield reconciliatory results," she said, noting that change will not come overnight, but in slow incremental change.
Racism as the underlying issue facing Indigenous people
In the Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s (TRC’s) 94 Calls to Action, there are five major areas that need drastic change or transformation. They include justice, education, health, sport and business.
“The research … [is] stating racism as an impact to the overall political, economic, social, and environmental health of our country. This isn’t just, ‘oh, we need to do something to help Indigenous people,’ this is, ‘the alarm bells are going off in every single one of those areas.'
“The trajectory we’re on is not sustainable,” she said.
“We’re in a crisis. We are living in a crisis and the efforts to address the problem, which ultimately is racism, have come in many forms.”
But the key, Sasakamoose says, is access to anti-racism training.
So, she says, the Collective Impact Project in the Battlefords spearheaded by BRCC will stop everyone walking around in the dark not knowing what to do. This will allow the lights to be turned on and see the writing on the wall, Sasakamoose said. Not only that, but we’ll be able to face the same direction.
“And that, just in and of itself [would be a success] because this area … really is the hotbed of racism in Canada, in so many different ways. And it’s psychologically entrenched, and it’s very historically rooted.”
She added that by taking away the number one barrier for Indigenous people — systemic racism in Canadian systems of power, Indigenous over-incarceration in jails, under representation in schools — a slew of social problems would be resolved.
“No longer can we ignore them. No longer can we continue to say, ‘Oh, Indigenous people just continue to make really bad choices. Like drinking too much and having children that they can’t look after.'”
“I grew up listening to all of those [stereotypes] but I was a ‘good one.' Right?" she added.
“These are the false narratives that look like love. Or look like good leadership. Or look like an unfortunate consequence … so racism doesn’t look like racism, so it becomes impossible for us to understand, unless we have an analysis [like anti-racism].”
Without it, we will never understand the problem, she says, but just focus on initiatives that fall flat because we’re trying to treat symptoms instead of the root cause.
It's a way of looking at systems of oppression. In social work talk, they would say, 'rather than working to help pick babies out of a river, stop and wonder why babies are in the river in the first place.'
"Addressing downstream issues will not solve an upstream problem ... initiatives are just initiatives and won’t solve the problem.”
Originally published in the Battlefords Regional News-Optimist on March 14.
