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Celia Haig-Brown received the Roderick Haig-Brown Prize for Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School (Vancouver: Tillicum / Pulp Press, 1988). Based on interviews with 13 former students, it's a study of how Indigenous students were forced to attend and endure the Kamloops Residential School. The book was published by Randy Fred, himself a survivor of the Alberni Residential School in Port Alberni.
Seventeen years after Resistance and Renewal appeared, the government of Canada announced plans in November of 2005 to financially compensate former students of Indian residential schools across Canada in response to the Assembly of First Nations' Report on Canada's Dispute Resolution Plan to Compensate for Abuses in Indian Residential Schools that was released in November of 2004. The total value of the proposed compensation package was estimated in excess of $2 billion. Each former student, if still alive, would receive $10,000 plus $3,000 for each year they were in attendance.
"I know many people are upset about the miniscule amount negotiated between Phil Fontaine and the Federal Government," Randy Fred told David Wiwchar, editor of the Nuu-chah-nulth newspaper Ha-Shilth-Sa. "However, I do not believe a larger amount could have been secured because it was Phil Fontaine who put the figures on the table. Very few residential school survivors had any direct input into determining the amount to ask for. Residential school victims now have no choice but to live with the decision for the sake of those who are living in ill health or old age. The Federal government would like nothing more than delaying any more payouts. My personal hope is that the courts and the government and church lawyers take this seriously. It is an indication that putting First Nations children into residential schools was a crime."
In 1995, while sentencing the notorious pedophile Arthur Henry Plint, dormitory supervisor at the Alberni Indian Residential School, Justice John Hogarth declared, "the Indian Residential School system was nothing but a form of institutionalized pedophilia."
As an Education faculty member at York University, Celia Haig-Brown has co-edited With Good Intentions: Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal Relations in Colonial Canada (UBC Press, 2005), an examination of whites such as James Teit who recognized colonial injustice and responded in constructive ways during the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century. Daughter of Roderick Haig-Brown, Celia Haig-Brown taught five years in Kamloops secondary schools, coordinated Kamloops' Native Indian Teacher Education Program until 1986 and also published a study of the Vancouver Native Education Centre in 1994.
In 2022, a follow-up to Resistance and Renewal, co-authored by Nuu-Chah-Nulth elder, Randy Fred and Secwepemc poet, Garry Gottfriedson was released, Tsquelmucwilc: The Kamloops Indian Residential School – Resistance and Reckoning (Arsenal Pulp, 2022). Randy Fred, who was the first publisher of Resistance and Renewal, and himself a residential school survivor, contributed essays along with those of Gottfriedson’s and Haig-Brown’s original text as well as new material from Celia Haig-Brown. There are also first-hand reminiscences by additional KIRS survivors and children of survivors describing intergenerational trauma. These stories tell of the indignities KIRS children suffered at the hands of colonizers, as well as the resilience and courage of survivors. The book takes its title from the Secwepemc phrase “Tsquelmucwilc” that loosely translates as “We return to being human.”
BOOKS:
Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School (Tillicum/Pulp Press, 1988). Second Edition (Arsenal, 2014) 9780889781894
With Good Intentions: Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal Relations in Colonial Canada (UBC Press, 2005) $34.95 9780774811385. Co-edited by David Nock.
Tsqelmucwilc: The Kamloops Indian Residential School - Resistance and a Reckoning (Arsenal, 2022) $22.95 9781551529059. Co-authored with Randy Fred and Garry Gottfriedson.
[BCBW 2023]
Seventeen years after Resistance and Renewal appeared, the government of Canada announced plans in November of 2005 to financially compensate former students of Indian residential schools across Canada in response to the Assembly of First Nations' Report on Canada's Dispute Resolution Plan to Compensate for Abuses in Indian Residential Schools that was released in November of 2004. The total value of the proposed compensation package was estimated in excess of $2 billion. Each former student, if still alive, would receive $10,000 plus $3,000 for each year they were in attendance.
"I know many people are upset about the miniscule amount negotiated between Phil Fontaine and the Federal Government," Randy Fred told David Wiwchar, editor of the Nuu-chah-nulth newspaper Ha-Shilth-Sa. "However, I do not believe a larger amount could have been secured because it was Phil Fontaine who put the figures on the table. Very few residential school survivors had any direct input into determining the amount to ask for. Residential school victims now have no choice but to live with the decision for the sake of those who are living in ill health or old age. The Federal government would like nothing more than delaying any more payouts. My personal hope is that the courts and the government and church lawyers take this seriously. It is an indication that putting First Nations children into residential schools was a crime."
In 1995, while sentencing the notorious pedophile Arthur Henry Plint, dormitory supervisor at the Alberni Indian Residential School, Justice John Hogarth declared, "the Indian Residential School system was nothing but a form of institutionalized pedophilia."
As an Education faculty member at York University, Celia Haig-Brown has co-edited With Good Intentions: Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal Relations in Colonial Canada (UBC Press, 2005), an examination of whites such as James Teit who recognized colonial injustice and responded in constructive ways during the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century. Daughter of Roderick Haig-Brown, Celia Haig-Brown taught five years in Kamloops secondary schools, coordinated Kamloops' Native Indian Teacher Education Program until 1986 and also published a study of the Vancouver Native Education Centre in 1994.
In 2022, a follow-up to Resistance and Renewal, co-authored by Nuu-Chah-Nulth elder, Randy Fred and Secwepemc poet, Garry Gottfriedson was released, Tsquelmucwilc: The Kamloops Indian Residential School – Resistance and Reckoning (Arsenal Pulp, 2022). Randy Fred, who was the first publisher of Resistance and Renewal, and himself a residential school survivor, contributed essays along with those of Gottfriedson’s and Haig-Brown’s original text as well as new material from Celia Haig-Brown. There are also first-hand reminiscences by additional KIRS survivors and children of survivors describing intergenerational trauma. These stories tell of the indignities KIRS children suffered at the hands of colonizers, as well as the resilience and courage of survivors. The book takes its title from the Secwepemc phrase “Tsquelmucwilc” that loosely translates as “We return to being human.”
BOOKS:
Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School (Tillicum/Pulp Press, 1988). Second Edition (Arsenal, 2014) 9780889781894
With Good Intentions: Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal Relations in Colonial Canada (UBC Press, 2005) $34.95 9780774811385. Co-edited by David Nock.
Tsqelmucwilc: The Kamloops Indian Residential School - Resistance and a Reckoning (Arsenal, 2022) $22.95 9781551529059. Co-authored with Randy Fred and Garry Gottfriedson.
[BCBW 2023]
Articles: 1 Article for this author
With Good Intentions: Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal Relations in Colonial Canada
Info
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions,"; said Samuel Johnson. As an education faculty member at York University, Celia Haig-Brown has co-edited With Good Intentions: Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal Relations in Colonial Canada (UBC Press $85), an examination of whites such as James Teit who recognized colonial injustice and responded in constructive ways during the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century. 0774811374
[BCBW 2006]
