Indigenous student labour and settler colonialism at Brandon Residential School

Abstract

• Indigenous student labour at residential schools comprised a central component of settler colonialism. • These labour demands were exploitative, unfree, and intended to reduce school and system expenses. • Indigenous student labour regimes sought to demonstrate to the settler public that Indigenous youth would become productive, assimilated members of Euro-Canadian society. This paper contends that unfree Indigenous student labour at residential schools was a key-and underappreciated-component of settler colonialism in Canada. Colonial administration and the churches attempted to "civilize" and assimilate Indigenous people-and prepare the frontier for white settlersthrough residential schooling. Labour, in accordance with Euro-Canadian gender norms, was expected to usher Brandon Industrial Institute (later Brandon Residential School) students from the "backwardness" of traditional lifeways to the industriousness and assimilation necessary for their roles in the serving classes of modern society. I use archival sources-newspapers, unpublished reports, Department of Indian Affairs documents, and United Church correspondence and photographs-and employ a version of Norman et al.'s "settler-colonial grid of recognizability" to examine student labour. This paper argues that the Department of Indian Affairs and church officials at Brandon Residential School sought to make Indigenous youth "legible" under the settler-colonial grid of recognizability through agricultural and manual work for boys and domestic labour for girls, both of which ensured the school's financial viability. I propose that this underexplored aspect of settler colonialism could be understood through three main themes-imperial settlerhumanitarianism, the logic of containment, and productive bodies-that are traced across the lifetime of the school.

Critical food guidance for tackling food waste in Canada

“…Liboiron argues that this waste issue is due to "assumed access by settler and colonial projects to Indigenous lands for settler and colonial goals" (2021, p. 5), which in this case is based on excessive consumption and resource extraction. Similarly, in a food system where Indigenous peoples are disproportionately impacted by food insecurity and food-related non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, food has historically been weaponized to harm children in residential schools through poor nutrition and insufficient foods (Mosby &Galloway, 2017), as well as through forced farm labour (Giancarlo, 2020). The colonial framework is also entrenched in an agricultural system that has in some cases profited from the exploitation of migrant farm workers (Reid-Musson, 2017).…”