This article originally appeared in the National Post.
By Harry S. LaForme, Karen Restoule and Mark S. Dockstator, September 30, 2024
Hundreds of students from 15 schools within the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) attended a field trip on Sept. 18. The goal of the trip was to raise students’ awareness about the Indigenous community’s “efforts to address mercury contamination and advocate for their rights regarding mining and logging activities within their territory.” Parents were assured that their children would not participate in the “rally” but would “observe and learn from the presentations and discussions.”
This all became unhinged when the Grassy Narrows River Run Rally was hijacked by anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian demonstrators, and students were co-opted into their ideologically driven demonstration.
The demonstrators hijacked the tragedy of Grassy Narrows to promote their own political agenda. Since when do we allow this? This is not education; it’s an attempt at indoctrination. Indigenous suffering was trivialized and used in the service of someone else’s false dogma. It was as galling as it was evil.
The first time in Canada we saw the ideologically motivated abuse of children was when Indigenous children were used as a tool to destroy the culture, the way of life, and the very existence of Indigenous people. Our children were taken from us and placed in Indian Residential Schools to remove them from the “influence of the wigwam” and to “kill the Indian in the child.” The last Indian Residential School was closed in 1996. The devastation and trauma they caused continues to this day.
Fast forward to Sept. 18 when children were, once again, used to promote demagoguery — this time to advance the ideology of the anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian movement.
During the field trip the students were supposed to learn about the tragic history of Grassy Narrows; a tragedy that continues to cause deep suffering. For over half a century, our people, our children have been and continue to be poisoned. The children of Grassy Narrows were too often born maimed and disabled. What was billed as an opportunity for students to learn about the dreadful realities faced by the Indigenous people of Grassy Narrows was usurped.
How is it that these teachers and adults, given the responsibility and care for our young students, view long-standing and critical Indigenous health and safety issues as so unimportant as to be leveraged to promote the creed of the anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian crusade? As so often happens, our voices and our suffering were subsumed and drowned out by others. Are we still nothing to Canada but background noise?
Zionism does not kill — as the stickers handed to students at the “rally” declared; extremism does. Chants of “Turtle Island to Lebanon, Israel will be gone” by anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian demonstrators promotes terrorism.
Some of the students at the field trip were Indigenous and know what Turtle Island means. Instead of helping youngsters learn about its value in our culture, Turtle Island was folded into a hateful chant that promotes terrorism, and yet may not be fully understood by the students forced to participate.
Fundamentally, Indigenous values do not align with pro-terror and hateful messages. They are anathema to the Seven Sacred Teachings of Indigenous people. These values are found in Treaties of Peace and Friendship, which are grounded in the Seven Sacred Teachings — Love, Respect, Courage, Honesty, Wisdom, Humility and Truth.
These treaties were entered into by the earliest settlers and the Indigenous people hundreds of years ago. They stressed peaceful, respectful and equal coexistence. They continue to govern all our relationships. They apply to the TDSB and their schools — the students, staff and trustees and the broader Canadian community.
We are all treaty partners to the Treaties of Peace and Friendship. We approach the children and youth of the TDSB as treaty partners. They should have learned what it means to be a treaty partner and to live in accordance with the Seven Sacred Teachings during the “field trip.”
Our children and youth, the students of the TDSB, are our much welcomed and loved treaty partners. They are not colonizers. The true colonizers are the adults who hijacked the field trip and wickedly co-opted our child and youth treaty partners to facilitate their anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian demonstration — to facilitate hate.
The National Day of Truth and Reconciliation is approaching. Reconciliation is not just saying the words in the land acknowledgements that are so proudly displayed by the TDSB. It is about the meaning and the spirit of the land acknowledgements. It is about living in accordance with the Seven Sacred Teachings every day — in school, in the home, at work, in all our relationships with our fellow human beings. Without truth there can be no reconciliation. This is what the students should have rightfully expected to be learning about on the Grassy Narrows River Run Rally, not about some geopolitical conflicts playing out thousands of miles away.
A thorough investigation is needed into the events of Sept. 18. The investigation cannot be conducted by the TDSB, which has shown itself to be demonstrably unfit to do so on so many levels.
What the TDSB did to children on Sept. 18 is despicable and borders on criminal. It dishonours the very concept of reconciliation and the Seven Sacred Teachings. Together we must ensure that such politically ideologically driven events never happen again.
The Honourable Harry S. LaForme O.C. I.P.C., Anishinaabe and proud member of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, is a retired appellate court judge and lawyer.
Karen Restoule, Anishinaabe-Kwe and proud member of the Dokis First Nation, is Vice-President at Crestview Strategy and Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
Mark S. Dockstator, Onyota’á:ka and proud member of the Oneida Nation of the Thames, is an Associate Professor of the Chanie Wenjack School of Indigenous Studies at Trent University.
