Starting with the foundations of residential schooling in
seventeenth-century New France, Miller traces the modern version of the
institution that was created in the 1880s, and, finally, describes the
phasing-out of the schools in the 1960s. He looks at instruction, work and
recreation, care and abuse, and the growing resistance to the system on the
part of students and their families. Based on extensive interviews as well as
archival research, Miller’s history is particularly rich in Native
accounts of the school system.
Shingwauks’ Vision is an
absolute first in its comprehensive treatment of this subject. J.R. Miller has
written a new chapter in the history of relations between indigenous and
immigrant peoples in Canada.
‘J.R. Miller is a highly regarded Saskatchewan
historian, but he also has the makings of an outstanding coroner. In
Shingwauk’s Vision, he has autopsied the barely cooled corpse of the
native residential school system. With clinical precision he has examined every
aspect of a wrong-headed and catastrophic experiment in social engineering that
lasted for three-and-a-half centuries before the federal government finally
stepped in and pulled the plug in 1969. … Miller’s work is destined
to be the reference work on this subject for years to come. As a thorough,
reasoned, and illuminating look at a sorry chapter of Canadian history, it is
required reading and long overdue.’ – Brian Maracle, Quill and
Quire Written by J.R. Miller. Published by University of
Toronto Press, 1996. |
