To Make Good Canadians: Girl Guiding in Indian Residential Schools
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TO MAKE GOOD CANADIANS: GIRL GUIDING IN INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS A Thesis Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences TRENT UNIVERSITY Peterborough, Ontario, Canada © Copyright by Mary Jane McCallum 2001 Canadian Studies and Native Studies M.A. Program May2002 ABSTRACT To Make Good Canadians: Girl Guiding in Indian Residential Schools Mary Jane McCallum Between 1910 and 1970, the Guide movement became active and, indeed, prolific in Indian residential, day, and hostel schools, sanatoriums, reserves and Northern communities throughout Canada. In these contexts, Guiding embraced not only twentieth century youth citizenship training schemes, but also the colonial project of making First Nations and Inuit people good citizens. But ironically, while the Guide programme endeavoured to produce moral, disciplined and patriotic girls who would be prepared to undertake home and civic responsibilities as dutiful mothers and wives, it also encouraged girls to study and imitate 'wild' Indians. This thesis will explore the ways in which Girl Guides prepared girls for citizenship, arguing that the Indian, who signified to Guides authentic adventure, primitive skills and civic duty, was a model for their training. 'Playing Indian' enabled Guides to access these 'authentic' Indian virtues. It also enabled them to deny their roles as proponents of colonialism. Acknowledgements I would like to thank a number of people who have helped me to research and write this thesis. First, I would like to thank the Munsee Delaware First Nation for their continued assistance in my post-secondary academic endeavours. Second, I would like to recognize Lynn Austin, Records Manager and Archivist at the National Headquarters of the Girl Guides of Canada Guides du Canada, whose expert advise and mastery of the numberous Girl Guide archives has been of infinite value in researching the history of the Girl Guide movement. Third, I would like to thank John Milloy, Joan Sangster and Molly Blyth for assisting and supporting me at various stages of writing and researching. To my friends and relatives I also owe a debt of gratitude. Without the constant encouragement of my "study buddy" Tullia Marcolongo, Danielle Soucy and Adene Kuchera, my Uncle Ray and Aunt Evelyn, this thesis could not have been completed. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents, who have inspired me more than they can ever know. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION - MAKING GOOD CANADIANS 1 Literature Review 5 Citizenship 5 Residential Schools 10 Girl Guides, Boy Scouts, Women and Girls. 15 The Citizen and the Imaginary Indian 24 Overview And Structure 26 CHAPTER ONE - WOMEN, YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 29 Womanly Citizenship 30 The Women's Movement - A Role Deserving of Citizenship 30 Women's Organizations and Education 31 Women's Organizations and Youth Clubs 34 Youth Citizenship 45 Citizenship Education - A Structure for Citizenship Training 45 Linking Girl Guides to Schools 57 CHAPTER TWO - INDIANS AND CITIZENSHIP 62 Indian Policy 64 Indian Education 70 Residential School Curriculum and Training 72 Girls' Curriculum 75 Extra-Curricular Activities 81 CHAPTER THREE - GIRL GUIDING 91 Defining Features of Guiding 101 Aims of the Girl Guide Movement 102 The Promise 105 The Guide Law 114 The Motto 118 The Uniform 119 The Good Turn 130 Girl Guide Ceremonials 131 Military Style Citizenship Training 136 Universal Girl Guide Sisterhood: The Guiding Umbrella 143 Resistance 154 CHAPTER FOUR - GUIDING THE IMAGINARY INDIAN 163 Accessing the Imaginary Indian 167 Empire Citizenship 191 Canadian Citizenship 200 CHAPTER FIVE - GUIDING IS AN EMPIRE GAME 217 APPENDIX 239 BIBLIOGRAPHY 240 Old Sun School, circa. 1930 National Headquarters of the Girl Guides of Canada-Guides du Canada Archives APH2374 Aim of Girl Guiding, 1938: Girl Guide Law, 1964: "Character development towards happy 1. A Guide's Honour is to be citizens through natural rather than Trusted through artificial means." 2. A Guide is Loyal 3. A Guide is Useful and Helps Girl Guide Promise, 1952: Others 4. A Guide is a Friend to All, and a On my honour I promise that I will do Sister to Every Guide my best 5. A Guide is Courteous To do my duty to God and the Queen, 6. A Guide is Kind to Animals and To help other people at all times enjoys the beauty in Nature To obey the Guide Law. 7. A Guide is Obedient 8. A Guide Smiles and Sings even under difficulty Girl Guide Motto: 9. A Guide is Thrifty 10. A Guide Keeps Herself Pure in Be Prepared. Thought, Word and Deed. 2 INTRODUCTION Making Good Citizens: Girl Guides in Residential Schools Dressed in the uniform of one of the most popular, widely-recognized and long standing organizations for girls in Canada, Girl Guides, these First Nations girls are positioned within a perceived archetype of Canadian youth. Their uniform represents loyalty, service and respectability, as well as integrated membership in a world-wide organization. The badges, ties, hats and pins worn by these girls show that they had achieved high standards of Character, Handcraft, Health and Service and were Prepared for everything from medical emergencies to defending the nation. Promising to uphold their duty to God and the Queen, to help others and to live by a moral code of thrift, obedience, usefulness and purity, they participated in an organization which, through discipline and testing, adventure and domestic training, aimed to develop good girls into model adult citizens. The scheme of building the Empire and the Canadian nation by fortifying its youth was at the heart of the Guide 1 and Scout philosophy of Lord Baden-Powell, the movements' founder. This project was supported financially and ideologically by the Canadian state, churches, schools, and women's clubs, making being a Girl Guide seem like a universal and natural part of growing up and belonging as a Canadian citizen. There are two problems with this assumption. First, the project of building a strong Empire and, later, a united Canadian nation was not universally understood, nor was it a natural process. At the simplest level, it involved attaining a land base and 1 The words "Girl Guide," "Guide" and "Guiding" unless otherwise specified, will refer in general to all girls participating in the movement, including Brownies, Guides, Rangers, and their leaders. 3 manufacturing citizens according to the imperatives of colonial and national agendas. One of the fundamental roadblocks standing in the way of Canadian nation-building was the Indian, who represented a set of beliefs constructed in opposition to White Canadian citizens. While the citizen was civilized, industrious, patriotic and Christian, the Indian was savage, unproductive and indifferent towards the Canadian state. The project of enfranchising Indians, as understood in the Enfranchisement Acts and later the Indian Act, therefore required dismantling Indian territory, usurping Indian sovereignty and transforming Indian identity. Federal institutions for Indian education stood at the core oflndian citizenship training. Indian schools used various socializing forces including citizenship education and extra-curricular activities such as Girl Guides to produce Canadian citizens of Indians. Aboriginal participation in the Girl Guide movement within the context of federally-run residential schools is therefore an important element of colonial and Canadian history and deserves special attention. Second, the citizen constructed by the aims of the Girl Guide organization, its Promise, Law and Motto, badge and testing system, songs, games and literature, was not, as these sources suggest, entirely coherent. While Girl Guides aimed to produce pure, self-disciplined, useful, trustworthy, thrifty and productive members of White middle class families, Christian churches and Euro-Canadian communities, the citizen construct was ironically supplemented by a character entirely outside of this definition - the 4 Imaginary Indian. 2 The Imaginary Indian became, for Guides, a symbol which stood for fun, conservation, ceremony and authentic adventure yet the Imaginary Indian was also a figure who was not loyal, or thrifty; he was undomesticated, irreligious, immoral, and otherwise contradicted the Promise and Law, aims and rules of the Guide organization. However, the Indian worked simultaneously with the Girl Guide to define and produce ideal Empire and Canadian citizens. This crucial contradiction of Guiding illuminates how the Canadian nation constructed itself and its boundaries according to its fears and desires of its Indian Other. This thesis will explore Girl Guiding in Canada from its emergence in 1910 to about 1970, focusing on the Aboriginal members of the movement who participated largely in the context of residential schools. While this period saw an enormous increase in general membership, particularly around the late fifties and early sixties, it also includes the point at which these numbers level off, around 1970. In this period, residential school groups begin to make their mark in Girl Guide sources in the mid 1920s, wax in the 1940s and 50s, and decline in the late 1960s and early 70s as the schools began to close. This period also saw a flourishing of Canadian Girl Guide literature and files including a number of magazines published for girls and their leaders and extensive Annual Reports from both provincial and national councils. By the 1970s, 2 The term "Imaginary Indian" is used by Daniel Francis to describe the images of Aboriginal people manufactured by Canadians. Daniel Francis, The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian In Canadian Culture (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1992). Robert Berkhofer Jr. refers to this non-Aboriginal fantasy as the "White Man's Indian" in his book The White Man's Indian. Robert Berkhofer Jr., The White Man's Indian - Images of the American Indian From Columbus to the Present (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). 5 these Annual Reports had thinned considerably in both depth and breadth and offered only limited coverage of the activities of individual Girl Guide groups.