HISTORIES OF F O R G E T T I N G , G E O G R A P H I E S OF R E M E M B E R I N G : 
EXPLORING P R O C E S S E S . O F WITNESSING A N D PERFORMING IN 

SENIOR S E C O N D A R Y HUMANITIES C L A S S R O O M ( S ) 

by • 

Jacyntha England 

A . , University of Victoria, 1989, B . E d . , Simon Fraser University, 1995 

A THESIS S U B M I T T E D IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF 
T H E R E Q U I R E M E N T S FOR T H E D E G R E E O F 

M A S T E R OF A R T S 

in 

T H E F A C U L T Y OF G R A D U A T E STUDIES 

Department of Education Studies 

W e accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard 

University of British Columbia 

March 2004 
(c) Copyright by Jacyntha England 2004 



Library Authorization 

In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced 

degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it 

freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for 

extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the 

head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that 

copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without 

my written permission. 

Name of" Author (plMise print) 
<X -Qt--aoo4-

Date (dd/mm/yyyy) 

Department of SAvtaAiopcA ^WWs 
The University of British Columbia 
Vancouver, B C Canada 



This thesis explores the roles oral histories and drama can play in questioning and 
transforming dominant curricular narratives in senior secondary Humanities (Social 
Studies, First Nations Studies, History, Geography) education. The project centered on 
two classes (Social Studies 11, First Nations Studies 12) in a secondary school in 
Langley, British Columbia. In collaboration with the regular classroom teacher, the 
author designed two eight week study units, one for each course, that incorporated oral 
testimonies from Canadian marginalized communities into a pedagogical framework of 
critical analysis and reflective drama processes. The testimonies detailed such 
experiences as legislated segregation in the City of Vancouver, residential schooling and 
the Japanese internment. The author used the Theatre of the Oppressed techniques of 
Augusto Boal (image theatre, cops in the head, forum theatre) to facilitate the students in 
their responses to the testimonies. Students also participated in class discussions and 
completed written reflections at the end of each lesson and unit. 

This project created a curricular opening in which students could critically and creatively 
engage in personal and collective interrogations of "race", racism, colonialism, nation 
building and memory in both a historical and contemporary national context. For many 
of the students the material covered in the testimonies was new and disturbing, and the 
drama processes proved invaluable in allowing them to express their questions, reactions 
and understandings openly and without judgment. Many students developed new insights 
on themselves as members of a "multicultural" nation, and found strategies to help them 
question dominant curricular and national narratives. The responses from both the 
students and the cooperating teacher show overwhelmingly that this teaching approach 
was both useful to them in their development and should be expanded to other schools, 
subject areas and grade levels. However, serious systemic and structural obstacles, such 
as outcomes-based school and curricular expectations, unequal social relations in both 
schools and society, and teachers' lack of confidence in working with controversial issues 
need to be examined and overcome to bring this work to full fruition. 

This thesis uses various narrative styles - academic, autobiography, poetry and 
travelogue - to witness the project's themes and findings. 

i i 



Abstract i i 
Table of Contents , i i i 
Acknowledgements i v 

M y Manifesto 1 

M y Invitation 4 

P a r t i Witnessing(s) 11 

1.1 Witnessing Historical and Pedagogical Space 12 

1.2 Mapping the project's Location and Methodology 33 

Part II Stop: Crisis 43 

2.1 A Crisis of Witnessing Becomes The Stop 46 
2.2 Sites of Memory in Culture(s) and Education(s) 52 
2.3 Navigating "race" with the Invisible Majority 68 
2.4 Troubling the National Narrative from the shadows o f Empire 85 
2.5 Postscript: Breakthrough pain, Crisis and Pedagogy 93 

Part III Transformation(s) 96 
3.1 Performative Space(s) 97 
3.2 Implication(s) 109 
3.3 Conclusion(s) 116 

Bibliography 126 

Appendix I Unit Plans 133 
Appendix II Student Feedback Forms 146 

i i i 



Because this is about the conversations and spaces we share, 
and the words we remember: 

Because Deirdre Kelly never blinked, never flinched, never shied away 

Because Anne Bourque has spent a decade teaching me to risk and love it all 

Because Leslie Roman taught me that the critical and the creative speak the same words 

Because Lynn Fels gave me the magic of dancing, singing and performing those words 

Because Jean Barman showed me that practice makes praxis makes a practitioner 

Because Graeme Chalmers let me be an artist, an activist and a scholar 

Because Marketa Nykl and David Diamond showed me to make my body my instrument 

Because Anne Souther and Stephen Osborne helped me take those notes to the page 

Because Hartej Gill said my words were words of beauty and wisdom and courage 

Because Stephanie Springgay said my words could be painted, if only she had a brush 

Because Lisa Okada kept the words alive, in kitchens and cafes and bus stops and parks 

Because Yvonne Brown laughed and smiled and let her eyes dance me into being 

Because the CSCI Collective welcomed me into conversations of clowning and joking 

Because Diane Potts taught me that to question is to challenge is to create 

Because Kari Winters taught me that to listen is to speak is to act 

Because Julia and Ruth were there, always and regardless 

Because this would not have happened without all of them together, whether they knew 
each other or not, building the web that has been my learning 

i v 



My writings testify to the patience and guidance of two people who taught me to move 
into, with and beyond the worlds of the academy: 

my father Anthony England, who taught me then 

and my mentor Leslie Roman, who teaches me now 

v 



My Manifesto 
Love the earth and sun and animals, 

despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks. 
Stand up for the stupid and crazy, 

Devote your income and labour to others . . . 
And your very flesh shall be a great poem 

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass 

A s an educator, but also as a white, middle class female I carry within and on my body 

power and privileges both spoken and silent, and I must remain vigilant of how these 

express themselves when I am working with what Delpit (2001, p. 582) so aptly calls 

"other people's children." To do this successfully, I must understand myself as not 

simply a transmitter of information, but as a "transformative cultural worker engaged in 

the production of ideologies and social practices" (Giroux, 2001, p. 126). To become this 

kind of practitioner, I must commit myself to deep and ongoing praxis, or "reflective 

participation" (Freire, 2000, p. 63), into the ways in which the grammars of education and 

social justice have and continue to shape me and my work as a global/local/colonial 

citizen, teacher, researcher and artist. 

/ agree with Giroux (2001, p. 128) when he says that: 

a critical pedagogy for democracy is about the intellectual, emotional, and ethical 
investments we make as part of our attempt to negotiate, accommodate and transform the 
world in which we find ourselves. The purpose and vision that drives such a pedagogy 
must be based on a politics and view of authority, that links teaching and learning to forms 
of self - and social empowerment that argue for forms of community life that extend the 
principles of liberty, equality, justice, and freedom to the widest possible set of 
institutional and lived relations. 

1 



More specifically, perhaps, I see social justice education as: 

both a process and a g o a l . . . that involves social actors who have a sense of their own 
agency as well as a sense of social responsibility toward and with others and the society as 
a whole. (Bell, 1997, p . l ) 

In practice, then, I and like-minded practitioners: 

must keep the perspective that people are experts on their own lives . . . that they can be 
the only authentic chroniclers of their own experience. We must believe that people are 
rational beings.. . that we may not understand their rationales, but that in no way reduces 
our responsibility to attempt to apprehend them. And finally, we must learn to be 
vulnerable enough to allow our world to turn upside down in order to allow the realities of 
others to edge themselves into our consciousness. (Delpit, 2001, p.594) 

So I must understand that: 

i f the effort to respect and honor the social reality and experiences of groups in this 
society is to be reflected in a pedagogical process, then as teachers - on all levels, from 
elementary to university settings - we must acknowledge that our styles of teaching may 
need to change, (hooks, 1994, p. 35) 

And my vision of change involves: 

the phenomenon of storytelling . . . a tradition that creates continuities and holds people 
mysteriously together who might otherwise fall apart. Storytelling, in fact, can become a 
beginning for political action when it focuses on the process of thinking about experience 
and the conditions for action. (Greene, 2000, p.302) 

Which I plan to explore through: 

theatre - the art of looking at ourselves . . . for the theatrical language is the most essential 
human language. Everything that actors do on stage, we do throughout our lives, always 
and everywhere. Theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of 
transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, instead of just waiting for it. 
(Boal, 2002, p. 15-16) 

And document within a framework of: 

three separate, distinct levels of witnessing: the level of being a witness to oneself within 
the experience; the level of being a witness to the testimonies of others; and the level of 
being a witness to the process of witnessing itself. (Laub, 1992 (p. 75) 





My Invitation to You, the Witness and Spect-actor 

Think of a time when the word border had no meaning for you. When did you last live 
beyond the barriers of geography, or the boundaries of knowledge? Have you ever been 
able to go wherever you wanted, speak to whomever you chose, ask for whatever you 
needed? Where was this world, for you? How old were you? Who shared it with you? 

This is my invitation to you to begin thinking metaphorically about the nature and reality 

of borders, both those that others construct around us, and those we impose on ourselves. 

In geopolitical terms, metaphorical borders become material borders laid down by victors 

to claim what they feel they won through physical, cultural or economic violence. Walls 

are built, soldiers hired to guard them, traditions developed to commemorate their 

founding. In educational terms, borders both metaphorical and material can also defined 

through victory and even violence: what we learn and how we teach become controlled by 

the dominant scholars, the dominant polices and the dominant curricula. These borders 

too are tightly guarded by official, elected and appointed gatekeepers who lock out just as 

much as they allow in. Both geopolitical and educational borders serve to contain the 

flow of voices, peoples, ideologies and pedagogies in much the same way they operate to 

restrict the flow of commercial goods and commodities. Violating these restrictions can 

prove dangerous. People get shot at border crossings. Opportunities for of students and 

educators get destroyed by gatekeepers. 

Now think of a time when you were told you couldn't have or do something. Couldn't 
cross the street, couldn't speak a language you loved, couldn't read a poem you had 
written to your class. Not because you weren't capable of such an act, but because 
someone told you it was inappropriate, unsafe, not allowed. Could we call this your first 
experience of coming up against a border? What did you do? How did you feel? 

4 



But it is not so much the official reasons for the development and existence of geopolitical 

and educational borders that I want to explore; it is more our lived experiences of being 

bordered within these discourses and realities that interest me. How is it to know oneself 

as privileged or subalterned by history and its imposed borders? What happens to those 

falsely segregated or united by a nation and its imagined borders? When we look across a 

border, what do we really see - of the other and of ourselves? How many of us ever 

actually cross -1 mean really transgress, in mind and body and soul - a border? What is 

the difference between a traveler voluntarily crossing a border, safe in the knowledge that 

this is a trip of exploration that one can leave at anytime, and an economic or political 

refugee fleeing one set of borders for another, knowing that choice is a luxury long ago 

abandoned in favour of survival? How can an awareness of these border struggles and 

privileges, and those murky waters in between them, inform our practice as educators and 

researchers? 

I did not understand borders until I was eight years old and my father tried to take me to 
his home country. I was listed on his passport as a dependent, but security officers still 
chose to take me aside and question me, asking me why I was travelling, if this man was 
indeed my father, where I thought he was taking me. The officers kept me so long we 
missed our flight. This was how I learned that some borders cannot be challenged. 

This thesis uses the metaphors of borders, maps and travel to uncover some questions that 

have been hidden by the answers of official state and educational policies and discourses. 

Answers of statehood, citizenship, identity and belonging. Answers of displacement, 

dispossession, invasion and exclusion. Answers, yes, of geography and geopolitics. But 

answers too of other things, of disciplines and boundaries and definitions and pedagogies. 

5 



Answers that, when navigated mindfully, force us to ask questions of who we are and 

what we do. So let us begin. Here, with what we know. 

To travel, we are often taught to use a map. The first maps human beings followed were 

the stars, or maybe detailed, precise etchings on sand or carvings on rock. These maps 

told stories, expressed rather than defined knowledges, allowed boundaries. Then came 

stronger lines, demarcations on pieces of parchment, rules and boundaries enforced by the 

victors. What we know of borders today comes from maps drawn in times of conquest, by 

artists and mapmakers under hire to those drunk on the desire to control pieces of land and 

the peoples they found there. 

Those were the maps we studied at school. Today in education the word map means many 

things. "Map the story," we tell students when they learn to read. "Map the literature," 

we tell some of these same students when they reach university. "Map your argument", 

we might tell ourselves as we prepare a paper or a presentation. The process of mapping 

concepts, ideas and experiences can thus become one of un-making as well as making. A s 

we map what we want to say or teach, we uncover hidden geographies and landscapes, un-

name territories and re-draw the borders of knowledge and language. We become 

geographers and cartographers so we can re-map the world and our relation to it. 

This entire document is really just a process in un-mapping. 

When I was in elementary school, our teachers loved to give us maps to colour. 
Sometimes these maps made sense, as in a map of Canada and its 12 provinces and 
territories. Other times they were vague, confusing, like when we were given a blank 
world map and told to colour in the oriental empire. We were always told to pay close 

o 



attention to the borders, for anyone spilling over one of the lines would lose marks. I 
liked to see what happened when I mixed the colours. But then Ifailed the assignment. 

A key part of this project w i l l be to re-contextualize the blurred, shifting outlines of 

Canada's national and social "imagined community" (Anderson, 1983). We w i l l 

"decolonize" (hooks, 1994, p.34) these imaginaries until we find, or at least point 

ourselves in the direction of, what Bhaba (1990) calls the "third space" of critical 

exploration and dialogue, in which "it is legitimate to ask how things might be otherwise" 

(Rizvi, 1994, p.66). Only then w i l l we be able to understand and implement "the 

possibilities for constructing a radically different Canada" (Bannerji, 2000) and truly say 

we are "teaching to transgress" (hooks, 1994). 

But maps can only do so much. Sometimes we get lost. The compass malfunctions, the 

maps get torn in two, our visas expire and we are forced to turn inwards, to our intuition, 

our inner compass. M y inner compass draws me to the arts, for they represent to me "a 

liberating space where one is moved to action, to voice, to affirm one's presence." (Fels, 

1998, p.34). Here I w i l l allow myself to be guided by Augusto Boal and his concept of 

the "spect/actor", and Maxine Greene and Kathleen Berry, who claim respectively that 

"art offers life; it offers hope; it offers the prospect of discovery" (1994, p.133) and that 

"any aspect of modern life is subject to interrogation or scrutiny through the dramatic arts, 

for they shape and re-shape the world" (2000, p.32). 

I w i l l write down - in narrative, in prose, in poetry and creative non-fiction, in styles yet to 

be invented or named - everything that happens along the way so that, unlike Hansel and 



Gretel who got lost in the woods, we w i l l always have a record, a documentation of our 

travels. We will find our way home. 

In grade eight Social Studies, we studied the formation of the United States as a nation. 
We learned the details of the land purchases in Louisiana, Alaska, New Mexico and could 
name all the players, the prices, the new borders this gave America. What we didn't 
learn, because no teacher or book ever mentioned it, was that citizenship can prove fickle. 
The residents of these territories were French, Russian or Mexican when they went to bed; 
the next day they woke up to find that their language, rights, jobs and land ownership held 
no further currency. The borders had simply been made to disappear. 
I did not learn until much later that this practice was not uncommon around the world. 

A s educators, we live in nations, we work in school districts, we study in departments. 

These borders - so neat and clear cut on paper - define us, name us, locate us. If there is 

a mutual agreement on the nature of the border's limits, that neatness can be maintained. 

But when the borders have been drawn arbitrarily, by a group of powerbrokers in a 

boardroom, some bod(ies) w i l l get hurt. Border crossings become guarded, indisputable 

territories, life threatening sites of contestation. If one is not careful, a border can become 

a war zone. But borders also must eventually meet, cross and intersect: it is inevitable that 

our pedagogical disciplines do the same. What happens then? 

"This is bullshit.1" he shouts. "You are not teaching us anything, with all these theatre 
exercises. You should be standing up there, lecturing and giving notes. " He, is a medical 
doctor, an authority trained in the exactness of numbers and science, the proven 
rationality of the body. There, is an adult education class at a university in Vancouver. 
He is the only man in the class and I am the instructor. I wait, letting the silence fill the 
room. "Would anyone like to respond to this? " I ask. Twenty women - nurses, teachers, 
activists, educators all - eye each other cautiously. Then one, the youngest, looks directly 
at me and says "Um, you 're doing the right thing with this work. " The others nod and 
someone else adds her voice. "I think this is interesting and want to try more. Please 
keep going. " So I do. But he refuses to participate for the rest of the class. 

o 



With every border, with every demarcation in the sand and earth, there comes a migration 

of bodies that shift between and across lands, publicly or in secret, legally or illegally. 

These areas become known as the borderlands, places authorities say must be scrutinized 

and patrolled. Yet it is here that many people find a place to belong that is neither here 

nor there, that belongs to no one but themselves. They invent: stories, voices, languages, 

identities. They refuse to be silenced by the patrols. In graduate school I have walked 

carefully between my department of record and the campus borderlands in which I and my 

work feel more at home. This tension is one of the necessary dynamics of this paper, as it 

seeks both to rupture and merge traditional boundaries - and to create new borderlands -

between the arts and critical thinking, between research and inquiry, between academic 

and creative writing, between theory and practice. 

Where have you stood, my friends? 
Across a river, a trickle of water in a parched desert, 

watching me, watching us . . . doing, what? 
I have stood at borders that are mere ditches or gullies 

that one could cross in a single step -
I have never counted a soldier at one of these. 
But now I watch as you or someone you love, 

your sister, your father, your child, 
runs into no man's land; 

and are shot, or raped, or handcuffed. . . or simply sent back, 
while somehow I, with my new passport and neat skin, 

am allowed to cross without harm. 

But here, if you take my hand, and I take yours, 
the crossing might be easier - and look, my friends, 

they have not seen us yet, will not catch us, not today. 
If only for tonight, amigas, we are safe. 
And tomorrow we will walk together, 

past the soldiers and through the barbed wire. 

Tomorrow, my friends, is coming now. 

9 



The borders I want you to imagine are both those of ancient cartographers and 

contemporary imperialists, and those that exist in our minds: mine, yours, theirs, ours . . . 

for at some stage in our lives we have all inherited the mappings of external teachings. 

What we know of ourselves, our stories, our disciplines and pedagogies we have learned, 

at least to begin with, through the eyes of somebody else, someone who believed they 

were doing the right thing by telling us what we should know - and what we should not. 

We must now continually work to un-make those teachings and mappings. 

I ask only that you allow the spaces to be empty when necessary and filled when you are 

ready, that you give yourselves permission to walk down roads you do not know. To lead 

us out then, I call on Maxine Greene (1995, p. 104): 

There have to be disciplines, yes, and a growing acquaintance with the structures of 
knowledge, but at the same time, there have to be the kinds of grounded interpretations 
possible only to those willing to abandon already constituted reason, willing to feel and to 
imagine, to open the windows and go in search. The search - sometimes rigorous, 
sometimes gay - ought to be accompanied by the sound of a blue guitar. 

Yes, this project may seem at first to be all over the map, to straddle too many borders, to 

stretch across too many disciplines. Yes, the journey w i l l at times be messy, hot, and 

uncomfortable. Y o u w i l l all, at some point, feel dirty and wish you could go home. But 

trust me, when we get there (wherever there is) you w i l l be glad you stuck it out. 

Come with me now into the borderlands. 

There, you will find guitars of whatever colours you need. 

They are ready to be played, and are just waiting for you to find them. 

10 



1̂ rt I: 

11 



Chapter I 
Witnessing Historical 3nd PecjggogicaJ 5p3ce: 

A personal and conceptual journey 

Mapping <? moment ofwitnessingCs) 

The teachers called us savages. I remember that, called us "Dirty savage, you'll learn, " 
stuff like that. Ifelt bad, Ifelt real dirty. I thought the nuns were so pure and clean. 

Dorothy Joseph 

To question "how spaces come to be, and to trace what they produce as well as what 

produces them, is to unsettle familiar everyday notions" (Razack, 2002, p.7). It requires 

risk, and time. So I ask: how do we find the space in our practice to build an educational 

culture of witnessing the spaces that have been constructed around and within us? 

In the summer of2001,1 am driving across Canada with four English friends. We 're tired 
ofpacking and un-packing our camping equipment every second day, tired of squeezing 
our bodies into a cramped car and driving for hours at a time, tired too, I think, of each 
other's company. My friends are sick of the rugged landscapes and pioneer museums and 
no longer bring out their cameras for viewpoints and historical sites. I am beginning to 
wonder why I even came back to Canada, a place that holds so many conflicting 
memories and emotions for me, when I was so happy overseas. 

We arrive in Kamloops and check into a roadside motel. The clerk behind the desk tells 
us a new museum has just opened on the other side of town. "Supposed to be pretty 
interesting, all about the school they used to run there, for the Indians, you know. " He 
gives us a free map of the city and draws the directions on it with a red felt pen. We get 
back in the car and drive over the Thompson River, winding around a series of industrial 
parks and retail outlets until we get to an enormous red brick building. "Welcome to the 
Secwepemc Cultural Education Society", a sign at the front gate reads. "All visitors 
please check in at the museum entrance. " And so the witnessing begins. 

12 



It was bad, I remember I couldn't keep anything down. The butter was rancid, everything 
was horrible. We got this white fish soup, and to this day I cannot eat fish. I remember 
com flakes for Easter and I think there was an egg or two or a jellybean for a treat. I 
don't remember any Christmas Dinner. 

Mary Anderson 

If "an examination of spatial arrangements is critical to an interrogation of the making of 

Canada as a white nation" (Oikawa, 2002, p. 77), how should we witness the teachings 

behind the nation's public spaces, and the buildings, monuments or cities that develop on 

them? Do we witness ourselves as resisting or perpetuating these teachings? 

We spend hours in the museum, poring over photographs, objects and documents. We 
read letters from missionary and government organizations that declare the need to 
civilize and assimilate native children. I touch pieces of a student's uniform, run my 
fingers along its scratchy woollen surface; this must have hurt to wear against bare skin. 
My friends watch a video interview with an adult survivor who describes his childhood in 
the school as one of abuse, fear, hunger and neglect, and speaks of an adult life full of 
anger and violence. We move through the museum in absolute silence, barely aware that 
we are its only visitors. 

The Kamloops Indian Residential School - now home to a band-run museum and 

education center - is not an innocent arrangement of bricks on land, but a deliberate 

construction with both material and symbolic meaning. It is what Goldberg (1993, p. 188) 

calls a "periphractic space, the primary mode by which the space of racial marginality has 

been articulated and reproduced." Constructed to both remove First Nations children from 

their homes, families and languages and to contain them at a safe distance from the clean 

streets and well-kept homes of the predominantly white settler community across the 

river, this building embodies both the experiences and legacies of colonialism. It becomes 

13 



a site of what Felman (1992) calls "trauma and testimony", to which the public must "bear 

witness." 

The photograph takes up an entire wall of the museum. Four children, none of whom can 
be older than seven or eight, stand in the back of an open cattle cart. The cart seems to be 
pulling away; the children stare at the lens with confused, frightened expressions. The 
caption under the photo reads "children being collectedfor the first day of school, circa 
1930. " Who took that photograph, and why? How much did the children know about 
what was happening to them? Ifind no other written information - no names for these 
children, their families or communities - just four terrified faces slipping into the past. 

This photo, and its overwhelming size in relation to me and the rest of this site of colonial 

legacy, holds me for several minutes. Through this photo, and my very act of responding 

to its presence, I begin to understand something transformative for my teaching. In that 

moment, the photo becomes a metaphor for how we are often required to teach Canadian 

history in our public schools. "Narratives of struggle" (hooks, 1998, p. 53) too often 

become, like the children in the photo, faded historic snapshots fixed against an ongoing 

backdrop of dominant "white settler mythologies" that promote the "disavowal of 

conquest, genocide, slavery and the exploitation of the labour of peoples of colour" 

(Razack, 2002, p.2). 

/ remember a truck came to pick us up. It wasn't just us, there were other children from 
the Reserve. It was a flatbed truck with rails around it, like the kind you carry cattle in. I 
was six years old. We rode all bunched up on wooden benches. I remember it rained and 
we got wet. There were no rest stops. I recall whispering "that's my brother over there. " 
It was strange not being able to talk to him. I had my hair cut off the first day of school, 
and my sister and I were separated and assigned different rooms. Naturally, they started 
us going to church right away. 

Mary Anderson 

14 



I touch the sepia-toned face of one of the children, lay my hand against her cheek as i f 

checking my own child for signs of fever. And then so many questions: How do we stop 

the children on the cart from disappearing into a misremembered past? How can our 

practice bear witness to their experiences in a meaningful way? And how should we 

witness space as a social construct - both historical and contemporary - within the highly 

contested physical, epistemological and pedagogical space that is Canadian education? 

The painful part was when my grandmother came to see me. She must have hitchhiked or 
caught the bus or something. I looked out the window and I saw her, I didn't see her 
coming in, but I saw her going away and I ran out the door and I managed to get as far as 
the outside door and then I saw her walking down the road. Two nuns grabbed me and 
told me not to do that, I must have been punished again. 

Anonymous 

My friends are waiting for me on a bench outside the museum. I join them, and we sit 
looking out at the city and the hills behind it. Our white bodies and European accents 
implicate us in the evil of this place, yet we can find no vocabulary with which to speak of 
our selves in this space. "It's kind of like Auschwitz, " one of us says. "You know, a place 
where something horrible happened and you go there because you feel an obligation to 
try to get a sense of what happened, but you never really do in the end. "Yeah, " I say, 
"except this isn't some distant thing we can explain away to make us feel better. This is 
us, our ancestors who did this. And this is the country I grew up in. " I want to ask them 
more questions - Are we just tourists here, taking this visit in like any other stop? What 
will we tell others about this place when we get home, and what even gives us the right to 
speak of what we saw if we will not also speak of what we felt, or what we are going to do 
with those feelings? - but their shocked, uncomfortable faces keep me quiet. 

Mapping the spaces we move through: schools and curricula 

It was an area where immigrants resided because of the direction that somebody placed 
on them -you didn't want all these people in the West End, right? . . . We never did get 
away from the East End — we didn't have cars, so we didn't have access to other areas of 
the city. You just bounced off walls down in the East End. 

Ray Culos 

1 c 
1 J 



I wish to map the pedagogical spaces of this re/search study by interrogating the physical 

and official discursive spaces within which it is structurally located. In doing this, I echo 

Berry's assertion that "educators and curriculum, as potential agents of change, through 

interrogations and disruption of unchallenged cultural constructions, can begin the process 

of dismantling curricula and themselves." (2000, p.33) Let's begin by imagining the key 

elements of secondary education culture - the physical sites of schools and classrooms, 

the curricula, students and teachers - in terms of what Henri Lefebvre (1991, p.7) calls 

"perceived space, conceived space and lived space." Education has first a perceived 

social role brought into the public imagination through repeated traditions. 

The physical plant of a school and the textual materials of its curricula direct the activities 

of the bodies moving through the building. Students and teachers sit at desks, walk 

through hallways, enter and exit through proscribed points. They teach and work from 

similarly confined structures of books, papers or computers. In this structured machine, 

the teachers transmit curricula while the students receive it. This could, in a nutshell, be 

how secondary education is perceived by the general public. 

The West End didn't like the East End. They didn't like us. But when they wanted to eat 
and drink, they always came to the East End. We'd give them everything we had. But you 
never go asked back to their house. Never. 

Violet Teti Benedetti 

Lefebvre argues that spaces become publicly perceived due to their planned (conceived) 

representation, or how the physical space is designed and executed. Do you ever pass a 

school, particularly those brick boxes from the middle of the last century, and think how 

16 



closely they resemble prisons? I do. I mean, what else can the huge, insurmountable 

walls and the narrow slit-like windows, the long corridors and square classrooms possibly 

be intended to represent? Many school buildings seem less designed as spaces for living 

than for containment, conveying a message that the bodies of education (teachers, 

curricula and students) are to be controlled and monitored. 

This brings me to Lefebvre's final concept, that of space as "directly lived through its 

associated images and symbols" (1991, p. 39). Educational space, through its perceptions 

and conceptions, then becomes a lived process of containment and control, something the 

public takes for granted but has little real connection to because most sites and spaces of 

teaching and learning are boxed and hidden away behind brick walls and closed doors. 

/ was friendly with the boy who was shot, Yosh Uno . . . his mother was in the store one 
day, they lived in the back, and four young white kids came in with a gun and they held 
her up. Yosh ran out from the back to protect his mother and they shot him dead. So, 
then these kids were charged with murder. Then the headlines, "four white kids for one 
Jap - is it fair? " and people saying, "Japs are killing Americans, so what difference does 
it make if 4 Canadian boys shoot 1 Jap? " (Ivy Kaji McAdams) 

Like the physical space of a school, a curriculum is also a perceived, conceived and lived 

space. It is perceived as intended to teach something. It is conceived by various players, 

from Ministry of Education officials to community members to contracted educators. 

Finally, it becomes lived by the teachers and students who must follow its guidelines. The 

official curricula for Social Studies 11 and First Nations Studies 12 present an enticing 

metaphor within which to explore how experiences of space play out in an educational 

17 



reality. These two subject areas form the focal points for this study because they represent 

some of the key perceived, conceived and lived spaces that have dominated much of my 

development as a secondary school teacher. 

A s a rookie Social Studies teacher in the primarily aboriginal community of Lytton, I 

worked and lived in constant tension between the proscribed provincial humanities 

curricula and the lived experiences of my students and their parents, many of whom had 

been forced to attend the area's notorious St. George's residential school. In an effort to 

move beyond the "textbook Indian" (Francis, 1997, p. 108) narratives of the standard 

Social Studies curricula and resources, I struggled to find ways of making learning 

meaningful and empowering for my students and still meet the school district's 

expectations. Some of my efforts paid off while others failed miserably, and in the throes 

of my working days I never fully had the time nor the energy to grapple with the inherent 

privilege and power of my position as a white, middle class teacher coming into an 

impoverished community haunted by the ghosts of other white, middle class "do-gooders" 

intent on "saving" souls and minds through western education. 

While I may have thought I was disrupting this flood by shifting how I moved within the 

community's curricular spaces, by collaborating with community leaders, using local 

resources and alternative teaching methodologies, I did not realize until years later that my 

sheer presence in the town and school reproduced rather than challenged hegemonic 

assumptions of whose knowledge held the most validity, at least in national economic and 

social capital terms. M y white body as the consistent authority in the front of the 

1 o 
10 



classroom, rather than that of an elder or healer, told the same story as the white bodies in 

the front of the classrooms of St. George's: my urban, university-trained "knowledge", the 

one that got me a teaching certificate and thus the job in their town, counted more than 

anything they had to offer. It was my desire to grapple with these issues of knowledge, 

invisibility and silencing, and the relationship of teachers to the power structures inherent 

in both continuing and disentangling the process, that fuelled in large part my interest in 

pursuing graduate studies. What questions would I be able to ask of myself and my work 

within the reflective spaces of academia? And, after navigating the twisting halls of 

theory and inquiry, what answers would I find? 

Before the Second World War we could not practice as lawyers, and many other 
professions we could not get into. Many department stores would not hire Chinese. 
Government agencies would not hire Chinese. Because after all, even though we were 
born here, we didn't have full rights as Canadian citizens. 

Harry Con 

The preceding narrative of my naive wanderings through one problematic educational 

space illustrates the kinds of tensions behind the negotiating and claiming of space -

historical, pedagogical and personal - that I want to explore in this thesis. I want this 

thesis to read as a journey through the many spaces that serve to educate us, so I feel I 

should begin with a brief interrogation of what is often used to claim space in our practice: 

the syallabus, or curriculum, or learning outcome so often conceived and transmitted by 

"experts". I want first to focus my inquiry on how two specific curricular documents, 

conceived by such experts as the best way to educate students on the cusp of graduating 

19 



and entering the larger society, create a learning space full of claims and exclusions for 

those who must live inside or outside of it. 

The Social Studies 11 Integrated Resource Package (B.C. Ministry of Education, 1996) 

opens with the following claim: 

50CIRL STUDIES TI COOTRIBUTES TO THE I0TP0RTR0T SORL, OF PREPARES STUDEOTS FOR THEIR 
FUTURE LIVES RS CRORDIRO CITIZEOS ROD fTJEfTJBERS OF THE lOTERORTIOORL COmmUOITY. THE 
CURRICULUM! IS DESI&OED TO E0SR6E STUDEOTS10 CRITICR'u, REFLECTIVE I0QUIRV I0T0 THE 
CHRLLEO&ES FRCI0& CRORDIROS RT THE BE&I00I06 OF THE 21ST CEOTURY. 

These are certainly worthy perceived ideals, but the manner in which those goals have 

been conceived quickly becomes suspect. In the first section, titled Skills and Processes, 

the teacher is told to do the following: "HRVE STUDEOTS WORK 10 6R0UPS TO BRRIOSTORUl R LIST 

OF THE EFFECTS OF immi&RRTiOO 00 SOCIETY" and then to "HRVE SOTRLL GROUPS OF STUDEOTS 

CRERTE CHRRTS ILLUSTRRTIOS THE POSITIVE ROD OESRTIVE EFFECTS OF EUROPERO COOTRCT ROD 

I0TERRCTI00 UJITH RBORSIORL PEOPLES", and to assess both projects on criteria that includes 

whether or not students "PRE5E0T RCCURRTE iOFORmRTlOO" (pp. 14-15). In the curriculum's 

lived space then, I wonder what these directives might feel like to immigrant student 

forced to see his or her coming to Canada as an "EFFECT" on an otherwise happy landscape, 

or to an Aborginal student forced to construct "POSITIVE" interpretations of colonialism. 

How are they going to want to contribute to the exercise that follows these assignments, in 

which the class is expected to discuss "UJHRT IT fDEROS TO BE CR0RDIR0" and each student 

must "COmPLETE THE SEOTEOCE, R CR0RDIR0 IS "? And whose answers should the teacher 

decide are "RCCURRTE"? 

20 



/ remember some food place where I went in and applied, and the form asked for 
nationality, so I put down "Canadian". He says, "That isn't enough." I says, "Well, I'm 
born here. " And I could see what he was getting at, he could see I was Jewish, I had a 
Jewish name. 

Gloria Steinberg Harris 

The First Nations Studies 12 Integrated Resource Package (1995) does offer a more 

critical approach (at least it asks students to "R55E55 THE IJTiPRCT OF EUROPERfl COflTRCT" 

rather than its positive effects, and the document actually uses the term colonialism, a 

word conspicuously absent from the Social Studies 11 text), but the program still seems to 

position aboriginal culture and experience as an exotic Other, one to be viewed from the 

confines of an anthropological gaze. Teachers are told, for example, to focus on the 

"RiCHfSESS RflD DIVERSITY OF FIRST ORTIOnS' LRO&URSES ROD CULTURES" in order to "DEVELOP RO 

RPPRECIRTIOn ROD RESPECT FOR THE SimLRRITIES RmOTSS RflO OlFFEREflCES BETUJEEfl THE DIVERSE 

CULTURES OF THE UJORuD" (p. 3). In the lived space of the curriculum defined classroom, I 

can't help but ask i f to teach the course in this way actually perpetuates what Lawrence 

(2002, p. 26) describes as "history . . . written from outside Indigenous perspectives" that 

means Indigenous peoples are not permitted to see "colonization as colonization." 

Becoming Accountable: 
Mapping the context for this project 

Just before leaving the Secwepemc Museum, Ifind a book for sale: Behind Closed Doors. 
Stories from the Kamloops Indian Residential School, $18.95. I buy it, planning only to 
read it for personal interest. Later in the summer I take a course on Augusto Boal 's 
Theatre of the Oppressed methodology that starts me thinking about possibilities for 
embodied learning in classrooms. That same fall, I take a graduate course with Jean 
Barman on the history of education. . . and BOOM1. . . . I am on a curve of learning and 
exploration that grows into a thesis research project. Funny how things come in threes. 

21 



Both the Social Studies 11 and First Nations Studies 12 curricular spaces create an 

educational and discursive space dominated by "historical narratives" (Stanley, 1998, p. 

42) that create what Willinsky (1998, p. 16) calls a "global backdrop of a world imagined 

as empire and race". In his exploration of what he terms "the ethics of accountability", 

Willinsky states that the "need to examine education's continuing contributions to what 

were and continue to be colonizing divisions of the world" can only begin to be met when 

educators understand that they "owe those they teach some account - i f always partial -

of what we have taught them about the world" by "examining what this form of schooling 

has underwritten and who it has denied" (1998, p. 16). 

We put nametags on all the children, in case we got separated, on cloth we wrote it down, 
and we put a little sum of money on the bigger ones, and the baby I knew I would carry 
wherever I went. And we all had name tags, in case we got separated, you know, died or 
something, well then they'd know who we were. 

Nobue Minato 

It was this project's intention to become accountable in this way and "critically engage" 

(Stanley, 1998, p. 43) with the perceived, conceived and lived spaces forged by Canada's 

dominant white settler educational discourse. I chose to do this by introducing specific 

texts of storytelling from two historically silenced and marginalized communities - East 

Vancouver and Kamloops's aboriginal population - into a Social Studies 11 and First 

Nations 12 classroom. Further, this project used Drama as the mode of response to these 

texts in an attempt to transform one small piece of classroom and curricular space into 

"lived space, shared space and public space" in which new pedagogies and ways of 

knowing come into being and begin "reaching toward each other in safe and unsafe 

22 



spaces, seeking equity, seeking decency, seeking for a common world" (Greene, 2000, p. 

294, p. 303). 

Questions o f Language: 
Mapping the spaces between telling and. responding 

Just what exactly is storytelling, anyway? The Oxford English Dictionary defines a story 

as "Hfl RCC0U0T OF imRSIORRY OR RERL PEOPLE ROD EVEOTS TOLD FOR EOTERTRinfOEOT" and telling 

as "HRVIOS RO IfTlPORTROT OR REVERLiOS EFFECT." Interestingly, the word telling is listed in 

this dictionary only as an adjective and not as a verb or noun. Is telling, then, not an 

action, not an experience in itself? Something about the very word story feels wrong to 

me in this context, like a story has a neat, clear beginning, middle and end, when true 

telling and responding is messy, unfinished and seldom resolved. Why should a story 

only be told for entertainment, and not to provoke or empower? Who decides when the 

story is over . . . and should we even wish such a thing? 

If we reclaim the active agency involved in the act of sharing stories and call it "truth 

telling" (Ward, 2000, p. 64), does the process then facilitate an experience that "addresses 

the question of how we understand what has happened from the point of view of the 

present" and open up " a moment between past and future when we can think what we are 

doing" ( H i l l , 1979, p. 290)? How do we learn - and teach - listening in such a way that 

would get us to that place? 

23 



My brother was the only Oriental in the class and he was competing and he was a good 
swimmer. He came back from the swim meet and my mother asked him how the class 
made out and he said, "We didn't swim." She said, "Why not?" He said, "Because in 
Crystal Pool they've got a rule, 'No Orientals allowed in here.'" They had singled out my 
brother and said, "He can't swim because we don't have Orientals in here. " So the rest 
of the boys said "Well, if he's not swimming, neither are we, " and the class all stepped 
back. 

Ivy Kaji McAdams 

Felman & Laub (1992) answer this question with their writings on "testimony and 

witnessing". A testimony, in their terms, is a narrative of trauma told by one person to 

another, but a narrative that does not "come into existence, in spite of the overwhelming 

and compelling nature of the reality of its occurrence" until it "is listened to and heard" (p. 

57). In this sense, the telling of and listening to an event become a mutually dependent 

process or contract in which "the knowing of the event is given birth to" and by extension 

"the listener is a party to the creation of knowledge de novo" (p. 57): 

Bearing witness to a trauma is, in fact, a process that includes the listener. Testimonies 
are not monologues; they cannot take place in solitude. The witnesses are talking to 
somebody: to somebody they have been waiting for for a long time. (p. 70) 

From Behind Closed Doors t o Opening Doors: 
Mapping spaces for textual tellings 

/ lost my talk, 
The talk you took away, 
When I was a little girl 

At Shubenacadie school. 

You snatched it away: 
I speak like you 
I think like you 
I create like you 

The scrambled ballad, about my word. 

Two ways I talk 

24 



Both ways I say 
Your way is more powerful 

So gently I offer my hand and ask, 
Let me find my talk 

So I can teach you about me 
- Rita Joe, I Lost My Talk, 1994 

Y o u have been reading their testimonies throughout this chapter -

but have you been listening? 

The testimonies offered in Behind Closed Doors: Stories from the Kamloops Indian 

Residential School and in Opening Doors: Vancouver's East End come from "degenerate 

spaces, established in relation to white bourgeois spaces to produce differing entitlements 

to power" (Oikawa, 2002, p. 77). Behind Closed Doors, like Haig-Brown's Resistance 

and Renewal (1999), witnesses the lived colonial experience of the Kamloops Indian 

Residential School, a holding pen for children dispossessed of their white-appropriated 

rural territories, while Opening Doors witnesses the classed and racialized lived 

experiences behind the social construction of East Vancouver as an/Other urban space 

well removed from Vancouver's white middle class West Side. These texts, then, offer an 

opportunity to witness how and why certain communities have been "re-cast outside the 

imagined white collective space of the Canadian nation" (Oikawa, p. 77). The voices in 

these texts uncover the realities of "the dark side of the nation" (Bannerji 2000): it is 

essential that we and our students witness their testimonies i f we truly wish to teach and 

learn in the lived and shared spaces of a "CURRICULUm DESIGNED TO E0GR&E STUDEOTS 10 

CRITiCRU REFLECTIVE I0QUJRV I0T0 THE CHRuuEO&ES FRCI06 CR0RDIR0S RT THE BE6I00I06 OF THE 2 1 s t 

CE0TURV" (Social Studies 11IRP, 1996, p.2). 

25 



Both texts fit into other conceived curricular spaces of First Nations Studies 12 and Social 

Studies 11. First Nations Studies 12 contains a specific unit titled Tradition and 

Challenge in Education that begins with the statement "FIRST fSRTIOOS SOCIETIES UJERE 

DRR!TIRTiCRLLY ALTERED BV RSSimiLRTIOOIST EDUCRTIOORL POLICIES" (p. 36) and encourages 

students and teachers to both "RSSESS THE IfDPRCT OF RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS 00 FIRST nRTIOOS 

FRmiLIES ROD COrnmuniTIES" and to "EXPLRIO THE RESISTROCE OF FIRST ORTIOnS PEOPLE TO 

RSSimiLRTIOOIST EDUCRTIOORL POLICIES ROD PRRCTICE" (p. 36) through such strategies as 

reading Haig-Brown's book or inviting a guest speaker to the class. Likewise, the Social 

Studies 11 curriculum's Social Issues unit encourages students and teachers to "LIST 

RERSOnS PEOPLE immi&RHTE TO CRORDR" and "IDEDTIFV ITIRJOR CRORDIRO 50CIRL POLICIES ROD 

PRO&RRmS ROD THEIR IfTlPRCT Ofl CRDRDIRfl SOCIETV" by developing "TimELIOES SHOUJIOS THE 80™ 

CEOTURV EVEOTS THRT HRVE BEEfl .Ti05T SISOIFICRflT If) SHRPI0& CRORDIRO SOCIETV" (p. 14). What 

is to stop the testimonies of Behind Closed Doors from " guest speaking" to a First 

Nations Studies class? Why can't Social Studies 11 students use the testimonies from 

Opening Doors to develop a "spatialized timeline" of provincial and municipal 

discriminatory housing and employment policies that "makes visible how social relations 

have been produced through geographic constructions" (Oikawa, 2002, p. 76) and policy? 

Despite the richness of their tellings, these texts remain in the margins, both physically 

and pedagogically, and are at risk of becoming testimonies to "events without a witness" 

(Laub, 1992, p. 80). Opening Doors was published by the British Columbia archives in 

1979, but is now out of print and available only in libraries or the odd used bookstore. In 

a similar marginalization, Behind Closed Doors is a publication of Theytus Books, a small 

26 



independent printing press, and is not sold in any major Canadian bookstore. Nor does 

either text appear on any Ministry of Education list of approved resources. On the 

surface, the public's access to these tellings remains limited; consequently, our ability to 

witness and act on what we hear from these testimonies may also be compromised. 

Yet when we de-center the space of communication and pedagogy from the domain of one 

dominant mainstream, these texts become, through their sheer existence, sites of active 

resistance. Theytus Books is the only publishing house in the province both operated by 

people of First Nations background and dedicated to publishing only works by and for 

First Nations communities; it sets an award-winning example of how publishing can be 

used for social and cultural empowerment. In a similar vein, the Opening Doors project 

was financed in the 1970's by Dave Barrett's social activist N D P government, and 

provides an excellent juxtaposition to the current Liberal government's ongoing cuts to 

public education. If we and our students analyze not only the testimonial content of these 

texts but their material production and location against a larger backdrop of systemic and 

cultural hegemony, we perform our own act of pedagogical resistance. 

These texts break through decades of educators and researchers "speaking for others" 

(Alcoff, 1993) and begin to "translate the sensory" (Kristeva, 1994, p. 250) lived 

experiences of being both placed in and resisting marginalized spaces. Bringing them into 

our classrooms and allowing ourselves and our students to listen to them, to witness them, 

can help begin a dialogue of educational accountability within our learning communities. 

27 



Spect-Acting and Response-ability: 
Mapping the concepts and the literature 

According to Felman & Laub the process of witnessing testimony is a contract between 

the teller and the listener, one in which the "listener is to be unobtrusively " - physically 

and mentally, to oneself, the teller and the testimony - "present throughout" (p. 71). This 

kind of presence they call "response - ability", a state that "leaves no hiding place intact" 

for "as one comes to know the survivor, one really comes to know oneself, and that is no 

simple task" (p. 72). 

Witnessing begins with a traumatic event allowed to happen through unequal and 

oppressive power relations. We either see this event unfold, or are told about it later. 

What makes the witnessing process different from mere listening or bystanding is how we 

respond to the trauma. A witness practicing response - ability is neither bystander nor 

tourist: they do not slow down as they drive past a traffic accident, they do not visit a 

famous site only to snap a photo and leave. A witness w i l l stop at the accident, enter the 

site, do whatever is needed to somehow document the event beyond the eyewitness facts 

and figures. A witness w i l l speak to others not only about the trauma, but about how they 

are experiencing it. A witness touches, tastes and smells the its insides, and finds ways to 

remember those embodied sensations. A witness w i l l admit defeat: he or she w i l l not be 

afraid to show fatigue, exhaustion or incomprehension. A witness, then, responds to the 

trauma on multiple levels so they w i l l forever be part of 'it, not just at its telling. 

Another key goal embedded within the process of bearing witness, and the impetus for so 

much of the autobiographical nature of research on testimony and witnessing, is that 



bearing witness somehow brings about a fundamental personal transformation. If the 

witness has made him or herself part of the trauma, they have engaged with the issues and 

experiences of injustice behind it. The hope is that this engagement leads in turn to a 

renewed consciousness or awareness of the workings of injustice, and a commitment to 

act for social justice. We and our students witness testimonies of the Japanese internment, 

for example, in the hopes that we as social actors w i l l fight against such events ever being 

allowed to repeat themselves in our lifetimes. 

This process of witnessing trauma, and witnessing oneself in relation to it, needs to be 

understood in our practice as an ongoing cycle. What we start in one classroom with 

students in grade ten may have an initial impact in the moment, but may not really take 

hold in some students' lives and actions until years later. Likewise, what we witness in 

ourselves - both as witnesses to the trauma and as facilitators of our students' witnessing 

processes - needs to be constantly reflected upon and interrogated. 

This psychoanalytic approach has been taken up by several education scholars (Simon, 

Eppert, Britzman, et.al.) who study the role witnessing plays in educational cultures. 

Britzman (1998, p. 68) for example, argues that witnessing allows educators insights into 

"what is not learned", and that witnessing is "not about a student's development or 

identity but about historicity and its relation to the student" (p. 72). I agree with this use 

of witnessing in education, but wonder why research has so far limited itself to 

discussions of higher education pedagogy. I also agree with the highly autobiographical 

nature of much research on witnessing, as it is impossible to separate oneself from the 

29 



process (as Roger I. Simon so often mentions in his work on the Holocaust, in which he 

witnesses himself as a Jewish man witnessing the testimony of survivors), but wonder 

why little work has been done on asking ourselves to witness the testimonies of survivors 

of domestic Canadian traumas such as residential schooling or the internment. Finally, I 

ask these scholars how we can move from witnessing through the mind, as most academic 

research does by the very nature of its reliance on written texts, to documenting our 

witnessing through the body. 

Mapping performance as the site o f witnessing 

In a social justice approach to senior secondary Humanities/Social Studies education, a 

subject area whose emphasis on historical data lends itself well to the witnessing process, 

we must ask ourselves two principal questions i f we want to bring a culture of witnessing 

into our practice. How can we encourage our students to safely become the event, to enter 

into it as fully as they can? How can we encourage them to see themselves not only as 

lifelong learners, but as lifelong witnesses? I argue that the conceived spaces of any 

traditional sites and structures of learning - with their desks and books and unmoving 

bodies - do not support a pedagogy of response-ability. To develop an educational 

process of witnessing we must welcome it as one of embodiment; the listener and teller 

must be able to interact, even i f the "teller" is a literary text. I believe that response-

ability comes when the listener is able to perform their embodied responses to any telling. 

Performance is of course a form of art, and encouraging performance means taking 

students into the arts education arena. I am of the view that the arts, and Drama 



particularly as my specialty, do not need to remain separate from other curricula, but can 

be infused into any subject, any space, by any teacher and with any group of students. I 

also believe that, when one is seeking to engage students in critical thought and reflection, 

the arts offer the unique opportunity to develop a student's "critical imagination" (Rizvi, 

1994, p. 66). R i z v i goes on to suggest that: 

we need to teach for those forms of artistic imagination that problematise cultural 
formation and acknowledge that a politics of difference involves a dialogue with others 
who speak from different traditions, locations and experiences. (Rizvi, 1994, p. 66) 

How do we get where we want this to take us? Perhaps: 

we can confront our inconsistent Canadian history of tolerance, and meet the challenges of 
our Canadian diversity, by teaching Drama with an acute awareness of how theatrical 
techniques in the theatre and in the classroom conspire with the social and cultural 
backgrounds, education, and expectations of audience and students to produce meaning. 
(Zatzman, 2003, p. 40), 

by working with and within 

a form that invites improvisation, ongoing dialogue and critical and creative response . . . 
the concept of "letting go" is frightening, but necessary, i f we are to invite students to 
imagine anew a curriculum that realizes their own presence (Fels, 2001, p. 6). 

Into this textual and pedagogical landscape of arts as witnessing I bring the theatre 

methods of Augusto Boal, who claims not only that "artists are witnesses of their times" 

but that this witnessing should be explored through the body, "the most important element 

of theatre" (2002, pp. 16-17). His methods of image theatre, in which participants 

respond to issues or experiences by making shapes with their bodies, and interior 

monologues, in which participants speak as the character or emotion created by the 

images they make, form the backbone to this project. Boal's theory of the "spect-actor", 

that "all human beings are actors (they act) and spectators (they observe)" (Boal, 2002, p. 

11 j i 



15) and are constantly shifting between the two positions or subjectivities in real life so 

they should do the same in the theatre, links directly to the concepts of both accountability 

and response - ability. 

In spect-acting "whatever is not expressly forbidden is allowed" (Boal, 2002, p. 40): we 

may respond physically, spiritually, or emotionally to what we hear and see. We respond 

to those speaking to us as well as the voices we discover inside us, becoming fully present 

in ways that sitting at a desk and thinking only through our heads does not permit. We 

become more fully able to commit to our responses, and in doing so we become 

accountable. 

In becoming accountable, we transform - ourselves, our surroundings and our teachings. 

32 



Chapter II 

Mapping the Project's Location and Methodology 

You pull out of your driveway in the West End and head down Georgia Street onto the 
viaduct, turning right when you see the sign for Main Street. You have to stop at the 
traffic light before you can get to 1st Avenue, which leads to the highway. It's raining, like 
it always is here; a lone squeegee kid jumps in front of you and begins wiping your car's 
windshield. She doesn'tfinish before the light changes, but has enough time to notice the 
loonie on your dashboard, the one you always keep handy for parking emergencies. She 
puts out her hand, expecting the coin, but you just stare straight ahead and keep driving. 
"Bitch, " she yells after you, so you turn up the volume on your radio. 

The traffic announcer tells you it's a good day to be heading east on highway number 1; 
the traffic is light and moving quickly. The road takes you through the suburbs of 
Bumaby and Coquitlam and over the Patullo Bridge. Pretty soon you start seeing the exit 
signs, first for Surrey and then the place you 're looking for, Langley. Follow the exit to 
Walnut Grove and drive past the line offast food franchises, motels and gas stations until 
you reach the first set of traffic lights. The houses look nice here, gated two-story 
townhouses with lush, expansive gardens. On the corner there is a church with a sign 
asking you to stay strong for your community. Turn left here and drive one block - there is 
the school. At just past 8:30 a.m., the school day has officially started. 

You pass a quartet of senior girls hanging out in the parking lot, cigarettes and purses in 
their hands (you can tell they 're seniors by the confident way they hold their shoulders 
back, how they refuse to rush even though they know they are late). They wait around 
outside the school entrance, finishing their smokes and laughing about homework 
assignments they haven't done, tests they forgot to study for. A boy walks out of the 
school, his blonde hair shaved almost to his skull, and swears as he passes the girls. 
"Fucking kicked out, " he tells one of them, a tall girl with long dark hair who seems to 
know him. The boy walks across the parking lot and gets into a mud-splattered white 
truck, revs the engine for a minute then peels out across the tarmac and onto the street. 
Smoke spews from his screeching tires; the girls laugh and pump their fists in the air. 
"Way to go Dustin!" the tall girl with dark hair cries. She turns to enter the school, and 
notices you for the first time. She looks you over slowly, deciding whether or not to trust 
you. She tilts her head to one side, puts a hand on her hip, stubs out her cigarette and 
raises her icy blue eyes to meet yours. 

"Welcome to hell, " she mouths at you, and then disappears into the building. 

33 



any map can show you the boundaries: 

Surrey to the west, 
Abbotsford to the east, 

Fraser river to the north, 
and the world's longest "unguarded" border to the south: 

a super sized belt of nature, bibles and foreigners 
wrapped tightly around its ever-growing waist 

* 

look at us, the township's website says: 

a community of 

(settler) 

communities 

* 

Sto:lo means river, means 10,000 years: 
Hudson's Bay Company its discovery; 

we learn this company town means the birthplace of BC 

* 

Dates: 
1858: the royal proclamation signed here, 

an (other) Empire territory 
(ten gentlemen ate that night from the manager's table); 

1871: gold rush, border disputes, railway 
(dislocation, separation, dispossession); 

the territory joins the birthing nation 

2003: capital fuels a bedroom community of 
88, (mainly white, mainly middle class) 000 global 

(colonial) 

citizens. 



And their school, how should we map that? 

almost 2 , (mainly white, mainly middle class) 0 0 0 bodies 
with - hey! - a female principal, and a commitment to: 

express innate curiosity! 
skillfully pursue knowledge! 

value personal well being! 

So into this map I come! 

Tell me where you 're from, I ask them, and 
with words on paper they draw the map of their town: 

tell me it's a place "clean and good", so 

"picture perfect"; 

but then the lines grow frayed, words become stronger, 
grounds shift beneath the surface, 

and a new geography takes hold 

until the map of their town becomes the map of their lives, 
dissecting an "underground world", a "suburban hell-hole" 

in which survival equals nothing less than "acceptance and approval" 

'explode 

the words they write, to tell me where they 're from: 

infect 

escape' 

this is the map of their town, their school, their lives; 

this is the map of their space. 



This project grew out of a telephone conversation I had with Anne Bourque, a Humanities 

teacher in the Langley school district. Anne has long been a mentor to me ever since she 

taught me during my Teacher Education program at Simon Fraser University, and as our 

careers have developed we have often shared conversations of both inspiration and 

frustration. This time she was frustrated, for she wanted to find new ways to challenge 

some of the assumptions and silences she felt were shutting down dialogues amongst her 

students, particularly in her senior humanities courses. She knew I had an interest in anti-

oppression pedagogy and its intersections with theatre and mainstream teaching practice, 

so she offered up two of her classes - Social Studies 11 and First Nations Studies 12 - as 

laboratories for exploration. And explore we did! 

Beginning with the assumption that "knowledge of history helps us trace the patterns that 

constitute oppression over time and enables us to see the long-standing grievances of 

different groups in our society" and that it "also offers hope as well as evidence that 

oppressive circumstances can change through the efforts of human actors" (Bell, 1997, p. 

6), I designed and taught two eight- lesson units, one for Social Studies 11 and the other 

for First Nations Studies 12. The goal of each unit was to encourage students to begin to 

examine their own social identities as well as develop an understanding of oppression in 

British Columbia as a historical, genealogical and contemporary lived experience. The 

lessons used selected tellings from Behind Closed Doors and Opening Doors to provoke 

questions around spatialized British Columbian experiences of race, gender and class 

oppression, and incorporated the theatre response techniques of Augusto Boal to explore 

the following questions: 

-> <r 
J O 



• How can the study of oral histories in secondary education become a pedagogical 

intervention to stimulate a new discourse on Canadian experiences of class, gender 

and race oppressions? 

• How does Drama as a mode of educational inquiry facilitate this intervention and 

discourse? 

Each unit was structured with the following "major elements of social justice education 

practice" (Bell, 1997, p. 42) in mind (cited below from B e l l , 1997, p. 42): 

• Balance the emotional and cognitive components of the learning process by paying 

attention to personal safety, classroom norms and guidelines for group behaviour. 

• Acknowledge and support the personal (the individual student's experience) while 

illuminating the systemic (the interactions among social groups) by calling 

attention to the here-and-now of the classroom setting and grounding the systemic 

or abstract in an accumulation of concrete, real-life examples. 

• Attend to social relations within the classroom by helping students understand 

group process and improve interpersonal communications without blaming or 

judging each other. 

• Utilize reflection and experience as tools for student-centered learning by using the 

student's worldview and experience as the starting point for dialogue or problem-

posing. 

• Value awareness, personal growth, and change as outcomes of the learning process 

by balancing different learning styles with lessons organized around goals of social 

awareness, knowledge and social action. 

37 



In the hope that by the end of the unit students would share at least the beginnings of a 

language with which to contextualize their learning, I decided to frame each unit's 

tellings, drama exercises, discussions and feedback form questions within a larger 

conceptual umbrella of anti-oppression vocabulary, specifically the terms power, 

oppression, lived experience and agency. I chose to work with these terms not only 

because they appear the most frequently across the anti-oppression literature, but also 

because they represent a continuum or cycle of knowledge and experience. If the students 

could reach even a limited understanding of how power is produced and constructed in 

their society, then they could use that knowledge to develop an understanding, or 

"consciousness" (Freire, 1970) of how oppression affects members of that society. 

Digging deeper, students who could witness the realities of power and oppression could 

then go on to examine how these phenomena become a lived experience for themselves 

and others. They could then begin the process of finding and using their agency as social 

actors, to engage with what Tatum (1992, p. 107) calls "action - the natural antidote to 

both denial and despair". 

Each term was explored, through discussion, tellings and drama exercises, for two 80-

minute lessons. I began each lesson with a brief explanation of the concept to be 

explored, and a reading to help illustrate it. I then asked them to relate this concept to 

their own experience, by means of a free expression question. We then moved into warm-

up activities from Boal's "arsenal of the theatre of the oppressed" (1992) that were 

structured to further examine the meanings behind the concept. The remainder of the 

lesson was spent hearing and responding to, or witnessing, testimonies that took us deeper 



into the concept. Each lesson ended with time for debriefing and questions. A complete 

unit plan for each course can be found in the Appendices. It is also important to note here 

that Boal and practitioners of theatre of the oppressed methodologies follow a certain 

protocol to ensure the safety of participants within both the classroom and the larger 

school environment. A key element of this protocol, and one enacted throughout the 

Langley project, is to inform the school counselors of the unit and its sensitivity, and to 

remind them every day of the time and place in which the lessons are to take place. 

Through this protocol of informing, the counselors were aware of potential issues and 

ready to offer support to students in case aspects of the lesson became emotionally 

difficult or traumatic. For a full description of the safety protocols, see David Diamond's 

A Joker's Guide to Theatre for Living (2000, pp. 5-15). 

After each lesson, and at the end of each unit, students were asked to complete written 

"feedback forms" or questionnaires in which they reflected open-endedly on both the 

content (the testimonies) and the process (the drama exercises) of the lesson and unit. The 

lessons were also videotaped. Further data was collected in two hour long semi-structured 

interviews with the co-operating teacher. Throughout the process, Anne and I maintained 

an ongoing dialogue by sharing reflective journal writings in person, over the phone and 

via email. Everything collected - the lessons, the feedback forms, the interviews, my 

notes and journals - became data worth investigating. The feedback forms for each unit, 

and the teacher interview questions, are included in the Appendices. 

3 9 



In analyzing the data, I wanted to first assess students' general experiences or 

understandings of race, class and gender oppression in Canada. Were they, for example, 

making assumptions based on such influences as mainstream media, family or community 

members, or did they have a first hand knowledge of the issues? 

Secondly, I wanted to see if, after witnessing the oral histories from Behind Closed Doors 

and Opening Doors, any students went through a personal transformation in how they 

approached or spoke about experiences of oppression in Canada. D i d their views or 

thinking on the issues - or how they are generally educated to see these issues - shift in 

any significant way, and how were they able to articulate that shift, either verbally or in 

writing? Did a critical engagement or commitment to social justice work take root 

amongst any of the students, and how much agency did the students feel they had as social 

actors in their own lives, compared from the unit's start to end? 

Third, I wanted to analyze the unit's performative moments and the students' reflections 

on them to explore the role drama as the mode of learning and communication played in 

the students' political or critical consciousness raising. How did embodying their 

responses or questions surrounding these issues effect their ability to relate to and grapple 

with them? What new spaces and opportunities for learning and dialogue did the drama 

methodologies open up, and could these openings be sustained beyond the unit? What 

role could this approach play in future senior secondary humanities courses? 

40 



In my conversations with Anne, I wanted to get to the heart not only of her interpretations 

of how the unit went for her and her students, but also to try to articulate what must 

happen within secondary education structures and organizations to really foster this nature 

of pedagogical change. Was this unit a mere pipe dream or real possibility? 

Finally, I also wanted to infuse this study with personal interrogations of my own colonial 

upbringing as a white child of economic privilege in that bastion of last gasp empire, 

Victoria, British Columbia, and the influence this background might have on my roles in 

the classroom. A s the eldest child of a white settler, upper class Canadian mother who 

never quite lost her internalized racist and classist assumptions, and an English working 

class hero father who became an academic but never quite lost the angry young man chip 

on his shoulder, my early development as a thinker and citizen was riddled with 

contradictions and compromises that I am now continually deconstructing as an adult 

global citizen and educator. I wanted to contrast my own memories of family and school 

life with those of the Langley students to see i f anything has changed or remained the 

same in a generation - and what needs to be done about this. 

The writing up of all this varied personal, analytical, performative and reflective data 

proved quite a challenge. How could I bring you, the reader, into each experience as fully 

and engagingly as possible? A s a writer who has published in both creative and academic 

forms or genres, I wanted to access and develop my skills iri both areas. I chose to write 

certain sections of this thesis in different styles, ranging from narrative to critical analysis 

to poetry, memoir and travelogue. True to the creative process (see Goldberg, 1990), I 

A 1 tl 



allowed each piece of the thesis puzzle to take on a voice and shape of its own and trusted 

the editing process to bring the text as close to the reader as possible. The key technique I 

use throughout the writing is that of the juxtaposed or intercutting narrative or snapshot, a 

technique widely used by such contemporary Canadian authors as Michael Ondaatje and 

Alice Munro. In the conclusion, I speak more on the tensions and contradictions I want 

these narratives to express, but do not want to spoil it for you now! 

I am in no way saying that a unit of eight lessons and a 120 page Master's thesis can do 

justice to the depth and complexity of the historical and contemporary experiences of 

oppression in this country, or that every student or educator w i l l share the same 

understandings of and responses to the study's findings. What I am saying is that within 

the packed spaces of a senior secondary curriculum and timetable, two units and a thesis 

created at least a space of exploration in which to tackle these ideas. 

A n d isn't that better than not tackling them at all? 

In this spirit of inquiry, response-ability and accountability, the Legacies -finding ways to 

understand how the past influences the present - and Literacies -finding ways to 

communicate and express that understanding - Drama Education Project was born. 

42 



>top : Crisis 



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44 



What do-1 rem&mher of the/ e*/a<>uxxttim/? 
'By Joy Ko#aM) 

What do I remember of the evacuation? 
I remember my father telling Tim and me 
About the mountains and the trains 
And the excitement of going on a trip. 
What do I remember of the evacuation? 
I remember my mother wrapping 
A blanket around me and my 
Pretending to fall asleep so she would be happy 
Although I was so excited I couldn't sleep 
(I hear there were people herded 
into the Hastings Park like cattle. 
Families were made to move in two hours 
Abandoning everything, leaving pets 
A n d possessions at gun point. 
I hear families were broken up 
Men were forced to work. I heard 
It whispered late at night 
That there was suffering) and 
I missed my dolls. 
What do I remember of the evacuation? 
I remember Miss Foster and Miss Tucker 
Who still live in Vancouver 
A n d who did what they could 
A n d loved the children and who gave me 
A puzzle to play with on the train. 
A n d I remember the mountains and I was 
Six years old and I swear I saw a giant 
Gulliver of Gulliver's Travels scanning the horizon 
A n d when I told my mother she believed it too 
A n d I remember how careful my parents were 
Not to bruise us with bitterness 
A n d I remember the puzzle of Lorraine Life 
Who said "Don't insult me" when I 
Proudly wrote my name in Japanese 
A n d Tim flew the Union Jack 
When the war was over but Lorraine 
A n d her friends spat on us anyway 
A n d I prayed to the God who loves 
A l l the children in his sight 
That I might be white. 



Chapter III 

"Tory- hard/ to- bear": 

The Stop is ubiquitous. . . evident in each and every earthbound action we experience. . 
there is a hinge around which events pivot. 

(Applebaum, p. 17) 

Then all hell broke loose. Early on in both units, I started to sense resistance from the 

students, but not the defensive "this is not my problem" kind I had witnessed from fellow 

students in some of my graduate courses; this resistance was more an overwhelmed, 

disbelieving silence. When Anne and I tried to encourage discussion around issues raised 

from the tellings, the students remained completely silent. No questions, no comments, 

not even a shift in body language. They refused to raise their eyes from the floor, kept 

their arms folded across their chests, dug their heels into the linoleum floor and waited, 

simply waited until the bell would ring or I would hand out the feedback questionnaires. 

Anne and I knew there was something major going on for these students, but because no 

one would speak we could not quite put our fingers on it. I began to wonder if we had 

bitten off more than we could chew, if the sophisticated ideas of the academy were simply 

too much to put into the minds of secondary students, or if my approach to the unit design 

had been all wrong. 

Had I lost my teaching touch, after two years in graduate school? Had we just unwittingly 

stumbled into the chasm between academic theory and classroom reality? 

46 



The answer was not so simple. The answer was all that, and more. The answer, when we 

found it, implicated the public spaces of our entire educational culture. 

. . . my re$pov\&e/tcr Joy Ko^ctwcv. . , 

What do we remember of the evacuation? I do not know what happened, for I was never 
there, and it was years before someone told me the story. 

Not your story, for no one in my town read your books, 
nor your mother's story, for my neighbourhood did not value the words of elders: 
they could not trust voices coming from the outside. 

There was an old man who drove our streets, selling fish from the back of his truck. 
We used to follow him down the road, liked to hide in the bushes and watch him walk, his 
shoulders stooped as he carried small bundles to each door, bowing as housewives dressed 
in cocktail dresses told him to keep the change as they shut the door in his face. 
And we called him Mr. Nip, because my best friend Sammy's Dad had once said we 
shouldn't buy our food from a nip like him. 

One day the fish truck stopped coming down our street and we moved on to other 
distractions; the swings at the park, the rocks on the beach at high tide. 

A n d then ten years later, or thereabouts, my grandfather began to speak. 
He spoke of farmers on Saltspring Island who moved in for the k i l l during the winter of 
'41, or was it '42 . . . he can't remember anymore... 
but what he does remember is that his father brought home a brand new boat, and that his 
cousins moved onto the orchard that used to belong to . . . them. 
There were no tears in my grandfather's eyes when he spoke that morning; 
just a stutter and a drool from a man who once was young. 

A n d that, my friend, is all I remember of the evacuation. 

They, these students waiting for me to teach them something, what do they remember? 
I say the words internment, evacuation, exile 
and they look at me in confusion, bewildered by a language they cannot share, 
the silence breaking the room - and my heart - in two. 

I have pushed them too far, exhausted them: defiance takes over. 
They fold their arms across their chests and stare at the floor, silent, waiting to escape 
until one voice in the back, half-choked in the frustrated sobs of adolescence, 
begs out in a furious whisper: Why are you making us talk about this? 

A n d that, my friend, is when they began to remember the evacuation. 

47 



An endless automatic movement of thought obscures the Stop. . . The Stop is 
acknowledgement of resistance. Made conscious, the Stop effortfully fills perception with 
body. (Applebaum, p. 17) 

Memory, or the lack of it, sent the Langley students into crisis. The third lesson for the 

Social Studies 11 class focused on understanding and coming to terms with oppression. I 

had chosen to illustrate this concept with a series of tellings from Opening Doors that 

testified to the experience of the Japanese internment or evacuation. I had assumed that 

the students would share at least a general knowledge of why and how the internment 

played out, but I had assumed incorrectly. As I began reading Nobue Minato's testimony 

of name tagging her children, several hands shot up. "What are you talking about?" one 

student asked. "I don't get it," another added. Pretty soon the entire room was a chorus, 

not of denial but of confusion. These students, sixteen year olds raised for the most part 

less than an hour from the Hastings Park detainment center of which Joy Kogawa writes, 

had never heard of the internment. It formed no part, whatsoever, of their conscious 

memory or language. 

Something similar Happened in the First Nations Studies 12 class at the same stage in the 

unit. I was reading from Dorothy Joseph's telling, in which she tells of being called a 

savage by the school nuns, when two male students walked out. They were both white 

and from strongly Christian families (indeed, their parents had almost refused to allow 

them to participate in the unit), and could not handle how the testimony was making them 

question their religion. "It's too hard to bear," one of them said, almost in tears. Other 

students in the class responded to the telling with a kind of dumfounded shock, for they 

48 



had grown up in the colonial shadows of the "birthplace of British Columbia", where the 

depth of abuses and injustices attached to the residential school project had been erased. 

M y lessons had inadvertently become these students' first exposure to the un-mapping of 

their country as a beacon of international and domestic goodwill. A n d Anne and I had 

walked straight into one of the biggest crises of our teaching careers. 

The stop hides in a most hidden place. This is a place that is both near and obvious. . . 
The Stop hides a secret dimension of experience. To stop is to uncover what is in hiding, 
which is to say, to experience ourselves in hiding. (Applebaum, p. 16, 24). 

Felman (1992, p. 47) writes of a "crisis of witnessing" in one of her university classes in 

which students watched videotaped testimonies from Holocaust survivors, as a moment 

when the "eloquence of life carried the class beyond a limit that I could foresee and had 

envisioned." Her students, who had a general knowledge of the Holocaust, were so 

overwhelmed when put face to face with a personal telling that they: 

broke out into crisis . . .they remained, after the screening, inarticulate and speechless. 
They looked subdued and kept their silence even as they left . . . what was unusual was 
that the experience did not end in silence, but instead, fermented into endless and 
relentless talking in the days and weeks to come; a talking which could not take place, 
however, within the confines of the classroom but which somehow had to break the very 
framework of the class (and thus emerge outside i t ) . . . I realized that something strange 
was going on when I started getting phone calls from the students at my home at all odd 
hours, in a manifest wish to talk about the session, although they did not quite know what 
to say. (p. 48) 

In many ways, what happened in my classes amounted to precisely such a crisis of 

witnessing. The crisis began with testimonies that pushed the limits of the students' 

understandings of themselves and their surroundings. Their lack of a language for 

debriefing their feelings then drove them into silence. Finally, the crisis became 

49 



something that had to be worked through outside the boundaries of the classroom, or even 

the school building. The students started going home and raising these questions with 

their families and friends - around the dinner table, in the car on the way to school, at the 

mall. Anne and I knew this was happening because we started getting phone calls from 

their parents - not complaining but seeking advice. "How should I talk to my daughter 

about this?" one parent asked me. I stayed quiet a while, thinking of a myriad of 

responses, none of which seemed right. " B y telling her what you know, and admitting 

what you don't," I finally answered. She seemed surprised, as i f admitting ignorance was 

a failing rather than an opening. " I ' l l try," she sighed, "but can't promise she'll get it." 

Get what, exactly? I wanted to ask her. Get that she lives in a racist country founded on 

inequalities, get that it's not her fault no one has taught her about this before, get that not 

knowing doesn't make her stupid or bad...? But she had already hung up the phone. 

A conversation was taking hold all around us, and we needed to find a way to have that 

conversation in the classroom. We did find a way to "break the framework", but not 

through writing or speaking. We broke the framework by acting and responding through 

theatre - but more on that later. 

The Stop contains a specific that, acting on awareness and organism alike, opens one to 
the.source of lighting. (Applebaum, p. 126) 

O f course, my units never got finished - at least not in the way I had so carefully theorized 

and planned and written down. The crisis led us beyond those eight simple lessons to a 

much deeper awareness. The crisis, in a sense, became the project. 

C A 
JV 



We Stopped. We Talked. We Re-£rouped. We Witnessed. And We Learned. 

When Anne, her students and I allowed ourselves to witness this initial moment of crisis 

as an invitation for dialogue, the class was able to "pass through its own answerlessness" 

(Felman, 1992, p. 50). The silences evaporated, and what these students wanted to talk 

about was not so much what had happened in the past, but what was happening to them 

now as they tried to understand the past. The rest of the project, then, became about 

working the students through deconstructions of three previously unchallenged 

epistemological spaces that had been constructed both around and within them. I call each 

of these a Stop, a moment that both disrupts and crystallizes knowledge and the 

possibilities for actions: they are The Stop of Memory, The Stop of Whiteness and The 

Stop of Imagined Canada. Over the next few chapters, I wish to address these Stops in 

detail - not just as research spaces but also as conceived, perceived, lived, public and 

shared spaces - in the hope that we can draw from them insights and ideas for our own 

pedagogies and practices. 

51 



Chapter IV 

Cultural memory represents the many shifting histories and shared memories that exist 
between a sanctioned narrative of history and personal memory (Sturken, 1991, p. 119) 

Memory a^publCcy spacer education/ and/commodity: 

Kobbewltlaynd/, Soidfo/AfrCcas, 2000 

I am going to this former prison in search of the memory of Mandela and apartheid. We 
leave Capetown Harbour in a comfortable cruising boat with padded chairs, a bar and 
washrooms, a video room and sundeck, but the waves and wind pitch the boat so violently 
that many of us become seasick. About halfway into the trip, I go out onto the deck to get 
some air, hoping this will reduce my nausea. A striking woman, tall and blonde, leans 
over a railing and watches the disappearing urban coastline. She nods at me and begins 
to speak. "I grew up here, almost twenty years ago, " she sighs, "then left to study in 
England and just never quite made it back. " She grimaces and grips the railing as the 
boat hits a particularly big wave. "Of course, Robben Island was real back then, not 
some tourist museum. It was ..." her voice trails off. She coughs and begins again. " a 
place that was just so horrible, so unspeakable. " 

They brought the prisoners here in the dead of night, usually. A dozen or so men and 
women, crammed into rickety, uncovered motorboats. They sat huddled against each 
other, without lifejackets, often without coats, handcuffed to the wooden benches to stop 
them from trying to swim away. When boats capsized only the driver survived. 

The island seems so innocuous from a distance: a small rocky outcrop with a few concrete 
buildings scattered across it. It reminds me of an island near my house in Victoria that 
we used to row to for family picnics. 

A tour guide meets us at the dock and ushers us into a mini-van. He is a former prisoner, 
part of the island's UNESCO-sponsored public education program. We pass the guards' 
residences — a neat, tidy row of brick houses with a school, swimming pool, and tennis 
courts, a community so complete in its banality that it would not be out of place in 
suburban America - and our guide tells us that some female prisoners got to work in these 
homes as maids. They would return to their cells each night, but still they were 
considered lucky because sometimes they would get "old clothes, or food from the guards' 
wives. " At a limestone pit we stop and get out of the van. This is the infamous forced 
labour quarry, where male prisoners worked ten hours a day, seven days a week, digging 
and chipping at endless blocks of limestone. Our guide pauses, takes a deep breath. 
"The guards used to stand just over there, watching us. They had guns, and whips. If 
they thought we weren't working hard enough they would beat us, maybe with the end of 
their guns, maybe with the whip. .." he shivers, "or maybe they would just throw rocks at 

52 



us. But Mandela, he was so strong. He would just laugh when they did this. " He points 
to a cave at the edge of the quarry. "We used to meet there, early in the morning before 
our work shift, or during our lunch breaks. And we would read to each other from books 
people had sent us, or tell stories from our childhoods. " 

They passed a law on this island that no one under the age of eighteen could visit 
prisoners. That meant sons, daughters, sisters, brothers were meant to be forgotten. It 
also meant prisoners should forget they ever loved or were loved: the rule was intended to 
remind prisoners they were no longer human. 

A woman, she can't possibly be older than thirty, greets us on the prison steps. She smiles 
and nods at us. " What do you think is the one thing a person might miss most when they 
are in prison? " she challenges us. We - mainly tourists from the west who do not know 
what freedom means because we have never had to win it - shuffle our feet and eye each 
other nervously. "The sky, " someone blurts out. "Birds, " tries another. "Freedom, " the 
blonde woman from the boat deck whispers. The guide looks each of us in the eye; we are 
not used to having our privilege confronted like this, to being poked in all the 
uncomfortable places. "No, " she begins, "it is the feeling of holding a child. " We fall 
silent, embarrassed and ashamed in the face of such simple cruelty. And then she begins 
her testimony: "When I was twenty-one I was brought here after being convicted of 
terrorism. I hadjust had a baby, she was about eight months old, and I did not see her for 
the next six years. When apartheid ended I was released, and now I work here to try to 
share my experiences with you so that something like this will never happen again. " I 
wonder how many times a day she must tell this story to strangers who only came here to 
take pictures of themselves in front of Mandela's cell. 

The walls of the prison are painted white, with bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. 
We file into a long corridor lined on each side with cell after cell, each one no more than 

five square feet. The cells have been kept as they were during the prison's operation: they 
house only narrow cots covered by thin grey blankets. On the wall outside each cell is the 
name of its occupant; above each cot hangs his or her photograph. Beside the photo are 
writings, written after the prisoner's release, in which he or she shares memories of 
prison life and survival. Some are poems, some letters, others essays. We move past each 
cell in silence, memorizing the names, reading their testimonies. Some of us take photos, 
or write notes in journals. An African-American family has brought a box of votive 
candles; they light one at each cell. Another couple, Spanish I think, bows and prays 
before each cell. The blonde woman from the boatdeck weeps quietly in a corner of the 
hallway. Our guide watches us as we witness her life - her past and her present, her 
trauma and her testimony. She does not weep with us, just folds her hands across her 
stomach and waits for us to finish. 

By the time we reach Mandela's cell, it hardly matters that this is what most of us came 
here to see. We take photos to commemorate his space in the prison and the place he 
holds in our imaginations. The Spanish couple takes a photo of the American children, 
then one of the family altogether. We do all this humbly, even solemnly; our recordings 
have none of the celebratory air so often associated with sightseeing and holidays. 

5 3 



The return boat ride is smoother; some of us gather at the bar where the Spanish couple 
shows photos from the safari they took last week. We dock and disperse into the summer 
Capetown evening of restaurants and movie theatres and luxury hotels. I want to say 
goodbye to the blonde woman, but by the time I get off the boat she has disappeared. 

SCtefr ofMemory: perioncii, politicals curxd/ edAAcatiovuxl 

History: the study of past event; the past considered as a whole 

Memory: a person or thing remembered; so as to commemorate 
(O.E.D., 2001, pp. 424, 558) 

"Do you know what this exhibit is about? " the museum guide asks me before I enter a 
sideroom in Atlanta's Martin Luther King Memorial Center. It is her job, somehow, to 
protect the visitor from witnessing too much, from going too far into the risky territories 
of memory. She hands me a piece ofpaper to sign. "By going in to this exhibit on 
lynching you release the museum from any responsibility for injury or trauma you may 
feel as a result of your viewing, " it reads. I sign and she opens the door for me. The room 
feels different right away - dark and claustrophobic, with none of the rousing audioclips 
of King speeches and spiritual music so present in the rest of the museum. The 
photographs are everywhere, on walls, in books, behind glass cases - men, women and 
children hanging from trees and bridges, their faces bloodied, their necks limp. They 
have their impact, but the one that truly stops me and makes the bile rise in my throat is 
not of a lynching at all, per se. It is of a little white girl, maybe three or four years old, 
sitting on her daddy's shoulders and eating an ice cream. Watching the lynching unfold. 

Do we want the students we teach to study the past, or to remember and respond to it? 

This is a hugely contested and ongoing debate in the scholarly arena, with the argument 

creating the equivalent of "running a knife between the tree of memory and the bark of 

history" (Nora, 1989, p. 13). The two sides may be summarized with a couple of quotes 

from two French men who have contributed much to the debate. Maurice Halbwachs, the 

key thinker behind the concept of collective memory, believed that "memory distorts the 

past, whereas the historian's obligation is to correct memory's inaccuracies" (Hutton, 

2000, p. 538). Pierre Nora, on the other hand, whose interrogations of public spaces and 



memory in France led to a whole wave of similar interrogations around the world, argued 

that "the emergence of history as a profession with a body of codified knowledge was a 

deliberate attempt to obliterate memory" (Hamilton, 1994, p. 11). 

/ am in the Nikkei Internment Museum in New Denver, British Columbia. This is the one 
place left in the entire province where internment spaces - the houses, the gardens, the 
barbed wire - have been kept as they were during the war. A school group has arrived 
just before me, their faces bright with anticipation. They rush through the displays in 
minutes, then gather on the lawn to eat lunch. A woman from the group - a parent, a 
teacher perhaps? - and I linger in one of the tiny "family dwellings ". "So small, " she 
says, surprised. "With such thin walls, and just that tiny sink for an entire family. Oh 
well" she laughs, pointing to the snow-capped mountains that circle the town, "at least it 
was beautiful here! " 

In many ways, the teaching - both in the conceived space of schooling and curriculum 

and in the shared, public spaces of monuments, ceremonies and museums - of Canadian 

history as a "linear march of progress through time" (Oikawa, 2002, p. 76) has erased the 

"living imagination" (Hutton, 2000, p.537) of remembering those whose lives and homes 

were marched on and through in the name of another group's "progress." This rupture 

between history and memory led to the Langley students' Stop of Memory - their 

unknowing of the internment and residential schooling - and how this rupture plays out in 

Canada and other global educational spaces is worth exploring here. 

H i&t&ri&y of for<ge£tLv\ty: Jcvpcvw, South/ Africa/ cwxch CcwxcuLcv 
a* lavicl&CGLp&y of memory avid/ education/ 

Let's return to Lefebvre's and Greene's concepts of space as perceived, conceived, lived, 

public and shared. The tension between memory, history and education continually 

resides within all these spaces, and using Japan, South Africa and Canada as mini case 

studies can help illustrate the "power relationships in the politics of negotiating memory" 

55 



(Hamilton, 1994, p. 18). In Japan, for example, the federal government and Ministry of 

Education consistently refused to allow negative images of Japan's imperial past (such as 

the Nanking Massacre, the enslavement of Korean comfort women, or the conditions in 

prisoner of war camps in Japanese-controlled territories during the Second World War) to 

be included in the conceived spaces of national textbooks and curricula in order to 

maintain a post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki perceived space of Japan as victim of western 

aggression. Twenty years after the end of the war, a Tokyo education professor named 

Saburo Ienaga sued his government for censoring textbooks he had written, arguing that 

the ministry of education was impeding his right to freedom of expression. 

Prague's Jewish Quarter on a Sunday afternoon is packed with tourists. They smoke and 
laugh as they wave cameras in each other's faces and haggle over the price of postcards. 
I fight past the hordes and end up on a deserted sidestreet. There is a synagogue here, 
hidden away behind a row of bushes. I enter the synagogue cautiously, unsettled by the 
tourist carnival outside and unsure I even deserve to be a witness here. An old man greets 
me and takes my hand. "Welcome, " he says in stilted English. "Come, " he says, leading 
me to a corner of the dusty room. Every wall of the synagogue is covered in names, 
thousands of them, the dates of their birth, transport and death etched in identical black 
letters. He runs his fingers down one line of names, peering close to read each one, and 
stops when he finds the one he wanted. He gestures for me to read, so I do: Ave Cohen 
Spatzen, b. 1900, transported to Bergen-Belsen 1941, d. 1943. The man takes his finger 
off the wall and points to his chest. "My father, " he whispers. 

It was not until 1982 that his court case began to be resolved when the word aggression 

replaced military advance in materials describing Japan's role in Asian conflicts. But in 

1997, the Japanese Supreme Court rejected Ienaga's request to include references to 

comfort women in a textbook he was writing, thus upholding the rationale that censorship 

and "feel-good nationalism are preferable to fact" (Paris, 2000, p. 153). The conflict that 

"occurs when people insist that others should remember as they do" (Hamilton, 1994, p. 

15) in the shared, public space of education, is reflected in the comments of Tokyo 

56 



professor of education Nobukatsu Fujioka, who declared that Ienaga's textbooks were 

"not written with Japanese people in mind, for they present a history hostile to Japan . . . 

and the impact on our children is such that they write in their essay classes that Japan is 

the worst, most immoral country in the world." (Paris, 2000, p. 152). The controversy 

over curriculum in post- war Japan reveals the messy borders of perceived and conceived 

spaces, in that not all members of a community imagine themselves as belonging to that 

space in the same way and thus w i l l not be able to agree on how to portray that space 

politically and educationally. In this conflict, though, the real victims are the 

subjectivities of teachers and students who must find ways to negotiate those spaces. 

Two other post-war nations faced similar struggles and negotiations in putting their 

violent acts onto paper and into schools. Germany did not begin confronting its Nazi past 

and the Holocaust in official curricular spaces until the 1960's, while France did not 

include references to the Vichy regime's collaboration with Germany, including the 

deportation of French Jews, in educational texts until the 1990's. Yet it is the post-

apartheid South Africa that offers more recent and troublesome insights into the ways in 

which "people in their society know" - and teach - "the past" (Hamilton, 1994, p. 9). 

/ was watching television yesterday morning, when an ad came on for a new cleaning 
product. A smiling blonde, white hostess who couldn't stop praising the product spoke 
directly to the camera. Then the ad cut to an image of a hand-just a nameless, 
disembodied tool of service - scrubbing a dirty cooking pot. The next scene showed the 
smiling blonde holding a shiny clean pot, so clean it sparkled as much as her teeth. Only 
after the ad had finished did I remember - the hand scrubbing the pot was black. 

Later that afternoon I was walking through Capetown's downtown core and stopped at a 
newsstand to buy a paper. A young African woman approached me, her hands neatly 
folded behind her back. "Excuse me madam, " she asked, smiling. "I was wondering if 



you might need any help in your house, maybe a maid, or cook, or nanny? " Ifumbled an 
apology, told her I was only a tourist and had no home here in which to employ her. This 
morning, when I checked out of my guesthouse, the clerk asked me where I was traveling 
next. "Back to Tanzania, where I live", I said. "Oh," he replied, " Black Africa. Never 
been one for that, myself. " he laughed, handing me back my credit card. 

With the official end to apartheid, how to teach the reality of the regime has become a 

hugely contested issue in which "schools in the new South Africa, and the students and 

teachers inside them, continue to struggle with the disparate messages about who they are 

and who they ought to be" (Soutien, 2001, p. 312). In this quote we can see similar 

tensions between perceived, conceived and lived spaces as in post-war Japan. Whether 

South African teachers and students perceive themselves as survivors or perpetrators of 

apartheid greatly impacts how they perceive their roles in the new nation's education, and 

likewise for how the nation conceives of and uses the role of schooling and education. 

These two lived post-apartheid spaces - learning bodies and governing bodies - may share 

a common vision of working towards a new nation, but how they may see going about it 

cannot help but differ. 

When Mandela's African National Congress took over the country on a platform of 

peaceful reconciliation, they re-vamped all curricula (which under the regime had 

portrayed apartheid as a difficult but necessary exercise in segregation and containment, 

for the good of the nation) to draw attention to the sufferings of apartheid, but did so as "a 

compromise that didn't show anyone in too bad a light" (Nolen, 2003, p. 3). This 

angered many who still felt the depths of apartheid as a lived experience were not 

sufficiently reflected in the materials and curricula, and angered still others who felt the 

horrors of apartheid were being exaggerated. "Do we simply replace a white Afrikaaner 

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nationalist narrative with a black African nationalist narrative, replace great white men 

with great black men?" the scholar Noor Nieftagodien asked in a speech shortly after the 

new curriculum was introduced. "That would be easiest," he continued, "but it's 

problematic - you are not challenging the approach to history, it's just an ideological 

shift" (Nolan, 2003, p. 3). Perhaps the effects of this debate are best summed up by the 

people most directly impacted by it - the students themselves: 

We're sick and tired of hearing about how our parents suffered. We want to be 
consumerist, individualist, young blacks - don't burden us with your past. 
(Nolan, 2000, p. 3). 

The comments of the students and Dr. Nieftagodien reflect memory, history and education 

in the new South African landscape as a "conversation without closure" (Hutton, 2000, p. 

541) that opens wounds so deep and conflicting that educational structures and materials 

may "never be able to integrate into a conventional historical narrative" (Hutton, 2000, p. 

541). 

The big colonial houses of the diamond and gold merchants, and monuments to the Boer 
pioneers are still the landmarks you see from the highway and read about in the 
guidebooks. The post- apartheid monuments are smaller, and you have to look for them. 
A small plaque outside the police station in Port Elizabeth where Steven Biko was 
murdered, a map on the floor of a church basement that outlines the streets and homes of 
a black community razed to make way for government offices. A woman who stands on 
the steps of a prison and asks you what you think you might miss if you were in her shoes. 
I think of Germany and its aggressive monuments to the victims of the Holocaust, and 
wonder if it is easier for the oppressor to commemorate its work in the form of guilty 
purging than it is for the oppressed to remember how, once liberated, to heal themselves. 

I now want to speak of Canada and its links between memory, history and education. 

Why include the Canadian space in this discussion? I want to explore the ideas of 

Canadian "race" historian Constance Backhouse (1999, p. 12), who asks: 

59 



why is there so much resistance to attributing "racism" to generations of the past, in 
Canada? Is it evidence of the lack of sophistication of historians generally about matters 
of race? Is it emblematic of the infancy of Canadian race history as a subdiscipline? 
Whatever the rationale, it is simply, in my opinion wrong. Individuals and groups from 
Canada's past acted in identifiably "racist" ways, causing actual and substantial damage to 
those they perceived as racially subordinate. These acts reinforced a wider social 
structure that was permeated with racism. 

I believe Canadian education is in deep denial, or a state of "unreflective ethnocentrism" 

(Roman, 1996, p. 4) about its location in a "white settler society established by Europeans 

on non-European soil" (Razack, 2002, p. 1). I do not need to revisit the discussion of 

curriculum opened in the previous section, but choose here to concentrate on a particular 

community or public education project that has, I think, larger implications for schooling. 

The Museum of Anthropology is packed today with tourists and school groups, all 
admiring the splendid collection of Pacific Northwest artifacts and totem poles. A young 
tourguide leads a group of schoolchildren around the great hall and pauses by a series of 
carved boxes. "These, " she begins, "were given away atpotlatches, which were big 
feasts hosted by leaders of each village. When the potlatches were banned, these boxes 
were brought to the university. " "Why were the potlatches banned, " a couple of students 
ask. "You know, I'm not really sure, " she says, ushering the students around the corner. 

The/ V&mivUcm/1n^tCtute/: VubUxyfwvxcly, "publCo" vn&tnoriefr? 

The Memory Project, funded by the nationalist thinktank the Dominion Institute, is a 

national project advertised in mainstream media and accessed regularly via the Internet by 

schools across the country. This heritage project is based on collecting and recording 

memories and artifacts from the First World War. The Institute (and let's remember here 

that the term Dominion projects explicit colonial links to Canada's days as a member of 

the British Empire) instigated a kind of moral panic by publicizing the fact that only a 

handful of living veterans of that war were still alive, and the country was in danger of 

O U 



losing its memory of their sacrifices. A worthy project, certainly, but in whose memory, 

and whose name? 

A visit to the project's website reveals a very white, Anglophone narrative of heroics: I 

searched but could find no mention of the contributions of men and women of colour, or 

Aboriginal and francophone servicemen, when historical record does show that peoples of 

these backgrounds fought and died in service of their 'country'. 

The Memory Project's very use of the term project to define itself is disturbing. In this 

context the word gives a sense of beginning, middle and end, of much-deserved closure -

much how Canadian education treats discourses of settlement as a fixed, final project 

rather than ongoing legacy. In essence, the Memory Project, like Canadian history 

education, has appropriated the language of a post-traumatic nation and space (survival, 

heritage, legacy are words that appear frequently throughout Project documents and 

curricula) without actually engaging with the risky business of negotiating how and why, 

and in whose name that space came to be, whom the creating of that space actually 

traumatized, and who is implicated in the continued development and success of that 

space today. I am suddenly aware here that throughout this thesis I have used the term 

project to describe the work I did with Anne's classes in Langley. I too am now 

implicated in the same process of confining the teaching of history to a contained, 

manageable product that I have just critiqued. Have I internalized the very language and 

structures I seek to change? How can I create new words to define my re/searching? 

The architects of South Africa's apartheid came to Canada to research ideas for 
segregation. It is said they found the Canadian system of reserves and native 

61 



disenfranchisement quite appealing. I remember this as I stand outside Pretoria's 
Voortrekker monument, with its sculptures of courageous Boers and menacing natives. I 
can't help but think "there too but for the grace of God. . . "and wonder why we seem so 
unable to use the word apartheid when speaking of laws and spaces in our own country. 

This mapping of memory and history in education, both locally and globally, illustrates 

that "though there is a struggle for memory in all countries, it w i l l emerge at different 

times" (Hamilton, 1994, p. 23). What this mapping also shows is a common thread 

among how these struggles for memory have played out: what gets taught in each 

country's educational spaces reflects or is dictated by the nation's public and collective 

understanding of themselves and their history, which means "the social production of 

memory" is "a collective production in which everyone participates, though not equally" 

(Hamilton, 1994, p. 18). In order to reclaim education's power to disrupt or subvert the 

production of dominant historical narratives, we must then engage with the very real and 

public space of collective and social remembrance. 

Memory coU&ctiMe/ i^m^^ttng^ 

In examining the concept of collective memory, I draw from the theory's originator 

Maurice Halbwachs, who defines it as a "record of resemblances, similarities kept alive by 

continuous reworking and transmission" (Hamilton, 1994, p. 19), or "continually reshaped 

by the social contexts into which it is received" (Hutton, 2000, p. 537). How, why and in 

what ways or places certain events or people become commemorated while others do not 

reflects the structure and perspective of larger "group identities" (Hamilton, 1994, p. 19). 

How the larger or dominant group perceives itself - its stories, its. tragedies, its heroes -

then becomes internalized by all members of the community, dominant or not, creating in 

•TO 
oz 



many cases "a tension between local and nationalist traditions" (Hamilton, 1994, p. 23). 

Veterans of the World Wars - the nation's grand struggle and triumph over evil - are 

remembered with large, elaborate statues in central public spaces, while the victims of the 

internment - the nation's own dirty laundry - must lobby government officials for years to 

be granted small patches of land, like street corners or unused parks, on which to 

commemorate their losses. There is not a single public memorial in the province that 

speaks to the violence enacted on the country's indigenous peoples. To challenge these 

"organized structures of forgetting" (Hamilton, 1994, p. 13) within which we live and 

work, education and educators need to continually shift the contexts and contours of our 

collective imaginings. We can begin by asking ourselves and our students the same 

questions Hamilton poses when she writes, "who then, is the "we" of the nation? How do 

I relate to a "national" memory?" 

K&~poi^LoruA^ the/ 8 ivxa^ie^: 
Memory cvnd/history cv^ cvrt cvnd/ trcw\&{oYwic^ixyvx> 

In the spring of1996, lam nearing the end of my rookie teaching year in the aboriginal 
community of Lytton (pop. 800), a year witnessed as a stranger in a mountain landscape 
of apartheid and memory. Today I walk into the staff room to be told that one of our 
students is dead. No one knows how he died yet, just that his body has been found beside 
the railway tracks on the reserve. He is the third student we have lost this year, and we 
call a crisis meeting to figure out how to handle this. Terry, the school counselor, brings 
sage into the staff room and smudges us all while we cry and hold each other. "How can 
this keep happening here? " a teacher cries. "What the hell is wrong with us? " Terry 
looks at her, tears running down his face. "St. George's school, that's what's wrong with 
us, " he whispers. He should know; he went there. I didn't. 

Invitations to begin "conceiving of history in a new way" (Hutton, 200, p. 545) have 

surfaced in recent post-colonial scholarship. Hamilton (1994, p. 12) supports the idea of 

teaching and studying an "essential interdependence between memory and history", while 



Oikawa (2002, p. 76) argues for a "spatializing" of the "historical narrative, so that we 

conceptualize history as not solely about time but also about space" and that this approach 

enables us to "see the long-term effects of national violence and the multiple ways in 

which violence is continually being perpetrated against subordinated communities". 

Felman calls these ideas "an inexorable historical transvaluation" (1992, p. 74) that 

establishes the "facts of the past through their narrativization and interpretation" (p. 93) 

rather than fixed definition. In this way, the merging of teaching memory and history as 

one interconnected phenomenon becomes teaching and learning to see, hear and touch 

"history, as an art of memory" (Hutton, 2000, p. 545). 

How do we do this? We take Nora's advice that "the less memory is experienced from the 

inside the more it exists only through its exterior scaffolding and outward signs" (Nora, 

1989, p. 13), and bring our students into the experience of memory and history as a lived, 

shared and public space. We begin this by interrogating with our students how discourses 

of memory and history are intertwined in "popular culture" for this "rather than scholarly 

debate, has become the principal site for the politics of memory" (Hamilton, 1994, p. 25). 

We bring films and documentaries into our classrooms that offer new ways to participate 

in the national collective memory, like Ararat, The War Between Us, or Khanesatake. We 

find novels, poems and plays that speak from silenced communities (the works of Joy 

Kogawa, Thompson Highway and Dionne Brand come to mind) and study them as literary 

and cultural texts. We do this not only with our students, but also with their parents, our 

colleagues, administrators and school boards. 

64 



We take our students - physically, emotionally and intellectually - to as many sites of 

memory as we can, and we interrogate the how, why and where of these places' presences 

and absences. We ask them to visit the Memory Project's website and ask questions about 

inclusion and exclusion. We take our class - or assign them a trip as homework - to the 

memorial outside Vancouver's Main Street bus terminal that remembers the Montreal 

massacre, and while we celebrate the fact that violence against women has any public 

commemorative space at all, we also ask why in the heart of the downtown eastside there 

is a memorial to a dozen white, eastern Canadian elite women and not to the community's 

fifty, missing women, most of whom were aboriginal, homeless, drug users and sex trade 

workers. 

We find - or ask our students to find - documents and museums that witness the head tax 

and Doukabour legislations. Then we talk about global public spaces like Robben Island, 

and its transformation into an educational project in danger of becoming a tourist 

commodity, and brainstorm places in Canada that might hold similar educational values 

and risks. Then we ask why they are not as vivid in our imaginations as they should be. 

If we can, we take them to the Secwepemc museum in Kamloops or the internment 

museum in New Denver and make the very journey a site of teaching and listening. 

We use words like apartheid, displacement and dispossession to refer to our own history, 

not just the histories of distant nations, until they form part of our students' lexicon. We 

see ourselves as enacting our own transformative historical transvaluations in the realm of 

65 



the everyday, by accepting that "contestation is at the very heart of the process" 

(Hamilton, 1994, p. 20) not only of negotiating memory, but of teaching. And whenever 

students say they have never "heard" of the trauma or event of which we are speaking, we 

Stop and find ways for them to hear, no, to witness, what happened and why. In allowing 

ourselves to remember this way, we re/member our classroom and its curricula. We 

become artists and actors in the art of remembering. 

Memory a^publCo'spacer edu<xz£Corva*nd> commodity CreprC&eJ: 
fort Langley, BrCtUhs Columbia/, 2003 

The actual site of Fort Langley, a Hudson's Bay Corporation trading post, is now a 
reconstructed museum under the care of the federal government. On the day that I visit, 
several school buses fill the parking lot. Before I can enter the site, I must pay an 
admission fee and pass through the gift shop, which sells colourful coffee table books 
about early pioneers as well as dream catchers and maple leaf key chains. A small exhibit 
of Sto.lo artefacts - bowls, pieces of broken jewelry - lines the wall before the exit, and 
then I am here, in this reproduction of life from a previous era. 

A white woman dressed as a fur trader greets me. "Would you like to watch the movie 
about Fort Langley first, or perhaps try your hand at panning for gold? " she asks, 
gesturing across the compound. I tell her I just want to explore, and she nods. She looks 
hot and bored under all her garb. I head over to the gold panning area, intrigued 
because a group of students is working there. They seem to be about twelve years old, 
grade seven maybe, and their uniforms (knee length plaid skirts for the girls, navy 
trousers for the boys, ties and jackets for everyone) give them away as private school 
students, members of Vancouver's new elite. Iam drawn particularly to a girl who is 
working her pan with concentrated diligence. The white sleeves of her blouse are rolled 
up to her elbows, her hair is pushed back over one shoulder. Her fingers work carefully 
through the wet sand, coming up empty each time. Finally she gives up, wipes her 
forehead with the back ofher hand. "Shit," she mutters, "Fm not getting anything. I give 
up. " Across the park a group of French immersion students, about the same age as the 
uniformed gold panners but dressed in the casual jeans and sweatshirts that denote public 
school, are getting a lesson in hard labour. The guide tells them they will be voyageurs 
for the day, and must begin by carrying heavy loads on their backs. Uphill. 

And the teachers in these scenarios? They sit huddled in groups, leaning against the 
whitewashed buildings, leaving college students on summer jobs to do the teaching. 

66 



"How does it feel, " I ask a guide, "to work here? " "Oh it's great, " he answers, adjusting 
his suspenders, for he is playing the camp manager today. "The people who come here 
get a real taste of our history. " "Does anyone ever ask tough questions, " I ask the he/she 
fur trader, "about land claims, or why the Scots workers had better conditions than the 
Hawaiians, or why workers' wives couldn't live on the compound? " She looks at me 
blankly, her painted moustache twitching. "What do you mean? " 

Visitors to Fort Langley become consumers of a colonial memory. The site itselffeels 
trapped between fantasy and misremembrance, shifting from day to day in one smooth 
sequence of public space and education, choreographed by the federal government. 

And another thing: on the day I visited Fort Langley, all the actors were white. 

67 



Chapter V: 

"Ernbarrawed/by their whitened": 

\Ja^C0i%ttn0^ "race/" wCth/they "CrwCH&les" m&J&rity 

The whites are, of course, the Caucasian race, the reds are the American Indian, the blacks 
are the African or Negro, and the yellows are the Mongolian (Japanese and Chinese). But 
only pure whites w i l l be classed as whites; the children begotten of marriages between 
whites and any one of the other races w i l l be classed as red, black or yellow, as the case 
may be, irrespective of the degree of colour. 

(1901 Dominion Census instructions, cited in Backhouse, 1999, p. 3) 

The town of Chemainus on Vancouver Island is known as the little town that could. This 
is a tourist phrase, a narrative of redemption, for the town of Chemainus has used art to 
pull itself from the brink of bankruptcy. A failed mill town in the early I980's, the 
community decided to resurrect itself by painting a series of murals on the walls of its 
buildings, large scale paintings depicting the region's history and environment. The idea 
was to market Chemainus as a tourist destination, a project of public education as well as 
income generation; it has indeed proved a remarkable financial success, if a somewhat 
more problematic educational or cultural project. 

I pull my car off the highway and through the lush hills of the Duncan valley, following 
the signs to Chemainus. I have never been to this town, but have heard much of its 
renewal project. Gift shops, bed and breakfasts in heritage homes, and a theatre 
advertising a summer run of an Agatha Christie play line the road into town. I park my 
car and spend an hour or so strolling the six square blocks of the town. The first murals I 
see are fairly humdrum scenes offorests and beaches, seascapes of whales and salmon. A 
heritage park, complete with artificial totem poles and a replica of a settler's log cabin, is 
situated on a bluff overlooking Kuper Island, home to one of the province's most 
notorious residential schools. There is no sign, no memorial to that space here. 

I make my way from the park to the town's main avenue and site of its most viewed 
murals. The first mural shows the town's founders, two balding white men who ran the 
mill. On the next wall is a rosy-hued portrait of three phases of a woman's life, from birth 
to adulthood to old age. This at first seems innocent, and it is not until I read the 
portrait's caption that I understand. 

This mural celebrates the life of the "first white woman born in Chemainus. " 

I turn the corner, nauseous. I am on a side road, little more than a back alley strewn with 
broken bottles and cigarette butts. And it is here, pushed to the side, forgotten, that I find 
the final murals of the town. The one on my left shows a Chinese store, circa 1908, filled 
with birds in cages and men in slippers and pointed hats. A child's memory, "it was a 
tough life but we were happy" is painted into one corner. The mural on my right shows 

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members of a First Nations community on a beach, shaking hands with an explorer. The 
explorer is dressed in the fashions of the eighteenth century, ruffled sleeves and buckled 
shoes and a feathered cap. His ship sits prominently in the harbour, dwarfing the 
village's canoes. The male villagers are dressed in loincloths, while the women are 
topless. And everyone, everyone, in this mural is smiling. 

Contact, the caption below the mural explains. And I remember bell hooks telling us that 
"no one is born a racist, everyone makes a choice " (hooks, 2003, p. 53). 

Power "plcyyx SymhxyU^i#icf cwui/ qu^tixyyuA^ wHCte< pviA/de^ey 

If the content is multicultural, then curriculum, instruction, and assessment choices 
become even more crucial to the process of knowledge acquisition and attitude changing. 
The teacher must serve as a role model demonstrating the application of multicultural 
perspectives in his or her classroom. (Brown, 1998, p. 167) 

A Sunday drive in the country, a special trip to show off my Dad's new car. My mom 
packs sandwiches for a picnic and lets me sit up front. We leave Victoria and head up the 
Saanich peninsula, looking for a place to have lunch. We hit a reserve, though I don 'tyet 
know what that means, and my mother whispers to me to close and lock my window, "you 
never can tell in these places ", she sighs. My father slows the car, lost, beside two kids 
playing on dirt bikes. Their clothes are stained and torn, their hair greasy; when they 
laugh at my Dad's questions I see gaps between their teeth. I hold my fingers to my nose 
and shout to the closed window, "pu, those guys stink. Let's get out of here!" My mother 
leans forward from the back seat, her knuckles white against the headrest. "She's right 
honey, we shouldn't be here, please do get going", she says. Her voice sounds edgy, 
afraid. My Dad just laughs and puts his foot on the gas pedal. 

I am eight years old and have just made my first racist comment. And no one, no one, has 
called me on it. 

At the time, I had no idea of the ugliness of my words; only now lam a teacher do I want 
to ask my parents why they stayed silent. But they no longer remember that day and only 
laugh when 1 try to speak of it. If we do not allow ourselves to speak, how do we learn? 

How do we navigate the murky, treacherous waters of race and racism in the classroom? 

What is needed for us to effectively bring our students to understanding that "race is a 

mythical construct but racism is not" (Backhouse, 1999, p. 7), and that racism runs much 

deeper than namecalling or stereotyping? How do we develop an understanding that 

racism is "a system of advantage based on race" (Tatum, 1997, p. 7) that houses whiteness 

69 



at its very core? This Stop in the project, of understanding race, racism and particularly 

the unmarked yet constant privileges accorded whiteness in Canadian history and society, 

formed the "hinge around which events pivot" (Applebaum, 1995, p. 17). 

The very fact that residential schooling and the internment could take place at all - and 

then be forgotten - revolves around the fact that this country was, and continues to be, 

settled and governed within a bastion of white privilege. What the project's crisis of 

witnessing brought out was that these (mainly white, mainly middle class) students had 

deeply internalized the mythmaking teachings of Canada as a racism free, multicultural 

community and, as the project progressed, they were forced to grapple with their first 

experience of unlearning or unmapping the lived experiences behind white privilege. 

The police car pulls right up behind me, its headlights glaring into my rearview mirror. I 
pull over and wait while the policeman gets out of his car and walks to my window. 
"Evening maam, " he begins, "just want to let you know I think your insurance has 
expired, from the dates on your plates. Mind if I see your license and registration? " I 
fumble around in the glove compartment, find the papers and handtPiem over with 
shaking hands. Jesus, fuck, damn - it's a fucking six hundred buck fine for driving 
uninsured, and the whole thing had just completely slipped my mind. The officer is white, 
male, clean cut and around my age. "I'm sorry, " I plead, "I've had so much on my mind 
lately, I must have forgotten to get the insurance renewed. I've never done anything like 
this before. " The officer tips his hat and smiles at me. "I can see you've made an honest 
mistake, I'll let it go this time. Just make sure you fill out the paperwork as soon as you 
can - and stay safe, maam. " With that he is gone. I head back out on the road and turn 
on the radio to calm my nerves. It's a political talk show from Victoria, some Liberal 
MLA speaking. "Well, " he laughs, "that MLA Jenny Kwan, the only thing good about her 
is that she's pretty and she looks good, an Asian face you know, something for the 
minorities. That's the only reason she's been able to make it in politics, cause she sure 
doesn't have much upstairs. " He laughs again, and I can almost feel his spit on my face. 

The next day six Vancouver police officers plead guilty to assaulting two homeless men, 
admitting that they forced them into a police car and drove them to Stanley Park, where 
they beat them unconscious and left them unattended on a freezing February night. 



fCndtng^ a/ definition/ cyfwhCte^ie^ 

What exactly is whiteness and its attendant privilege? Although I am frustrated by the 

dominance issues of whiteness hold in anti-racist discourse (much of the literature looks at 

how to raise awareness of skin privilege among white educators and students), I feel it is 

necessary to examine the Langley project and its crises of witnessing through this lens, 

particularly in relation to the Social Studies 11 class as it was made up exclusively of 22 

white students. Whiteness, then, had become their educational, as well as social, cultural 

and economic location. And this project, in Anne's words, made them embarrassed by it. 

Although Ruth Frankenberg has recently distanced herself from her earlier work on the 

making of whiteness, I still feel educators can learn from how she has framed whiteness 

and its privileges (Frankenberg, 2001, p. 76) because she offers some very clear, practical 

ideas that we can use to both interrogate our own experiences and share with others: 

• Whiteness is a location of structural advantage in societies structure in racial 

dominance. 

• Whiteness is a "standpoint", a location from which to see selves, others and 

national and global orders. 

• Whiteness is a site of elaboration of a range of cultural practices and identities, 

often unmarked an unnamed, or named as national or "normative" rather than 

specifiably racial. 

• Whiteness is often renamed or displaced within ethnic or class namings. 

71 



• Inclusion within the category "white" is often a matter of contestation, and in 

different times and places some kinds of whiteness are boundary markers of the 

category itself. 

In the 1700's, a woman named Jacinta married into my very white, very aristocratic, 
very English family. Little is known about her, except that her husband was a Colonel 
in the Royal Marines, and when he brought his bride back to England she became 
known as the "toast of the regiment as the pretty little gypsy, " even though they made 
her change her name to Jacyntha to sound more English. I know all this because on 
my fourteenth birthday my grandmother gave me a collection of stories she had 
written about the family genealogy of my name. "Your first ancestor, " she wrote in 
the opening sentence, "was a foreign bride, small and dark. " 

• Whiteness as a site of privilege is not absolute but rather crosscut by a range of 

other axes of relative advantage or subordination; these do not erase or render 

invisible race privilege, but rather inflect or modify it. 

• Whiteness is a product of history, and is a relational category. Like other racial 

locations, it has no inherent but only socially constructed meanings. A s such, 

whiteness's meanings are complexly layered and variable locally and translocally; 

also, whiteness's meanings may appear simultaneously malleable and intractable. 

• The relationality and socially constructed character of whiteness does not, it must 

be emphasized, mean that this and other racial locations are unreal in their material 

and discursive effects. 

Things I have heard said in graduate classes when discussing race and racism: 
• "Why make such a big deal out of it, it's not that important now anyways " 
• "You know, I've been targeted too. When I moved here from England all 

the kids made fun of me for my accent. " 
• "My father came here from Greece, he didn't fit in either, couldn't speak 

any English, so does he get lumped in with the privileged whites? " 
Things I have said in the same classes: 

• "God, weren't those people just playing the race card, to complain like that? " 



• "Can we really call whites who acted in the past racist - / mean wasn't it a 
different context back then? " 

• "My family has been here four generations, surely that counts for something? " 

Frankenberg concludes her definition with the following caveat: 

I am struck by the extraordinary sense of ease with which white individuals can slide from 
awareness of whiteness to the lack therof, and related to that slippage, from race-
consciousness to unconsciousness and from anti-racism to racism, whether from year to 
year, situation to situation, or sentence to sentence. M y own history, for example, is 
marked by a shift from unconsciousness both of my whiteness and of my own 
enmeshment in racism to an awakening of them . . . but my awakening is never complete. 
Although the initial transformation was one of major earthquake proportions, there is 
always room for another aftershock, always need for further awakening. (2001, p. 77) 

The speaker - a white, female Ph.D. candidate - at an academic critical race conference 
is delivering a paper on an anti-racist course she taught last semester to undergraduate 
students in the Faculty of Social Work. "Non-white students, " she begins, "were in a 
minority in the class. " Immediately, two women in the audience - African-Canadian, 
female professors - stand up. "Excuse me, " one of them calls out. The presenter stops, 
looks up from her paper and squints in their direction. "Do you mind, " the professor 
continues politely, "iffor the rest of your talk you do not use the term "non-white " to 
refer to us? " The presenter seems perplexed, unsure of what to do or say. "We are 
people, " the professor answers. "So call us people - people of colour. " 

" It? y About food/": VonUAWwice/ cw edAA&atiovx/ 

The challenge in the Langley school was to engage the students in enough critical 

explorations and discussions that they could start moving towards an interrogation of 

whiteness as the norm by which all others are defined, divided and governed. This 

required facilitating a shift in their thinking on race and racism from what is currently 

practiced in their school (soft, or celebratory multiculturalism) to a deeper, more 

questioning critical multiculturalism. To set the scene, I wish to quote at length from a 

follow-up interview I shared with Anne, in which we discussed how issues of race, racism 

and multiculturalism had been taught in her school before the project began: 



A: In our school I think we have, maybe 24 kids of Indo-Canadian background, our school is 
very homogenous, all the blonde hair, blue eyes. 

J: And most of your teachers are of that background as well? 

A- Yes, we have one Japanese teacher, one Indo-Canadian teacher on staff, but they're both 
women, our male teachers are exclusively white, exclusively white males, out of 100 
teachers. 

J: So the kids have very little contact with people from other backgrounds. 

A Yes, I'm always amazed when I take my students out of the district, when they see 
people in cultural dress, it's like they've never seen anything like that before. We did have 
one TA who was Indo-Canadian, and she was a hugely strong influence on the school in 
terms of multicultural education, but she lost her job last year with the budget cuts. She 
worked hard to get kids to understand cultural differences, really educated them. 

J: So what is multicultural education like at your school'? 

A It's about food. Multicultural week at our school boils down to food, a superficial act, a 
facade so we can say we've met the requirements. Sometimes the teachers will bring in 
costumes, maybe music or dance, but it's still performed, not explored. 

J: We talk about critical multiculturalism as looking at real experiences of historical 
contexts, the pain and oppression, but this isn't happening. 

A No, we only talk about the good stuff, the costumes, the dancing, the stuff that doesn't 
challenge you. These kids have never been to the home of an Indo-Canadian family, or 
friends from different backgrounds. Multicultural education at my school feels like a thin 
coat of paint 

The administration too, in our case, at our school, we have this superficial multicultural 
week but that's influenced to be that way by the admin, who wants to keep things safe, 
we're not going to offend anyone, bring too many questions, or parent complaints. We 
need to be talking about the Komagata Mam, but admin would discourage that because it's 
seen as offensive - not to people of Indo-Canadian background but to the white families -
and they don't want to deal with those kinds of parent complaints. Basically, in this high 
school where we should be doing things that are developing a social consciousness, we 
keep everything too neat and simple. Like this sign that somebody put up outside my 
classroom the other day, saying the school was a racism free zone - like that is going to 
solve it all, just put up a sign but don't talk about it. 

A s explained by Bell (1997, p. 12), "members of dominant or privileged groups 

internalized systems of oppression and through their collusion with the system operate as 

•~l A 
I* 



agents in perpetuating i t . . . Dominants learn to look at themselves, others, and society 

through a distorted lens in which the structural privileges they enjoy and the cultural 

practices o f their group are represented as normal and universal". F r o m the administration 

right through the teachers and to the students, Anne's school merely reproduced rather 

than challenged white dominance. So what happened when Harry C o n and Gloria 

Steinberg Harris and Mary Anderson and Dorothy Joseph brought their testimonies right 

into the faces and bodies o f forty-two o f these students? 

"It iff polite^ cwxch appropriate/ to- hnow yovw ba^k^rouA^d/' 
(Katie/, SocCaU'll) 

H o w much does the make-up o f our classroom influence how we can speak about 

experiences o f racism? Reflecting the homogeneous white nature o f Langley, both classes 

were made up o f predominantly white European students, the Social Studies 11 class 

exclusively so. In this class, the discussions and reflections centered openly on coming to 

terms with one's own implications with white privilege and its role in creating and 

perpetuating systemic racism. In turn, their written reflections on the feedback forms 

were self-reflective and provocative. M y role as the teacher was also simplified, as I 

could be read as from their side, as someone who shared their experiences and responses. 

The First Nations Studies 12 class, on the other hand, had a slightly more diverse 

composition. The majority (20) was still white, but the class also had two students o f 

aboriginal background (both males, one Sto:lo, one biracial white and native) and two o f 

Iranian background (a male born in Canada and a female recent immigrant with limited 

English skills). In this class I needed to find ways to create spaces for the white students 



to process their responses, and at the same time maintain a safe space for the students of 

colour to express their experiences. It was a tightrope walk we never quite mastered: the 

students were often silent and what little discussions arose were often strained, as i f we 

were all too afraid of hurting each other. Written responses on the feedback form 

reflected this tension: questions were often unanswered, or answered only partially. 

What happened? How should I account for - or be accountable for - the differences in 

classroom climates and student engagement? In the Social Studies 11 class, did I show 

more empathy in witnessing the testimonies, or more confidence in facilitating student 

responses? In the First Nations Studies 12 class, were the aboriginal males made to feel 

like token speakers for all First Nations? Was I read by that class's students of colour as 

ally or enemy? What could I or should I have done differently? 

I have no answer to these questions, and here I am faced with a difficult choice. I want to 

use this chapter to interrogate whiteness and its dominance in education, and feel that the 

written comments from the Socials 11 students have a lot to teach us about how white 

students might be able to interpret and act on an awareness of skin privilege. At the same 

time, I am aware that by selecting data from only one of the classes I am ignoring 

questions and insights that could arise from a more comparative analysis. I am also aware 

that I am perpetuating already abundant stereotypes surrounding First Nations Studies 12 

as what Anne called a "non-academic dumping ground" by not including their written 

comments here. 

76 



A l l this raises troubling questions about the choices researchers make in order to present a 

good case, or create a piece of good art, or write a publishable paper. Do we include 

participants' comments because they are articulate, neat and quotable and thus enhance 

our argument and our work? Journalists, artists and documentary filmmakers do this all 

the time and no one bats an eye. Editing is, in the end, a necessary part of good 

storytelling, and that is what I am trying to do here. I want you to experience the stories 

behind the project's crises o f witnessing, and for this particular crisis the Social Studies 11 

reflections - for whatever reason, be it time, safety, interest - were more candid and 

articulate, and do take the reader into the experience more clearly, than the comments 

from the First Nations Studies 12 students. 

The questions I asked earlier about the dynamics of a white teacher doing anti-racist work 

in homogenous versus diverse classrooms are well worth pursuing in further research but 

lay beyond the scope of this thesis. I want to keep this chapter's focus on the students' 

processes for working through the project's crises, and for the purposes o f this chapter 

only I w i l l depend on the written reflections of the Social Studies 11 students to explore 

how they understood whiteness as a construct in their own lives. The depth of their 

responses to the crisis of witnessing whiteness (and even in this homogenous group skin 

appearances can be deceiving, for within this group of 18 students was diversity of class, 

gender, sexuality, ability, language and religion) shows both hope for change and just how 

much more work needs to be done. 

77 



I would like to analyze their written responses to the testimonies within a framework of 

social identity development, because in many ways the students in this class were working 

through not just a crisis of knowledge but a crisis of identity as who they had grown up 

believing they were, as individuals and citizens, was being called into question. 

Briefly, Hardiman and Jackson (1992) conceptualize social identity for whites and peoples 

of colour as moving messily and even simultaneously through five distinct stages: naive, 

acceptance, resistance, redefinition and internalization. The naive stage, when individuals 

are "unaware of the complex codes of appropriate behaviour for members of their social , 

group" (Bell, 1997, p. 23) is basically passed through in early childhood, when 

acceptance, or "some degree of internalization, whether conscious or unconscious, of the 

dominant culture's logic system" (Bell, 1997, p. 24) begins to take hold. This acceptance 

can, when challenged, become resistance, or a state of "increased awareness of the 

existence of oppression and its impact" (Bell, 1997, p. 24). With sufficient support, a 

person can move into a process of redefinition to create "an identity that is independent of 

an oppressive system based on hierarchical superiority and inferiority" (Bell, 1997, p. 27). 

Finally, as an individual becomes more fully committed to redefining and reworking him 

or herself in relation to the dominant culture, internalization, or the goal to "incorporate 

the identity of redefinition into all aspects of everyday life" (Bell, 1997, p. 27). How far 

could, or did, or should, the students go? 

78 



"I'm/ wot rcvoUt': Acceptance/ avid/ official/ vmAXtUMXturali&m/ 

Perhaps one o f the reasons the crisis unfolded as it d i d was because the S o c i a l Studies 11 

students were already i n a state o f acceptance, enhanced by the school and community 

culture, that this was simply the way things are. This k i n d o f acceptance is echoed i n a 

couple o f early reflections from students, when they were asked to write o n their 

impressions o f the role racism plays i n h o w inequalities w o r k i n the L o w e r M a i n l a n d : 

/ DON'T REALLY THINK ABOUT RACISM VERY OFTEN BECAUSE I AM NOT RACIST. IDON'T 
SEE RACISM AROUND ME TOO OFTEN BECAUSE SCHOOL AND MY ENVIRONMENT ARE NOT 
VERY RACIST. (ALYSSA) 

Here we have a student w a l k i n g and t a l k i n g the party line o f celebratory multiculturalism, 

the "I/we are not racist" discourse that says because we are polite i n respecting difference, 

w e are not implicated i n a systemic construction o f power and privilege based o n s k i n . T o 

her, the system works, so she sees no need to change it. Another student, Bridget, had a 

s i m i l a r perspective o n difference and inequality when she wrote "THE ECONOMIC DIVIDE 

STILL EXISTS, BUT I DOUBT THAT THE RACIAL ASPECT PLAYS SUCH A BIG ROLE." She was 

able to make a l i m i t e d class analysis, but unable to l i n k that to racial difference and 

therefore u n w i l l i n g to believe that race is an issue i n contemporary Vancouver. 

Perhaps the most complacent example o f acceptance comes from Natalie, who wrote o f 

East Vancouver as "NOT A PLACE IV WANT TO GROW UP IN AND LATER ON, WHEN I 

HAVE CHILDREN, I W0ULDN1 WANT THEM TO GROW UP IN IT EITHER." She is so secure 

i n her places and spaces - both her s k i n , class and geographic privileges - that she is 

unable to imagine her life any other way, nor can she see anything wrong w i t h h o w she 

lives i n relation to the opportunities o f others. 

79 



A n interesting comment from Megan shows the messy boundaries of understanding one's 

self and society. Just as she declares that "WHITE PEOPLE HELD TOO MUCH POWER AMD 

IT WENT TO THEIR HEADS, THEY MAY HILL HAVE TOO MUCH", a sign she is beginning to 

move into resistance, she falls back into acceptance when she writes in the next sentence 

that 'VISIBLE MINORITIES, THEIR JOURNEY DIDN'T HAPPEN IN VAIN. THEIR RACES ARE 

NOW ACCEPTED IN SOCIETIES OF "WHITE" BACKGROUNDS." Her use of the words "races" 

and "accepted" shows she is still speaking from the position of accepting white dominance 

as the norm, even though she seems ready to try to work towards change. She finishes her 

paragraph with "WE STILL HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO, BUT WE'RE IN THE RIGHT 

DIRECTION", which takes into account the need for change, but acceptance that official 

routes are still the best vehicle. 

These reflections were written before we moved into the text. After the first testimonies, 

those of the discriminatory employment experiences of Harry Con and Gloria Steinberg 

Harris, the same students began to shift noticeably. "I UNDERSTAND NOW THAT RACISM 

OCCURS CLOSER TO HOME THAN WE THINK" wrote Alyssa, while Bridget documented her 

reaction by saying "/ FELT SO DISGUSTED THAT PEOPLE COULD TREAT FELLOW HUMAN 

BEINGS LIKE THAT" and Natalie felt she was beginning to think about East Vancouver "IN 

DIFFERENT WAYS, I NOW DON! LOOK DOWN TO THEM." Are they in resistance yet? Not 

fully, I would say, as they are still in initial stages of processing - but are at least coming 

into an increased awareness. 

8 0 



"The/ e^perbewoefr were/ reA/oUAtio-ncory:" cvctVn^ Onto- retl&tavice/ 

The more complex the testimonies became, and the longer we involved ourselves with 

them, the more the students were able to articulate their resistance in writing. After Ivy 

McAdams's testimony, in which her brother Peter is refused entry to the pool, E l i n wrote 

"JUST THE FACT WA T A POOL WOULD HA VE SUCH A SIGN DISGUSTS MF.. .PETER'S 

STRUGGLE IS EXACTLY LIKE MODERN DAY DISCRIMINATION, WHERE THE STRONGER 

PARTY SINGLE OUT THE WEAKER' ONE." They were also able to share deeper insights into 

the workings and dominance of power. '7HE MORE POWERFUL PEOPLE DON! HAVE A 

REASON TO BE AFRAID OF ANYTHING BECAUSE NO ONE WOULD STAND UP TO THEM", 

wrote Alyssa, while her classmate Ryan "CAME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT WHITE 

SUPREMACISTS ARE AFRAID OF LOSING THEIR POWER OVER MINORITY GROUPS, AND IF 

THIS FEAR DID NOT EXIST THEN I BELIEVE RACISM WOULD NOT BE SUCH A PROMINENT 

ISSUE." 

When Jennifer writes that hearing the testimonies was "REVOLUTIONARY, I HAD NEVER 

THOUGHT OF MINORITIES THAT WAY BEFORE", and Katie says that 'VANCOUVER IS NOT 

AS PICTURE PERFECT AS SOME WOULD BELIEVE", they are taking their first steps towards 

critical thinking, moving through answerless and confusion to concrete ideas and analyses. 

How these ideas become suggestions for action becomes clear in the following student 

comments: 

RACISM AND DISCRIMINA TION HA VE HAPPENED TO MORE PEOPLE AND PEOPLE DON! 
ALWAYS SEE THE TRUTH, THEY ONLY SEE WHAT THEY WANT TO SEE. (ANDREA) 

I NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT OTHER PEOPLE WENT THROUGH, AND WHAT THEY ARE 
GOING THROUGH EVEN NOW. I FEEL LIKE I UNDERSTAND THAT THEY HAVE GONE 
THROUGH SO MUCH HISTORICALLY, THA T IT NEEDS TO STOP. (KIARA) 



I'M STARTING TO REALIZE THAT SOME PEOPLE SEPARATE THE CITIZENS INTO DIFFERENT 
"CLASSES". WHY ARE WE HILL UVING LIKE THIS? A HUGE AMOUNT OF PEOPLE 
DISCRIMINATE AGAINST THE PEOPLE IN EAST VANCOUVER, BUT HOW DO WE PROVE THEM 
WRONG? (UNDSAY) 

These three quotes, particularly the words of Kiara and Lindsay, show these young 

students seriously grappling with finding and defining their position in a racist society, a 

move that may lead them into redefinition and internalization. However, for all the hope 

and inspiration their transformations offer, other students' responses to the same 

testimony reveal a willingness to listen to the tellings, but an inability to move beyond the 

fixed link of the us and them mentality of whiteness and official multiculturalism: 

/ REALIZED THAT VANCOUVER WASN7SUCH A GOOD PLACE TO BE WHEN LOTS OF PEOPLE 
WERE STILL RACIST, BECAUSE THEY TREATED ALL THE NON-WHITE PEOPLE SO MEANLY. 

(WHITNEY) 

I HA VE MORE COMPASSION FOR THOSE PEOPLE NOW. I DON! EXACTLY KNOW WHY THIS 
HAPPENED IN VANCOUVER BUT NOT OTHER CITIES IN CANADA. 

(RON) 

I HAVE A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF HOW THEY MUST HA VE FELT AND THE 
DEVASTATING INJUSTICES THAT WERE LAID UPON THEM. 

(BIANCA) 

Were. Non-white. Those people. Not other cities. Have felt. Were laid. These quotes 

show a less reflexive attitude than those of their classmates, one that still sees 

discrimination as a fixed, historical event that has happened to people other than 

themselves and is therefore not their concern. Ron's inability to relate Vancouver's 

history to the larger picture of systemic racism is also troubling. I see their comments as 

indicative of what Backhouse (1999. p. 9) the "misleading transparency of whiteness" that 

"contributes to an erasure of the privileges that attach to membership in the dominant 

8 2 



race." This shows us not only, of course, that when we work to deconstruct issues of 

oppression we must remain mindful that individuals move into their realizations at 

different paces and in different ways, but also that really breaking through the boundaries 

of learned patterns and acceptances is a long, arduous process, and that "white antiracism 

is a stance requiring lifelong vigilance" (Frankenberg, 2001, p. 77). 

OutoftCme/, o-u£ofplace<: RedefonitiOYW cwicV (Atfe^ntUity^Uynfr 

Not only were the Social Studies 11 students negotiating their understandings of 

themselves as part of a white identity, they were trying to see this new identity through 

their already-rocky lens of teenage hood. "USING AN EXAMPLE CLOSE TO HOME (MAST 

VANCOUVER) REALLY MAKES IT EASY TO SEE RACISM AS A THING THAT DOES IN FACT 

EXIST IN OUR COMMUNITY, AND IT DOES! THAT'S WHAT I'VE LEARNED, IT DID AND IT 

DOES AND WE NEED TO CHANGE IT!" writes Jennifer in her final reflection. W she 

continues, "IT MAKES ME WONDER WHAT I CAN EVEN DO TO HELP. HOW CAN I FIGHT 

AGAINST RACISM WHEN I CAN! EVEN WALK INTO A STORE WITHOUT BEING 

STEREOTYPED AS SOMEONE WHO'S GOING TO STEAL SOMETHING? I WANT TO HELP AND 

FIGHT BUT WHO'S GOING TO BELIEVE THAT I TRULY WANT TO?" 

This tension between the students' willingness to begin redefining themselves against a 

backdrop of white privilege and their sense of themselves as not being taken seriously 

within the larger adult community was a constant thread running through many 

discussions and reflections. This tension certainly challenged assumptions I held about 

their social and cultural location, and needs more exploration. 

8 3 



In eight lessons, we were able to bring the students to varying degrees of awareness, and 

in some cases a desire for action, about how white power and privilege operate to oppress 

people of colour. What we were not able to do was facilitate in them a dissection of their 

own implication in skin privilege. We can hope that these eight lessons formed the 

"beginning of an inquiry rather than the end of it" (Frederickson, 1997, p. 79), and as 

these students move through other years of schooling, at least a few of them w i l l continue 

to grapple with the questions we raised in the ways we encouraged them to. I do believe 

the testimonies began to move them through the "slippery fictions of racial designation" 

and into an understanding that "the concept of 'race' is undeniably a moving target 

through time and space" (Backhouse, 1999, p. 11). 

Last week I emailed the following quote (hooks, 2003, p. 57) to some of the students: 

If we fail to acknowledge the value and significance of individual anti-racist white people 
we not only diminish the work they have done and do to transform their thinking and 
behavior, but we prevent other white people from learning by their example. A l l people 
of color who suffer racial exploitation and oppression know that white supremacy w i l l not 
end until racist white people change. 

A n d Lindsay, so passionate in her commitment to prove racists wrong, wrote me back to 

say she had pasted hooks' words in her locker. 

Watch this space. 

84 



Chapter VI 

"We/ treated/ them/ ICke/ poiaeteiOYiy": 
Trouhiiru^ the/ natiorwU/ Lrnxuftiruzry from/ the/ yhaxiowy 

of Empire 

Unlike the United States, where there is at least an admission of the fact that racism exists 
and has a history, in this country one is faced with a stupefying innocence. 

Dionne Brand, Bread out of Stone, 1994, p. 178 

I was born in the States, when my English father was a doctoral student at Yale. We 
moved to Canada when I was two, but I remained a landed immigrant until I was sixteen. 
For my citizenship ceremony I got to miss a day of school, and my whole family went 
downtown. My mother and grandmother wore dresses and carried leather purses, while 
the men (my father, grandfather and brother) wore suits. Most of the people at the 
ceremony were people of colour, except for the presiding judge and Mounties. The judge 
opened his remarks by saying he realized most of the new citizens came from places where 
they might have been afraid of courts and police, but here, in their new safe country, they 
had nothing to worry about. After the ceremony my grandfather took us to the fanciest 
restaurant in Victoria, where we ate steaks and drank champagne and raised our glasses 
in toasts to the nation and the Queen. I don't remember anything else. 

A t my final immigration interview, I was facing an elderly, bald, white man, mustached 
and blue-eyed - who said he had been to India. I made some polite rejoinder and he asked 
me - "Do you speak Hindi?" I replied that I understood it very well and spoke it with 
mistakes. "Can you translate this sentence for me?" he asked, and proceeded to say in 
Hindi what in English amount to "Do you want to fuck with me?" His hand was on my 
passport, the pink slip of my "landing" document lay next to it. Steadying my voice I said 
"I don't know Hindi that well." . . . On Bloor Street in Toronto, sitting on the steps of a 
church - 1 vomited. I was a landed immigrant. 

Himani Bannerji, The Dark Side of the Nation (2000, p. 89) 

How are we educated to see ourselves as part of the nation, and how do we want our 

students to think about this place we call home? I think here of a recent article in the 

Globe and Mail newspaper to promote the paper's annual Nation Builder of the Year 

85 



award, a prize voted on by readers, that opened with the headline "Canadians who help 

make country better" (Alphonso, 2003, p. 3). The article takes up half a page, with 

photographs of four key contenders: golfer Mike Weir, Kelowna fire chief Gerry 

Zimmermann, Supreme Court judge Roy McMurtry and medical researcher Paul Goss. 

Four photos of four successful, educated, middle class white men. The list continues: 

businessmen, politicians, athletes. Not a single artist, writer or activist. Then, buried deep 

in paragraph 12,1 find the name Monia Mazigh, the wife of Maher Arar, whose 

persistence in keeping her husband's confinement in a Syrian prison in the public eye did 

much to obtain his release. She is the only female or person of colour in the entire piece. 

How do these kinds of popular culture narratives influence those we teach to define who is 

and who is not "an insider/outsider to the Canadian nation" (Bannerji, 2000, p. 63)? 

My family have been settlers here since the late 1800's. We have farmed, mined, logged 
and run orchards. We have had servants and made money. The women have given birth 
to alcoholics, whores and gamblers as well as accountants and teachers and scientists. I 
have a great-great grandfather who designed most of the first grand homes on the Gulf 
Islands and even owned a few of the smaller islands until he drank and gambled them 
away; a great-grandmother who was a founding teacher at Havergal College, a private 
girls' school in Ontario; and an uncle who worked the north of Vancouver Island as a 
card player and fishing guide until he got involved with the mob and was murdered in 
Vegas. Me? -1 got out while the going was good and spent my adulthood overseas. 

My mother used to joke that she was the only Canadian born female who spoke English 
like the Queen. She grew up in the Yukon, raised by a mother who slapped her hand every 
time she failed to pronounce certain letters (like a, or o) correctly. In this family, correct 
meant British. My mother never did figure out how to get rid of her accent. 

Benedict Anderson's definition of the nation as "an imagined political community -

imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign" (1983, p. 6) can help illuminate not 

only my own and my mother's educational experiences, but those of the students in the 



Langley project as well. A s I witness my memories of my citizenship ceremony and my 

colonial genealogy, and as I reflect on the fundamental "crisis of witnessing" (Felman, 

1992) that occurred throughout the project, I realize that the link between how our 

understandings of nationhood and belonging are formed, and what happens when those 

understandings are challenged, must be read and acted upon as key pedagogical issues. 

Anderson details his definition of the nation by saying it becomes imagined because 

although the "members of even the smallest nation w i l l never know most of their fellow 

members . . . in the minds of each lives the image of their communities" (p. 6). He states 

that each nation remains limited because they have "finite, i f elastic, boundaries, beyond 

which lie other nations" (p. 7) and sovereign because "the concept was born in an age in 

which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the . . . dynastic 

realm" (p. 7). They can be called communities "because, regardless of the actual 

inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a 

deep, horizontal comradeship" (p. 7). What distinguishes these imagined places and 

spaces, according to Anderson, is not their "falsity/genuineness, b u t . . . the style in which 

they are imagined" (p.6). Bannerji (200, p. 157) adds to this critique with "we can say, 

therefore, that there is nothing natural about communities. In fact they are contested 

ground of socio-cultural definitions and political agencies." 

Hobsbawm (1983) adds to Anderson's and Bannerji's analyses with his study of what he 

terms "invented traditions . . .a set of practices . . .which seek to inculcate certain values 

and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the 



past" (p. 1). In a country such as Canada, whose institution as a nation is fairly recent, 

this past had to be "invented" almost as soon as it was being implemented as a tradition. 

Hobsbawm lists three major innovations as deciding factors in how invented traditions 

take root in the popular imagination. The first? Primary education, of course. 

In 1973 I started elementary school in an upper middle class suburb of Victoria called 
Oak Bay. Our school day had several strict rituals as part of its daily routine. First, we 
filed into our classrooms in order of our ages, the grade ones in the front, the grade 
sevens at the back. Then under the watchful eyes of Queen Elizabeth II, for every 
classroom had her portrait hanging from the front wall so that it would face us, so that we 
would have to answer to her every time we allowed our eyes to leave our books, we stood 
to say the Lord's Prayer in unison. I don't remember if there was anyone different - a 
Jew, a Buddhist, a Moslem or an atheist - who had permission to miss this ritual because 
no one ever spoke of such things, and besides, we all looked and talked alike. White. 
Clean. Well fed and clothed. Successful children of successful parents. 

On certain days of the week, all the grades would march down the stairs of our hundred-
year-old brick school to the auditorium, where we would gather for an assembly. 
Sometimes there would be entertainment, like a play or a musician, sometimes a talk from 
a famous person, an author or an astronaut. What I remember most about these 
assemblies is that a special student, chosen by the principal, always led the other students 
into the auditorium, and that special student was allowed to carry the flag. I never got 
chosen; it always seemed to be the boys, particularly the athletic or nerdy ones, like the 
boy who won a city track race or placed top five in a national science contest, who got to 
carry the flag. And so we would follow these dynamic young heroes into the auditorium, 
like the children who followed the piper into the cave, and before we were allowed to sit 
down we sang God Save the Queen. Not Oh Canada, not a poem or a drum song or a 
story or a dance. But God Save the Queen, once a week, for seven years. And no, this was 
not a private school. And no, it was not the 1940's. And yes, we thought at the time that 
singing this anthem was a good thing. A fine, a very fine thing. 

This chapter's title quote was written by a First Nations Studies 12 student named 

Chelsea, but she was not alone. "IT MADE ME FEEL SAD AMD QUITE CONFUSED WHY WE 

AS A COUNTRY CAN! LEND A HAND TO THOSE IN NEED. ..WE ARE ALL CANADIANS. WE 

ARE A FAMILY, AND WHEN A PART OF THA T FAMILY SUFFERS WE SHOULD BE THERE FOR 

THEM," writes E l i n , a Social Studies 11 student, after a lesson in which we tackled 

o o 



histories of racial segregation in Vancouver. "I WOULD NEVER HAVE THOUGHT THAT A 

PLACE I CONSIDER SO ACCEPTING OF DIVERSITY WOULD HAVE SUCH A HISTORY OF 

RACISM," adds her classmate Bridget. After the same lesson Sarah admits, "TO THINK 

ABOUT THIS MAKES ME SHUDDER. MY PRIDE OF CANADA HAS WA VERED", while Ryan 

writes 'THIS TYPE OF RACISM I OFTEN ASSOCIATE WITH SOUTHERN UNITED HATES, BUT 

NEVER IN OUR OWN HOMELAND. THE CONCEPT IS TRULY MIND-BOGGLING." However, I 

think Megan most clearly sums up the crisis when she says "THE STORIES MADE ME 

HARE IT RIGHT IN THE FACE. I HAD TO REC0GNI2E THAT CANADA ISN'T QUITE AS 

MULTICULTURALLYINCLINED AS WE'VE 8EEN TOLD." 

Reflections of this kind show these students being forced to re-negotiate their relation to 

state-sponsored multiculturalism, or what Francis (1997) calls "national dreams" and 

Stanley and Roman (1997, p.215) identify as the "Canada the redeemer discourse". For 

most of their lives, the Langley students internalized the same teachings as me and my 

mother: Canada as a peaceful, multicultural democracy; Canada as a rugged landscape 

tamed by brave Mounties and pioneers; Canada as not - N O T - the United States. 

My Englcvnd/ go&y to- Ottcvwa/: A Travelogue/ 

Germaine Greer wanted to see the city of Oakland, California. So she followed her road 
map through the tangled streets of San Francisco, the endless freeways and traffic jams, 
the districts both glamorous and dangerous, until she reached the end of one map and the 
beginning of another. And then, standing on the bridge between the two cities and seeing 
Oakland for the first time, she could only whisper bitterly: 

"There is no there, there. " 

89 



/ do not want to go to Oakland, but I am going to Ottawa. "You must make sure you see 
the leaves, " the woman in the seat beside me says as we lift off from Vancouver. "Just 
wonderful this time of year. " I smile, murmuring assent, but do not tell her I have already 
seen the leaves in the Gatineaus in the fall and that lam visiting "the nation's capital", as 
the pilot so eloquently announced, for a different reason. True, the leaves would be 
beautiful, the golds and auburns a refreshing change from the deep greens of Vancouver's 
rainforest, but I will not have time for that this visit. This time, on this frequent flyer 
redeye weekend freebie, I want to find the story of my country. 

If it is there. And if it will let me in. 

The downtown core of Ottawa this Sunday morning is cold and windy, with icy breezes 
shooting off the Rideau Canal. I begin my walk at Nepean Point, where there is a bronze 
statue ode to the "founder " of the Ottawa settlement. He is dressed in fine European 
garments and stands looking across the river, his hand on his hip and his boot raised on a 
piece of rock. I walk further, past a statue of a Huron chief dressed in feathers and 
loincloth who, the plaque beneath his bare feet reads, was the "first Indian to co-operate 
with the settlers ". His name is not given. Onto the Chateau Laurier now, a hotel named 
after a former Prime Minister and an ode to the fruits of industry. Limousines pull up to 
its entrance, and doormen in long coats fill their arms with stacks of luggage. Inside the 
opulent lobby - marble floors, gold ceilings - a tour guide recites the list of famous guests 
-presidents and royalty and celebrities -to a group of tourists. 

I head to the Houses of Parliament, passing on the way more statues offounding 
European fathers. The tour guide leads us through various halls and chambers, marble 
stairways adorned with symbols (wheat for Saskatchewan, beavers for Quebec) and the 
flowers (dogwoods for British Columbia, wild roses for Alberta) of each province. Finally 
we are at the entrance to the House of Commons. Our guide opens the door with a 
knowing flourish and we are allowed to stand in the hall, this immense space in which so 
much has happened to define this nation. The desks are arranged in rows facing each 
other, all polished wood and deep green velvet surfaces. "Here, " the guide begins "is 
where all the Members of Parliament sit when the House is in session. " And what strikes 
me about this space is not the elaborate high ceilings or the golden throne at the centre, 
but how peculiarly small the desks are, and how suffocatingly close their rows feel. 

iRnd theo it hits roe: this voovo is structured just like the kind of cfessroows we now discourse 

teachers from creating. 

It is not until I leave the Houses of Parliament that I remember I had also wanted to find a 
newly unveiled memorial to Canada's early suffragettes. It takes me a while and I have to 
ask directions, because the memorial is behind the main buildings and is not visible from 
the front entrance. When Ifinally find the statues I see four women - women who were 

9 0 



activists, who became senators, who took the damn government to court, for Christ's sake 
- sitting together in a square. Globs of bird dung cover part of the memorial plaque, and 
a lone crow picks at the grass beside the statues. Nellie Mclung and Emily Murphy hold 
teacups to their lips and cross their legs delicately at the ankles, smiling at each other. 
And that is all they are doing in this unwanted, neglected space. 
And I remember making a presentation in my grade seven class that I decided to call 
"women as leaders in Canada. " I stood in an empty space at the front of six rows of 
desks and told my classmates I wanted to be the first female Prime Minister of Canada. 
Some of them cheered, others laughed. My teacher Mr. Cowan sat at his desk at the back 
of the room and took notes on a pad of yellow legal paper. When Ifinished, his raised his 
eyebrows and looked at me. "So tell me, Jacyntha, " he began, "why would a woman 
possibly want to lead the country, and why on earth should we let her? " 

The Sunday night red eye flight to Vancouver leaves an hour late. Passengers are grumpy 
and tired: the businessmen and civil servants have meetings scheduled for early the next 
morning, others have families to leave and return to. 

And me? I have . . . nothing. 

Kewegotiattng'the' Cm^ 

Ottawa, the defining public space o f the national imaginary, follows the same r i g i d 

narrative o f c o l o n i a l i s m as the country's a u r i c u l a r spaces: European male heroes who 

tamed the wilderness, co-operative noble savages, genteel w o m e n and invisible minorities. 

Struggles o f race, o f slavery, o f class and marginalization are simply not - to echo the 

words o f Germaine Greer - there. 

It is multicultural week at the Langley school, and the Social Studies 11 class has been 
called to the library for a presentation by an immigration officer. Each student is handed 
a fake identity card, with a name, country, education and profession. They must follow 
the immigration points system to see if their 'person' would be allowed into the country. 
A girl who was given the identity of a Yemeni electrician asks the presenter why she failed 
to be admitted. "Well", the presenter begins, "Yemen is on the list of suspicious countries 
for their links with terrorists. Besides, there's already plenty of electricians here, and 
your person could not speak English. He had no chance, which is tough, but to get into 
our country that's the way it is. " "But, " the student raises her voice, "is that really 
fair? " The officer pauses, preparing an answer, but the bell rings. 

91 



As Bannerji (2000, p. 110) makes clear, "depending on one's social location, the Canadian 

landscape . . . can seem near or far, disturbing, threatening or benign." Y o u matter, the 

public space of imagined Canada tells us, i f you are male and white and wealthy. Y o u 

have no place here, they tell us, i f you are poor, or indigenous, or of colour. A n d so it 

goes in our communities, our museums, our national monuments. And so we are 

educated, and so the education becomes internalized and the imagined nation becomes the 

system, the structure, in which we live, work and teach. 

A n d now we have to un-do it. We must find as many ways as possible to interrogate the 

very concept of nation, community and belonging - not just with our students but within 

ourselves - much in the way the texts and exercises from this project did. We must find 

ways of accounting for the nation building project, as both a historical and contemporary 

process, and ask i f there even is such a thing as a nation builder. For whose nation? And 

then we ask ourselves i f the Canadian landscape is as comfortable and near to our students 

and us as we might once have thought. 

92 



PcHrUcript: 

I would venture to propose, today, that teaching in i t s e l f . . . takes place precisely only 
through a crisis: i f teaching does not hit upon some sort of crisis, i f it does not encounter 
either the vulnerability or the explosiveness of a (explicit or implicit) critical and 
unpredictable dimension, it has perhaps not truly taught. (Felman, 1994, p. 53) 

My mother lies on the hospice bed, wrapped up to her chin in blankets. Her skin is paper 
thin, her hair almost gone. I touch her hand and she opens her eyes and tries to smile. 

In the age of testimony teaching, I would venture to suggest, must in turn testify, make 
something happen, and not just transmit a passive knowledge. (Felman, 1994, p. 53) 

Her brown eyes are empty and hollowed -1 don't think she recognizes me anymore. A 
nurse comes in, checks her i.v. and morphine drip, rearranges the sheets on the bed. My 
mother closes her eyes and winces, a soft moan escaping from her lips. 

I want my students to be able to receive information that is dissonant, and not just 
congruent, with everything that they have learned beforehand. Testimonial teaching 
fosters the capacity to witness something that may be surprising. (Felman, 1994, p. 53) 

"She's in pain ", the nurse tells me, "but we can't risk increasing her morphine. This is 
what we call breakthrough pain, pain too strong for any medicines. " 

Teaching must be viewed not merely as transmitting, but as accessing: as accessing the 
crisis or the critical dimension... The question for the teacher is, then, on the one hand, 
how to access, how not to foreclose the crisis, and, on the other hand, how to contain it, 
how much crisis can the class sustain. It is the teacher's task to recontextualize the crisis 
and to put it back into perspective, to relate the present to the past and to the future and to 
thus reintegrate the crisis in a transformed frame of meaning. (Felman, 1994, p. 54) 

She grips the sheets, twists her wasted body in agony. The nurse holds my mother by the 
shoulders and sings softly to her, wipes her forehead with a damp cloth. She glances at 
me. "Breakthrough pain usually doesn't last more than a minute or so, just keep holding 
her hand", she says. I bite my lip to keep from crying: I should be the one holding her, 
singing to her, cleaning her. I goddamnit, should be her comfort, not this stranger. 

In working through the crisis which broke the framework of the course, the dynamics of 
the class and the practice of my teaching exceeded, thus, the mere concept of the 
testimony as I had initially devised it and set out to teach it. What was first conceived as 
theory of testimony got unwittingly enacted, had become itself not theory, but an event of 



life: of life as the perpetual necessity - and the perpetual predicament - of a learning that 
in fact can never end. (Felman, 1994, p. 55) 

The pain seems to have passed; my mother lies still. The nurse takes the top sheet from 
the bed - stained from my mother's sweat and drool - and throws it into the empty 
corridor. She pulls a fresh sheet from a shelf and snaps it out across my mother's 
sleeping body in one quick, efficient movement. Iam jealous of her, of her ease with this 
woman in the bed whom I have spent most of my life hating, of her ability to soothe and 
love her when I can't. I want to ask the nurse how it feels to know all her patients are 
going to die under her care, but my mother opens her eyes again. They light up when she 
sees me. "Hello darling", she whispers, beaming. I am not sure if she means it, or if it is 
the morphine talking, but I stay in the room, holding her hand and singing, until dark. 

At a public lecture on campus, my colleague Yvonne Brown, an educator and activist in 

her own right, asked her audience to think about creating a pedagogy of pain, one that 

embraces the dark, prickly spaces of memory and suffering in order to push us into new 

realms of awareness and understanding. I think of the nurse's words {breakthrough pain 

is too strong for medicine; it only lasts a minute) and wonder how we can extend 

moments of breakthrough pain into the classroom and beyond. I don't want us to depend 

on morphine or the quick fix solutions - one day workshops, guest speakers or videos - so 

often favoured in teaching, to rid or mask what is really going un under our skins. 

In many ways, the crisis that hit the project was a moment of breakthrough pain, one that 

could not be hidden away by easy, safe answers. The breakthrough pains of memory, of 

racism and of nation building forced us to embrace not just our selves, but each other, as 

we worked through the crisis and re-thought who we were and wanted to be. Yes, the 

pain cut deep and caused hurt, even bleeding and scarring. But, like the moment in the 

hospice when witnessing my mother's breakthrough pain finally allowed me to love her 

the way she needed, the project's breakthrough pain jolted me into action, and turned me 

94 



into a better teacher. As educators we need to witness our tolerance levels of 

breakthrough emotional and social pain, the areas that for us morphine cannot treat. In my 

case, these are my memories of my mother's death and my interrogations of my life of 

white privilege. In making peace with these pains within myself, I become better able to 

maintain safe spaces for inquiry and expression in my classrooms. 

In using the phrase breakthrough pain, I need to distinguish here between the kinds of pain 

caused by collective experiences and memories of oppression, and the more individual 

pains of personal trauma, abuse or violence. I am not saying we should suddenly try to 

become therapists to our students in the sense of working through their personal traumas 

in the public space of the classroom. That is work we are not qualified to do, and would 

easily prove disastrous. What I am saying is that teaching to an engagement with and 

critique of collective pain and social crisis allows for students and teachers to experience 

breakthroughs in their collective and individual understandings of themselves in relation 

to history and society. Such a breakthrough is in itself a therapeutic moment, if we follow 

the dictionary definition of therapeutic as "having a good effect on the body or mind" 

(O.E.D., 2001, p. 943). I would dare to add that such breakthroughs are necessary in a 

social justice approach to teaching if we ever hope to facilitate deep and long lasting 

transformations amongst those we teach. And they only happen when we are willing to 

risk our emotions and venture into painful territories, at both personal and pedagogical 

levels. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you Shoshana, for making sense of this for me. 

95 





Chapter VII: 

"y©U G f o D t Ml 9%l<2Gp cfoiDg it": 

1?gi??©i?i»2trtfe sp>2c<s(s), 1?ei?£©i?i»ftrtfe wopDeDt(s) 

'$>?o[o£ue: 
This is drama and how it educates: for each of the students, their very acts of discovery 
and questioning are inherent parts of the theatre they produce when responding to a wide 
range of historical and personal narratives... students must have the opportunity to make 
meaning, to write themselves into their and others' generational stories; to discover how 
performance might be constructed and to explore the possibility of creating memory... 
Drama educates by filling spaces in the struggle to trace history both remembered and not 
remembered, transmitted and not transmitted. (Zatzman, 2003, p. 36, 44) 

* 

Scene I 
A rainy Monday morning, almost half the class is absent. We move the desks and chairs 
to the side of the room, and I read them Dorothy Joseph's testimony from Behind Closed 
Doors, in which the nuns call her a savage. Then I ask the students to create a shape or 
image with their bodies that shares their response to the testimony. Chelsea steps into the 
center of the space, straightens her back and points her finger to the ground. She freezes 
her entire body - her face, her neck, her shoulders, even the tip of her pointing finger -
into one embodied expression of hate. When I move on to the next exercise, asking them 
to speak a monologue as that shape, Chelsea whispers "you dirty little savage, get over 
here, I'll show you". I let the exercise continue, to thirty seconds; Chelsea is beginning to 
spit, her face red, the bile spewing from her mouth, "who do you think you are, you little 
savage "; I am worried about Chelsea, she seems close to breaking, so I call out "10 
seconds to go "; her voice pitches into one low, anguished sigh. Chelsea sinks to her 
knees, shaking, tears at the edges of her eyes. "Those words, " she tells the class, "were 
the sickest things I've ever said. " "But, " she writes later, "one of the most amazing 
things I've ever done, I had no idea I could act to be something I'm not. " 

* 

Scene II 
I read the Socials Studies 11 class Ivy Macadams's testimony from Opening Doors about 
the shooting and newspaper headline "four whites for one Jap - is it fair? ", and tell them 
we are going to make a group image response to the telling. We are beginning to talk 
about characters and struggles in the telling, when Elin raises her hand. "I don't think we 
should respond to the telling as it is, just about the boys. I think we should make our 
image about the bigger picture of racism in the media today. " 

* 



Scene III 
Working on this response image, almost half the class joins together on one side of the 
room, taking shapes to represent the media. They stand on chairs and desks, hold out 
cameras, and lean their heads together conspiratorially. While they take on these images, 
a smaller group, all girls, makes shapes of victim hood on the other side of the room: they 
lay on the floor, crouch together, hide their faces behind their hands, find ways of 
protecting each other with their bodies. In the center of this tableau stands another girl, 
defiantly refusing to look at either the media or the victims. She folds her arms across her 
chest and stares out the window. This image has unfolded — Organically, performatively, 
critically - with no spoken direction from me or the class. 

* 

Scene IV 
I ask students in the tableau to speak lines their image might say, lines that begin with 
"I'm afraid of and "I want". I do not give them much time to think about what they will 
say, for I want them to be able to speak directly in the moment. I move around the 
tableau, touching each student on the shoulder in turn, inviting and welcoming his or her 
words into the space, "I want them out of my country ", "I want to keep my power ", "I 
am afraid of not getting a good story " echo the voices of the frozen media. "I want to 
live ", "I am afraid of them ", "I want to be free ", cry the victims. When I get to the 
center, to the girl choosing to ignore both situations, she whispers, "I am afraid. .. of 
nothing. " Later, she tells the class she was showing what she thought was at the heart of 
both the testimony and the group response image. She was, she said "representing 
power, that can choose to see what it wants to see and ignore the rest - and that kind of 
power has no fear, because they never let anything get too close to them. " 

* 

Epilogue 

A l l these embodied, expressive, literate insights. 

A l l this collective, co-operative action. 

A l l this art. 

From students who, when sitting at their desks, would not / could not say a word. 

^resktog the Pwroeworfc: Dvsvos 9% process of snswertog 

I want to concentrate in this chapter on how Drama as a process allowed the crisis of 

witnessing to "break the very framework of the class" (Felman, 1992, p. 48) and "pass 

98 



through its own answerlessness" (Felman, 1992, p. 50). I want to simply let the students 

tell you how this happened: 

/ PERSONALLY FEEL THAT LEARNING IN THIS WAY IS BETTER THAN DOING QUESTIONS OR 
TAKING NOTES FROM A TEXTBOOK. IT BRINGS PEOPLE TO BE MORE OPENLY INVOLVED 
IN THE MATERIAL THAT IS BEING STUDIED. I THINK IT MADE ME UNDERSTAND THE 
TOPIC MORE BECAUSE YOU HA VE TO STOP AND TRY TO SEE THE CONNECTION BETWEEN 
THE DRAMA AND THE TOPIC... I WISH MORE LESSONS WERE TAUGHT IN THIS MANNER. 

(NATAUE, SS 11) 

THE DRAMA REALLY MADE ME THINK ABOUT THE CHARACTERS IN ALL THE STORIES. I 
FELT CLOSE TO THEM AND, AT SOME POINTS, UNDERSTOOD THEIR PAIN AS WELL 

(CHELSEA, FN 12) 

IN OTHER COURSES WE ARE TOLD WHAT TO THINK BUT HERE, WITH ACTING, ITS ALL UP 
TO YOU. WHAT I LEARNED MOST FROM THE THEATRE GAMES WAS SEEING WHAT 
EVERYONE ELSE FELT ABOUT THE CHARACTERS THEY WERE PORTRAYING. IT MADE ME 
SEE HOW DIFFERENT EVEN YOUR CLOSEST FRIEND CAN SEE SOMETHING THAT YOU SEE A 
DIFFERENT WAY. (JENNIFER, SS 11) 

LEARNING THIS WAY WAS A COMPLETELY NEW EXPERIENCE FOR ME. I AM NOT USUALLY 
A PERSON WHO ENJOYS IMPROVISATION OR UNPLANNED EVENTS OF ANY SORT, BUT THIS 
HELPED ME TO PUSH MY SELF AND PUT MYSELF IN THE SHOES OF ANOTHER HUMAN AND 
TO PLAY THE ROLE OF A RACIST. I DID THIS IN THE HOPE OF COMPREHENDING THE 
MENTALITY OF THOSE WHO ARE RACIST. (BRYAN, FN 12) 

TT CHALLENGED ME TO STEP OUT OF MY NICE, C02Y SHELL AND TAKE RISKS. I WANTED 
TO REALLY HELP, TO GET MY IDEAS OUT THERE. WE HA VEN7 REALLY BEEN IN A RACIAL 
ISSUE WHERE SOMEONE IS DISCRIMINATED AGAINST, SO THIS WAS A GOOD EYE OPENER. 

(MEGAN, SS 11) 

IT FELT A LOT DIFFERENT TO LEARN THIS WAY, BUT I PREFERRED IT. THIS PROCESS GOT 
ME TO PUT MYSELF IN SOMEONE ELSE'S SHOES AND CONSIDER THEIR THOUGHTS, 
EMOTIONS AND PERSPECTIVES. IT CHALLENGED ME TO GO DEEPER THAN THE FACTS AND 
EXPLORE THE HUMAN IMPACT OF OUR HISTORY. I LIKED THE COLLECTIVE EXPERIENCE.. 
. IT GIVES STUDENTS A MUCH MORE PROFOUND INSIGHT THAN A TEXTBOOK WOULD... I 
WOULD MAKE EACH UNIT LONGER, IF POSSIBLE. 

(BRIDGET, SS 11) 

99 



/ WAS REALLY NERVOUS AND UNSURE OF NOW IT WAS GOING TO WORK BECAUSE IT IS 
NOT SOMETHING THAT I HAVE ENJOYED IN THEPAST. I DON! LIKE PUTTING MYSELF 
OUT THERE IN FRONT OF MY PEERS. HOWEVER, ONCE WE STARTED AND IREAU2ED THAT 
WE WERE ALL IN IT TOGETHER, I REALLY ENJOYED IT. IT REALLY CHALLENGED ME, BUT I 
FELT GOOD BECAUSE I KNEW THERE WAS NO WRONG ANSWER. I HA VE GROWN AS I 
LEARNED ABOUT BOTH THE PEOPLE OF EAST VANCOUVER AND MYSELF. I HA VE NEVER 
DONE ANYTHING LIKE IT BEFORE, AND IT WAS REALLY WORTHWHILE. 

(KIARA, SS 11) 

The c r i t i c ^ irosgtostion pnd the third spsce: 

The fascinating thing about these reflections is that, almost to a one, the students are 

intertwining their personal growth, their learning about the testimonies and their learning 

about the drama process into one seamless narrative that incorporates with fluidity Laub's 

(1992, p. 75) three levels of witnessing (witnessing oneself within the experience, 

witnessing the testimonies, and witnessing the process of witnessing itself). 

This is exciting, for it shows that they are starting to work and think from a shared point of 

critical interrogation and imagination, that to them the two domains go hand in hand. I 

would venture to suggest here that it was the process of embodying and living their 

responses, of drawing "upon their emotions to unfold their cultural imagination" (Rizvi, 

1994, p. 59) that allowed them to reach moments of critical insight. The process was 

circular, without a clear beginning and certainly with no end. It was the drama process, 

and where it led the students into their own personal inquiries of their internal and external 

boundaries and surroundings, that moved the discourses of race, nation, class and memory 

from crisis to transformation and action. It was the drama, that educated. 

Is this the fabled "third space" of which Bhaba speaks? Did incorporating Boal's 

techniques "open up the possibilities for new structures of authority, and for new politics 

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of resistance to be created" (Rizvi, 1994, p. 63)? I would argue that the entire project 

found and conducted itself, celebrating witnessing at multiple levels, within that space -

and beyond. 

Finding the third space was just the beginning for these students. Moving into the third 

space - and here I quibble with the notion that spaces must be numbered sequentially, and 

that the ultimate destination is a mere third, troisieme, bronze, for surely there must be as 

many spaces as we have minds and memories? - and beyond to re-articulate the 

boundaries of what they thought was possible in their minds and bodies became a way for 

these students to "lay down possible new worlds" (Varela, 1987, p. 68), spaces and - most 

importantly - ways of knowing. The third, and fourth and five hundredth spaces inhabited 

by the project's performative moments became, in and of themselves, literacies. 

Literacy as reading codes, literacy as trickster 

Eisner (1997, p. 135) defines literacy as "an ability to read, interpret and communicate 

codes in any medium." How, then, were the students in the project becoming literate? 

They were not being asked to read any texts in the traditional, alphabetic way; however, 

they were being asked and encouraged to read themselves, the bodies of their classmates, 

and the tellings and teachings behind each testimony. They became culturally literate, 

able to read and communicate their understandings on "the interrelationships between 

power structures, the hidden and not-so hidden agendas of the oppressed and the 

oppressor" (Fels, 2001, p. 3). Through their growing comfort with Boal's methodology, 

they developed a performative literacy, not only in that they were able to use the language 

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of Boal to express their learning and feeling, but also in that the performative act led them 

"from the single-dimensionality of dichotomies towards an understanding of the 

multiplicity of perspective and outcomes possible" (Fels, 2001, p. 5). 

This kind of literacy, this ability to read and move through media, codes and meanings in 

a creative and critical way, is what Fernandez (2001, p . l 17) calls "trickster literacies . . . 

lush literacies that are in constant motion around us." She goes on to comment 

"that these literacies often remain invisible is paradoxical. That our impoverished 

pedagogies cannot learn from these literacies is still more paradoxical." I think of this 

project as a form of trickster literacy, as it shifted from body to mind to bodymind, from 

storytelling to performance and back. 

In the First Nations Studies 12 class, the academically 'weaker' of the two groups (i.e., 

students whose success at traditional academics and literacy had been limited), something 

extraordinary began to take root about midway through the unit. Suddenly, at the end of 

each lesson, students who two weeks previous had had trouble finding their feedback 

forms were rushing back to their desks to begin scribbling down their ideas. They would 

write furiously and passionately, often after the bell rang, until they had said all they 

needed to say. The trickster was moving through them, realizing a voice that had long 

been silenced by traditional learning structures and assessments. Perhaps the greatest 

trickster was Bryan, who after a lesson in which we witnessed a testimony from Behind 

Closed Doors about two girls who tried to run away from the school, wrote that "hearing 

this story made me want to try to write a story about those girls, about them running 

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away." Bryan traveled, in the space of a few minutes, from witnessing to responding to 

analyzing and then wanting to create his own response in another artistic medium. To 

further illuminate the impact Anne and I felt in the room during these lessons, and the 

shifts we knew were happening in the students' ability to read the word and the world, I 

want to share with you another extract from my final interview with Anne: 

J: I think the reason they worked so quickly when we got to the written parts was that the 
embodied work, the theatre, had touched something inside them, that they felt this huge 
need to try to write it down, to express it, to tell their story. 

A They felt they were doing something. 

J: Yes, they were being asked to do something that they felt was somehow relevant to 
their lives. 

A And I know you were collecting data from the questions, but you know, all those 
questions you used in your data could also be used by me as a teacher to get feedback 
from the kids, to evaluate their learning - just from those forms, I would know what they 
learned, how they learned it, I would know everything. 

J: It was a unit taught through performance, which leads us to the concept of performative 
literacy . . . and so I want to ask you how would you define the term literacy? 

A: In a simplistic form, the ability to read and understand, to write and make yourself 
understood, to spectate and observe, to interpret - that to me is literacy. 

J: And in performative literacy, we believe we can come to be able to read and understand 
the world, through engaging in Drama. 

A Totally, I believe that too. 

J: and that was what was happening, especially with the First Nations Studies 12 students, 
who might not have strong alphabetic skills, but they were responding so strongly in the 
drama work because it touched something inside them that more traditional ways of 
teaching couldn't - this validated them, made them literate, perhaps for the first time in 
several years. And this literacy was moving from their body up into their heads, and then 
they were wanting to get alphabetically literate, they were wanting to write it down. That 
was incredible, just scribbling, they had no writer's block no frustration, because it had 
already been created for them to write down through the work like you said, it's a 
methodology. 

A what a valid assessment - because not only am I getting their gut reaction to the work 
which is the most honest, but I'm also seeing how they're interpreting it; how to take the 
ideas one step further, it's an exciting way to plan, to ask yourself just how far can we go 

1 
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with this'? What links can we make? I mean some of those kids wrote more for you in 
your few days with them than they wrote for me all year. 

J: And that writing was coming from a very natural place, they had it right there, and that 
was what blew me away, seeing the confidence level raise. So it's like we have to reverse 
how we think about teaching and learning - start with the body, get them feeling and 
thinking in that way and then let it come into a head intellectual way of knowing. 

A Learning doesn't have to be all dates and names and places. Learning can be this, what 
we did Learning can be that, feeling it from the inner self - like I learned something today, 
yes the kids learned something about residential schools or Cast Van, but they also learned 
that they reacted to that knowledge, and they didn't like what they heard 

Trickster, that says it all. 

Writing the TOoroent: frustrations of writing about performance 

How can I write about the performative? Do I tell you what happened, lay out the rules of 

the exercise, who moved where, who stood where, who spoke what? Would a diagram 

104 



h e l p , a m a p , w i t h a r r o w s a n d c i r c l e s a n d footnotes to t e l l y o u h o w it felt? T h e w o r d s y o u 

j u s t r e a d , w h a t d o they m e a n to y o u ? I f I t e l l y o u that these w o r d s w e r e s p o k e n b y 

m e m b e r s o f the S o c i a l S t u d i e s 11 c l a s s , a n d that t h e y c r e a t e d one o f the m o s t 

t r a n s f o r m a t i v e a n d m a g i c a l m o m e n t s o f the u n i t , w o u l d y o u b e l i e v e m e ? 

B o a l has a n e x e r c i s e c a l l e d s o u n d s c a p e that I l o v e , because it e n c o u r a g e s a different k i n d 

o f l i s t e n i n g . A f t e r the g r o u p has f o r m e d its r e s p o n s e i m a g e , I ask t h e m to t h i n k 

i n d i v i d u a l l y o f o n e w o r d to e x p r e s s t h e i r f e e l i n g s as that i m a g e . T h e n I m o v e t h r o u g h the 

i m a g e , t o u c h i n g p a r t i c i p a n t s o n the s h o u l d e r a n d i n v i t i n g t h e m to share t h e i r w o r d . I 

m o v e q u i c k l y b e t w e e n s o u n d s , s o m e t i m e s a s k i n g one p e r s o n to repeat theirs, so that the 

w o r d s b e g i n to b l u r together i n t o a n a u r a l s o u n d s c a p e . N o t o n l y d o p a r t i c i p a n t s n e e d to b e 

" u n o b t r u s i v e l y p r e s e n t " ( F e l m a n , 1 9 9 2 , p . 7 1 ) to t h e i r o w n s o u n d , t h e y n e e d to l i s t e n to 

w h a t the others are s a y i n g , as w e l l as be r e a d y f o r m y i n v i t a t i o n . T h e s o u n d s c a p e t h e n 

b e c o m e s its o w n e x e r c i s e i n w i t n e s s i n g a t e s t i m o n y o f r e s p o n s e . 

A f t e r r e a d i n g I v y K a j i M c A d a m s ' s t e s t i m o n y about h e r brother at the s w i m m i n g p o o l , I 

a s k e d the c l a s s to f o r m t h e i r r e s p o n s e i m a g e o r t a b l e a u as p o s s i b l e " c o p s i n the h e a d " 

( B o a l , 1 9 9 2 ) o r v o i c e s that f o r m i n the m i n d o f the p r o t a g o n i s t Peter, w h o w a s b e i n g 

p o r t r a y e d b y A l y s s a . T h e students m o v e d c h a i r s a n d t a b l e s , as w a s b e c o m i n g t h e i r h a b i t , 

a n d gathered a r o u n d A l y s s a i n different p o s e s , s o m e s u p p o r t i v e , s o m e h o s t i l e . W h e n the 

s o u n d s c a p e e x e r c i s e b e g a n , those w o r d s c a m e out. 

105 



I found myself lingering on Bridget's "M^vcrC?" and wanting to hear it in contrast to the 

other voices. Bridget spoke her word aggressively, angrily, harshly, for she wanted 

Peter/Alyssa to feel, to know, he did not belong. A s I kept welcoming her word into the 

soundscape, her voice raised in volume and ferocity until it was at a fever pitch, drowning 

out everything else. Why did I stay with that word? It just struck me in the moment as 

what could be explored; the hatred and fear involved in naming difference. 

But how do I tell you, now, what power that moment held for all of us in the room? How 

do I get you to see the image, to hear the edgy scratch, the near hysteria in Bridget's voice, 

the quiet assurance in Alyssa's as she kept whispering "fUe***the utter pin-drop silence 

between the words, as the group focused so intently on their spect-acting? How can I 

bring you into that room, that moment, that space - or should I even try? 

Maybe sharing a piece of conversation w i l l help: 

A: The scene in socials 11 - the kids were blown away. I liked the fact that they were blown 
away and at the end they could really sense the power of the work they'd done. 

J: It was so intense, that last exercise, especially when they'd been so lethargic at the 
beginning of class. 

A when the whole thing came together, they told the story of how they felt about it -
Bridget saying "different". 

J: I found the soundscape amazing too, all those words. 

A and how do you put something like that down on paper - it would look like nothing 

J: yes, and you have to see it in the context of what has happened before, what the shapes 
were that the kids were making. . how they just came out of themselves and went so 
deeply into the work 

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A: it was almost like a branching out into this avant garde drama thing -1 mean, come on, 
making shapes and soundscapes in the middle of a socials classroom - but it all made sense. 
I was sitting there watching the work and it made complete sense to me, what they were 
telling me with those sounds. 

The performative space is like no other research space. It breathes, it swallows, it moves 

between, through and around the spaces we thought were already there. It reveals the 

hidden, silent spaces we never knew we wanted or would be able to find. The 

performative space is constantly opening and closing itself around us. It folds and 

stretches the canvas of who we are and what we can do. It belongs to one, it belongs to all 

- simultaneously - and excludes only those who do not think they want it. Yet. 

Now, read the soundscape again, and tell me what you hear: 

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The performative moment, like the Stop, is when the performative space becomes its own 

living, breathing entity, and all boundaries of classroom and knowledge disappear. The 

performative moment tells its own transformation story, reveals its own aesthetic (a 

beauty, a moment of being most alive, a choice) just when we most need it. In the heat of 

a performative moment we forget who we are, where we were, and know only this: the 

word, the sound, the image, the breath. We cross the threshold of our own preconceived 

ability, take a leap of faith, jump into the deep water without a lifejacket, take off our 

shoes and walk through the fire. And we surface on the other side, in our own realm of 

memory and make believe, still breathing, still swimming, still walking. Unscathed and 

unscarred, waving but never drowning. The performative moment is as simple as a 

sixteen year old girl whispering "you dirty savage"; it is as powerful as a teenaged boy 

writing a story; it is as endless and universal as another girl shouting "different" into her 

classmate's head. The performative moment is us: it belongs to us, speaks to and with us, 

walks through and around us. We are its recipients but never its captors, and we must 

learn to hold, celebrate, nurture, share i t . . . and ultimately release it. 

Maybe I should not have tried writing about it after all. Or maybe this tension between 

being and documenting is in itself an aesthetic, performative experience. Can I make "the 

teaching of the aesthetic experience" my "pedagogic creed" (Greene, 1994, p. 133)? 

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Chftpte? VIII 

iTOpliestioDS 

Teachers might even be able to think in terms of yet another metaphor - that of the 
landscaper, someone who endeavors to change the lay of the land. . . but this is unlikely 
to work well if teachers merely follow the dictates of an architectural landscaper who 
never gets down into the dirt. It also won't work well if teachers focus only on their own 
garden plot andfail to see its relation to the larger overall design of the site. At the 
macro level, our educational systems need to be spaces that are both functional and 
beautiful. (Reynolds, 1996, p. 76) 

"This isn't just some words in s textbook, it's real": 

Student reflections . . . 

. . . O n story / truth telling: 

/ THINK LEARNING FROM THIS RESOURCE WAS MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE. INSTEAD OF 
BEING TOLD BY A TEXTBOOK WHAT HAPPENED, WE LEARNED ABOUT THE HISTORY 
THROUGH THE WORDS OF THE PEOPLE WHO LIVED IT. IT MADE A MUCH MORE 
PERSONAL AND INSIGHTFUL PROCESS. 

(BRIDGET, SS 11) 

IN MY OPINION YOU CANNOT EVEN COMPARE THE EFFECT THAT LISTENING TO THESE 
REAL LIFE MEMORIES HAD ON MY UNDERSTANDING OF THE URBAN EXPERIENCE 
COMPARED TO LEARNING FROM TEXTBOOKS OR EVEN VIDEOS. IN REALITY YOU NEVER 
REALLY REMEMBER ANYTHING FROM OUTDATED BORING TEXTBOOKS, BUT HEARING 
THOSE EXPERIENCES REALLY MADE ME THINK AND TAKE TO HEART WHAT WAS BEING 
SAID. 

(BIANCA, SS 11) 

THE STORIES WERE REAL MEMORIES, NOT JUST A RESEARCH PAGE FOR A TEXTBOOK. 
THE EFFECT IT HAS HAD ON MY UNDERSTANDING OF THE URBAN EXPERIENCE IS HOW 
EVERYDAY OF THEIR LIVES PEOPLE REMIND THEM OF "WHAT THEY ARE". 

(ELIN, SS II) 

. . . O n spect-acting: 

AT FIRST IT WAS PRETTY SCARY AND NERVE RACKING BECAUSE YOU DID NOT KNOW 
WHA T TO EXPECT, BUT IT DEFINITELY MADE YOU REALLY REFLECT ON WHA T YOU WERE 



LEARNING, AND INSPIRED YOU TO PUSH YOURSELF TO TAKE ON EACH ROLE AS IF IT WERE 
REALLY HAPPENING TO YOU. 

(BIANCA, SS It) 

IT WAS EASIER TO LEARN FROM DRAMA THAN TEXT BECAUSE IT WAS MORE FUN, AND 
WHEN PEOPLE ARE ENJOYING THEMSELVES AND HA VING FUN THEY LEARN BETTER. 

(RYAN, FN 12) 

AT FIRST IT WAS HARD BUT IT BECAME EASIER AS THE CLASS BECAME MORE 
COMFORTABLE WITH THE IDEA. IT MADE ME FEEL LIKE I WAS THE PERSON. I LEARNED 
TO TAKE CHANCES AND DO SOMETHING I'M NOT SO INTO DOING. 

(CORY, FN 12) 

LEARNING THROUGH DRAMA DARED THOSE PARTICIPATING TO ACTUALLY GET IN THE 
MINDS OF THE CHARACTERS AND UNDERHAND ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT LEVEL 
THE GAMES INSPIRED ME TO REACH THAT LEVEL OF UNDERSTANDING IN MY OTHER 
CLASSES AND ASSIGNMENTS. (SAMM, SS 11) 

. . . O n frsnsforrotog 

. . . other schools snd other students: 

/ THINK THIS WOULD BE EXCELLENT TO BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS. IT WOULD TEACH 
EMPATHY, SYMPATHY, ACTING AND PUBLIC SPEAKING SKILLS AS WELL AS CONCEPTS OF 
RACISM AND HISTORY. 

(MURRAY, SS It) 

IT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN OTHER SCHOOLS BECAUSE IF NOT THEY WILL PROBABLY NEVER 
HA VE THE CHANCE TO REALLY OPEN THEIR EYES TO MANY THINGS. IT WAS A REALLY 
POWERFUL EXPERIENCE THAT ALL SHOULD HAVE THE CHANCE TO EXPERIENCE. 

(BIANCA, SS 11) 

THIS UNIT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN OTHER SCHOOLS BECAUSE I THINK IT HELPS STUDENTS 
LEARN MORE AND FASTER. 

(TODD, FN 12) 

IT WOULD BE USEFUL TO TEACH THIS ELSEWHERE BECAUSE IT HELPS OPEN YOUR MIND 
TO THINKING ABOUT ISSUES MOST PEOPLE NORMALLY DON! SPEND A LOT OF TIME 
THINKING ABOUT. 

(BRYAN, SS 11) 

. . . svd themselves: 

ALL THE STEREOTYPES OR TERRIBLE THINGS I HEARD ABOUT THE DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE 
DON!AFFECT ME AS MUCH. I AM NOTAS NAIVE AS I WAS, AND I'VE REALIZED THAT THE 
WAY I HAVE ACTED IN THE PAST IS ONLY CONTRIBUTING TO THEIR SUFFERING. MY 

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BELIEFS HA VE BEEN ALTERED BECAUSE I KNOW HOW WHA T THESE PEOPLE HA VE TO 
SUFFER WITH EVERYDAY, AND IF MANY OTHERS COULD MAKE THE CHANGE I DID DURING 
THIS UNIT, THAT WOULD BE GREAT. (EUN, SS ll) 

frsDSferrotog our tesehtog: 9 hsrd-votsd reality cheek 

What i f teachers . . . 
• came to expect diversity rather than conformity in their classrooms? 
• actually worked with one another to solve problems? 
• felt free enough to admit that they had problems? 
• were encouraged to be reformers, even rebels, and given the necessary supports for 

their efforts? 
• were encouraged to see and deal with the partiality of their own knowledge, the 

limits of their ability to control behavior and their subjective responses to their 
students? 

• had a say in the social polices they were asked to implement? 
• were treated like professionals rather than children? 

• were able to choose when and with whom they wished to collaborate? 

(Reynolds, 1996, pp. 75-76) 

So, with a unit that created this much impact on one small part of the educational 

landscape, what are the realistic chances of this kind of work being implemented on a 

larger scale? How effective is an individual teacher's transformation i f it stops at 

awareness or consciousness-raising but not does transcend into committed and sustainable 

action? What are the very real structural barriers that must be overcome to bring risky but 

transformative pedagogies out into the open - and how w i l l they be received by an 

educational system and culture that "hold a depoliticized, liberal view of education . . . 

that does not perceive curriculum content, classroom processes and school organization as 

the outcome of past and current struggles over what is to be taught, to whom, why and 

how" (Hursh, 1995, pp. 105-106)? How "do we negotiate a safe place for our art within a 

system that feels monstrous and immutable? Do we use our art to help question and 

change the monstrous system? Is there a middle ground" (Murray, 2000, p. 103)? And 

what good would the middle ground be i f it did not succeed in changing the system? 

111 
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"H©w teachers talk about teaching .reflects the discourse of the larger society." 

Hurray, iftnne, J-fursh and Jacyntha in conversation 

H: If teachers are to become reflective, to raise questions of what is to be taught, to 
whom, how and for what purpose, they must treat their classroom practices as problems 
and analyse how their classrooms are supported or contradicted by the discourses and 
organizational structures of schooling. Education is political in the sense that the 
organization of the school and the curriculum content practices are outcomes of contested 
political goals. . . Teachers' discourses need to be analysed continually to see which of 
the competing concepts of society and schooling they reflect and perpetuate (Hursh, 1995, 
p. 108-109). 

J: So when you have conversations with other teachers, do you talk much about 
this stuff - social justice or anti-racism work"? 

A: No, we talk about budget, and photocopying. People just don't have the time or 
the energy. This stuff - social justice - is not viewed as a priority. 

We've talked about how by about year 15 of a teacher's career, they have seen how 
everything new or innovative gets shut down, and they don't want to bother 
anymore. They're just coasting waiting for their retirement, and I would say that's 
true of most teachers. They back off from social justice work because it's just too 
exhausting, overwhelming, much work Training would be a huge issue. What you 
did in this project, well a lot of teachers just would not be comfortable with that 
First of all anything that is controversial like racism, that rubs others the wrong 
way, that emphasizes whiteness, teachers will just stay away from That's wrong, 
but these kinds of lessons can cause teachers so much grief, with parent and admin 
complaints, that the teacher might just say "why do it if it's going to cause me so 
much trouble, I may as well just bypass it and not worry about" And I think 
because of the way the school system is set up, that's the problem 

M: How do we recognize and work within the complex and often contradictory messages 
teachers receive that make them doubt their own artistry and its place in their teaching? 
(Murray, 2000, 103) 

A: For me to do this? I would need a major workshop, like a course. I mean, I have 
some drama experience but nothing that can give me that kind of ease that you 
showed in the classes. So I would want to be put in the situation where I could 
learn how to work like that before I could actually go with it into a classroom of my 
own. 

M: Is the genuine and lasting presence of Drama in any school anything less than an act 
of reform? (Murray, 2000, p. 103) 

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A: So many teachers don't have the background in real nitty gritty facilitation that 
would give them the confidence and skills to take on this kind of work I'm not 
talking about an afternoon pro-d workshop, but a full interactive course, one that 
talks not only about facilitation, but also the topics, the issues you're covering, so 
you can do it right 
Like how do you walk in there and be as confident as you were. I mean you were 
taking a huge risk because you didn't know these kids, had no idea what kind of a 
response you'd get For me, I would be taking a risk on something else. I would 
know the kids, know the potential responses, but at the same time my real risk 
would be the actual doing, the actual moving of the desks and getting them to start 
making shapes with their bodies. 

J: I think that that's the challenge - finding that way of being within yourself and 
feel confident using that then finding ways to encourage teachers to develop that 
sense of themselves as facilitators. It's a teaching skilL 

A: Yes, and I think it is something that can be taught I could learn it if I'm in the 
right environment observing you was already a beginning. Everything I was 
watching, like how you set ihe chairs up, how you had them move, where, where 
you stood, how you went into the crowd. I watched you, which was great - but 
there has to come a time when I do, myself. 

I would like to reverse the role, I would like you to watch me. This is what I'm going 
to do, and I want constructive criticism and collaboration from a colleague, which is 
another thing that is lacking in the system, We just don't have time to go around 
doing this kind of stuff in our workday. 

J: This needs like a year. 

A I would say a three-month minimum drama program, just to get the essentials of 
drama. Like, a Drama for the classroom teacher, to really understand image theatre, 
the philosophy and approaches. Now that I've got those approaches, I need to work 
on how to present an issue of social justice through this approach to drama in your 
classroom we need that kind of process to get really comfortable with the work 
and its potential 

M: Is it realistic to expect deep and thorough support of the arts from all administrative 
realms? (Murray, 2000, p. 103) 
A and sometimes the support - the resources and the courses, just aren't there. 

J: So if we want to improve our practice, where do we look, who do we turn to'? 

A In Langley's favour, Langley has one of the most developed professional 
development programs for teachers at nominal costs, so it is a good district that 

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way. So we need to figure out how to use people that we have to help us change 
we don't have to pay the big bucks to fly someone in from Toronto or the States, 
we can find the support we need in our own communities. We have you, who live 
down the street 

FuM Circle/: The/ t£ud&nt t&cvche-y the/ teycvcher 

There was a time when I ran to her, desperate, seeking help and assurance -
and only her words could soothe me 

L 'enseignement, cest Tenseignement: Teaching is teaching -you can do it 

Late at night, sleepless, restless, terrified of failure -
I would call her up and whisper my fears across the urban telephone wires 
and into her 25 years of experience 

A n d even then - even when she had watched us teach all day, had driven 
her car across the city to meet with me, had offered ideas, suggestions, books and guides, 
had sent me emails, had spoken with my supervisor, had eaten lunch in her car so she 
would not be late for our meeting, had laughed when I tried to tell the class a joke, had 
said "who cares about the product, look what you were doing in the process" 
when I screwed it all up yet again -

and then she had driven home 
across two suburbs in rush-hour traffic, to leftovers, phone messages, 
emails, questions and confusion, hours of prep before she could put her feet up -

then I call, just as she was slipping into sleep, slipping into bed beside her husband, 
slipping into a warm bubble bath, slipping into something more comfortable 
than being a university instructor to wannabe teachers, wannabe world changers 
who would not/could not write unit plans the way the faculty wanted them to -

then I, the most difficult, unfocussed student of all, the activist, the actress, the traveler, 
the one who kept wanting to write stories instead of essays, who always seemed within 
a hair's breadth of dropping out, dropping down, dropping away, dropping like flies, 

never waving, always drowning, 

the one she always needed to save, to reel back in from the churning middle waters -

I would phone her late at night, and say 

"Je ne peux pas le faire, je ne sais pas quoifaire ": I can't do it, I don't know what to do 

114 



because I was tired, because books made me nervous, because that day the principal had 
yelled at me for taking kids into the hallway during class hours and causing a ruckus (I 
had wanted them to tour the school in French - they were learning the vocab anyway) 

and she would stop what she was doing - stop eating, stop making love, stop living her 
life - and listen to me cry 

and before we said goodnight she would always say 

L 'enseignement c 'est I 'enseignement. . . et toi, tu es une professeur 

So now, a decade later, I sit in her newly-remodelled kitchen (they did it themselves, she 
and her husband, cheaper that way, but took them forever), 
and she pours me a drink, and presses garlic for the salad, and throws meat on the grill 

A n d I feel at home, and safe - though I have lived a teaching career on the edge, in places 
and sites of violence, of conflict, of change and hope - back in her embrace. 

The tables have turned, this year I have been her teacher - have walked into her world and 
torn it upside down, told her students to stand on chairs and lay on the floor, 
have spoken of race, and legacy, and disturbing new memories - and she, she tells me 
now in her kitchen, on this warm early summer evening, has learned from me. 

Learned that change, and hope, and saving the world is not a crazy, washed out dream -
learned that all those calls were not in vain, for they brought us to be here, tonight, again. 

L 'enseignement c 'est I 'enseignement: teaching is teaching, and we will do it. 

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Chspter DC 

& fctocf of eoDciusioD, I guess 

When I finished this project in June, I spent weeks searching for ways to write about it. 

Every morning I would make a big pot of tea and sit down at my computer - and cry. 

Something about the black and white type, the finality of trying to put all that magic into 

academic, rational and objective language, trying to fill the voids of the blank pages with 

quotes and insights that would make sense . . . just shut me down. What happened in this 

project felt, at that time, too rough, too raw, too sacred to turn into a research product. 

So I took my time, read some more, went to Europe, wrote and published some creative 

stories, broke up with my boyfriend, grieved and figured out how to move on - and came 

back to the thesis in the fall. I was still getting nowhere in Vancouver, so I packed up my 

laptop, notes and books and headed to the Cariboo, where a friend gave me the keys to her 

cabin in the backwoods. The Cariboo has been my spiritual home since I began my 

teaching career there a decade ago, and it is where I return to whenever I need healing, or 

comforting, or wisdom, or renewal. I go there because the air is fresh, the nights are clear 

and cold, and I can sleep under a blanket of stars and wake up to horses grazing by my 

window. I go there to remind myself of a world bigger than me; I go there to love and be 

in love; I go there to teach and be taught, to write and be written. I go there, to be alive. 

It was almost dark when I arrived at the cabin, after winding my way through several 

kilometers of mountain backroads. A herd of cattle had kept me company for part of the 

111. 
1 1U 



way, and I was pretty sure I had seen a bear running up into the hills at one point. The 

changing leaves of spruce and alder trees spread carpets of gold, bronze, red and burgundy 

across the valley, and the stars were just starting to come out. I drove down the pot-holed 

drive to the cabin, got out and stretched. The air was sharp, noticeably cooler; I took 

several slow, deep breaths to clear all the cobwebs and confusion from my brain. Then I 

unpacked my laptop, opened up the cabin, got a fire going, made a pot of tea, and sat 

down to write. And there, under the stars, surrounded by scents of cinnamon and cedar, I 

wrote the first words of this thesis, the poem that responds to Joy Kogawa. 

I have tried, in this writing, to weave together two narratives: the analytic narrative of the 

research, grounded in theories and literatures and data, and the more creative, 

autobiographical narrative of my own personal journeys through the data and theories and 

literatures. M y hope is that the creative narratives need no extra analysis or explanation: I 

want them to complement, enhance and illuminate the threads of analysis: my hope is that 

they form their own inquiry, draw you in and give you the freedom to interpret them as 

you need. They bear witness to my histories of forgetting and re/membering and invite 

you to witness your stories of social justice teaching, pedagogy, and the arts. In this way, 

you and I w i l l reach what Taylor and Saarinen call "interstanding", since "understanding 

has become impossible because nothing stands under, interstanding has become 

unavoidable because everything stands in between" (Taylor & Saarinen, 1994, p. 2). 

In many ways, this project was one big foray into interstanding. We witnessed the spaces 

in which we live, teach, and learn - the spaces we must find news ways of sharing. We 

1 1 n 
i 1 / 



uncovered serious gaps in a curriculum driven by white settler mythologies, and tried to 

untangle the knots of memory, history, race, place, and nation. We challenged ourselves 

and our students to work beyond our comfort zones, to take risks, to blur the boundaries of 

our imaginations. We cried, we swore, we got confused. It hurt, deeply, to recognize our 

selves and our bodies as implicated in the dual legacies of colonialism and racism. 

We became literate in a new methodology. The students used words like image theatre, 

interior monologue, cops in the head and soundscape as they would use words like book, 

pen, test and essay. They began the unit as learners, then discovered they could be actors 

- socially and artistically - until they ended the unit as spect-actors in their own right, on a 

stage full of the tumbling geographies of remembrance. They left the unit with a raised 

critical awareness not only of their understandings of oppression, history and social 

change, but of their ability to know and express themselves on these issues. 

There are obstacles, of course, to seeing this work come to fruition. We wished we had 

had more time to fully explore our questions and uncertainties in greater depth. I needed, 

perhaps, more preparation, more context, before going in to teach the unit, so that I would 

have been more aware of their needs and gaps before we began . . . but then, i f I had 

known all I know now, would the crisis had happened, would the learning be as rich? 

The senior secondary curriculum is so full, packed, overflowing - with outcomes, with 

exams, with university entrances, with the diverse concerns of parents and administrators, 

with budget cuts and fear. With so much fear - of offending, of wasting time, of not being 

110 n o 



efficient and sufficient - that finding time to implement new approaches is almost 

impossible. Teachers, too, may want to take the risk and time to try new methodologies, 

but feel unskilled or unsupported. Ongoing opportunities for professional training and 

support, both in anti-oppression and arts education - through public institutions like 

universities, school boards or grassroots community groups - are vital if "teachers are to 

think like artists and gain comfort in taking risks" (Murray, 2000, p. 102). And as Murray 

continues to make clear: 

true change seems to need more than money; it requires focused, negotiated, community 
belief towards re-envisioning urban schools. It requires support from the larger 
administrative body for that systemic reform. If we believe drama is truly a 
transformative art, we need to be strategic in how and why we share it. 

We need also to be strategic about how we implement new resources like oral histories. 

Seek them out and use them, trusting that your students will value their truth telling as the 

Langley students did. Trust too that the bodies that manage us - our administrators and 

parents - will respect our work if we present it in an honest, up-front and open manner, if 

we give clear justifications and explanations of our rationale ahead of time. Remember, 

Langley is a conservative, Christian space, and - surprisingly - not one parent complained 

about the work, so why should your learning community be any different? 

This project ends in hope. Community organizations like Vancouver Status of Women 

and Headlines Theatre have begun actively offering intensive training workshops for 

educators on anti-oppression and Boal pedagogies respectively. I have been able to share 

my work and insights in a series of hands-on workshops both for UBC teacher education 

students and Vancouver School Board professionals, and the response every time has been 

1 1 r» 



overwhelmingly positive, with teachers pro-actively choosing to try this work on their 

own. I have been hired by a national multiliteracies research project co-ordinated at 

U B C ' s Language and Literacy Education department to develop two projects with 

Vancouver schools that w i l l explore drama as a literacy in its own right. For the next few 

months, I w i l l work with four teachers who want to use the work of Boal to stimulate 

critical creativity and communication in their classrooms. We w i l l talk, map, plan our 

mutual visions, and find the spaces for interstanding our selves and our practice. I w i l l 

offer ideas, they w i l l take the work and make it their own . . . and i f they get stuck, or need 

encouragement, or someone to laugh and cry with, I w i l l come into their classrooms and 

work through whatever crises or answerlessness made them Stop. Later, we w i l l share our 

findings with other practitioners, through writing, through acting, through speaking -

through being. We have started. We are on our way. Here. Today. 

Whst Next?: Suggestions for further research 

The teaching of humanities touches on phenomena fundamental to the human (and 

humane) experience, and by its very nature deals with issues both sensitive and 

controversial. In this subject area, anything can be a potential landmine, a trap door 

leading into the next crisis of witnessing. Yes, we are walking straight into landmines 

anytime we open our mouths to name oppression and its perpetrators, or whenever we 

stand up against racism, homophobia, sexism, ablism and other forms of discrimination. 

But we cannot simply keep walking on eggshells hoping we don't get into too much 

trouble. We as educators must be willing to delve into murky, contested territories, 

knowing that the work might be difficult and knowing too that it might generate more 

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questions than answers. Some unfinished questions I have from this project, and ones 

requiring further thought and research, include the following: 

• How do we define the role of the teacher in social justice pedagogies, and how 

does that role influence classroom dynamics? 

• How can experienced teachers work with beginning teachers and students in 

teacher education programs to create and implement innovative approaches to 

social justice teaching? 

• The Langley project tried to create an analysis that integrated class, race and 

gender oppressions, a discourse for which the students were not ready. Is a social 

justice pedagogy that attempts to look at oppression as a relational or intersectional 

experience feasible in the senior secondary curriculum? 

• What other experiences of oppression or injustice within Canada's borders might 

senior secondary students be unaware of? Do oral histories from these groups 

exist as public documents? How can they be used in ways similar to these units? 

• How could this research and these two units benefit students in communities with 

opposite demographics to Langley's (e.g. highly diverse, low income schools)? 

• How can this work be shared, in a meaningful way, with other practitioners, and be 

supported and sustained beyond token academic research projects? 

• What would an extended version of this unit - sixteen lessons over a semester, for 

example - look and play out like in senior secondary curricula? 

• How can the teaching of drama as a process for understanding and reading the 

world become a core, integrated curricular practice at the senior secondary level? 

101 
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A Dote: WitoessiDg, public cultures md Jomn Lsrcot 

Anne: This kind of work can be done, I mean you were only in my classroom a few 
weeks, but the impact was huge. Kids went home and talked about the work, which to me 
is a perfect indicator that they learned something. They wondered about it, it made them 
curious. And now, I would bet that i f those kids were in a group where anyone was 
saying anything about First Nations, or residential schooling, or East Van or Hastings, 
those kids would give whoever was talking an earful. A n earful. While the kids who 
haven't had that opportunity may never really get it - what happened in residential 
schooling, what created the downtown east side. 

We're trying to promote learning, aren't we, so now what that unit is going to do I ' l l bet is 
make them curious, take them further, get them to try to start learning on their own, going 
to a museum, reading a novel set during the time - like, just after we finished the unit with 
you, the kids in First Nations Studies 12 were begging me to bring in a speaker who had 
survived a residential school - they were craving more work on the issue, and after 
hearing stories wanted to be in the presence of a survivor. Suddenly, they were interested. 

A n d you know what else it brought up for them probably, is that everyone has a story and 
that it's okay to share them, not to keep things bottled up inside as so many kids do - to 
tell their own stories of how they feel discriminated against, to see themselves as part of a 
larger system of discrimination and exploitation - the shortest period of their life, but the 
most intense. It puts their lives into perspective - like they may have problems, but they 
have a certain level of safety compared to others, like kids who were put into residential 
schools. So now when they see something in the news or media, they'll be more critical, 
more literate. 

To develop an educational culture of witnessing, we must shift our perceptions of space 

from within (our classrooms, our desks, our textbooks, our curricula, our school building, 

our community politics) to without (our bodies, our stage, our re/searching, re/membering 

and re/presenting, our museums, monuments, parks and media). We must begin to think 

of and act on education as a public and shared space that travels beyond the conceived 

walls of our own schools and curricula, and we must make that move with it whenever we 

can. We must witness our selves not just as educators, activists and artists; we must 

witness our selves as witnesses to our own processes of teaching, learning and 

interstanding. In this new space, our work and our visions w i l l cease "to be a thing, and 



become more than a process. They w i l l become a verb, an action, a social practice, a 

private meaning, and a public hope . . . not just the sight of our labor but the product of 

our labor, changing as we are changed by it" (Pinar et.al., 1995, p. 848). 

On the day I write this conclusion, a student named Jomar Lanot has just been killed by a 

group of teenagers outside an East Vancouver secondary school. It is being described as a 

racial incident, in which a group of male Indo-Canadian teenagers began shouting racial 

insults at a group of Filipino boys on the school's basketball court. A verbal battle broke 

out, then the Indo-Canadian boys gave chase. Jomar was caught and hit on the head with 

what police have described as a blunt object. He was seventeen and had been in this 

country for just over a year. 

I watch two C B C reporters, both white men, cover the story. I listen to their subtle 

intonations on the word "immigrant", "east Vancouver", "Filipino", "Indo-Canadian" 

"race" and "violence", so the themes become strung together in one long melody of 

Othering and objectifying. I watch the white female principal of the school express her 

regrets and say that although she did not know Jomar, she had been told he was a good 

and helpful student; then I see the white male school district superintendent defend the 

district's efforts to quell racist behaviour amongst their youth, and the white male police 

chief deny this is a racial incident. I do not see, or hear, the faces or voices of other 

students, teachers, parents or activists - not because I am not watching, ready to witness, 

but because they are not there. The authority in this story remains the authority of the 

system: white, middle class and (mostly) male. 

123 



I read two pieces on the death in the Toronto Globe and M a i l , both written by white men: 

"students mourn bright light" says one headline, while "Vancouver and the violence of 

Babel" cries a column on the op-ed pages. The story and its discourses are quickly 

becoming positioned as us and them. The incident is a matter between two "ethnic" 

groups, not whites and people of colour, so the problem lays not with/in us and our 

system, but with them, over there, the immigrant population in distant East Van. This 

discourse is not so very different from the racist and colonial discourses so present in 

Opening Doors - race, class and geographic constructions as an exercise in exclusion. 

Buried in Mark Hume's opinion piece about the death is a telling quote from Ken 

Annandale, a retired principal of Van Tech, another east Vancouver secondary school: 

We don't have the E S L teachers we used to have, we don't have the councilors we used to 
have, and we don't have the police liaison officers we used to have. The bottom line is 
we've got schools full of talented kids and committed teachers, but we are underresourced 
i n terms of dealing with social responsibility (Hume, 2003, p. 15). 

Hume then goes on to say: 

there w i l l be a lot of talk about the need for anti-violence, anti-racism programs in 
Vancouver schools. There w i l l be demands for quick fix responses, when what is needed 
is a broad, long-term commitment to helping new immigrants and and teaching kids of all 
racial backgrounds more about social responsibility. But where w i l l the money come 
from? The provincial government, which is spending $600 million to upgrade a highway, 
can't adequately fund E S L , counseling and other non-core programs... the tragic death 
reminds us that teaching social justice to kids is a task that's never done. 

Students are not "kids", M r . Hume, they are people. And they are not the only ones who 

need to be "taught" about social responsibility and social justice: 

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UNDERFUNDING, O V E R C R O W D I N G , EXHAUSTION, 

CONFUSION, 

DENIAL SILENCE. INVISIBILITY. 

FEAR. 

We must trespass on and move through these educational spaces, navigate them, contest 

them, interrogate them - constantly - if we are going to hold the spaces around us 

accountable for what they teach us, and how we teach in them. And by we, I mean US, 

our "kids", our neighbors, bosses, authorities, governments, monuments, arts and media. 

ARE Y O U READY? 

NOW? 

The struggles continue. 

125 



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Discourses in Transition. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education. V o l . 22, 
N o . 3 

Stanley, T. (1995). White Supremacy and the rhetoric of educational indoctrination: a 
Canadian case study, in Barman, J., Sutherland, N . & Wilson, D. ed. Children, Teachers 
and Schools in the history of British Columbia. Calgary: Detselig Enterprises Ltd. 

Sturken, M . (1991). The Wall, The Screen and The Image: The Vietnam Veterans 
Memorial. Representations. No. 35 

Tatum, B . D . (1997). "Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?" and 
other conversations about race. New York: BasicBooks. 

Taylor, M . & Saarinen, E . (1994). Imagologies. New York: Routledge. 

Varela, F. (1987). Laying down a path in walking, in Thompson, W.I. (ed) GAIA, a Way 
of knowing: Political implications of the new biology. Hudson, N Y : Lindisfarne. 

Young, I . M . (1990). Five faces of oppression. Justice and the politics of difference. 
Princeton: Princeton University Press. 

Ward, J. Raising resisters: the role of truth telling in the psychological development of 
African American girls, in Weis, L . & Fine, M . eds (2000). Construction Sites: 
Excavating race, class and gender among urban youth. New York: Teachers College. 

Willinsky, J. (1999). Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End. 
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 

Willinsky, J. (1999). Curriculum after culture, race, nation. Discourse. Studies in the 
Cultural Politics of Education, 20 (1), 89-112. 
Woodson, S.E. (2000). Towards a critical pedagogy in theatre: children's rights to, in and 
through Drama. Art of the Stage, 11 (3), 8-11. 
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Gallagher, K . & Booth, D., eds. How Theatre Educates: Convergences and 
Counterpoints. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 101-131. 

111 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project: Social Studies 11, 

First Nations Studies 12 
Lesson One: Locating Our Selves, Understanding and Naming Key Concepts of Unit 

Objectives: 
• To encourage students to begin to express and examine their own social identities 
• To allow facilitator to gain an understanding of social make-up of classroom 
• To familiarize students with concepts of power, oppression, lived experience and 

agency through drama games, group debrief and individual reflection 

Materials: 
• One small ball that is easy to toss in a group 
• Nametags 
• "I am From" poem, from Linda Christensen's Reading, Writing, and Rising Up 

resource book 
• Research Feedback Forms 

Process: 70 minutes 

I. Introductions, 10 minutes 
• Introduce myself, give out nametags, set ground rules for safety (respect, trust, 

confidentiality) 
• Game: ball toss in circle; toss ball around group, each person must say the 

name of another member of the group before they toss it to them. 
• Introduce concept of research feedback forms and pseudonym, hand out 

feedback forms 

//. Locating Our Selves, 20 minutes 
• Introduce concept of personal location (race, class, gender etc.) by reading "I 

am From poem" 
• Ask students to write their own "I am from" poem, paragraph or drawing, as 

free expression #1 on feedback form. The piece must include the following: 
one line about where they were born; one line about where they live now; one 
line about something important in their family; one line about something 
important to them. These pieces w i l l not have to be read aloud, but i f a student 
wants to share a piece welcome them. 

///. Introducing Key Concepts of Unit, 20 minutes: 
Power, Oppression, Lived Experience and Agency Through Drama 

* Write above terms on board, but do not explain them until after the games: give students time to 
complete free expression #2 on feedback form* 

Game #1: Power Struggle 
In pairs, find a way to push against each other (shoulder to shoulder, back to back) and 
still keep balanced. Experiment with different body parts (arm to arm, leg to leg, etc.) 



Game# 2: Mirror Hypnosis 
Change partners. Choose a leader and follower. The leader can "hypnotize" the follower 
with one hand. The follower must focus only on the hand, and must follow it no matter 
where it leads (up high, on the floor, in circles). A l l o w both partners to experience 
leading and following. 

Game #3: West Side Story 
F o r m two equal lines facing each other, at one end o f the room. The first person on the 
right o f each line is named leader. The leader from the first row makes a challenge, one 
that is physical and non-verbal (no language), to the opposite row. The members o f the 
first group must copy the challenge together, as loud and large as possible, moving 
forward and pushing the opposite line across to the other end o f the room. Then the other 
line's leader issues a challenge to the line that just lead, with the group members copying 
the action and forcing the first line back to the end o f the room where the game began. If 
time, continue with new leaders. 

IV. Group Debrief: 10 minutes 
Bring students' attention to the terms on board, try to come to a group definition o f each 
term. 
Possible questions/ideas could include: 

• H o w can we connect the words to the drama games? What was inside the drama 
games for you? 

• What is power? In the games, who had it? H o w did they use it? What did it mean 
to you to have it or not have it? 

• What is oppression? In the games, who lived with it? H o w did it feel? 
• H o w did you experience agency in the games, either through your own actions or 

those o f others? 

V. Individual Reflection (feedback forms): 10 minutes 
A s k students to complete feedback forms. Collect and set the scene for following lesson 
(understanding historical connections to contemporary oppression, locating concepts o f 
oppression within a local context) 

1 3 4 



Legacies and Literacies, First Nations Studies 12 
Lesson Two: Understanding Historical contexts of oppression 

Objectives: 
• To familiarize students with concept of oppression as a historical and genealogical 

lived experience, through the process of listening and responding to an oral history 
of a residential school survivor 

• To encourage students to make links between historical oppression and 
contemporary realities 

• To encourage students to reflect on the connection between oppression and lived 
experience 

• To introduce students to concepts of embodied memory and feeling through image 
theatre 

Materials: 
• Mary Anderson's recollection of her first day of school, in Behind Closed Doors: 

Stories from the Kamloops Indian Residential School 
• Research feedback forms #2 

• A large, open work area in which students can move freely 

Process: 70 Minutes 
I. Warm up Blind Games (10 minutes): 

a) Ask students to spread around the room until they find a space that is comfortable 
for them. Tell them to find a spot on the side of the room across from them and 
memorize it, then ask them to close their eyes and move towards that spot. Arms 
must be either across the chest or at the sides. Students must try not to open their 
eyes until they think they have reached their spot. 

b) In pairs, assign one partner to lead and the other to be blind. Decide on a sound 
(no language) that they w i l l use as their guiding signal. The leader moves two 
steps away from his or her partner and begins to move around the room. The blind 
partner closes his or her eyes. Using only the agreed upon sound, the leader must 
safely guide the blind partner around the room. 

c) Debrief by asking students what the experience of leading and being blind made 
them think of, and how they could relate it to concepts of power, oppression, lived 
experience or agency. 

//. Introducing Image Theatre (5 minutes) 
a) What do you see?: one person (teacher, to start), stands in middle of room and 

makes any frozen image with his or her body. Hold it for thirty seconds while 
students call out whatever they see in the image. Emphasize that in image theatre 
any impression or interpretation is valid, as long as it respects the person who is 
making it. Then ask another student to go into the centre and make a shape, and 
ask him or her to hold i f for thirty seconds while other call out responses. 



Continue for a few minutes, allowing several students to work at making and 
showing images. 

b) Complete the Image: Ask a student to make a shape in the centre of the class. Ask 
another person to join the shape, extending it with their body in any way they can. 
Call out "first person go" and ask another person to come join the shape that is left. 
Then call out "first person go" again, and ask for another person to join the new 
shape. Continue until all students have participated. 

III. Free Expression #l(on research feedback form): Memories of School (10 minutes) 
a) Set the tone for the investigation into Mary Anderson's story by asking students 
to remember their earliest memory of school, negative or positive, and to express 
this memory as a poem, story or illustration. No student should be forced to share, 
but i f a student wants to share he or she is welcome. 
b) Extend the exercise by asking students to make images to show this memory -
asking students to create the images simultaneously creates a gallery effect and 
also reduces fear for students nervous about sharing. Explain that later in the class, 
we w i l l use images to respond to telling. 

IV. The telling (5 minutes) 
Ask students to find a comfortable place to sit to listen to telling. Introduce the telling as 
one woman's recollection of her first day at school. Read the telling twice: the first time, 
ask students to think about how Mary's experience is different or similar to their own 
school memory; the second time, ask students to see themselves as a character, or an 
emotion, or a word, or an image in the story. Pause between each reading. 

V. Individual Image Response Theatre (15 minutes) 
a) Ask students to choose what was for them the most powerful, insightful, or 

educational moment from the telling. This can be represented as a character, or a 
word, an image or emotion. Ask each student to make an image, using any level 
or body position, that shows this moment. Explain that this image needs to be 
something they can hold without moving, but make it clear that students can take a 
break to stretch whenever necessary. Explain that the image they start with w i l l 
become a character. 

b) Ask students to hold their image, and to think of a sound (no language) that 
expresses what it feels like to be in this shape. The sound can be any volume or 
emotion. Ask students to give the sound simultaneously, when the teacher claps 
his or her hands. Count to three out loud, then clap your hands. Then move 
slowly through the group, touching students lightly on the shoulder (this is the 
signal for them to give their sound). 

c) Ask students to think of a sentence, beginning with the words "I am afraid o f . . . " 
that expresses what the character behind this shape might be feeling. Follow same 
process as above. 

d) Ask students to think of a sentence, beginning with "I w a n t . . . " . Repeat as above. 
e) Ask students to visualize this character's deepest wish, and to picture an image 

that shows it. Tell them they have three steps (claps) to get from their current 

l J O 



image to the image that shows the character's deepest wish. Students may only 
make one movement or step per clap. G o through the three claps; see which 
students get closest to reaching their wish image. 

VI. Group Image Response Theatre (10 minutes) 
a) A s k one student to show his or her original response image in centre of room. A s k 

the rest of the class to complete this image, either with their own original images 
or with a new image that responds to the ones presented. Keep going until all 
students are part o f the image, so that the class has formed a tableau response to 
Mary's telling. 

b) A s k students to create a sound (non language) that expresses their image. A s k for 
the sounds to be given simultaneously at first, then create move into the tableau 
and touch students on shoulders to ask them to give their sound. Vary speed and 
pattern, sometimes going back to the same image, or asking one image to repeat its 
sound, sometimes moving slowly or quickly between sounds, so that you create a 
"soundscape" o f responses tied to the image. 

c) Staying in the tableau, ask students to begin a dialogue in the roles their images 
have created for them. A s k one student to begin with any sentence, then encourage 
others to respond, filling in the spaces until a conversation takes hold. 

VII. GroupDebrief and Individual Reflection (15 minutes) 
Lead the class in a brief discussion o f the class. Possible questions may include: 

• H o w does hearing Mary's story today make you feel? 
• What does it make you think about school, or childhood? 
• Does it challenge previous conceptions you may have had o f residential schooling? 
• What links can you draw between residential schooling and contemporary First 

Nations issues? 
• W h y should we study stories from the past? 

A s k students to complete and hand in research feedback forms, and set the scene for 
following lesson (understanding lived experience and developing skills o f empathy) 

137 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project 
Lesson Three: First Nations Studies 12, Engaging With Empathy 

Objectives: 
• To encourage students to develop and recognize skills of empathy in 

understanding the residential school experience 
• To encourage students to further explore and identify concept of lived experience 
• To introduce students to theatrical technique of interior monologue 

Materials: 
• Behind Closed Doors: Stories from the Kamloops Indian Residential School (p.85, 

p.161, p.137, p. 127, p. 74, p. 85, p. 80) 

Process: 70 minutes 

Free expression #1: Introduce concept of empathy (10 minutes) 
Read aloud, or write on board, dictionary definition of empathy. Brainstorm with class 
what makes one feel empathy. Ask them to complete free expression exercise, writing 
about a moment in their life when they felt empathy for another person's situation. 

Warm up: Fear and Protection (10 minutes) 
Students secretly choose one other person in the class to be their protector. Students move 
around the room, and each student must stay close to their protector at all times, no matter 
what their protector does. Reverse the game, using fear. Students secretly choose 
someone in the class to be afraid of, and as they move around the room they must stay as 
far as possible from this person. Use this exercise to discuss issues of power, safety, 
agency. 

/. Group tableaux and interior monologues in small groups (20 minutes) 
A s k students to form pairs or small groups. Read short selections from Behind Closed 
Doors to set scene for lesson. Ask each pair or group to form a tableau showing their 
response to each piece. Each time you read a piece, the group has a different leader who 
has the power to sculpt the group according to his or her own response. Move into 
interior monologues by asking students to hold their shape and speak, stream of 
consciousness style, as that shape or image for thirty seconds. Encourage students to say 
whatever comes into their head, and to not stop to think about what they want to say. 
Debrief by asking students to share their experiences during the exercise. D i d anyone 
come close to feeling empathy for his or her character? 

II. Group tableaux and interior monologues as whole class (20 minutes) 
Read stories from p. 80 and p. 85, asking students to create whole class tableaux in 
response to the memories. Try a soundscape activity before moving into interior 
monologues. Ask students to share key words or lines from their monologues. How does 
this exercise get us closer to the experience of empathy? 
///. Debrief, fill out feedback forms (10 minutes) 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project, First Nations Studies 12 
Final Lesson: Understanding multiple perspectives 

Objectives: 
• To encourage students to find complexities within individual experiences of 

residential schooling 
• To introduce "cops in the head" theatrical technique 

Materials 
Behind Closed Doors: Stories from the Kamloops Indian Residential School, p. 85 
(Dorothy Joseph) 

Process: 70 minutes 

Free expression #1, (10 minutes): Think of a time when you had to make a difficult choice 

Warm up: Imitate the oppressor/oppressed (10 minutes) 
Choose a character from any of the tellings that you think was an oppressor (i.e., someone 
who was using power to control the life of another). Begin to imagine how they might 
walk, talk, sit. Take on their character for one minute, moving around the room. Repeat, 
in choosing to play an oppressed character. Debrief by asking questions about the 
privilege to move in and out of peoples' experience. 

/. Dorothy Joseph's telling. (40 minutes) 
Read entire telling once. Ask students to identify key points in telling when different 

characters had to make a choice regarding their actions or words. Create group tableaux, 
interior monologues and soundscapes to depict each scene. Ask students to play the 
conscience, or cops, that might be in the heads of the major characters making choices. 
Improvise scenes with students, in which these cops interact with major characters. Do 
they encourage the action, or lead the characters to make different actions? Debrief by 
discussing the complexities of each character's choice - how do we allow cops to operate 
in our heads? 

Complete feedback forms, closing debrief (10 minutes) 

139 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project, Social Studies 11 
Lesson Two: Understanding Historical contexts of oppression 

Objectives: 
• To familiarize students with concept of oppression as a historical and genealogical 

lived experience 
• To encourage students to make links between historical oppression and 

contemporary realities 
• To encourage students to reflect on the connection between oppression and lived 

experience 
• To introduce students to concepts of embodied memory and feeling through image 

theatre 
Materials: 

• Ray Culos's (p.166), George Nita's (p.20), Gloria Steinberg Harris's (p.130) and 
Elda Battistoni Venturato's (p.47) oral histories from Opening Doors: Vancouver's 
East End 

• Research feedback forms #2 
• A large, open work area in which students can move freely 

Process: 70 Minutes 
• Write quote from Ray Culos on board: "It was an area where immigrants resided 

because of the direction that somebody placed on them - you didn't want all those 
people in the West End, right?" Read George Nita's description of the "dog days 
of discrimination." 

• Use these quote as an opportunity to discuss issues of race and class in the 
development of early Vancouver. Who were the "West Enders"? )? How might 
they have perceived immigrants? Why? What power might they have had to 
control who lived near them? How might they have used this power 
(economically, legally, socially)? How can we connect some of these questions 
and answers to the key concepts of the unit, or the drama games from the previous 
class? 

II. Free Expression #1: Memories of East Vancouver (10 minutes) 
Set the tone for the investigation into the oral histories by asking students to 
remember their earliest memory of either being in or hearing about East 
Vancouver, negative or positive, and to express this memory as a poem, story or 
illustration. No student should be forced to share, but i f a student wants to share 
he or she is welcome. 

III. Warm up Blind Games (10 minutes): 
d) Ask students to spread around the room until they find a space that is comfortable 

for them. Tell them to find a spot on the side of the room across from them and 
memorize it, then ask them to close their eyes and move towards that spot. Arms 
must be either across the chest or at the sides. Students must try not to open their 
eyes until they think they have reached their spot. 



e) In pairs, assign one partner to lead and the other to be blind. Decide on a sound 
(no language) that they w i l l use as their guiding signal. The leader moves two 
steps away from his or her partner and begins to move around the room. The blind 
partner closes his or her eyes. Using only the agreed upon sound, the leader must 
safely guide the blind partner around the room. 

f) Debrief by asking students what the experience of leading and being blind made 
them think of, and how they could relate it to concepts of power, oppression, lived 
experience or agency. 

IV. Introducing Image Theatre (5 minutes) 
c) What do you see?: one person (teacher, to start), stands in middle of room and 

makes any frozen image with his or her body. Hold it for thirty seconds while 
students call out whatever they see in the image. Emphasize that in image theatre 
any impression or interpretation is valid, as long as it respects the person who is 
making it. Then ask another student to go into the centre and make a shape, and 
ask him or her to hold i f for thirty seconds while other call out responses. 
Continue for a few minutes, allowing several students to work at making and 
showing images. 

d) Complete the Image: Ask a student to make a shape in the centre of the class. Ask 
another person to join the shape, extending it with their body in any way they can. 
Call out "first person go" and ask another person to come join the shape that is left. 
Then call out "first person go" again, and ask for another person to join the new 
shape. Continue until all students have participated. 

V. Ida's telling (5 minutes) 
Ask students to find a comfortable place to sit to listen to telling. Introduce the telling as 
one woman's recollections of living with poverty in East Vancouver. Read the telling 
twice: the first time, ask students to think about how the speaker's experience is different 
or similar to their personal memory of East Vancouver; the second time, ask students to 
see themselves as a character, or an emotion, or a word, or an image in the story. Pause 
between each reading. 

VI. Individual Image Response Theatre (15 minutes) 
f) Ask students to choose what was for them the most powerful, insightful, or 

educational moment from the telling. This can be represented as a character, or a 
word, an image or emotion. Ask each student to make an image, using any level 
or body position, that shows this moment. Explain that this image needs to be 
something they can hold without moving, but make it clear that students can take a 
break to stretch whenever necessary. Explain that the image they start with w i l l 
become a character. 

g) Ask students to hold their image, and to think of a sound (no language) that 
expresses what it feels like to be in this shape. The sound can be any volume or 
emotion. Ask students to give the sound simultaneously, when the teacher claps 
his or her hands. Count to three out loud, then clap your hands. Then move 
slowly through the group, touching students lightly on the shoulder (this is the 
signal for them to give their sound). 

141 



h) Ask students to think of a sentence, beginning with the words "I am afraid o f . . . " 
that expresses what the character behind this shape might be feeling. Follow same 
process as above. 

i) Ask students to think of a sentence, beginning with "I w a n t . . . " . Repeat as above, 
j) Ask students to visualize this character's deepest wish, and to picture an image 

that shows it. Tell them they have three steps (claps) to get from their current 
image to the image that shows the character's deepest wish. Students may only 
make one movement or step per clap. Go through the three claps; see which 
students get closest to reaching their wish image. 

Gloria's telling (5 minutes): repeat the process as for the first telling 

VI. Group Image Response Theatre (10 minutes) 
d) Ask one student to show his or her original response image in centre of room. Ask 

the rest of the class to complete this image, either with their own original images 
or with a new image that responds to the ones presented. Keep going until all 
students are part of the image, so that the class has formed a tableau response to 
Gloria's telling. 

e) Ask students to create a sound (non language) that expresses their image. Ask for 
the sounds to be given simultaneously at first, then create move into the tableau 
and touch students on shoulders to ask them to give their sound. Vary speed and 
pattern, sometimes going back to the same image, or asking one image to repeat its 
sound, sometimes moving slowly or quickly between sounds, so that you create a 
"soundscape" of responses tied to the image. 

f) Staying in the tableau, ask students to begin a dialogue in the roles their images 
have created for them. Ask one student to begin with any sentence, then encourage 
others to respond, filling in the spaces until a conversation takes hold. 

VII. GroupDebrief and Individual Reflection (15 minutes) 
Lead the class in a brief discussion of the class. Possible questions may include: 

• How does hearing these stories today make you feel? 
• What does it make you think about how East Vancouver became the place it is 

today? 
• Does it challenge previous conceptions you may have had of the area? 
• What links can you draw between the historical development of East Vancouver 

and today? 
• Why should we study stories from the past? 
• What role did the drama games and exercises have in getting you to think about all 

this? 
Ask students to complete and hand in research feedback forms, and set the scene for 
following lesson (understanding lived experience and developing skills of empathy) 

142 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project 
Lesson Three: Social Studies 11, Engaging With Empathy 

Objectives: 
• To encourage students to develop and recognize skills of empathy in 

understanding class and race difference and discrimination in Vancouver 
• To encourage students to further explore and identify concept of lived experience 
• To introduce students to theatrical technique of interior monologue 

Materials: 

• Opening Doors: Vancouver's East End 

Process: 70 minutes 

Free expression #1: Introduce concept of empathy (10 minutes) 
Read aloud, or write on board, dictionary definition of empathy. Brainstorm with class 
what makes one feel empathy. Ask them to complete free expression exercise, writing 
about a moment in their life when they felt empathy for another person's situation. 
* Write two quotes from Opening Doors (p. 159, Harry Con & p. 132, Gloria Steinberg 
Harris) on board, and read aloud from p.37, Violet Benedetti and p.99, Tadao 
Wakabayashi; these can serve as starting points for the lesson's investigations of class and 
race in Vancouver.* 

Warm up: Fear and Protection (10 minutes) 
Students secretly choose one other person in the class to be their protector. Students move 
around the room, and each student must stay close to their protector at all times, no matter 
what their protector does. Reverse the game, using fear. Students secretly choose 
someone in the class to be afraid of, and as they move around the room they must stay as 
far as possible from this person. Use this exercise to discuss issues of power, safety, 
agency. 

/. Group tableaux and interior monologues individually and in small groups (20 
minutes) 
Read short selections from Opening Doors (p. 164, Ray Culos, p. 36, Violet Benedetti, 
p. 89, Nobue Shiga Minato, p. 131, Gloria Steinberg Harris) to set scene for lesson. For 
the first one or two, ask students to work individually, making shapes to show their 
response to the telling. Ask each pair or group to form a tableau showing their response to 
each piece. Move into interior monologues by asking students to hold their shape and 
speak, stream of consciousness style, as that shape or image for thirty seconds. Encourage 
students to say whatever comes into their head, and to not stop to think about what they 
want to say. For the last two pieces, move the class into pairs or small groups and read the 
tellings. Each time you read a piece, the group has a different leader who has the power to 
sculpt the group according to his or her own response. Try a soundscape activity before 
moving into interior monologues. Debrief by asking students to share their experiences 
during the exercise. D i d anyone come close to feeling empathy for his or her character? 



II. Group tableaux and interior monologues as whole class (20 minutes) 

Read story from p. 119 (Ivy Kaji McAdams) and p. 23 (George Nita - time permitting), 
asking students to create whole class tableaux and monologues in response to the 
memories. Ask students to share key words or lines from their monologues. How does 
this exercise get us closer to the experience of empathy? 

III. Debrief, fill out feedback forms (10 minutes) 

144 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project, Social Studies 11 
Final Lesson: Understanding multiple perspectives 

Objectives: 
• To encourage students to find complexities within individual experiences of 

residential schooling 
• To introduce "cops in the head" theatrical technique 

Materials 

Opening Doors: Vancouver's East End, p. 119 (Ivy Kaji McAdams) 

Process: 70 minutes 
Free expression #1, (10 minutes): Think of a time when you had to make a difficult 
choice... 

Warm up: Imitate the oppressor/oppressed (10 minutes) 
Choose a character from any of the tellings that you think was an oppressor (i.e., someone 
who was using power to control the life of another). Begin to imagine how they might 
walk, talk, sit. Take on their character for one minute, moving around the room. Repeat, 
in choosing to play an oppressed character. Debrief by asking questions about the 
privilege to move in and out of peoples' experience. 

//. Ivy McAdams's telling. (40 minutes) 
Read entire telling once. Ask students to identify key points in telling when different 

characters had to make a choice regarding their actions or words. Create group tableaux, 
interior monologues and soundscapes to depict each scene. Ask students to play the 
conscience, or cops, that might be in the heads of the major characters making choices. 
Improvise scenes with students, in which these cops interact with major characters. Do 
they encourage the action, or lead the characters to make different actions? Debrief by 
discussing the complexities of each character's choice - how do we allow cops to operate 
in our heads? 

Complete feedback forms, closing debrief (10 minutes) 

145 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project: Research Feedback Form #1: 
Social Studies and First Nations Studies 

Tell me who you are! 

N A M E (choose a pen name, and use it each time): 

Free Expression #1:1 am from... 
Write a poem, or paragraph, or make an illustration, to show us something about 
yourself 
Your piece MUST include: 

• one line, sentence or image that shows where you were born 
• one line, sentence or image that shows where you live now 
• one line, sentence or image that tells us something important about your family 
• one line, sentence or image that show something that you value, that is important 

to you 

Free Expression #2: Power, Oppression, Lived Experience and Agency 
Write or draw something, anything that you think of when you read these words on the 
board. What do these words make you see? How do they make you feel? Which one can 
you relate to the most? How? 

Reflection: Choose one moment from the drama games when you felt a direct connection 
to one of the concepts discussed in today's class (power, oppression, lived experience and 
agency) and write one or two paragraphs about it. Which game was it (struggle, hypnosis 
or west side story)? What were you doing (leading or following)? How did you feel... 
and how can you connect these feelings to a concept? 

1 4 6 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project: Research Feedback Form #2, 
First Nations Studies 

Name: (Remember to use the same pen name) 

Free Expression #1: My First Memory of School 
Write a poem, a song, or a story, or create an illustration, that shows or describes the 
earliest memory you have of going to school. It can be either a good memory or a 
difficult one . . . it is up to you. Try to give as much detail as you can - what you saw, 
heard, felt, who was with you, who you wished was with you . . . 

Think about what you knew about residential schools before this lesson. Do you see the 
residential school experience differently after participating in the lesson? How? 

Choose one moment from one of the Drama activities in today's lesson that was 
significant for you, perhaps because it challenged or inspired you in some way, or made 
you feel a powerful emotion. Describe that moment and how it made you feel. What do 
you think you might be able to take from that moment and use in other parts of your life 
(in school, with friends or family . . . ) ? 

147 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project Research Feedback Form #3: 
First Nations Studies 

Name (don't forget your pen name!) 

Free Expression #1: Empathy means the ability to share and understand the feelings of 
another person. Think about a moment in your life when you felt empathy, and write 
about or illustrate that moment. Who was the person? What happened? How did you 
feel? Did you ever get a chance to tell them your feelings? 

i 

Free Expression #2: If you could speak to a residential school survivor today, what 
would you want to say to them? If you could speak to someone who worked in a 
residential school, what would you want to say? 

Choose the line from any one of your interior monologues that was the most important to 
you, and write it here. What were you thinking of when you said that line? What image 
were you making? Why does it stand out for you? How did making that image and 
saying that line make you feel? 

148 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project Research Feedback Form #4: 
First Nations Studies 

Name (or pen name) 

Free Expression #1: Making difficult choices 
Think of a time when you had to make a difficult choice, one that made you feel some . 
conflict inside yourself. Write about or illustrate that choice. What "voices" did you hear 
in your conscience - what did they want you to do? If those "voices" could be specific 
people or characters, who would they be? How did you resolve the conflict? 

Which of the characters in today's telling do you think faced the most difficult choice, and 
the most complicated internal "voices"? How can you connect this character's struggle to 
modern discussions of residential schooling? 

Think about today's "cops in the head" exercise. Which "cop" did you find the most 
realistic and convincing? Why? Write a line or image they made that had an impact on 
you. What insights does this give you into the kinds of choices people make? 

149 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project, First Nations Studies 12: 
Final Reflections 

Name or Pen Name: 

A. Thinking Back.... 
This project asked you to take some big personal risks, both in terms of topics and the 
process used to explore those topics. This form has two pages. The first page asks you to 
reflect on the content of the unit and the second page asks you to reflect on the process of 
learning this material through Drama. 

Think back to the four key concepts of the unit (power, oppression, lived experience and 
agency). Do you understand any of these concepts better after completing the unit? 
Which ones? How? Which concepts would you like to explore iri more detail? Which 
concepts still feel unclear to you? 

One of the goals of this project was to get you thinking about residential schools in ways 
you might not have done in previous classes. Has this happened for you? How? Write 
about the most important insight you feel you have gained into understanding issues 
surrounding residential schools. 

This unit was taught entirely through one resource, a collection of oral histories, or 
peoples' recollections of going to the Kamloops Indian Residential School. What effect 
has listening to these real life memories had on your understanding of the residential 
school experience? How does learning from this resource compare to learning from other 
resources, such as videos or textbooks? 

150 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project, First Nations Studies 12 : 
Final Reflections 

Name or Pen Name: 

B. Looking Forward... 

One of the goals of this unit was to try to learn about concepts of power, oppression, lived 
experience and agency through Drama games and exercises. Describe, in as much detail 
as possible, what it was like to learn this way. Did it make you see or feel things 
differently? How? How did it challenge or inspire you? 

Which drama exercise do you feel had the strongest impact on you (e.g.: interior 
monologue, cops in the head, image theatre)? Write about the image you made or the line 
you spoke in this exercise. How did this exercise affect you and your understanding of the 
unit's concepts or issues? Go into detail! 

Do you think this unit should be taught in other schools? Why? What changes would you 
make? 

Do you have any other questions, comments or reflections? Feel free to write them here! 

151 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project: Research Feedback Form #2, 
Social Studies 11 

Name: (Remember to use the same pen name) 

Free Expression #/: My First Memory of East Vancouver 
Write a poem, a song, or a story, or create an illustration, that shows or describes the 
earliest memory you have of either being in or hearing about East Vancouver. It can be 
either a good memory or a difficult one, it is up to you. Try to give as much detail as you 
can - what you saw, heard, felt, who was with you, who you wished was with you . . . 

Think about what you knew about East Vancouver before this lesson. Do you see the area 
differently after participating in the lesson? How? 

Choose one moment from one of the Drama activities in today's lesson that was 
significant for you, perhaps because it challenged or inspired you in some way, or made 
you feel a powerful emotion. Describe that moment and how it made you feel. What do 
you think you might be able to take from that moment and use in other parts of your life 
(in school, with friends or family . . . ) ? 

152 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project Research Feedback Form #3: 
Social Studies 11 

Name (don't forget your pen name!) 

Free Expression #1: Empathy means the ability to share and understand the feelings o f 
another person. Think about a moment in your life when you felt empathy, and write 
about or illustrate that moment. Who was the person? What happened? H o w did you 
feel? D i d you ever get a chance to tell them your feelings? 

Free Expression #2: Imagine you had a chance to meet any character, major or minor, 
from today's lesson. W h o m would you want to meet? Why? What would you want to 
say to him or her? 

Choose the line from any one o f your interior monologues that was the most important to 
you, and write it here. What were you thinking of when you said that line? What image 
were you making? W h y does it stand out for you? H o w did making that image and 
saying that line make you feel? 

153 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project Research Feedback Form #4: 
Social Studies 11 

Name (or pen name) 

Free Expression #1: Making difficult choices 
Think of a time when you had to make a difficult choice, one that made you feel some 
conflict inside yourself. Write about or illustrate that choice. What "voices" did you hear 
in your conscience - what did they want you to do? If those "voices" could be specific 
people or characters, who would they be? How did you resolve the conflict? 

Which of the characters in today's telling do you think faced the most difficult choice, and 
the most complicated internal "voices"? How can you connect this character's struggle to 
modern discussions of oppression or discrimination in Vancouver and Canada? 

If you played a "cop" in today's exercise, describe the experience. What did you want 
your character to do? Did you get what you wanted? How did it feel to play someone 
with intentions other than your own? 
If you played a character in today's exercise, describe the experience. How easy was it to 
listen to or block out the cops' voices? D i d any comments surprise you? What made you 
do what you did, in the end? 

154 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project, Social Studies 11: 
Final Reflections 

Name or Pen Name: 

A. Thinking Back.... 
This project asked you to take some big personal risks, both in terms of topics and the 
process used to explore those topics. This form has two pages. The first page asks you to 
reflect on the content of the unit and the second page asks you to reflect on the process of 
learning this material through Drama. 

Think back to the four key concepts of the unit (power, oppression, lived experience and 
agency). Do you understand any of these concepts better after completing the unit? 
Which ones? How? Which concepts would you like to explore in more detail? Which 
concepts still feel unclear to you? 

One of the goals of this project was to get you thinking about Vancouver in ways you 
might not have done in previous classes. Has this happened for you? How? Write about 
the most important insight you feel you have gained into understanding issues surrounding 
Vancouver and discrimination in this city. 

This unit was taught entirely through one resource, a collection of oral histories, or 
peoples' recollections of growing up in East Vancouver. What effect has listening to 
these real life memories had on your understanding of the urban experience? How does 
learning from this resource compare to learning from other resources, such as videos or 
textbooks? 

155 



Legacies and Literacies Drama Education Project, Social Studies 11: 
Final Reflections 

Name or Pen Name: 

B. Looking Forward.. 

One of the goals of this unit was to try to learn about concepts of power, oppression, lived 
experience and agency through Drama games and exercises. Describe, in as much detail 
as possible, what it was like to learn this way. Did it make you see or feel things 
differently? How? How did it challenge or inspire you? 

Which drama exercise do you feel had the strongest impact on you (e.g.: interior 
monologue, cops in the head, image theatre)? Write about the image you made or the line 
you spoke in this exercise. How did this exercise affect you and your understanding of the 
unit's concepts or issues? Go into detail! 

Do you think this unit should be taught in other schools? Why? What changes would you 
make? 

Do you have any other questions, comments or reflections? Feel free to write them here! 

156