Calgary student calls on MRU to stop teaching ‘positives’ of residential schools

CALGARY – A Mount Royal University student is calling for change when it comes to teaching about residential schools.

“I am the daughter of a residential school survivor and I know there is nothing positive out of those schools,” said Brye Robertson.

Robertson was floored when she received a worksheet in her introduction to Indigenous studies course at Mount Royal University that read: “Positive and Negative effects of Residential Schools.”

In 2021 a professor at the university I attend is teaching misinformation about residential schools. A Thread:

My professor gave us a work sheet to look over and read after class and I seen a statement that said “positives and negatives of residential schools”

1/10 pic.twitter.com/KonyxBeHtY

— Iviviq ᐃᕕᕕᖅ ❄️ (@UrbanInuk) June 26, 2021

Robertson asked her professor, Barbara Barnes, for clarification.

“The email she sent me back, I was appalled. It was that females learned to clean, so diseases don’t take over and learned to cook. And another one was they learned to speak English. But it was not a willingness to speak English. I don’t speak my Indigenous language, Invialuktun, because of the time my mom spent in residential school,” she adds.

Robertson says her professor wrote that residential school survivors are also resilient and strong because of their experience.

“We always hear resiliency. It is such a common word to be thrown around. Wouldn’t it be beautiful if we were not forced to be resilient?” Robertson responded.

Robertson says this worksheet was never de-constructed in class nor with her peers. She fears it could lead to misinformation as many students were non-Indigenous.

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“I worry about other students that don’t know and then they take that information into the world as truth and hold it as truth because it came from an Indigenous professor.”

CityNews has seen these original emails and verified the email which belonged to Barbara Barnes at her Mount Royal email account.

We reached out to Barnes, who is listed as teaching Indigenous studies courses for over a decade at universities in Calgary, for comment. She declined, allowing the university to comment on her behalf.

“Mount Royal University takes student concerns seriously and we have internal processes in place to address these. Curriculum is approved by the Institution and delivered by faculty members who each bring different experiences and approaches to the content,” said Mount Royal University in a statement.

Gabrielle Lindstrom, who has taught Indigenous studies courses at Mount Royal University and the University of Calgary says she can’t think of any positive effects of residential schools.

“That would be equivalent to saying is there a positive to cultural genocide.”

Lindstrom says these conversations are happening under the guise of academic freedom.

“Morally it is wrong to have those kinds of discussions. Are there benefits to reading and writing? Absolutely. But we could’ve learned to read and write without being raped, without having our culture and our language beaten out of us.”

Robertson says she reached out to the student advocacy office at Mount Royal University and did not feel like her concerns were taken seriously. She is considering finishing her degree elsewhere.