![]() Yes” The song ends with sounds of geese flying and corresponds to images of Wenjack fleeing the school and starting on his journey home. For example, the song “Swing Set,” and the corresponding illustrations, narrate the ingenuity of students as they organized their escape: “Over the rise on the lawn/Someone dragging someone/The kid looking me in the eye/Teacher not looking at anyone… Now?/Not yet/ Now?!/ Now. In showing how Wenjack and two of his fellow students actively plotted to run away from the school, The Secret Path provides a rare representation of student agency. Media coverage usually focuses on the abuse in schools, and rightly so, but this can perpetuate a view of Indigenous peoples as helpless victims. The Secret Path also highlights student resistance in residential schools. And while looking to celebrities to champion social causes can be risky, there is no denying that Downie’s popularity in “White Canada,” to use his words, will surely expose new audiences to the legacy of residential schooling. Faced with his own mortality, Downie decided to channel his energy into finishing the project and doing right by Wenjack, including working with his family, especially his sister Pearl, to raise money to aid reconciliation efforts. ![]() Then, last year, Downie was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. The idea was to use Downie’s caché as a celebrity to shine a brighter light on the horrific history of residential schools to support the work of the TRC. Downie quickly wrote a series of poems that became the basis for the project. The project started three years ago when Downie’s brother first came across Wenjack’s story and relayed it to Gord, who was immediately taken to Chanie Wenjack. Building on the recommendations of the TRC, The Secret Path is primarily concerned with raising awareness about residential schools and generating money to support Indigenous peoples in the healing process. In this review, I offer a critical analysis of the strengths and limitations of The Secret Path to promote further dialogue about popular representations of residential school history and their role in reconciliation. After reviewing the project, however, I share Hayden King’s concerns about Downie’s use of Wenjack and the history of residential schools to offer a narrow and settler-curated vision of reconciliation. As a historian of education and as someone with a family member navigating the ongoing legacy of residential schools, I was excited that Downie was using his star power to raise awareness about the legacy of Indian Residential Schools in Canada. Like many people, I had high hopes for the solo record, graphic novel, and short animated film that comprise the project. It seems fitting, then, that this past Sunday, October 23 (the 50th anniversary of his death) I attended a packed event in Trent’s Wenjack Theatre to watch CBC’s livestream of The Secret Path, Gord Downie’s new multimedia project about Chanie Wenjack. It was not until I moved to Ontario and started teaching in a classroom at Trent University dedicated to Wenjack’s memory that I, as a settler, first heard his harrowing story: he died of exposure while trying to walk the 600 kilometers from the school to his home in Ogoki Post in northern Ontario. I did not learn about Chanie Wenjack (misnamed “Charlie” by his teachers), a 12-year-old Anishinaabe boy who ran away from the Cecilia Jeffery Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ontario in October 1966. ![]() ![]() Paul’s Indian Residential School in North Vancouver, I did not learn about residential schools as a child.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |