Joan Crate
Autore di Black Apple
Opere di Joan Crate
Opere correlate
All My Relations: An Anthology of Contemporary Canadian Native Prose (1990) — Collaboratore — 59 copie
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Sesso
- female
Utenti
Recensioni
Premi e riconoscimenti
Potrebbero anche piacerti
Autori correlati
Statistiche
- Opere
- 7
- Opere correlate
- 3
- Utenti
- 65
- Popolarità
- #261,994
- Voto
- 3.4
- Recensioni
- 3
- ISBN
- 16
So why is this particular book important? Because it shows that there were individual people (like Mother Grace) who genuinely believed she was helping the children and who did her best to ensure they were fed, educated and not abused. Here is a woman who was indoctrinated from birth about salvation of the immortal soul through Jesus, about priests being the embodiment of God on earth...she is (to a more benevolent extent) a victim of a system that channeled her way of thinking and her beliefs. She did her best in difficult circumstances. Should she have known better? Probably.
And that is the main reason this book is important. Despite the relatively good treatment Rose received, and the advantages Mother Grace secured for her, we see a young woman torn from her family who misses them terribly throughout her life. We see a young aboriginal person struggling to understand who she really is, where she belongs, how to best live her life, learning how to make her own decisions and to trust her own judgement. That is one of the tragic legacies of residential schools: they stole the identities of those who survived; they stunted the growth of independence, decision-making, self-confidence and trust. That is one part of why so many survivors, and their children and grandchildren have had to work so hard to reclaim their cultural and personal heritage.
So, for those who say that many former students were not abused, that many received a good education; for those who try to find the good in the system, this book is an eye-opener that even the good was not really so good for the vast majority of students.… (altro)