Check this story out!
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/05/21/thunder-bay-hair.html
This is clearly an assault on a vulnerable child and a personal attack on the values of a first nation’s child, his family, their cultural and spiritual heritage, and an unfortunate reminder of the conditions that other native children experienced in residential schools, orphanages, and foster homes. Where a euro-centric validation of what constitute humans defined the affirmative culture and what constitutes family, churches, laws, states, and the orders of society, whereupon theses supposed care takers of our children called them infidels, heathens and savages, and cut their hair to kill the "Indian in the Child" After 500 and some years of worthlessness, of not worthy of "being" We first people of this continent survived your systems assaults against our being, but we lost much as so many of our people lost their sense of worth, their self-esteem, self factualization, and were positioned to skid row alleys, bars, unemployment, and barely secure low paying jobs, Fighting constantly in life to survive the racism, bigotry, physical attacks for the length of my hair, the colour of my skin and for me simply being Indian. This narrative included me as a baby, infant, child, teenager , man, and now a much older university educated man who had to work four times as hard to survive the tricks and weapons of the white person and his/her system of control and containment. Sue the assistant, the school the whole dam system for this assault on this vulnerable child. Miigweech, all my relations.
3 comments:
Donald, I disagree with you a little about the suing. I don't mean that I don't think it should be done. It's just that I think it is a second-best option which leaves room for doubt because the standard of proof required for civil prosecution is merely the balance of probabilities. As one of the commentators said under the CBC article, anyone who thinks this was not assault has probably had a bit too much taken off at the top. I think the second most important thing for now (the first being to give the boy the extra love and family and community support he must need right now) is to force the Crown to bring criminal charges, and to see them through to the only result any sane person would accept. The cruelty and illegality of this act needs to be made clear beyond any doubt, and the state must not be given the option of sitting on the fence while two private parties slug it out.
The teacher's aide displayed a total lack of good judgement: 1. She had no business touching the child or his hair; 2. The parents had already informed the school staff that the boy and his older brother were growing their hair long in order to take part of the First Nation dances; 3. In the fall, the teacher's aide had already demonstrated disrespect toward the boys' long hair and Native culture by ridiculing the older brother's length of hair and speaking of her disapproval of boys having long hair; 4. She chopped off 10 cm of the boy's hair. Hair grows about 1.5cm (.5 inch) per month - about 15 cm or 6 inches per year. He won't be able to braid his front hair for his headdress for this summer's First Nations ceremonial dances.
BTW, Canadian press and CBC sucks. Their news article made this incident seem trivial and the Thunder Bay mom to be overreacting. The news reports done by Teresa Smith (Canwest News Service) and Sarah Elizabeth Brown (Continental Newspaper) told a more complete info background.
I have updated my blog with addresses folks can write to if they are interested in encouraging the institutions involved to do the right thing. I personally believe that the school, the school board, the police and the crown attorney, all of whom should be in the business of protecting children should be pushing for assault charges to be laid. I am not saying peple have to agree with my idea of what shoud be done, but as I am following the blogs on this story I have noticed many people calling for a variety of actions and remedies. I think it's important we let the insitututions know what happened is not acceptable.
For addresses to write to go to:
http://crazybitchesrus.blogspot.com/2009/05/lets-tell-them-this-was-assault-and.html
Post a Comment