The Critical Role of Residential Schools in the Colonial Toolkit

Five years after the release of the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, systemic discrimination against Indigenous peoples continued seemingly unabated in 2020. In her new novel, Five Little Indians, which was longlisted for the Giller Prize, Michelle Good offers a deeply personal insight into the impacts of the residential school system and the role it played as a key implement in the colonial toolkit. She will read from the novel and discuss the issues it raises with fellow writer Kateri Akiwenze-Damm. This is the first in a series of events that Michelle Good will host and present for Green College in the coming months, as J. V. Clyne Lecturer (Virtually) in Residence.

Michelle Good is of Cree ancestry, a descendent of the Battle River Cree and a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation. She has worked with indigenous organizations since she was a teenager and at forty decided to approach that work in a different way obtaining her law degree from UBC at 43. She has practiced law in the public and private sector since then, primarily advocating for Residential School Survivors.

She graduated from UBC with a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing MFA in 2014 where her novel Five Little Indians first started taking shape. Her poetry, and short stories have appeared in a number of publications. Her first novel, Five Little Indians won the HarperCollins/UBC Best New Fiction Prize and her poetry has been included in Best Canadian Poetry in Canada 2016 and Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in Canada 2017.

Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm is Anishinaabe from the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, Chippewas of Nawash First Nation at Neyaashiinigmiing on the Saugeen Peninsula in southwestern Ontario. She is an Assistant Professor, Creative Writing, Indigenous Literatures and Oral traditions in the English Department at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. She is the founder, Publisher, and Managing Editor of Kegedonce Press, an Indigenous publishing company that has been producing literary books by Indigenous writers from across Canada and internationally since 1993. Kateri is a well known writer, a spoken word artist, a librettist, and a mentor to writers through her work as an publisher, professor, and editor. She has done readings, performances, and speaking engagements around the world. Her 2015 book of short fiction, The Stone Collection, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was a finalist for a Sarton Literary Award. She wrote the Globe and Mail opinion piece, “The cultural appropriation debate is over. It’s time for action,” the graphic novel, Nimkii, about children caught in the CAS Scoops, for the anthology This Place: 150 Years Retold, and is working on a second collection of short fiction. (Re)Generation: The Poetry of Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, collected and with an introduction by Dallas Hunt, will be released this year by Wilfrid University Press. Kateri was one of the jurors for the inaugural Indigenous Voices Awards as well as for the 2018 Commonwealth Writers Short Story Awards. Kateri is the proud mother of two loving and creative boys.

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