False Lenses & Single Stories

My schooling and upbringing created many lenses in me, most of which I am now actively trying to rid myself of. I was directly taught that the signing of the treaties was a happy affair, where the Indigenous people welcomed the colonists with open arms and everyone was pleased with the outcome. I learned from my mother that Indigenous people are all poor and dangerous. I never questioned the disparity between these two lessons. Yet, it left me with the lense that Indigenous people who are in suffering placed themselves there. I learned through the class resources, textbooks, and literature that white was the normal colour to be. Others were “other.” This left me with the lens that I am somehow inherently superior. I am working to unlearn these biases through the pursuit of knowledge. I traveled to China a few years ago, to a city with very few foreigners and got to experience being the “minority” for a month. This helped to shift my perspective. Now I am reading a variety of Indigenous literature, and of course learning true histories here at school.

The “single story” in my school was that of middle to upper class white people. As I said all of our resources were whitewashed, and our literature was written by white people. Boys were also much more frequently represented than girls. I did grow up thinking my gender was somehow the lesser one. We did read one book from the perspective of a Black slave in fifth grade. I was fascinated by the elements of a different cultural backdrop. However, this book was written by a white woman. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be a part of a minoritized group within the education I had. To be surrounded by stories and representations of a single group that you aren’t a part of would be very damaging.