Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.
On Sept. 18, some 15 schools in the Toronto District School Board sent students on a field trip to attend the Grassy Narrows River Run, a rally organized by members of the Grassy Narrows First Nation of northwestern Ontario.
The demonstration is an effort by the First Nation to garner public support and to demand more action from Queen’s Park, as it continues to suffer the debilitating effects of mercury poisoning caused by effluent dumped into its river system by a nearby paper mill in the 1960s.
According to the permission forms that parents were asked to sign, the outing was intended to “deepen our students’ understanding of contemporary Indigenous struggles and the importance of community-led initiatives.”
Things went sideways. While it’s hard to reconstruct precisely what happened, video footage and first-person accounts reveal that some rally participants turned to the pro-Palestinian cause, and that some students and teachers joined in. In one video clip, students can be seen faithfully following a chanter’s instructions to “Repeat after me: From Turtle Island to Palestine, occupation is a crime.”
Predictably, a maelstrom ensued. Social media lit up with conflicting claims about the nature of the rally, accusations of attempted indoctrination by the school board and calls for teacher firings. As the TDSB tripped over itself with public apologies, apoplectic parents protested in front of its headquarters and an indignant Premier Doug Ford instructed the Ministry of Education to investigate.
At a special meeting of TDSB trustees last Wednesday, emotions ran high. “To be completely clear, the antisemitism displayed was heinous, the hurt is profound, the humiliation of our children is unforgivable,” Trustee Alexandra Lulka Rotman said.
So much for Grassy Narrows. Its brief moment in the sun was completely overshadowed by a mudslinging match over school board policies and Middle East politics.
The incident does not reflect well on the TDSB, which has made diversity, equity and inclusion its brand and committed loudly to the project of reconciliation. It has agreed to co-operate fully with the Ministry’s investigation, to review all policies relating to the field trip gone wrong and to take “appropriate action” against any employees who violated existing standards.
But the TDSB should broaden its lens. This may be less a matter of flawed policies and procedures or a few misguided teachers, than of a school board culture that conflates solidarity with knowledge. Even if the Grassy Narrows River Run had not veered into the charged territory of the war in Gaza, the question remains: Why are students being sent to rallies in the first place?
The TDSB is big on gestures: orange T-shirts, land acknowledgments, days of significance. There’s nothing wrong with these, but they’re no substitute for learning. A teacher friend who, for years, has taught the Grade 11 English course on Indigenous literature (which is mandatory for TDSB students as of this year) routinely spends the first few weeks of the class teaching Canadian history. She finds that students are familiar with the terms “residential schools” and “genocide,” but often don’t know what they represent.
It can’t be easy teaching contemporary issues in these polarized times, and Premier Ford’s admonition that students “should be in the classroom learning about reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, the whole shebang” is condescending and facile.
But the job of educators is not to impart their convictions on students. Rather it is to empower students to develop their own and the first step on that path is knowledge. As popular as demonstrations may be in the performative culture of social media, they don’t typically promote a greater understanding of issues. In fact, a rally that draws a line between the people of Grassy Narrows and Gaza does the opposite, by eliding the histories of these peoples and presenting them as symbols of oppression and victimization.
The people of Grassy Narrows are not symbols. They are a community that has suffered horribly at the hands of racist policy and willful neglect and is fighting back. Educators who want to do justice to this First Nation’s story will highlight its resilience, evident in the legal actions it has taken against both the provincial and federal governments. They will have students explore the history of resource management in this country, as well as Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Teachers who want to incorporate the voices of Grassy Narrow community members have several documentaries to choose from – including one by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.
It may not be as fun as a rally, but it’s an education. And in the long run, well-informed students will have more to contribute to the project of reconciliation – and civic life generally – than ones who have been standing on the sidelines of rallies.