“My grade 8 son brought a homework sheet home the other day — they’re always sheets…”

Goddamn those worksheets, right?

“…he’d copied from the board the following facts which were presented as fact:”

Facts as fact. Cool.

“…that European and European settlers were colonialists, pillagers of the land who knew only buying and selling and didn’t respect mother earth.”

#recordscratch (in Eyre’s head)

“He asked me if it was okay if he could write that he associated with his pioneer great- and great-great-grandparents…I said yes, of course…”

Oh my god the poor little thing; he must have been so confused. How will he ever bounce back from that kind of trauma?

“…they had known poverty in Norway or Ukraine, or war in Germany, that they had come here and tilled the land that produced food for everybody and loved their families and tried to create whole, stable communities in this province, and had loved it here.”

Please.

First of all, what does being poor in Scandinavia have to do with anything?

I freely admit I struggle with the term “settler” and its relatively new negative connotation. All eight of my great-grandparents were European immigrants to Saskatchewan, and I am grateful that their hard work building a homestead landed me where I am today.

However, I’ve also grown to understand that my ancestors, along with thousands of other European immigrants (aka settlers), forcibly displaced Saskatchewan’s indigenous residents (to put it simply), creating a chain of negative events that still feeds the cycle of racism, poverty and lack of privilege (also put simply) plaguing our indigenous population today. And I feel really, really shitty about that. If I could go back and undo my own good fortune so as not to destroy the lives of others I would, but I can’t. Therefore, I do my best to channel my regret through reconciliation, which to me means educating myself, and making sure my kids are educated, about the true context of our personal history and its impact on Saskatchewan and Canada’s indigenous nations, and about the treaties.

But who cares because English was Eyre’s Baba’s second language and the struggle is real, people:

“My two grandmothers went off to school (in Saskatchewan) speaking only Norwegian and Ukrainian respectively, to one-room schoolhouses… And yet one of my grannies became a business owner, what’s known today as a female entrepreneur. The other was brilliant in math.”

Oh for the love of…are we seriously doing this again?

Eyre went down this road last fall, sitting in a room full of Saskatchewan’s Northern and Indigenous residents who were trying, seemingly in vain, to get the reality of their circumstances through her skull. Her response, which she defended in the Legislature, was to compare their grandmothers’ history to that of her own, who she says didn’t have “lunch money” or “running water”.

The implication of that little outburst, of course, being, “and look at me – I’m successful, highly educated, financially secure and ultimately very privileged… what’s your problem?”

Just as, if not more troubling is the fact that Eyre’s more recent speech was given as Saskatchewan’s Minister of Education, in which she is threatening treaty education in the curriculum and broadly and politically condemning teachers, administrators and her own Ministry.

Is it any wonder that the Saskatchewan Teacher’s Federation is running a campaign pushing their thousands of members to buy Sask Party memberships to Pick a Premier? If its successful and enough teachers buy memberships, it is entirely feasible that they will do just that – and I promise you it won’t be the status quo.

If I’m a teacher – hell, if I’m a Saskatchewan resident with cognitive thinking skills and even a moderate emotional IQ – I’m buying a Sask Party membership right now and making sure anyone who thinks and talks like what I detailed above hits the backbench and stays there.

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Lots and lots of you have asked if I would create a Patreon page, which again, is totally mind-blowing and I’m not crying, you’re crying. I looked into it, and it’s pretty cool – basically a subscription-donation service for people who make stuff, I guess like this blog – so I did. I mean seriously, if everyone who read this blog regularly threw in a few bucks a month, um.. well things would amp up around here, let’s just leave it at that. Anyway, here is my brand new and shiny Patreon link, and thank you so much for support and for reading.

Like what you’re reading? I’d love to keep doing it for free, but I have to feed my kids, and these posts take forever to write. By clicking the Donate button below, your generous contribution makes sure I can keep doing both.

For those of you who care, I’m Tammy Robert. I’m a writer, but pay the bills consulting in media and public relations. Feel free to email me anytime about either at tammyrobert@live.ca.