A recommendation by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney's handpicked curriculum advisors to strip all mention of residential schools from the province's Kindergarten-to-grade 4 curriculum "will perpetuate systemic racism through whitewashing," says Melissa Purcell, the Alberta Teachers Association's staff officer for Indigenous education.
'The Indian Residential School system was created to erase the cultures, histories, languages, and perspectives of Indigenous peoples within Canada, and these recommendations perpetuate that erasure," Purcell said in a statement from the ATA yesterday. "These recommendations cannot be taken seriously and must be rejected outright."
