Introduction

Jennifer Pettit

Operating from the 1830s to 1970, the Mohawk Institute, Canada’s first and longest-running residential school, and a model for the residential school system, still stands today as part of the Woodland Cultural Centre (WCC) in what is now known as Brantford, Ontario. The Mohawk Institute had, and continues to have, a significant impact on the students who attended and their families and communities. Yet, though it existed as a residential school for almost a century and a half, most people know little about what went on “behind the bricks” of the Institute. This is no accident. As determined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Canada has historically downplayed or told outright mistruths about its settler-colonial past, at the heart of which was the residential school system that removed over 130,000 students from their homes and communities.

Like the TRC, the authors contributing to this collection believe this needs to change. Assembled and guided by Tuscarora historian Richard (Rick) W. Hill, Sr., Behind the Bricks brings together experts in a wide variety of areas to tell a more complete history of the school than has hitherto been published. The most unique feature of this book is that it brings together non-Indigenous writers and Haudenosaunee scholars from Six Nations who have been working on various aspects of the Mohawk Institute’s history for decades. In doing so, it seeks to bring these separate studies into conversation with each other and make these bodies of work more accessible. The scope of the book is broad, covering an array of topics, such as the architecture and archaeology of the Institute, student experiences at the school, religion, food, etc. In Behind the Bricks, you will read not only about the school but about the students, the teachers, and the changing historical context in which the Mohawk Institute and other residential schools operated. While Behind the Bricks can of course be read in its entirety, individual chapters also stand on their own.

Behind the Bricks begins with a memoir, introduced by John Moses, a member of the Delaware and Upper Mohawk bands from the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, and written by his father, Russ Moses, who attended the Mohawk Institute in the 1940s. Russ’s father attended the school in the 1910s, and his father before him in the 1880s, so John is the first of his family who was not a student at the Mohawk Institute. Despite this, the school continues to have a significant impact on him and his family and community. The memoir concludes with Russ’s reminder that “This is not my story, but yours,” calling attention to the fact that the truth of residential schools is something that should be known to all Canadians.

Following Moses’s memoir, part 1, “Historical Overview and Context of the Mohawk Institute,” begins with two overview chapters by historian Jennifer Pettit, who started writing about the Mohawk Institute in her 1993 master’s thesis at the University of Western Ontario. The first of these chapters, “‘To Shake Off the Rude Habits of Savage Life’: The Foundations of the Mohawk Institute to the Early 1900s,” traces the beginnings of the Mohawk Institute in present-day Brantford, Ontario, from its inception in the 1830s through to the early years of the twentieth century, when the second Mohawk Institute building was burned to the ground by students, and government aspirations for residential schools began to move from assimilation to a policy of segregation. The goals of church and state authorities and administrators over time, as well as the goals of community members, are analyzed in this introductory chapter, as are community and student responses to the school until the turn of the century. The second background chapter, “‘The Difficulties of Making an Indian into a White Man, Were Not Thoroughly Appreciated’: The Mohawk Institute, 1904 to the Present,” continues by following and analyzing the history of the school from the opening of the third and final school building in 1904 to the closure of the Mohawk Institute in 1970. The school’s legacy, the government’s apology and settlement for student survivors, and the TRC’s findings are also addressed. The chapter concludes that the school failed all three parties involved—church, government, and community.

Part 2, “Teachers, Curriculum, and Tools of Control,” consists of three chapters. The first, by historian Alison Norman, entitled “The Indian Normal School: The Role of the Mohawk Institute in the Training of Indigenous Teachers in the Late Nineteenth Century,” describes teacher training as a priority for principals Abraham Nelles and Robert Ashton. The Mohawk Institute worked to educate high-performing students to continue their education and become teachers within the Institute, and later in day schools at Grand River and beyond. From little-known instructors to prominent teachers like Isaac Bearfoot, these students had a significant impact on their communities as educators. Norman stresses, however, that their success came despite their residential school experience, not because of it.

The next chapter, “Teaching Control and Service: The Use of Military Training at the Mohawk Institute,” by Evan Habkirk, examines the use of military training at the Mohawk Institute. Habkirk concludes that this training was used as a tool to control Indigenous students while demonstrating to the non-Indigenous public that the school was “civilizing” students and having a positive effect on the children. In reality, military training served only to hide the negative experiences of students.

In the final chapter in part 2, “‘New Weapons’: Race, Indigeneity, and Intelligence Testing at the Mohawk Institute, 1920–1949,” Alexandra Giancarlo assesses how intelligence testing affected the quality of education provided to Indigenous students and the curriculum of the Mohawk Institute and residential schools more broadly. Giancarlo explains how school authority figures used the “science” of intelligence to justify and legitimize a policy of segregation of Indigenous students and lower-quality “special” curricula well below the standards for non-Indigenous students in this period.

Part 3, “The Building, the Grounds, and Commemoration,” begins with a chapter by Magdalena Miłosz entitled “A ‘Model’ School: An Architectural History of the Mohawk Institute.” Miłosz analyzes the architectural history of the Mohawk Institute, studying who imagined, built, and maintained the school’s buildings. She describes the important role that school architecture played not only in the experiences of students but also in advancing the broader goals of settler-colonial authorities.

The final chapter in part 3, “The Stewardship, Preservation, and Commemoration of the Mohawk Institute,” by Cody Groat, examines how the Mohawk Institute has been remembered and memorialized. In 1972, the Institute was the first residential school to be recognized by the Province of Ontario through a heritage designation, and in 2013, the WCC, built on the site of the former residential school, launched the “Save the Evidence” campaign with the goal of supporting the restoration of the former Mohawk Institute school building. Despite being the longest-running residential school in Canada, and one of the few such schools still standing, the Mohawk Institute has not been designated a national historic site.

Part 4, “Survival and Resistance,” provides examples of how students responded to the school. In “Ten Years of Student Resistance at the Mohawk Institute, 1903–1913,” Diana Castillo examines student opposition during an important decade in the school’s history. In addition to the destruction of the school by students via a fire, this decade also saw the prosecution of principal A. Nelles Ashton, who was tried and found guilty of harming students Ruth and Hazel Miller, who ran away from the Mohawk Institute and were severely punished by Ashton upon their return. These incidents helped bring about a move to more government control and oversight of the school.

In the next chapter, “ęhǫwadihsadǫ ne:ˀhniˀ gadigyenǫ:gyeˀs ganahaǫgwęˀ ęyagǫnhehgǫhǫ:k / They Buried Them, but They the Seeds Floated Around What Will Sustain Them,” Haudenosaunee community members and scholars Teri Lyn Morrow, Bonnie Freeman, and Sandra Juutilainen explore student experiences and perceptions of gardens, farming, and food, and how this has affected their lives and families after attending the Mohawk Institute. They stress the importance of food sovereignty and access and community-led programs to the understanding of and advancement of reconciliation.

Part 5 of Behind the Bricks consists of three chapters that examine the impact of the New England Company on the Mohawk Institute. This part of the book begins with a chapter by Thomas Peace entitled “A Model to Follow? The Sussex Vale Indian School.” Built in 1787 in Sussex Vale, New Brunswick, by the New England Company, the same missionary society that would go on to build the Mohawk Institute, this school helps us to understand how and why the Mohawk Institute was created. Designed as a residential facility intended for the removal of children from their communities and families, and anchored in indentured servitude and facing several allegations of sexual assault, Sussex Vale ended in failure in 1826. As a result, the New England Company looked west to the Grand River, where they founded the Mohawk Institute in the 1830s in partnership with some of the Six Nations community (including the Six Nations’ Council), though other community members rejected the school from the start. In this chapter, Peace traces the New England Company’s aspirations for its school at Grand River and the impact of Sussex Vale on both the Mohawk Institute and the residential school system that grew from it.

In the next chapter, “Robert Ashton, the New England Company, and the Mohawk Institute, 1872–1910,” historian William Acres examines Robert Ashton, superintendent of the Mohawk Institute for almost forty years. This chapter analyzes a school authority figure, a topic often ignored in residential school histories. Acres traces Ashton’s vision for the Institute, his dealings with the New England Company, and the many troubles during his tenure, including the burning down of the Institute by disgruntled students.

Acres also authored the final chapter in part 5, entitled “The Lands of the Mohawk Institute: Robert Ashton and the Demise of the New England Company’s ‘Station,’ 1891–1922.” This chapter examines the land and properties of the New England Company at their Grand River Station. Conflicts over these lands were exacerbated by Ashton’s choice to manage the Mohawk Institute more as a “Victorian agricultural reformatory” than a school. This approach, combined with a lack of consultation with the Six Nations community, resulted in a school that was a far cry from what the Six Nations had hoped for when the Institute was envisioned.

Part 6, “Student Experiences and Voices,” begins with another chapter by Thomas Peace entitled “Life at the Mohawk Institute During the 1860s.” This chapter was created as part of the Documenting the Early Residential Schools project, in which Peace and his students at Huron University College, in partnership with the WCC and others, transcribed the Mohawk Institute’s only surviving attendance records from the 1800s. In the absence of survivor testimony, it is difficult to understand student experiences of the residential school system. This is especially the case for students who attended the school during the nineteenth century. This chapter details how the Mohawk Institute register covering 1860–73 provides a window into the life of over four hundred children who attended the school during this period, and touches on such topics as attendance, sickness, death, student activities, academics, runaways, and visitor observations. Peace concludes that there was no singular student experience at the Mohawk Institute during these years.

Drawing on materials recovered from the building during recent renovations and artifacts from an archaeological assessment, the next chapter, “Collecting the Evidence: Restoration and Archaeology at the Mohawk Institute,” written by Sarah Clarke, Paul Racher, and Tara Froman, examines the archaeology of the Mohawk Institute, exploring the lived experiences of the students at the school through objects. Water damage at the Institute in 2017 necessitated an extensive renovation of the school, and no archaeological assessment had been completed before this time. The archaeological study completed as part of the renovation has already uncovered over thirty-five thousand artifacts, ranging from the pre-colonial Indigenous occupation of this land, through the residential school era, to the present. While ongoing, the archaeological assessment has much to tell us about student life at the Mohawk Institute.

The next chapter in part 6, “Collective Trauma and the Role of Religion in the Mohawk Institute Experience,” by Wendy Fletcher, assesses the role that religion played in the socialization and harm of children at the Mohawk Institute. As this chapter demonstrates, notwithstanding the de facto lack of a signatory religious partner at the Mohawk Institute between 1922 and 1970, religion held a complex and multi-faceted place in the narrative of the Mohawk Institute, from the perspective of both those who wielded power and those who were harmed. Fletcher uses collective trauma theory as a vehicle to understand the experience of the survivors of the Mohawk Institute and concludes that religion was the framework for the collective traumatization of students through the destruction of their culture through a “civilization” process managed in a Christian context.

In the final chapter, “Concluding Voices: Survivor Stories of Life Behind the Bricks,” Six Nations historian Richard (Rick) W. Hill, Sr. shares excerpts from a variety of interviews with former students. These are gathered from several sources, including Elizabeth Graham’s book The Mush Hole: Life at Two Residential Schools, as well as interviews with former Mohawk Institute students conducted by the WCC. These oral history testimonies reveal shared themes such as hunger, loneliness, and abuse, and provide us with an insider’s view of daily life at the school. Standing on their own with little interpretation, these interviews serve as a testament to the strength and resilience of those who survived their time at the Mohawk Institute, something they never should have had to face as children.

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It is important to note that many of the authors of Behind the Bricks are non-Indigenous settler scholars who have benefited (and continue to benefit) from Canada’s colonial past. We have attempted to grapple with this and approach our work in a manner that is respectful and produces a much more truthful assessment of the Mohawk Institute. In this journey, our work has been led and guided by Richard (Rick) W. Hill, Sr., a member of the Six Nations community, and co-editor of Behind the Bricks. Together, we formed the Mohawk Institute Research Group with the aim of sharing research related to the Mohawk Institute (both previously conducted and new) and making this information available to the public. We hope we have written a book that benefits, rather than takes from or harms, the Six Nations community and that challenges past histories that justify settler colonialism.

Research methodology varies from chapter to chapter, but primary source analysis (including government and church documents, artifacts, and oral testimony) forms the basis of the research for the book. While many of these sources were produced by church and state authorities with their own biases and a goal of using residential schools to eradicate Indigenous culture and legitimize non-Indigenous rule, we have read these sources critically and juxtaposed them with oral testimony and non-written sources such as artwork created by survivors of the Mohawk Institute, as well as archaeological findings.

Photographs from various years of the Mohawk Institute’s history have also been utilized and are found throughout Behind the Bricks. Some of these photographs are informal and taken by amateurs, while others were created by official church or state photographers. John Berger and Jean Mohr have written that “a photograph is a meeting place where the interests of the photographer, the photographed, the viewer and those who are using the photographs are often contradictory.”¹ This is the case for the photographs included in Behind the Bricks. Some of these images were used as propaganda to convince church and state administrators and the public that the school’s “civilization” program was succeeding and thus may not provide a “true” view of what went on behind the bricks of the Mohawk Institute. However, even these posed photographs sometimes tell us more than the photographer intended as they are another means of assessing administrators’ goals for the school. In choosing which photos to include and which to leave out, we have attempted to be cognizant of the potential value of including photographs and drawings for our readers, while being mindful not to re-victimize former students.

Indeed, one of our goals for Behind the Bricks is for readers of this book not just to observe from a distance, but to take what they have learned and make concrete actions toward truth and reconciliation. Paulette Regan has written that we must be aware of “appropriating survivors’ pain in voyeuristic ways that enable non-Indigenous people to feel good about feeling bad, but engender no critical awareness of themselves as colonial beneficiaries who bear a responsibility to address the inequities and injustices from which they have profited.”² For too long, many histories of Canada have ignored or downplayed how non-Indigenous people have benefited from the residential school system and schools such as the Mohawk Institute.

Behind the Bricks thus aims to fill a gap in residential school literature. Despite the school’s importance to Canada’s history and the global history of colonial schooling, no comparable text is available. Behind the Bricks rests on a wide foundation of books about the residential school system, including works such as J. R. Miller’s Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (1996); Agnes Grant’s No End of Grief: Native Residential Schools in Canada (1996); John Milloy’s A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System (1999); and the many works produced more recently as part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, such as A Knock on the Door: The Essential History of Residential Schools from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2016) and the TRC’s extensive six-volume final report, which provides a detailed historical overview of the residential school system in Canada.³ More narrowly, many articles and books have focused on specific aspects of residential school history, such as health and sport. Many memoirs have also been written by former students. While there are case studies of individual schools such as Williams Lake, relatively little has been written about the Mohawk Institute specifically.

The two works that have to date provided the most complete examination of the Mohawk Institute are Jennifer Pettit’s 1993 master’s thesis, “From Longhouse to Schoolhouse: The Mohawk Institute, 1934–1970,” and Elizabeth Graham’s The Mush Hole: Life at Two Residential Schools (1997). Graham’s book includes not only a brief narrative history of the Mohawk Institute and the Mount Elgin school but also an extensive collection of documents from government and church authorities, as well as the transcripts of interviews with sixty former students at the schools. Behind the Bricks builds on these works and is notable for the broad number of topics covered and for its focus on the early, middle, and later years of the residential school system, unlike many studies that tend to favour the more recent period. Behind the Bricks is also unique in that it is an edited collection with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors rather than a single-author book, which is the case for many works that focus on the residential school system in Canada.

Behind the Bricks concludes with several appendices and a list of suggested readings for those who wish to continue to research and explore the history of the Mohawk Institute. Also included is a reproduction of Haudenosaunee scholar Keith Jamieson’s important 1987 essay “History of Six Nations Education.” This source was one of the first published by the WCC and sold to visitors, and it includes community knowledge, primary source research, and a section on Haudenosaunee history from Tom Hill, the director of the WCC at the time. As it is out of print, we have reproduced it here for the benefit of those wishing to learn more. None of our research on the Mohawk Institute would have been possible without the work of the Woodland Cultural Centre over the decades; and for that reason, among others, all proceeds from the sale of this book will go to the WCC.

We hope that Behind the Bricks contributes to the “truth” aspect of truth and reconciliation and inspires readers to continue their journey of learning about not only the Mohawk Institute and the residential school system more broadly but also the history of settler colonialism and its continued influence in Canada today. Without this truth, there can be no reconciliation.

notes

1. 1 John Berger and Jean Mohr, Another Way of Telling (Pantheon, 1982), 7, quoted in Molly Fraust, “Visual Propaganda at the Carlisle Indian School,” in Visualizing a Mission: Artifacts and Imagery of the Carlisle Indian School, 1879 to 1918, ed. Molly Fraust, Stephanie Latini, Kathleen McWeeney, Kathryn M. Moyer, Laura Turner, and Antonia Valdes-Dapena (Trout Gallery, 2004), 19.

2. 2 Paulette Regan, Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada (UBC Press, 2010), 47.

3. 3 Detailed publication information about these sources can be found in the “Suggested Reading” section of Behind the Bricks.