Confronting Racism, Discrimination and Othering - MICHELLE GOOD

Summary

At this William Alanson White Institute event, Cree writer and Red Pheasant Cree Nation member Michelle Good discusses Canada’s residential-school system, its continuing effects on Indigenous communities, and themes behind her novel Five Little Indians. Tom Hennis moderates, and Dr. Maria Nardone introduces the program.

Residential Schools as Colonial Policy

Good describes the schools as a government-and-church project, modeled in part on the Carlisle school in the United States. She argues that their purpose went beyond assimilation: they were designed to sever Indigenous children from their families, languages, cultures, and communities. Children were compelled to attend, and parents could face penalties for resisting.

Good characterizes the system as genocidal, citing the removal of children as one of the acts included in the postwar genocide conventions.

Abuse and Officially Known Deaths

Good stresses that schools were often isolated and lacked meaningful outside oversight, creating conditions for physical and sexual abuse. She also notes that high mortality rates were reported early on. She recounts a 1907 investigation that warned of severe illness and deaths, and says officials nevertheless continued the policy.

Colonialism, Land, and Resources

Good links the schools to a broader colonial project driven by control of land and resources. She describes policies that destroyed Indigenous livelihoods—including the killing of buffalo and withholding food—to pressure people to accept treaties and make land available for settlement.

She recommends James Daschuk’s Clearing the Plains as a history of these policies.

Collective and Intergenerational Harm

The harm, Good argues, was not limited to individual children. Removing school-age children disrupted the roles of parents, grandparents, and other community members as caregivers, teachers, and transmitters of culture. The loss and trauma affected generations in both directions and continue to shape communities.

She compares trauma to radioactivity: it persists and has a long “half-life.”

Five Little Indians and Life After School

Good explains that she developed the novel’s five central characters as different survivor archetypes, drawing on her legal work and extensive assessments of trauma. The book focuses on what happened after young people were released—often at 16, when government support ended—and left to navigate cities and communities without adequate care.

She reads a passage about Maisie’s return home after ten years away. Although her parents welcome her, the separation has made home and family feel unfamiliar, and the childhood safety she longs for cannot be restored. Good says she chose fiction in part to help readers feel the human impact, not just learn the history.

Healing and Cultural Continuity

The novel’s character Mariah is an Indigenous healer who offers Clara safety and support through cultural traditions and ceremony. Good rejects the idea that such healing is “therapy without training,” describing it instead as grounded in generations of knowledge.

She also emphasizes Indigenous resilience and the role Indigenous people have played in securing change, including legal and educational advances.

Reconciliation and Responsibility

Good criticizes the limited scope of official responses. She argues that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and related programs did not fully address collective harms, and that calls to action concerning missing children and burial sites were not adequately funded.

In her view, Indigenous people have too often had to lead the search for truth and educate non-Indigenous society. She urges allies to take responsibility for their own education and to support justice and relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments that honor treaty commitments.

Resistance and Resilience

Good describes Indigenous communities as continuing to build institutions and protect their rights despite extensive harm. She gives examples of Indigenous-led education and child-welfare initiatives, and closes by emphasizing that Indigenous peoples remain powerful and resilient.

Presenters and Contributors

• Michelle Good — Speaker; Cree writer and member of Red Pheasant Cree Nation
• Tom Hennis — Moderator
• Dr. Maria Nardone — Host and series introduction