Resumen de Indigenous resistance and racist schooling on the borders of empires: Coast Salish cultural survival
The Coast Salish people of British Columbia and Washington State inhabit a borderlands region where they have negotiated the sometimes contrasting policies of two empires. Families belong to more than one village and must travel across the Canada-USA border frequently for ceremonies and events that bind the Coast Salish world together. Both British and American colonialism required categorising, dividing, and confining Aboriginal people. Residential schools were the ultimate tools for removing Indigenous peoples from the land as they were designed to eradicate the memory of languages and place-based epistemologies containing the Indigenous meanings of time and reality. This article focuses on some contrasting educational policies and contexts across the Canada-USA border and shows some strategies Coast Salish people have used for resisting assimilation and returning to their own understandings of place and identity. Some of the community strategies for resisting assimilation have included reclaiming government boarding schools as a way to escape the racism of integrated public schools. Coast Salish efforts at decolonising education have concentrated on the maintenance of cultural boundaries, challenging neoliberal assumptions about history while defending treaties and land claims.
