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Sean Carleton is a historian, teacher and union organizer. He coauthored May Day: A Graphic History of Protest, with Robin Folvik and Mark Leier. The illustrators are Sam Bradd and Trevor McKilligan.
BOOKS
Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia (UBC Press, 2022) $89.95 h.c. 9780774868075
Graphic History Collective and David Lester. 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2019.
Graphic History Collective, with Althea Balmes, Gord Hill, Orion Keresztesi, and David Lester. Direct Action Gets the Goods: A Graphic History of the Strike in Canada. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2019.
Graphic History Collective, with Paul Buhle, eds. Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working-Class Struggle. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2016.
May Day: a Graphic History of Protest (Between the Lines, 2012) $6.95 9781926662909
[BCBW 2022]
Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia by Sean Carleton (UBC Press)
Between the mid-19th century and early 20th century, schooling for Indigenous and non-Indigenous children and youth had distinct yet complementary functions in building BC. Sean Carleton dives deep into different kinds of state schooling for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples—public schools, Indian Day Schools, and Indian Residential Schools in Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia. Carleton’s book has been shortlisted for the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing. 9780774868082
BC BookWorld: What was your focus in writing this book?
Sean Carleton: Lessons in Legitimacy contributes to the important project of truth-telling about Canada’s history of schooling and settler capitalism in the era of reconciliation. The book brings the histories of Indigenous and non-Indigenous schooling, often studied separately, into one analytical frame. In doing so, Lessons in Legitimacy examines the overlapping roles played by different kinds of state schooling—including Indian Day Schools and Indian Residential Schools as well as public schools—in building British Columbia, first as a British colony and then as Canada’s westernmost province, between 1849 and 1930.
BW: What was education like for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in BC after 1849?
SC: The book shows that government control over schooling was neither predetermined nor straightforwardly imposed. Instead, it offers a long view of the development of state-supported schooling as a struggle and negotiated compromise. Colonial officials in the 1850s and 1860s promoted colonization by building roads and bridges and establishing police forces and courthouses, but they also grudgingly agreed to assist schooling efforts in limited ways, especially for labouring classes, to appease disgruntled settlers. As more working-class families moved to BC, many parents lobbied the government to fund nondenominational schooling. Unable to afford private schools, they eventually ceded authority over education to the provincial government by the early 1900s. At the same time, the federal government, responsible for “Indian” education, supported the expansion of missionary schooling for Indigenous peoples and collaborated with churches to create new day and residential schools focused on coercive assimilation. By 1930, schooling in BC shifted from mostly ad hoc and voluntary operations to compulsory state-controlled institutions.
BW: Can you give an example of how education was used to shape BC?
SC: Different kinds of state schooling shared the goal of imparting key lessons in legitimacy: the formal and informal teachings that justified the colonial project and normalized the unequal social relations of settler capitalism as commonsensical. Students got lessons in everything from history and civics to home economics and calisthenics in ways that built their character and taught them to take up and accept unequal roles in the emerging social order. Schooling not only preserved social order in the colonies, it actively helped produce—and legitimate—that order. Schools, for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, thus served as important laboratories for learning colonial legitimacy.
BW: How does understanding the history of education in BC help us in furthering reconciliation?
SC: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was clear: without truth there can be no justice, healing or genuine reconciliation. Building on the work of the TRC, Lessons in Legitimacy shows how truth-telling about the past can help strengthen Indigenous-settler relations in the present and facilitate meaningful reconciliation for the future.
BW: What else do we need to know about Lessons in Legitimacy?
SC: I am donating all book royalties to the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, which is based in North Vancouver: www.irsss.ca
[BCBW 2023]
BOOKS
Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia (UBC Press, 2022) $89.95 h.c. 9780774868075
Graphic History Collective and David Lester. 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2019.
Graphic History Collective, with Althea Balmes, Gord Hill, Orion Keresztesi, and David Lester. Direct Action Gets the Goods: A Graphic History of the Strike in Canada. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2019.
Graphic History Collective, with Paul Buhle, eds. Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working-Class Struggle. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2016.
May Day: a Graphic History of Protest (Between the Lines, 2012) $6.95 9781926662909
[BCBW 2022]
Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia by Sean Carleton (UBC Press)
Between the mid-19th century and early 20th century, schooling for Indigenous and non-Indigenous children and youth had distinct yet complementary functions in building BC. Sean Carleton dives deep into different kinds of state schooling for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples—public schools, Indian Day Schools, and Indian Residential Schools in Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia. Carleton’s book has been shortlisted for the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing. 9780774868082
BC BookWorld: What was your focus in writing this book?
Sean Carleton: Lessons in Legitimacy contributes to the important project of truth-telling about Canada’s history of schooling and settler capitalism in the era of reconciliation. The book brings the histories of Indigenous and non-Indigenous schooling, often studied separately, into one analytical frame. In doing so, Lessons in Legitimacy examines the overlapping roles played by different kinds of state schooling—including Indian Day Schools and Indian Residential Schools as well as public schools—in building British Columbia, first as a British colony and then as Canada’s westernmost province, between 1849 and 1930.
BW: What was education like for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in BC after 1849?
SC: The book shows that government control over schooling was neither predetermined nor straightforwardly imposed. Instead, it offers a long view of the development of state-supported schooling as a struggle and negotiated compromise. Colonial officials in the 1850s and 1860s promoted colonization by building roads and bridges and establishing police forces and courthouses, but they also grudgingly agreed to assist schooling efforts in limited ways, especially for labouring classes, to appease disgruntled settlers. As more working-class families moved to BC, many parents lobbied the government to fund nondenominational schooling. Unable to afford private schools, they eventually ceded authority over education to the provincial government by the early 1900s. At the same time, the federal government, responsible for “Indian” education, supported the expansion of missionary schooling for Indigenous peoples and collaborated with churches to create new day and residential schools focused on coercive assimilation. By 1930, schooling in BC shifted from mostly ad hoc and voluntary operations to compulsory state-controlled institutions.
BW: Can you give an example of how education was used to shape BC?
SC: Different kinds of state schooling shared the goal of imparting key lessons in legitimacy: the formal and informal teachings that justified the colonial project and normalized the unequal social relations of settler capitalism as commonsensical. Students got lessons in everything from history and civics to home economics and calisthenics in ways that built their character and taught them to take up and accept unequal roles in the emerging social order. Schooling not only preserved social order in the colonies, it actively helped produce—and legitimate—that order. Schools, for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, thus served as important laboratories for learning colonial legitimacy.
BW: How does understanding the history of education in BC help us in furthering reconciliation?
SC: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was clear: without truth there can be no justice, healing or genuine reconciliation. Building on the work of the TRC, Lessons in Legitimacy shows how truth-telling about the past can help strengthen Indigenous-settler relations in the present and facilitate meaningful reconciliation for the future.
BW: What else do we need to know about Lessons in Legitimacy?
SC: I am donating all book royalties to the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, which is based in North Vancouver: www.irsss.ca
[BCBW 2023]
