Analyzing an Orange Shirt Day Tweet from the RCMP

Orange Shirt Day was yesterday, and it was amazing to see educators recognizing the day, raising awareness about the horrible conditions that children faced in Residential Schools, and taking action for Indigenous children today.

Here is one example I saw:

Nancy Steinhauer, principal of the Mabin School in Toronto, shared this lesson about how to use Orange Shirt Day to move towards advocacy and action.

I appreciate how the SK teacher here connected Orange Shirt Day with the present injustices against Indigenous children, specifically the Federal Government's inequitable funding practices and the horrible conditions many Indigenous children are still asked to attend school in. 

I noticed yesterday that Orange Shirt Day is now so well known that many institutions, governments, and organizations make statements in support of the day.

This tweet below issued by the RCMP provides a perfect opportunity to engage in critical analysis about such statements with your students. 

Perhaps you might notice as I and many others have that the words "sent away" are doing a lot of work here. 

Here are some questions I have about this Tweet: 
1. How did Indigenous children come to arrive at Residential Schools? 
2. What compelled them to attend? 
3. What was the role of the RCMP in this process?
4. What conversation needs to be started? Where else are those conversations already being held? 
5. How is the use of the passive voice in this Tweet operating? 

Also:
What is preformative or optical allyship and how do we know when we, someone else, or an organization is engaging in it?

As a final comment, I will leave you with an image from Prince Edward Island newspaper The Guardian in July 2018 of Cree artist Kent Monkman standing in front of his painting, "The Scream".