Annotated Bibliography

Message of Acknowledgment and Appreciation

It is with great gratitude that Scouts Canada would like to acknowledge the insights we have received from organizations and individuals who have guided us. We have never talked about these issues. But after 100+ years, we finally opened ourselves up to first listen to our own Indigenous members, and then were graciously guided by Indigenous peoples. They have been generous enough to believe in us, just enough, to give us feedback for improvement. Our relationship was critical but challenging, and we failed them and the diverse expectations in many ways, but we owe so much to their patience and contribution.

In 2020, Scouts Canada began the journey of listening and healing our relationship with Indigenous peoples. Recognizing the importance of guidance and collaboration, the Advisory Committee was formed. Our Advisors brought a wealth of talent, excellence, and lived experience from their respective perspectives. Their dynamic set of perspectives included urban, Métis, rural, emphasis on the insights and work generated from MMIW efforts (Murdered, Missing Indigenous Women), regions, on-reserve, off-reserve, creative, and corporate. Scouts Canada is grateful to the Advisory Committee members for their guidance, honesty and truth as we work to build a more inclusive future.  

We also acknowledge that this group does not necessarily capture the full spectrum of diversity across First Nations, Métis, and Inuit perspectives. To ensure our learning was informed by the diverse experiences across our Indigenous members, Scouts Canada began with organization-wide Listening Sessions. These sessions began in July 2021 and concluded in January 2022. Through these sessions we heard feedback on Scout Canada’s approach to Reconciliation and heard a strong desire for increased knowledge. The Listening Sessions further communicated that Scouts Canada was in a state of “needing to learn more” in order to create meaningful change along with an action plan to move forward. We appreciate all participants’ willingness to share with us their experiences and guidance on the path to continued learning. 

Alexander, K., & Logan McCallum, M. (2020, December 3). A structural pandemic: On statues, colonial violence, and the importance of history (part II). Active History. https://activehistory.ca/blog/2020/12/03/a-structural-pandemic-on-statues-colonial-violence-and-the-importance-of-history/#_edn4

This is Part 2 of 3 of 'A Structural Pandemic' written by historians Mary Jane Logan McCallum and Kristine Alexander. McCallum and Alexander began the series with the introduction “we are writing as historians – one Indigenous (McCallum) and one settler (Alexander) – whose lives and careers have been shaped by the legacies of British imperialism and Canadian settler colonialism.” Part 2 continues a historical review of Scouting and Guiding with attention drawn to Scouting in Canada. In this publication is it stated “During a Canadian tour in 1923, both Lord Baden-Powell and his wife Olave (leader of the Girl Guide movement) noted during a speech given to Girl Guides that the Scout and Guide movements were “particularly useful in the schools for Red Indian children, just as [they] had also proved useful in a like manner on the West Coast of Africa and in Baghdad.'" This has been part of identifying the root cause of why Scouting would be aligned with Residential schools at such a large scale..

Alexander, K. & Scouts Canada. (2023, May 19). Scouting history - Kristine Alexander (E. Genova, Interviewer) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTBcpRBk8Is

In this 36-minute interview Evelisa Genova, Scouts Canada’s Director of Diversity and Inclusion, speaks with Dr. Kristine Alexander, Director of the Institute for Child and Youth Studies, University of Lethbridge as one part of the Truth: Acknowledging Scouting History in Canada. This interview is a part of a multi-part series where historians reviewed archives of speeches given by Scouting leaders, newspaper articles, published magazines and handbooks both in Canada and the UK. These conversations contributed to the leaning of the difficult truths behind the origins of Scouting in Canada, the colonial framework from which it was developed, and the intent of its program, specifically the colonial objectives when delivered to Indigenous youth.

Brune, M. (2020, July 22). Pulling down our monuments. Sierra Club. https://www.sierraclub.org/michael-brune/2020/07/john-muir-early-history-sierra-club

Organizations have a responsibility to learn and understand the history from which they were developed. As land-based programs continue to acknowledge the exclusion of and harm to Indigenous peoples, we develop a deeper understanding of the hurtful impact of these actions had.

In the article Pulling Down Our Monuments, Michael Brune, former Executive Director of Sierra Club (2010-2021), opens a reflection on Sierra Club’s early history through ‘truth-telling’. The narrative reviews the organization’s monumental figures and leaders and their connections to racism and white supremacy, as well as classism as it related to outdoor recreation. Brune continues to state “the whiteness and privilege of our early membership fed into a very dangerous idea -- one that’s still circulating today. It’s the idea that exploring, enjoying, and protecting the outdoors can be separated from human affairs. Such willful ignorance is what allows some people to shut their eyes to the reality that the wild places we love are also the ancestral homelands of Native peoples, forced off their lands in the decades or centuries before they became national parks.” Brune makes a commitment that following posts will explore how the organization evolved on issues of immigration and population control, environmental justice and Indigenous sovereignty as well as how Sierra Club is “working to center the voices of people we have historically ignored, so we can begin repairing some of the harms done.” Sierra Club has taken great strides in their equity and inclusion journey over a number of years. As an organization that is also connected to values of conservation, stewardship, and the outdoors in a North American context, it was an important place to learn how our own similar values could be handled and discussed.

Elkins, C. (2022, July 11). The violent legacy of the British Empire (T. Gross, Interviewer). NPR; WHYY. https://www.npr.org/2022/07/11/1110863022/the-violent-legacy-of-the-british-empire

Available through NPR, the first 30 minutes of this program Terry Gross interviewers Caroline Elkins, Harvard historian and author of book Legacy of Violence. The interview is captioned online with the description: “Reflecting on the British Empire covering 24% of the Earth's land mass by 1920, Elkins says the British rulers portrayed themselves as benevolent, but used systematic violence to maintain control.”  This piece is critical in gaining insight into what the normalized cultural and societal beliefs were that Baden Powell lived and operated under.

Greening, C. M. (2009). Develop yourself: Anxiety and performance masculinity in Robert Baden-Powell’s scouting for boys [MA Thesis]. Memorial University of Newfoundland.

C.M Greening’s Master’s thesis for Memorial University of Newfoundland provides a focus on Baden Powell and the spirit of enforcing a British White Boyhood intention for Scouting.

Abstract: Robert Baden-Powell's seminal instructional tract Scouting For Boys has been in print continuously for one century, and is cited as one of the English-speaking world's bestselling books of the twentieth century. The youth movement that Scouting For Boys has spawned is now one of the largest and recognizable of such organizations in the world. Drawing on the sociological and psychoanalytical theories in Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and Judith Butler's Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex,' the theory of performative identity is used to outline the myriad of anxieties and contradictions inherent in this text. A performative analysis of Scouting For Boys' various discursive modes- as well as close readings of its key illustrations- allow for an understanding of the ways in which this text seeks to indoctrinate youth while simultaneously immunizing them from unwholesome outside influences. This thesis illustrates that Scouting For Boys' success depends on performativity (acting out the “ideal” of boyhood), even while denying performativity's possibilities, and that the text itself is a crystallized example of the ways in which performance theories work.

Inclusion + reconciliation summary report. Scouts Canada. (2022, April 22).         

https://scoutsca.s3.amazonaws.com/2022/04/1222_din_listening_report.pdf

Scouts Canada began the learning process through organization-wide Listening     Sessions. These sessions took place between July 2021 and January 2022.  Following       Scouts Canada’s commitment to Reconciliation, invitations were shared to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit members to two Listening Sessions. Next, the process was opened to include broader membership to gain their current suggestions, needs and/or concerns on        Reconciliation as the starting point of our Inclusion journey. Details of these sessions are available in the Inclusion + Reconciliation Summary Report.

Indigenous Corporate Training Inc. (2018, August 16). What reconciliation is and what it is not. Indigenous Corporate Training Inc. https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/what-reconciliation-is-and-what-it-is-not

2023 marked Indigenous Corporate Training Inc’s 20th year of operations. ICT’s mission is to “guide, train, and support learners in Working Effectively With Indigenous Peoples®.” With a vision of “Continuing to be the trusted guide for learners in their quest for reconciliation and making the world a better place for future generations.” In 2021 ITC won the 2021 Indigenous Business of the Year Award (3-10 employee category) from the British Columbia Achievement Foundation. The referenced training article outlines 23 different descriptors of reconciliation, including: complex; continuous; about working towards solidarity as a society and country; taking responsibility as a person, a parent, an employee, an employer to: never utter, accept, or ignore a racist comment and never utter, accept, or ignore a statement that includes a stereotype about Indigenous Peoples; the responsibility of every Canadian; acknowledging the past and ensuring that history never repeats; learning about Indigenous history; recognition and support of the deep connections Indigenous Peoples have to the land; and, an opportunity to move forward. The publication also stated 7 bullets of what ‘Reconciliation is not’: a trend; a single gesture, action, or statement; a box to be ticked; about blame; about guilt; about the loss of rights for non-Indigenous Canadians; someone else’s responsibility.

Piers, L. (2016). Mowgli and the Wolf Cubs as imperial products: Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894) as an inspiration for Robert Baden-Powell’s The Wolf Cub’s Handbook (1916) [MA Thesis]. Ghent University.

The Master's thesis by L. Piers was completed under advisement from Dr. Marianne Van Remoortel professor at Ghent University. It explores the link between The Jungle Book (1894) and imperialism. Piers highlights the deep imperialist values on which the Scouting framework is designed, by exploring the historical context of the Victorian Age on Baden-Powell’s and Kipling’s writing and how these authors aimed to transfer their thinking to the next generations.

Trepanier, J. (2015). Building Boys, Building Canada: The Boy Scout Movement in Canada, 1908-1970 [PHD dissertation]. York University.

Excerpts from Abstract: “This dissertation examines Canada’s largest organization for boys of the twentieth century - the Boy Scouts. In Scouting for Boys [1908], Robert Baden Powell argued that Scouting provided a universal model for countries of the British Empire to develop the physical, mental and spiritual development of boys. The process of transplanting Baden-Powell’s movement to Canada led to the establishment of two separate organizations, divided along linguistic and religious lines. The movement also extended its reach to the Canadian North as missionaries and government officials adopted the movement in residential and day schools across the country… The Canadian Scout movement provides a compelling lens to understand how language, religion, race and class shaped the construction of Canadian boyhoods. This dissertation taps into the archival records of the Boy Scout movement, Canadian churches, state records, and private collections from the 1910s through to the 1960s to examine the motivations, objectives and tensions within the Scout movement’s network of institutional and cultural support…. Northern nationalists, meanwhile, latched onto the Scout movement as a means of promoting particular “ideas of north” for southern boys and northern Aboriginal and Inuit boys.”

Trepanier, J. & Scouts Canada. (2023, May 19). Scouting History - James Trepanier (E. Genova, Interviewer) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS34d0teJig

In this 34-minute interview Evelisa Genova, Scouts Canada’s Director of Diversity and Inclusion, speaks with Dr. James Trepanier, Curator, Canadian Museum of History as one part of the Truth: Acknowledging Scouting History in Canada. This interview is a part of a two-part series where historians reviewed archives of speeches given by Scouting leaders, newspaper articles, published magazines and handbooks both in Canada and the UK. These conversations contributed to the leaning of the difficult truths behind the origins of Scouting in Canada, the colonial framework from which it was developed and the intent of its program, specifically as it relates to Indigenous youth.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015a). Canada’s Residential Schools: The history, part 1 origins to 1939: The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada volume 1. McGill-Queen’s University Press. https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Volume_1_History_Part_1_English_Web.pdf

In 2015 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) created a series of reports on Canada's Residential Schools. In Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 1 origins to 1939, early history of Scouts’ involvement in residential schools is referenced: Scouting taking place at the Qu'Appelle school in Saskatchewan (p. 312), the incorporation of the military hats and belts (left over from the cadet corps) into the children’s scouting uniforms (p. 370) and a photograph of Boy Scouts at the File Hills, Saskatchewan, school, (p. 610).

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015b). Canada’s Residential Schools: The history, part 2 1939 to 2000: The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada volume 1. McGill-Queen’s University Press. https://nctr.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Volume_1_History_Part_2_English_Web.pdf

In 2015 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) created a series of reports on Canada's Residential Schools. In Canada’s Residential Schools: The history, part 2 1939 to 2000, detailed descriptions of Boy Scouts of Canada's involvement in residential schools are outlined as well as illustrated through photographic evidence. On page 488 it is stated “Three other prominent institutions—the Junior Red Cross, the Girl Guides, and the Boy Scouts—also had significant residential school presences…The aim of the Scouts and Guides was to build character and develop a strong sense of citizenship and service, while providing youngsters with handicraft skills and building their health and strength. The organizations were hierarchical in structure, with a series of steps through which members could advance, and, given their uniforms and codes of honour and duty, almost military in nature. From the outset of the movement, it had been thought that the Boy Scouts might serve as future soldiers, and the Girl Guides were to be future mothers of the nation.” In 1950 the Boy Scouts of Canada reported having “eight Indian Boy Scout Troops and two Indian Wolf Cub Packs. Six of the eight Scout troops were associated with residential schools, as were both Cub packs. Most of the schools were in northern Canada” (p. 489). On page 489 it is also stated that “Those involved in the Boy Scouts movement believed that they were helping to transform Aboriginal youngsters.”

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015c). Canada’s Residential Schools: The Inuit and Northern experience: The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada volume 2. McGill-Queen’s University Press. https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Volume_2_Inuit_and_Northern_English_Web.pdf

In Canada’s Residential Schools: The Inuit and Northern Experience, Chapter 4 Student Life at the Mission Schools provides summaries of individual memoirs from former students. On page 43 one account begins to describe involvement with Scouts as an extra-curricular activity. On page 44 it is stated, “The lay teachers also introduced Scouting at the school, purchasing uniforms for the boys with their own money. “We made bone rings for the scarves we wore with uniforms. Our Boy Scout activities were a lot of fun, and a big change from the usual routine of the residential school.” The 2015 report further articulates the rooted connection between Scouting and the government’s Residential School’s, stating “A policy document from 1964 observed that Northern Affairs encouraged “Scouts and Guides, Cadets, hobby clubs, film showings, interschools competitions, field days, as some of the activities which offer these students opportunities for acculturation experiences beyond those given in school” (p. 122).

Woodger, K. (2017). Whiteness and ambiguous Canadianization: The Boy Scouts Association and the Canadian Cadet Organization. Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 28, 95–126. https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/jcha/2017-v28-n1-jcha03928/1050896ar/

Abstract: Between the 1920s and late 1960s, the Boy Scouts Association of Canada and the Canadian Cadet Movement proved to be ambiguous institutions for the Canadianization of certain ethnic minorities. While nationally, as agents of Anglo-conformity and settler colonialism, these movements remained rooted in a British Canadian identity, at the local level they gradually became more accommodating of particular white ethnic identities. However, this did not extend to non-white cadets and scouts, especially Aboriginal boys, who were targets for assimilation into the larger Anglo-Canadian mainstream. As such, this is in part a study of Anglo-Canadian whiteness and the ways in which shifting definitions of whiteness and national identity can be viewed through the local accommodations made by two Anglo-Canadian youth movements. Aboriginal youth were subject to assimilationist programs within cadet and scout units, but, at the local level, both national movements provided greater cultural accommodation to white ethnic and religious minorities, primarily through the intervention of ethnic and religious institutions that sponsored their own Cadet or Scout units. This began during the interwar years with two of the largest white linguistic and religious minority groups, French Canadian Catholics and Jewish-Canadians, spreading to white ethnic Eastern Europeans during the postwar period.