Author brings Five Little Indians to the Battlefords Michelle Good addresses the question, ‘why can’t we just get over it?’

By Miguel Fenrich Staff Reporter

Michelle Good, lawyer, activist and author, brought her novel, Five Little Indians, with her to an evening of discussion on March 28 at the North Battleford library to celebrate her novel being chosen for the Saskatchewan Library Association’s One Book, One Province.

“One of the things I used to hear, over and over again ... either in the context of litigation, in the context of dispute resolution hearings, in the context of comments and newspaper articles and so on, ‘why can’t we just get over it?’”

When Good, a member of Red Pheasant First Nation, first heard it, she br ushed it aside, summing it up to some “ignorant fool,” but she noticed how often she’d hear it.

“I realized that that anthem of annoyance, if you will, was coming from a deep failure to understand what residential schools were and how they impacted Indigenous communities.” And Good decided to answer the question, wanting to illustrate first that this was not the first thing that happened to Indigenous people in Canada.

“What is the colonial tool kit ... that has been used against Indigenous people around the world, not just here?” Good asked.

Colonialism in Canada

“The real heart of colonialism gets lost,” Good said, going back to the very basics, which include her definition of colonialism.

“The policy or practice of acquiring full, or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.”

Good believes that residential schools were only an aspect of that colonialism’s attempt

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