Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Douglas Sanderson’s book Valley of the Birdtail (HarperCollins, 2022) won the Dafoe Prize and the Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize. It was a finalist for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.
LH: What is Valley of the Birdtail about and why should people read it?
DS: Valley is a history of Canada. The two Manitoba communities that we follow, Rossburn and Waywayseecappo, were both founded around the same time. We track family members and follow them over 150 years, right up to the present day, to show how government policy favours one population over the other.
LH: Andrew, you recently said you learned absolutely nothing about Indigenous people in history class. I assume there have been a lot of changes to how this subject is taught. Do you think Valley of the Birdtail addresses a gap that still exists in how the education system teaches Indigenous issues?
AS: We’ve met with a lot of teachers in recent months. And we asked them ‘How do you reach young people on these issues?’ The first thing they’ll say is you need to tell good stories. Stories are how younger people are going to learn. I really do think we’ve written a super accessible and moving story about the history of Canada and the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in a way that is going to reach young people.
LH: One of the themes of Valley of the Birdtail is that it’s never too late to learn and change. Do you think Canada does enough to educate older generations and new immigrants on Canada’s history with Indigenous peoples?
DS: My sense is that the immigrant population tends to be better informed than residents. The immigration exam has been updated over the years. It requires them to know there are Indigenous people, that they have entered into treaties, that there is a section of the Constitution dedicated to Indigenous rights.
One of the things I’ve discovered in doing this book tour is that almost no one knows anything about Canadian history, but almost everybody thinks they’re fully informed.
LH: Your book spends a lot of time examining education policy. You use the example of Rossburn and Waywayseecappo to illustrate how equalizing school funding can rapidly lead to more equal student outcomes. The federal government has taken steps toward equalizing school funding everywhere. Are you optimistic that equality of educational opportunities is on the horizon?
DS: I’m optimistic that the math of it, if it stays on track, will lead to equal funding. I don’t know that that means equal opportunity because reserve schools for the most part are far away. It costs more money to educate students when the resources are more expensive.
But ultimately I think about that question against the political reality that Indigenous people are five per cent of the population and spread all across the country. When a provincial school system’s [funding] gets cut, everybody notices. But that’s not the case on reserves.
So that’s why [increased funding] doesn’t actually address the real problem, which is a misalignment in the resources and jurisdiction of Indigenous government. They need the ability to raise money and spend it on their citizens. That is ultimately what has to happen. Not another level of government saying ‘Yeah, okay, I guess we’ll top you up this month.’
LH: In Jody Wilson Raybould’s Indian in the Cabinet, she discusses her disappointment that Trudeau’s Liberal government was not interested in pushing forward Indigenous self-governance changes. Valley of the Birdtail drives at the need for more fundamental changes to Indigenous governance and financing powers. When you hear about Raybould’s experience in cabinet, what do you think it will take to achieve those big changes?
AS: I think the problem still is that we have this idea in our minds that a government is going to decide to fix everything and that the machinery of government will shift and fix the problem. Instead, what is required is a lot more Canadians demanding the change. And if we do that, then the machinery will respond. It’s really as simple as that, and of course that’s not very simple at all.
DS: When Canadians start asking their politicians: ‘What is the plan? What are we doing on this file? What is the end game?’ [Politicians] are going to turn to their civil servants and say ‘Hey, what’s the plan? What’s the end game? Maybe we should come up with something.’ It really turns on an energized population that is interested in this political file and is demanding answers.
LH: You have both spoken about how all Canadians have a role to play in reconciliation — that we can’t simply wait for Ottawa to do all the work. Can you give our audience a sense of what roles they might play?
AS: I want to give a specific example from the end of the book, where we show that for the last 40 years, Indigenous children on reserves were getting 40 to 50 per cent less funding for their schools. The only way that could happen, with the full knowledge of our government, is because not enough Canadians noticed or cared. So I don’t want to overthink how difficult it is for people to be involved in this stuff. A lot of it is learning more and being a little more attuned with what’s going on with our neighbours.
LH: July 1 is approaching. After all of your research for this book and conversations with Canadians, what are your feelings about Canada Day?
DS: A few years ago, for Canada’s 150th, my wife and I made a bunch of buttons that just added a 30 in front of that 150, to say, actually, we’re celebrating 30,000 and 150 years. From my point of view, that’s the right way of framing the day. That Canada is a little add on to a 30,000-year history of settlement and science and discovery and culture. Canada’s worth celebrating, but it’s worth putting in context as well.
AS: If there’s anything we’re trying to do, we’re trying to complicate the story of Canada. We’re not trying to take anything away from the parts that are worth celebrating. We’re just trying to tell a fuller story in the hopes that we can do a better job of hearing each other’s versions of that story.
DS: I think that this is not a popular view amongst Indigenous peoples in general, but I really believe in this idea that Indigenous Canada is not separate from Canada. We’re part of it. We have to figure out how to make that Canada real and valuable and useful. As long as we keep thinking of it as separate, how are we ever going to bring it together?
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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