Alice, I really enjoyed reading your discussion post as both a visual artist and an urban studies major. Your discussion post compellingly unpacks Larochelle's analysis, shedding light on how educational discourse in Quebec was not just descriptive but actively mythologized and racialized Indigenous and Black bodies to serve colonial ambitions.
Your connection to visual observation as a central ethnocentric framework is particularly striking. As you note, it wasn’t merely about describing Indigenous and Black peoples but about encoding their bodies and ways of life within a racialized hierarchy. This visual framing aligned with broader Western colonial practices where sight and categorization were used as tools of domination. By framing Indigenous peoples as "vanishing" and Black individuals as "static," these texts not only denied their agency but also sought to fix them in a temporal and cultural limbo that validated French-Canadian colonial dominance.
The paradox you identify—Indigenous peoples being both essential to and excluded from French-Canadian identity—is a powerful example of the calculated flexibility of colonial ideologies. By appropriating Indigenous elements, French-Canadians could claim a form of symbolic indigeneity that bolstered their claim to the land while erasing the actual sovereignty and presence of Indigenous peoples. This dynamic resonates beyond Quebec, echoing similar patterns in settler colonial contexts globally, where indigeneity is appropriated as a national symbol but denied political and territorial recognition.
Moreover, the infantilization of Black individuals you discuss highlights another layer of exclusion. By framing Blackness as perpetually marginal and childlike, the textbooks not only justified exploitation but also solidified a racialized boundary of belonging within Quebec society. This infantilization echoes a broader colonial narrative that sought to naturalize racial hierarchies by portraying Black people as incapable of self-determination, reinforcing their exclusion from narratives of progress and citizenship.
Finally, your analysis points to the insidious power of educational materials in shaping societal structures. Education is often assumed to be a neutral or progressive force, yet Larochelle’s work exposes how deeply it can be implicated in perpetuating systemic inequities. The geography textbooks you discuss laid the ideological groundwork for exclusion and dominance, showing how colonial power operates not just through overt violence but also through the subtleties of pedagogy and representation.
Your discussion invites us to think critically about the enduring legacies of these colonial frameworks in contemporary educational systems. How might we interrogate current curricula to uncover similar myths that perpetuate exclusion and hierarchy? And how can education, geography, and visual arts be reimagined as a tool for decolonization and empowerment rather than subjugation?
