Book Review: Out of the Depths, by Isabelle Knockwood

Book review: Out of the Depths: The Experience of Mi'kmaw Children at the Indian Residential School at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, new extended edition

Author: Isabelle Knockwood

Publisher: Roseway Publishing (2001)

Number of Pages: 176

Subject: Education, history, residential schools

Where to buy: The Fernwood Publishing website 

                       It is also available at the Saint Mary’s University bookstore.

Out of the Depths is the heart-wrenching true story of Isabelle Knockwood’s experience in the Indian Residential School in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia.  Along with her own terrifying accounts of what she experienced in the school, Knockwood includes a variety of accounts from other former students.  The abuse that the students experienced is unfathomable, and even after reading the story it is difficult to understand how a group of people could treat children in such an abusive manner. 

It was not just the nuns and the priests who monitored and punished the children.  The nuns often had “pets”, girls who were singled out as the nuns’ favourites.  These girls frequently acted as spies, and they would tell the nuns about any of the other girls’ behaviour that had been deemed deviant.  It seems as though a form of panopticism had established itself in the residential schools through the way they used other children as spies.  Jeremy Bentham’s idea of the panopticon is prevalent in the constant threat of being watched.  In fact, that is the cornerstone of the panopticon; people will, theoretically, internalize the rules being imposed upon them, through the threat of constant monitoring.  Power was distributed not only to the nuns and priests, but also to the other residents.  This speaks to the Foucaultian analysis of the panopticon in terms of power, and that power can be decentralized.  

There was a very active discursive power, that is, power that stems from the system of knowledge and elements of shared by a culture to produce a particular version of reality. The nuns and priests attempted to culturally assimilate the Aboriginal children to become “white”.  The darkest, most Aboriginal-looking children were punished the most, and the lightest skinned children were often chosen by the nuns to be “pets”. The Residential Schools made it their mission to annihilate the native languages spoken by the Aboriginal children. There were tremendous punishments that awaited anyone who dared speak their mother tongue.

The Indian Residential Schools are a chapter of Canadian history that many would like to forget. We can’t dismiss the torture that these children endured. Through grit and determination, these children survived horrors that are difficult to imagine. Isabelle Knockwood’s story illuminates the hardships and abuse felt by the Aboriginal community in Canada.  The voices of the survivors are being heard with the prayer: “Out of the depths I have cried unto thee, O Lord.  Lord, hear my voice.”