Colonizing minds: public education, the textbook Indian, and the struggle for settler hegemony in British Columbia, 1920-1970

This thesis examines the relationship between public education, the representations of indigenous peoples as the Textbook Indian in secondary school textbooks, and the struggle for settler hegemony in British Columbia between 1920 and 1970. In drawing inspiration from Marxist Theory and critical pedagogy, this work shows how education in general and textbooks in particular were powerful tools of a project of colonizing minds. The colonizing minds project refers to the state’s process of manufacturing and manipulating public education to justify and rationalize colonialism and the development of settler society in British Columbia to students as commonsensical. This thesis argues that the colonizing minds project was subtly refashioned over time to reflect the needs, struggles, and changing historical circumstances of settler society in British Columbia during the twentieth century.