Books and Broomsticks: Prairie Indigenous Female Domestic Workers and the Canadian Outing System, 1888-1901
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2019-08-30
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Abstract
This thesis discusses the Canadian outing system, a direct feature of industrial schools in the prairie west prominent in the late nineteenth century. Seen as an extension of the school’s vocational training, the outing system became an outlet with which the Canadian federal government’s Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) could integrate into the lower ranks of Euro-Canadian society young Indigenous girls in a hierarchical system of labour. By examining the roles and education of Indigenous female youth in the industrial school system in the Canadian prairies, this study illuminates how, in the name of assimilation, the DIA implemented the outing system. This thesis highlights how young Indigenous women were compelled to work in homes that exemplified settler values, taking on strenuous labour in environments where attitudes of race and class dimensions were prominent. By drawing from 1901 census data and looking at the settler homes, farms, and establishments in which they worked, this thesis provides an important glimpse into the early history of domestic work for Indigenous women and girls in western Canada and offers insights into the very nature of settler colonialism in early Canadian national history.
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Nason, S. F. (2019). Books and Broomsticks: Prairie Indigenous Female Domestic Workers and the Canadian Outing System, 1888-1901 (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.