For the first 100-plus years of Canada’s history, First Nations children were taken from their homes and forced to attend residential schools where they were robbed of their culture, beaten for speaking their language, and, as we have learned recently, suffered much, much worse.
With that context, and without any self-reflection (or sense of irony) a Vancouver Island woman who was enraged that her daughter witnessed an Indigenous smudging ceremony in public school, fought the school district all the way to B.C.’s highest court.
Candice Servatius is an evangelical Christian whose daughter was in Grade 5 at John Howitt Elementary School in Port Alberni in 2015. That year, parents were notified that a member of the local Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation would visit the school to talk about Indigenous culture and history.
As part of that learning about Indigenous culture, a Nuu-chah-nulth elder was invited to demonstrate smudging, something that Servatius called a violation of her religious freedom.
She sued the Port Alberni school district in 2016.
READ MORE: Port Alberni mom takes school district to court over Indigenous smudging, prayer in class
In January 2020, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Douglas Thompson dismissed her petition finding that the smudging demonstration, as well as a prayer said by a hoop dancer at a school assembly, did not interfere with her or her children’s religious beliefs. There was also no infringement on her freedom of religion.
Obviously, right? Good grief, how sad is it that someone is so upset their children were shown a demonstration of Indigenous cultural practices that they choose to fight it in court?
But Servatius wasn’t done. She lost, but took the case to the B.C. Court of Appeal, where she lost again. This week, on Dec. 12, appeal court Justice Susan Griffin, writing on behalf of the three-justice panel, upheld the initial ruling that the demonstrations were not religious ceremonies, but educational opportunities for the students, and that students were not forced to participate.
“Neither event breached the appellant’s freedom of religion or the duty of state neutrality,” the court ruled. “The trial judge did not make an error in his findings of fact that the children did not participate in the smudging or the prayer and the school did not promote or favour a set of beliefs.”
To me, the argument that her child should not be taught about Indigenous culture amounts to: “I don’t understand this. It’s not what I believe or what I teach my children to believe, therefore, witchcraft!”
The case reminds me of the ridiculous Texas mother, Jamie Gooch, who went viral when she warned parents against watching the PG-rated Disney movie Hocus Pocus 2.
“Do not watch this film,” Gooch told her local CBS news station. “Everybody thinks it’s fake and innocent, but they could be casting any type of spell that they want to, anything could be coming through that TV screen into your home.”
Servatius’s argument depended on her own misguided belief that the person demonstrating the smudging “was dealing with ‘spirits’ in the room, and also attributing to (the elder) the ‘supernatural ability’ to impart her ‘spiritual beliefs’ to others who are nearby,” according to the court.
“It is not for Ms. Servatius to impose her own beliefs on what an Indigenous person is experiencing when demonstrating a cultural tradition to non-Indigenous people.”
University of Victoria professor, and member of the Lil’wat Nation, Lorna Williams, who served as an expert witness, agreed.
“Indigenous practices such as smudging and hoop dances are not ‘religious’ practices as that term is understood in the western world,” Williams said in an affidavit.
On the matter of costs in the case, Servatius said she was of limited means so Justice Thompson used his discretion in not forcing her to pay all of the costs of the school district. But there was a piece of important information she conveniently left out: she was represented by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
The school district cross appealed and won, the court of appeal ordering Servatius to pay the district’s costs.
For its part, the Justice Centre issued a statement essentially hanging her out to dry. But, hey, they will accept donations to help cover her costs.
Now the Justice Centre appears to have left her high and dry, saying only in a statement that they would accept donations to help cover her cost.
How generous.
Here’s the thing: while thousands of Indigenous children felt terror and sadness being torn from their homes and culture to attend overtly religious schools over the 100-plus years of the residential school system, this woman fought to the end of the legal road in B.C. because her child witnessed a smudging ceremony.
It’s hard to wrap one’s head around the staggering lack of self-reflection and ignorance of history in this case.
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