Just because investigative journalism sullies a local hero doesn’t make it less valid

By Helena Friesen
Photos by Eleanor Qu

In Feb. 3’s column, Eric Onderwater asked the student body to “Leave John Furlong Alone.” Furlong, who has been accused of abusing aboriginal students during his stint as a voluntary teacher up North in the 70s, is also the former CEO of VANOC. Onderwater asks SFU students to ignore the laundry list of allegations against Furlong, which include his use of a leather strap on students, multiple accounts of sexual assault and his penchant for racist slurs.

Onderwater accuses Robinson (the Georgia Straight journalist who broke the story) of fabricating it with the intention of becoming famous, selecting Furlong at random as the target. Because most journalists would risk their entire careers in order to break a story about a marginalized group of people that most Canadians are not sympathetic towards while tearing down a local celebrity. A bulletproof plan if ever there was one.

Let’s do a little math: a furlong was typically used to measure the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting. It is approximately the equivalent of 5 km. Currently there are over 6.5 km worth of archived material and documents related to residential schools that are inaccessible because the government has refused to provide the resources to bring them out of storage. One furlong is equivalent to approximately 33 John Furlongs. This means you would need 3575 Mr. Furlongs in order to understand how much material the government is not allowing us to access.

Although John Furlong was not teaching at what is technically a residential school, he did teach at a Catholic school that had virtually the same mission of assimilation, humiliation and degradation. In fact, they even shared some of the same teachers. Because of this technicality, none of the students were compensated for the mistreatment they endured.

The millions of documents that attest to the conditions of residential schools are currently unavailable, seemingly because the government would like to make it as difficult as possible to access our atrocious history. If more people were aware, pieces like Onderwater’s would never be penned. Onderwater’s article reinforces the dominant attitude held by Canadians, and he works hard to delegitimize aboriginal people and silence their voices.

He states “Robinson thinks. . . Aboriginals are saintly creatures in need of every resource the government has to offer.” He conveniently neglects the fact that the entire population of Canada uses government funds, like the ones we get to keep the university running, to pave our roads, or to give subsidies to oil corporations.

The effects of residential schooling are not up for debate. If the allegations against Furlong are true, he must be held accountable. More importantly, Canadians need to stop believing the lie that indigenous people are bathing in pools of money with endless resources. It is important to contextualize the conditions of different aboriginal communities.

There is no monolithic aboriginal identity, or experience. Making sweeping generalizations about a group of people is called stereotyping and is best friends with a concept I like to call racism. How many Furlongs will it take for people to finally start believing aboriginal people and give it a rest? We can only hope that work like Robinson’s continues to highlight the gross negligence the government shows towards groups of people. I’m not so sure we need to leave John Furlong alone, but it would probably be best if Onderwater recognized the SFU community does not support his solo act.