Port Alberni mom argues that obliging her children to participate tramples their freedom of religion
By Agnieszka Krawczynski
VANCOUVER

There’s a significant difference between learning about aboriginal spirituality and being obliged to participate in it, according to the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.

“Prayer and religious ceremonies have been illegal in public schools in Canada for over 25 years,” said JCCF president John Carpay.

So when Port Alberni mom Candice Servatius found out her two children had participated in a Nuu-chah-nulth cleansing ritual they did not want to be part of, she felt their rights to freedom of religion had been trampled.

Rightly so, according to the JCCF. “It is a mischaracterization to label the ‘cleansing’ ceremony that took place in the JHES classrooms on Sept. 16, 2015, as non-religious,” wrote lawyer Jay Cameron in a letter to school trustees in July.

“The description of the ceremony explicitly referred to ‘spirits’ and ‘energy.'”

The First Nations ceremony was held at John Howitt Elementary School Sept. 16, 2015. It required each student to hold a cedar branch as smoke was fanned over his or her “body and spirit” and over classroom furniture, according to a letter from the school.

When Servatius received the letter, she was concerned about the ritual. She went to the school the next day to find out more and learned her children had already been obliged to participate. This was despite the fact that her 9-year-old daughter had been anxious about it and asked her teacher to be exempted.

“The school district violated the Charter section 2(a) freedom of religion of Mrs. Servatius and her children,” according to Cameron.

Servatius was troubled again when her children came home Jan. 7, saying that a school assembly that day had impressed them with a hoop dancing performance but made them uncomfortable because of a prayer that had been recited.

“We asked them about the prayer and what made them feel uncomfortable about it, and they said: ‘He was praying to a god, but not the same God that we pray to.'”

The JCCF filed a petition on Servatius’s behalf in B.C. Supreme Court in Nanaimo Nov. 1.

“The mom is fine with the kids learning about Aboriginal spirituality, but it’s the way that it’s taught,” Carpay explained to CBC’s The Current Nov. 18.

“For example, it’s good to teach the kids about Christianity, that’s part of our culture and heritage, but it’s quite different to teach them by forcing kids to recite the Lord’s Prayer.”

Servatius hopes court action will force the school to accept that it violated the freedoms of her children and commit to not doing so in the future.

Representatives of the school maintain that the aboriginal ceremony and prayer were appropriate cultural, not religious, practices.

“Our schools operate on a secular, inclusive, and non-discriminatory basis, but there is teaching and learning about different cultures and traditions, and that is an important part of learning,” said School District 70 superintendent Greg Smyth.

Keith Mitchell, a lawyer for the school, added the school should have made it clear students could “opt out” of the cleansing ritual.

akrawczynski@rcav.org