Fatty Legs: A True Story

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What were the residential schools in the US and Canada? What purpose did they serve? What effect did they have on Indigenous Nations and their people? Consider multiple levels of “people”: community, family, and individual.

Teaching Suggestion: Use student discussion and exploration of this text to introduce all three of the text’s themes—especially The Intimate and Impersonal Dimensions of Colonialism. Understanding the global versus local and impersonal versus personal impacts of colonialism is essential for students to understand this text and the world around them.

• The front and back matter of the 10th Anniversary Edition of Fatty Legs provide an excellent resource that will help students analyze and discuss this short answer question. Start with the afterword written by Christy Jordan-Fenton; then follow it up with “A Note on Language.” Lastly, both the preface (also by Jordan-Fenton) and the foreword written by Debbie Reese provide passionate and detailed explanations of the importance, universality, and impact of Pokiak-Fenton’s story.
• Canada Parks has a page that provides a brief history of residential schools in Canada.