TORONTO – Canada’s largest school board says it’s phasing out the word “chief” from senior staff’s job titles out of respect for Indigenous peoples.
The Toronto District School Board says it has been working on removing the term from job titles for a few years, and is close to eliminating it completely.
The board says the word “chief” doesn’t accurately represent the jobs it’s used to describe, and is being replaced with terms like “manager” and “executive officer”.
For instance, the title chief of social work is now the manager of social work.
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The board says the word “chief” has also been used in a negative way in the past.
Ontario’s education minister said boards were allowed to have their own discussions over such matters.
“School boards have the flexibility to engage in their own conversations around the steps that should be taken to reflect the recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” a spokesman for Mitzie Hunter said in a statement.
Mark Morton, who works at the University of Waterloo’s Centre for Teaching Excellence and is an expert on etymology, said the word “chief” has roots much older than its application to Indigenous peoples.
The word’s root is believed to predate Latin, and also spawned words such as “captain,” he said.
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The word “chief” in its modern sense was first used to describe leaders of Irish and Scottish clans in the 1570s, he noted, and it wasn’t until the 18th century that it was applied to the leaders of First Nations.
The TDSB’s effort was the first time Morton had heard of the word being thought of as offensive to First Nations people, but if it was considered truly hurtful, he said it was fair to phase it out.
“If that usage is going to genuinely hurt a group of people, then I would say yes, by all means, let’s see if we can find an alternative,” Morton says. “On the other hand, the word originated outside of the context of First Nations cultures … and the First Nations associations that it has, I don’t think are negative.”
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