Residential Schools

*Trigger warning: This lesson contains information about the operations of the Residential School System in Canada, which was in place from the 1880s until 1996. It is my goal to publish this to inform and educate, not to harm anyone who may be re-living the trauma of this system.

The Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line is available 24-hours a day for anyone experiencing pain or distress as a result of his or her Residential school experience. Please call 1-800-721-0066. For more information on the program, please refer to the FNHA website.*

 

“Two primary objectives of the residential school system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. These objectives were based on the assumption Indigenous cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal. Indeed, some sought, as it was infamously said, “to kill the Indian in the child.” Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country.”

– Prime Minister Stephen Harper, official apology, June 11, 2008

 

• The term residential schools refers to a school system set up by the Canadian government and administered by churches designed to educate Indigenous children but also indoctrinating them into Euro-Canadian and Christian ways of living.
• The residential school system operated from the 1880s into the closing decades of the 20th century and forcibly separated children from their families for extended periods of time, forbidding them to acknowledge their Indigenous heritage and culture or to speak their own languages.
• Nicholas Flood Davin, under direction from Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, recommended following the U.S. example of “aggressive civilization” in the school system.
• Authorities would frequently take children to schools far from their home communities, part of a strategy to alienate them from their families and familiar surroundings.
• In 1920, under the Indian Act, it became mandatory for every Indian child to attend a residential school and illegal for them to attend any other educational institution.
• Because the government’s and the churches’ intent was to eradicate all aspects of Indigenous culture in these young people and interrupt its transmission from one generation to the next, the residential school system is commonly considered a form of cultural genocide.
• This genocide was multi-faceted:
• Students were separated from their families
• Students had their hair cut short
• They were dressed in uniforms
• Their days were strictly regimented
• Boys and girls were kept separate
• Students were strictly forbidden to speak their languages or to practice Indigenous customs or traditions.
• Teachings focused primarily on practical skills.
• Girls were taught to do laundry, sew, cook, and clean.
• Boys were taught carpentry, tinsmithing, and farming.
• Many students only attended class part-time (most only reaching a grade 5 level by their 18th birthday) and worked for the school the rest of the time:
• Girls did the housekeeping
• Boys did general maintenance and agriculture.
• Emotional and psychological abuse was constant, physical abuse was used as a punishment, and sexual abuse was also common.  
• B.C. Supreme Court Justice Douglas Hogarth stated, “As far as the victims were concerned, the Indian residential school system was nothing more than institutionalized pedophilia.”
• In 1907, government medical inspector P.H. Bryce reported that 24 percent of previously healthy Indigenous children across Canada were dying in residential schools, and anywhere from 47-75% of students discharged from residential schools died shortly after returning home
• The Royal Commission of Indigenous Peoples concluded that church and state officials were fully aware of the abuses and tragedies at the schools.
• Some former students have fond memories of their time at residential schools, and certainly some of the priests and nuns who ran the schools treated the students as best they could given the circumstances. But even these “good” experiences occurred within a system aimed at destroying Indigenous cultures and assimilating Indigenous students.