6. Indian Residential Schools
Canada’s
Indian Residential Schools

7. Student Learning Outcome
I can analyze First Nation/European Residential Schools in SK, and understand the lasting affects they have on all Canadians.

8. The Residential School System
Canadian government believed they were responsible for the education of Aboriginal People.
They believed it was important for Aboriginal children to learn English and adopt Christianity and Canadian Customs.
They felt this would help to diminish and abolish Native traditions and customs within a few generations.
These children suffered abuses of the mind, body, emotions, and spirit that have had a deep lasting impact on the survivors, their families and their communities.

9. The Residential School System in Canada: A Backgrounder
For over 300 years, European settlers and Aboriginal Peoples regarded one another as distinct nations.
In war, colonists and First Nations formed alliances, and in trade each enjoyed the economic benefits of co-operation.
By the mid-19th century however, European hunger for land had increased dramatically, and the economic base of the colonies shifted from fur to agriculture.
Alliances of the early colonial era gave way to direct competition for land and resources.
Settlers and the government began to view Aboriginal Peoples as a “problem”.

10. .
In 1920, Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932, summed up the government’s position when he said, “I want to get rid of the Indian problem. Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department.”

11. Attendance was mandatory.
Residential schools were federally run under the department of Indian Affairs.
Attendance was mandatory.
"Indian Agents" were employed by the government to ensure all Native children attended.
Children were stripped from their families as young as five years old
While federally-funded, church-run residential schools had been operating in southern Canada since the 1830s, in the North, for the most part, the Residential School System was not fully established until around For Inuit, the residential school system was but one facet of massive and rapid cultural changes taking place in this same time frame. Between the 1910s and 1950s these changes included the establishment of communities around trading posts; the introduction of Christianity throughout the North; the devastating spread of tuberculosis and small pox that forced many Inuit to travel to the foreign South for treatment; the introduction of RCMP officers and federal government employees throughout the Arctic; the loss of hundreds of sled dogs, which were a primary mode of transportation; the forcible relocations of communities and families; and the influence of southern Canadian cultural practices replacing many Inuit ways of life. Amidst this cultural turmoil, the Residential School System was introduced throughout the North, and Inuit children were taken to schools often far from their homes and introduced to a completely foreign way of life. Prior to 1955, less than 15 per cent of school-aged Inuit children were enrolled in residential schools, but within a decade this number would climb to over 75 per cent.
Heather Igloliorte essay.

12. This was a system designed to kill the Indian in the child.
The earliest Residential School was the Mohawk Indian Residential School, opened in 1876 in Brantford, Ontario.
At the System’s peak in the early 1930s, 80 residential schools operated across Canada with an enrolment of over 17,000 students.

13. The last school did not close until 1996 (Gordon Indian Residential school in SK).
In all about 150, 000 Aboriginal children were removed from their communities and forced to attend the schools.
An Act to amend the Indian Act.
[Assented to 1st July 1920.]
10. (1) Every Indian child between the ages of seven and fifteen years who is
physically able shall attend such day, industrial or boarding school as may be designated
by the Superintendent General for the full periods during which such school is open each
year. Provided, however, that such school shall be the nearest available school of the kind
required, and that no Protestant child shall be assigned to a Roman Catholic school or a
school conducted under Roman Catholic auspices, and no Roman Catholic child shall be
assigned to a Protestant school or a school conducted under Protestant auspices.
Indians became wards of the crown under the British North America Act. Through the Indian Act parents had few rights, if any, to protect the interest of their children. Implications of law that facilitated forced removal of children from family and the construction of legal barriers for parents to fight for rights of their children.
Act defined (as result of BNA act) Indians as wards of the crown, which over time lead to limitation of Indian parental rights over the responsibility of their children, in which school administrators were assigned guardianship.
Act outlawed the practicing of Indian culture, spirituality, and ceremony.
Act made it illegal for Indians to vote, creating a barrier to appeal to elected officials to change laws affecting their children.

14. Many children were taken from their homes, often forcibly removed, and separated from their families by long distances.
Others who attended residential schools near their communities were often prohibited from seeing their families outside of occasional permitted visits.
Broad occurrences of disease, hunger, and overcrowding were noted by government officials as early as 1897.

15. Student's were discouraged from speaking their first language and from practicing Native traditions. If Caught they were severely punished.

16. Students were rarely given opportunity to see normal family life, and stayed at the school 10 months out of the year. Any correspondence with parents was written in English (which most parents could not read).

17. The quality of education was low in comparison to non-Aboriginal schools.
As late as 1950, according to an Indian Affairs study, over 40% of the teaching staff had no professional training. This is not to say that past experiences were all negative, or that the staff were all bad. Such is not the case.

18. All activities were segregated by gender.
Brothers and sisters at the same residential school were rarely aloud to see each other.
All activities were segregated by gender.
When students returned to the reserve they often found they didn’t belong.
They became ashamed of their Native heritage.

19. First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children were often separated from their parents for long periods of time and this prevented them from discovering and learning valuable parenting skills.
The removal of children from their homes also prevented the transmission of language and culture, resulting in many Aboriginal people who do not speak their traditional language and/or who are not familiar with their culture.

20. The system of forced assimilation has had consequences that continue to affect Aboriginal Peoples today.
The need for healing does not stop with the Residential School Survivors; intergenerational effects of trauma are real and pervasive and must also be addressed.

21. In the early 1990s, beginning with Phil Fontaine, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Survivors came forward with disclosures about physical and sexual abuse at residential schools.
Throughout the 1990s, these reports escalated and more Aboriginal victims from one end of the country to the other courageously came forward with stories.
The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) confirmed a link between social crisis in Aboriginal communities, residential schools, and the legacy of intergenerational trauma.

22. Anyone who is of First Nations, Inuit, or Métis ancestry will know someone or perhaps have relatives who attended these Residential Schools.
We may never know or be aware of how many Survivors we have passed on the street. How many heroes and heroines walk amongst us?

23. Healing
Many Survivors are making positive changes and have turned to a combination of Western therapies and traditional practices to heal. Talking circles, sweats, storytelling, ceremonies, fasts, feasts, and vision quests reconnect Survivors to their cultures and to themselves. On-the-land activities such as trapping, hunting, fishing, and gathering medicinal plants and wild foods also renew the spirit. All of these practices assist in re-enforcing and celebrating Aboriginal identities.

24. “We were Children” – NFB
As young children, Lyna and Glen were taken from their homes and placed in church-run boarding schools. The trauma of this experience was made worse by years of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, the effects of which persist in their adult lives.
In this emotional film, the profound impact of the Canadian government’s Residential School System is conveyed unflinchingly through the eyes of two children who were forced to face hardships beyond their years. “We Were Children” gives voice to a national tragedy and demonstrates the incredible resilience of the human spirit.
Film producer Lisa Meeches interviewed over 700 Survivors and felt compelled to make this film to honour their truths.