Canada's Dark Past: Residential Schools
Upon the 'white man's' entry into Canada, the Native American people's lives were changed forever. It first begun with the purposeful spread of foreign diseases, such as small pox, in hopes to reduce the population of the people Native to the grounds. Eventually the British explorers conquered an entire nation, pushing the original free-roamers of the land into concentrated, over-crowded corridors called Reserves, where the land was "designated for their kind."
Around 1870, the British government (ruling over Canada) started feeling that they needed to assimilate the Indian people into their ideal civilization. In order to do so, they thought some sort of education must take place, as done traditionally in the British culture. Thus the birth of residential schooling. 139 federal government-regulated residential schools were implemented in every province and territory that exists today, excluding P.E.I, New Brunswick and Newfoundland. Provincially-funded or residential schools funded in other ways cannot be accounted for in this number.
British officials stormed reserves, plucking out children between the ages of 4 - 16 years. By 1920, the law stated Indian children between 7 - 16 years of age are required to attend residential schooling and by 1933 the Canadian government forced Native parents to give up custody by declaring all Indian children at residential schools are under the legal guardianship of their principal. In the end, over 150,000 Native American children fell victim to the residential schooling system and many of them did not make it home.
Children could not speak their native languages or practice cultural traditions while at school. Residential schools forced new religion (Catholicism) and English learning on all of the children. Brothers and sisters at the same school could not communicate due to gender segregation and on top of that, the children were forced to stay at school year-round without contacting their family. A lucky few schools would allow the children to go home for the summer months but they would have to return come September.
At school, students would be locked in their dormitories and have barred windows to prevent escape. However this also meant if there were a fire, the children could not get out. Many children who tried to escape residential sch
ools would turn up dead, usually by freezing to death into the night or drowning.
Nutrition provided at schools was not adequate. The children were often served insufficient quantities of spoiled food at each meal. Furthermore, students would be forced outside in harsh climates with inadequate clothing, increasing their exposure to illnesses. A child who would vomit would often be force-fed their own puke and the suffering children would be withheld of medical attention or proper treatment.
Male children were forced to shave their heads and female students would have their hair cut to a school appropriate length. For the indigenous culture, this was truly a strip of their dignity as the hair is a sacred part of the human body which ties us to the earth. There were only 2 cases in which a Native person would cut their hair (1) as a symbol of mourning the loss of a loved one or (2) as an act of separation from past actions, in which case the hair would be burned or placed in a river as a sign of respect.
Many survivors of residential schooling, including my very own grandfather, recall being physically and sexually assaulted by wardens or teachers at the schools. Children were often electrically shocked as a form of punishment Other forms of enforcement at residential schools include whipping kids with a leather strap, publicly beating naked children, sticking needles through the tongue of anyone who spoke their native language and locking up students in basements, closets or cages. Then, when a child would succumb to the torture at school, often times the faculty failed to even notify the family of their child's passing.
The Truth And Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a team dedicated to uncovering the truths of Indian residential schools, have determined at least 4,000 Indigenous children died while attending school, based solely on partial government and commission records. Most of those deaths were in fires and runaways. That number is expected to increase as researchers find further complete records. Deaths in residential schools stopped being recorded by the government in 1920 after the Indian Affairs officer noticed children at these schools were dying at alarming rates
TRC has also founded "The Missing Children Project" to continue to help establish names of deceased residential school students and where they died. Unfortunately, many kids were buried without names on their gravestone or remain unaccounted for because - although the TRC has heard allegations, they have never been able to prove - the murders and manslaughter which remain unaccounted for in government records. Many children who passed in such instances, were reported as discharged or listed 'missing'.
Fortunately, the last federally funded residential school in Canada was closed in 1966 in the province of Saskatchewan. In June of 2008, former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper formally acknowledged and apologized to the Aboriginal people of Canada for the government's role in the Indian Residential Schooling System (even though he was not an active member of the government at that time). Although the apology does not make up for the thousands of lives lost and the thousands more who lost their culture due to the residential schooling system, it is a bittersweet recognition of Canada's dark past.
Sources:
http://www.anishinabek.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/An-Overview-of-the-IRS-System-Booklet.pdf
https://globalnews.ca/news/2402492/residential-schools-subjected-students-to-disease-abuse-experiments-trc-report/
https://blog.thelonghairs.us/long-hair-native-american-culture/
http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/at-least-4000-aboriginal-children-died-in-residential-schools-commission-finds
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/05/31/how-many-first-nations-kids-died-in-residential-schools-justice-murray-sinclair-says-canada-needs-answers.html