...Summary: Two key objectives of the residential school system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions, and cultures, and to also make them adapt to the dominant culture. These objectives were created based on the theory of the aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs of the, being unworthy and unequal. It was infamously dais to “kill the Indian in the child”. Initially, about 1,100 students attended 69 schools across the country. In 1931, at the peak of the residential school system, there were about 80 schools operating in Canada. There were a total of about 130 schools in every territory and province except Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick from the earliest in the 19th...
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...The topic I chose was residential schools because I think everyone should be more aware of them and the harm they caused. The idea of residential schools has changed a lot over time because it caused great harm to the children, families, and the culture. Canada has realized that they shouldn't have assumed that Aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal. They now know that there was no need to try and “Kill the Indian in the child.” It was racist and unnecessary. The impact it has had on Aboriginal people is horrendous. Over 4000 Aboriginal children died. Former students of residential schools have come forward and spoken of physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological abuse at the hands of some of the staff. The...
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...CANADA - Before Confederation, the Canadian government was not concerned about the education of the Aboriginal people. However, once the government policy changed in 1830 and it was required to provide Aboriginal youth with education and merge them into Canadian society, the Canadian government and various religious institutions formed church-run residential schools in every province besides Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. The Aboriginal leaders and elders anticipated that these schools would let their children learn the skills of the Canadian society and help them easily transition into the dominated society of Canada but the residential schools were of nothing they imagined or hoped for (). RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS: THE DARK SIDE Continued Currently, residential schools are still running and forcibly taking Aboriginal children from the ages five to sixteen from their families and communities and forcing them to attend the schools where they are deprived of their...
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...educating and caring for Aboriginal people in Canada. The government believed that the best chance to be successful was for them to learn English and adopt Christianity and Canadian customs. In an ideal world, these new customs would be passed onto their children, meaning their native traditions would diminish and completely disappear within a few generations. The Canadian government developed a policy called “aggressive assimilation” to be taught at these new church-run, government-funded schools, called residential schools. It was believed that children were easier to influence that adults, so the idea of sending these children to a boarding school to learn new values would be the most effective. These schools were created based on the belief that aboriginal culture was unable to adapt to a rapidly modernizing society. Students were discouraged from speaking their first language or practising native traditions and were faced with severe punishment if they did not comply. Most students lived at these schools 10 months a year, away from their parents, segregating them from opportunities to see examples of normal family life. Siblings at the same school rarely saw each other, as all...
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...Reconciliation Payments for All Indian Residential School Survivors CANADIAN BAR ASSOCIATION February 2005 PREFACE The Canadian Bar Association is a national association representing 38,000 jurists, including lawyers, notaries, law teachers and students across Canada. The Association’s primary objectives include improvement in the law and in the administration of justice. This submission was prepared by the National Aboriginal Law and the National Alternative Dispute Resolution Sections of the Canadian Bar Association, with assistance from the Legislation and Law Reform Directorate at the National Office. The submission has been reviewed by the Legislation and Law Reform Committee and approved as a public statement of the Canadian Bar Association. The Logical Next Step: Reconciliation Payments for All Indian Residential School Survivors Executive Summary At its Annual Meeting in August 2004, the Canadian Bar Association adopted a resolution1 calling for the government to go beyond the existing Indian Residential Schools Dispute Resolution process to provide a base payment to all survivors of Indian Residential Schools. The CBA recognizes the tragic legacy of Indian Residential Schools and the failure of the current options of either litigatio n or the dispute resolution process to resolve the situation. The harms caused by Indian Residential Schools are still profoundly felt by the individual students who attended the schools, as well as their families, communities...
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...This paper will review three articles that discuss Indian Residential Schools in Canada and the legacy that followed from being a student in these institutions. As abuse was prevalent across most of the schools, this created a lot of emotional problems and coping strategies which were passed on from generation to generation. These three articles are Agnes Grant’s Finding my Talk, David MacDonald’s “Genocide in the Indian Residential Schools: Canadian history through the Lens of the UN Genocide Convention”, and Jennifer Llewellyn’s “Dealing with the Legacy of Native Residential School Abuse in Canada: Litigation, ADR, and Restorative justice.” The first reading finding my talk is about one woman named Eleanor Brass and her experience coping with not only the years of abuse endured in residential schools, but also with dealing with a lifetime of racism, being an indigenous woman in Canada. Eleanor was one of the first babies to be born on the File Hills Colony , which was under tight control of the Indian agents. Indian agents would control all the farming practices of the families who were living on the colony. Nothing could be sold without the agent overseeing the transaction and this amount of control was not limited to their farming...
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...Defining the issue Aboriginal families all across Canada were affected by the residential school system. The two main objectives of residential schools were to remove and isolate indigenous children from their families and cultures and to assimilate them into the Western cultures. From the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s it was mandatory that Aboriginal children went to residential schools by the federal government, to try to make them more like “children in mainstream society” (Kevin, Beeds, and Filion 340). Aboriginal values were looked down upon. Schools were operated by a staff that consisted of nuns and priests. They focused on teaching children Christianity. This event was significant in Canadian history because it represented the loss of culture, language, and family connection due to long separations and the hardships faced at school. The experience at residential schools continue to affect generations of Aboriginals still to this day. History of the Issue Prior to the Canadian government’s involvement in the education of Aboriginal children, traditional education effectively sustained Aboriginal cultures for decades of years (340). Early in the 1600s French missionaries came to North America to convert Aboriginals to Christianity (340). They established mission schools in New France. By the 1800s the government focused on educating First Nations children in a way to indirectly assimilate them into Canadian society (340). In 1879, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald commissioned...
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...diverting due to the Residential School systems. Canada has been struggling to gain the forgiveness of the Residential School attendants and gladly, they had finally accepted our apologies, but will they ever forgive themselves for not being one of us? During the twentieth century, Residential Schools became widespread in all Canadian provinces and territories except Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland. Aboriginal children had been seized from their homes and had been placed into these ‘boarding schools’. They had to do labour work, live with complete strangers, and also study the Canadian culture just to kill the Indian in the Child. The young children had to do all of this for the government while being abused. Sexually, physically and mentally. About one hundred and fifty thousand children were placed into this horrid living and only eighty thousand made it out alive as in two thousand and eight. In order for us to be forgiven, we did two acts that will never make up for what our country had done to them. We wrote a state of apology that was read in front of a crowd of survivors. We had also given each of them a generous amount of money as a materialistic apology. But how did the aboriginal community act upon the materialistic goods and apology? Has Canada as a whole done enough to heal the wounds of aboriginal students that had attended the Residential schools? Firstly, Canada had a requirement to make an apology to the residential community. On June...
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...Residential schooling and Indian Boarding schooling have both been used throughout Canada and America. It was said to be a solution for the “Indian problem”. For many others who attended, it was a time of abuse and desecration of culture. The first residential school opened in the 1800’s. Under the Indian Act, it became mandatory for every Indian child between the ages of 4 and 16 to attend a residential school or boarding school and it is illegal for them to attend any other educational institution. There are two objective views that the government wanted to establish with these schooling systems. The first one is to isolate the children from their families, so they can be converted and educated into the “white” culture. The second view is...
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...communities from different parts of world migrated and settled in Canada, this communities brought their culture and values along with them. As the time elapsed new trends were introduced for the progress of the nation but Canadian government thought that this aboriginal communities cannot accept the changes taking place in the society because of their cultural values, language and traditions. As a result of which “Canadian government developed a policy called aggressive assimilation” (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/a-history-of-residential-schools-in-canada-1.702280). This policy was mainly introduced to assimilate the aboriginal communities to Canadian culture by killing their culture, language and traditions. This policy directly affected the role of women in the society. As a result of this policy even today the aboriginal communities are suffering from poverty, addiction, alcoholism, violence activities and many other social issues which is becoming a barrier in the progress of nation in correct means. The first reason that led to all other issues was that the role of women was affected in the society because of the residential schools, born because of the “aggressive assimilation” policy implemented by the government. On June 11, 2008 Beverley Jacobs the president of Native Women’s Association of Canada relating the present situation and the situation before residential schools says that “Prior to the residential schools and prior to colonization women in our communities were very...
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...The Residential school system in Canada was a system devoted to providing a disciplined based ideal that promoted the rejection of the aboriginal culture in favor of the then dominant white European population. The teaching strategies that were encouraged ranged from pulling children as young as six away from their parents to mental, physical and sexual abuse. The Residential schools were run by a variety of participating church organizations, which received funding from the Canadian government. The funding was based on a per aboriginal basis therefore it was in the best interests of the churches to enroll as many aboriginal students as possible. The schools were run in almost every province in Canada from 1860-1884 and claimed to be promoting religious and cultural assimilation. However, the cruelty that was experienced by many young aboriginals in the residential schools emphasizes the differences between the aboriginal societies and the European dominant society making complete assimilation impossible. The imposition of residential schools on First Nations children has led to significant loss of indigenous languages, and this language loss has led to further cultural losses for traditional First Nations cultures in Canada. The earliest known date opening of a Residential school was in 1840, located in Manitowaning, Ontario. The school was the Wikemikong Indian Residential School, it closed in 1879. The last Residential school to close was La Tuque Indian...
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...The residential schools of Canada can be dated back to the 1870s. Before 1996, when the last of 170 schools were closed, an estimated 150,000 indigenous youth were forced to attend. In an attempt to blend indigenous youth into Canadian society, both the Canadian government and Christian churches believed educating and converting the youth would achieve their goal of integrating them into Canadian society (Miller, 2014). The infliction of economic self sufficiency and religious conversion caused the loss of languages which further resulted in the loss of culture among traditional indigenous peoples. The death of a language is more complex than simply a loss of communication, it is a loss of knowledge. "The wisdom of humanity is summarized in...
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...Residential School Residential school: (in Canada) a boarding school maintained by the Canadian government for Indian and Inuit children from sparsely populated settlements. 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 Aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal. Indeed, some sought, as it was infamously said, “to kill the Indian in the child.” Before the confederation (1867) and until 1910, Churches and the government sought to assimilate the Native peoples. Residential schools became the promote method of assimilation. At one time or another, 144 residential schools existed in Canada. An estimated total of 150, 000(one hundred and fifty thousands) children attended the schools. Imagine five hockey arenas, each setting 30,000. It is said to be a cultural Genocide? How? Evidence/ Quote "When the children came back, they were different, speaking in the wemistikoshiw tongue, talking back to their parents, fighting and hitting one another, crying in the middle of the night for no reason" With the loss of their families and its influences, children that were sent to residential schools resulted in the loss of their First Nations culture and a negative difference in behavior What led to residential school? European settlers...
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...cultural practices and spiritual beliefs. More than one million people in Canada identify themselves as an Aboriginal person, according to the 2006 Census.” (Indigenous Nationhood) Although many Aboriginal peoples in Canada identify as being Aboriginal, many Aboriginal peoples struggle to maintain or gain a sense of cultural identity due to the Canadian Governments assimilation policies. Throughout this paper I will discuss how the Indian Act, the Canadian Residential School System, and the Sixties Scoop assimilated Aboriginal peoples into a European way of life, by attempting to integrate them into society by abolishing their Aboriginal identities. This assimilation process impacted Aboriginal peoples in negative ways throughout the generations socially, culturally, and economically. The negative impacts within child welfare system, educational institutions, and the socio-economic status of Aboriginal peoples today, prove assimilation and the total integration of Aboriginal peoples within mainstream society is unacceptable. Decolonization techniques should be applied within those areas in order combat the long lasting effects of assimilation by colonization. Decolonization will also help enable Aboriginal peoples to regain a cultural identity. The 1876 Indian Act was created as a way to control and assimilate Aboriginal peoples. “The Indian Act, by itself, was simply a tool used by the Government of Canada to exercise near-total control over First Nations people.” (Coates, 2008...
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...Nations People in many ways; we have treated them as less than ourselves and in some cases still do. Forcing children into residential schools, not allowing Canadian aboriginals to vote, taking away the land that they had lived on for years, these are just a few things that we, as Canadians, have done. 150,000 Indian children were taken away from their families to live at residential schools. The first residential school was opened in 1840 in Bradford, Ontario and by 1910 there were a total of 74 schools all across Canada. Residential...
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