Imagine being ripped away from your family, torn from your home and everything you know, everything you love. Imagine being forced into a foreign situation, a strange school where you speak in a language you don't know, and going through all of this a innocent child. This seems like a nightmare to most, a situation that would never occur in a “just” society like Canada. The atrocity, that our fortunate generation would have to “imagine”, is the grave truth that occurred to Canada's Aboriginal children. These children were forced into church run, government-funded schools where they endured horrible unimaginable conditions. This essay deals with the aboriginal residential schools of Canada, the abuse that occurred and the impact carried on generation from generation. Canada's greatest shame that shaped our country's culture for the worst.
General Information
During the 1870s, the Canadian government partnered with the Anglican, Presbyterian, Catholic and United Church to create residential schools for aboriginal children. The purpose of the school system was to integrate Aboriginal people into Canadian society and Canadian culture. A quote from a Canadian government official is that it was a system designed to "kill the Indian in the child”. The attendance of the residential schools was mandatory for the natives, and the punishment of the parents for not sending their children to the residential school was often imprisonment or large fines. More than 150,000 children as young as the age of 4, had attended the residential schools run by the federal government. Today there are about 80,000 survivors alive.
The Residential Schools
From 1870 until 1996, 150,000 aboriginal children were removed from their families and forced by the government into the church run schools. In 1884, attendance at schools became law for all aboriginal children under the age of 16. The schools were the only option, if parents refused to send their children by free will, they were taken by force and parents were imprisoned and fined. Aside from this law forcing families to send their children away, after the Second World War, the Canadian Family Allowances Act began granting baby bonuses to families with children, but assured that this money was cut off if parents refused to send their children to school. The children were forced to live in the schools, students would go great lengths of time without any interaction with their families and communities, ranging from 10 months at a time to multiple years.
In most schools, students were not allowed to speak their own language, french and english were important to the schools, the removal of their native tongues and integration of “Canadian language”, was largely important in the “whitewashing” like process of the schools. If students attempted to speak their own language, in class or among themselves, they would undergo severe physical punishment. This led to the extinction of the rich aboriginal culture, the native language was lost, and replaced with the english culture deemed superior by religious institutions and Canadian government.
Until the late 1950s, residential schools were severely underfunded and often relied on forced labor from their students to maintain their facilities, even though it was labelled as craft skills training. The work was arduous, and severely compromised the academic and social development of the students. In many cases, literacy programs, or any serious efforts to inspire literacy in either English or French, were almost non-existent. Books and textbooks, if provided, were drawn mainly from provincially funded public school programs for non-Aboriginal students, and teachers in residential schools were often poorly trained or prepared. During that same period, Canadian government scientists conducted nutritional tests on students. The last boarding school run by the Canadian government, Gordon Residential Schools, closed in 1996.
Abuse
Thousands of Aboriginal children in Canada have died in residential schools that failed to protect them from fire, abuse, and deadly diseases .More than 4,000 school children died. This figure is based on partial federal government records, and Commission officials expect the number to increase as its researchers find more complete files from Library and Archives Canada and elsewhere.
"The lives of Aboriginal children did not seem as valuable as non-Aboriginal children," 2
The death rate was much higher than non-Aboriginal children, considered by many to be Canada's greatest historical shame. A lawsuit against the federal government and the churches resulted in a settlement that included payments to those affected and the creation in 2008 of the commission. Its role is to hold public hearings so that people can tell their stories, collect documents. The commission also established "The Missing Children Project" to assemble the names of the children who died, how they died, and where they were buried.
Many perished in the fires – despite repeated warnings of checks that called for emergency exits and sprinklers, that were ignored. It was well known that schools "lock them up in their dormitories because they did not want to escape, and if a fire broke out, they could not get out."
Many schools refused to spend money on emergency exits. Instead, they built poles outside of windows for kids to slide down. But the windows were locked, and the children were unable to reach the poles. There are so many deaths that I think could have been avoided if they had done what they were supposed to do.
There were also children that died as runaways, found dead from hypothermia in the snow-covered fields; others who tried to escape their aggressors drowned in the nearby rivers.
Many died of tuberculosis because they were malnourished and housed in poorly ventilated buildings.
Some died of suicide, unable to bear the brutality of schools.
The Commission even heard unproven allegations – by the commission – of homicide and murder.
"There are people who have been claimed that they have seen a child who has been beaten so brutally that they are dead.So there is this unanswered question: That the abuse was to the extreme that they were coming to death”
What was happening to the thousands of children who died? Schools and the government would not pay to have children shipped to their families.
And they were placed in coffins and buried near schools – some of them in marked graves, some in anonymous graves. Often their parents in distant reserves never said what happened.
students who went hungry at a residential school in Nova Scotia say they are not surprised to learn that they were part of a federal experiment. First Nations leaders across the country are demanding apologies from the federal government after it was revealed that Canada was running nutritional experiments on Aboriginal children and adults suffering from malnutrition during and after the Second World War. at least 1,300 Aboriginal people – most children – were used as guinea pigs in the 1940s and 50s by researchers researching the effectiveness of vitamin supplements. Research began in 1942 on about 300 Cree from Norway House in northern Manitoba. Plans were later developed for research on approximately 1,000 Aboriginal children suffering from hunger in six residential schools in Port Alberni, British Columbia, Kenora, Ont., Shubenacadie, NS, and Lethbridge, in Alberta.
Impact
Out of the survivors of residential schools, 64% were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, 21% were diagnosed with major depression, 7% were diagnosed with anxiety disorder and 7% were diagnosed with borderline personality disorder
Many Indian Residential School Survivors Suffer from Residential School Syndrome Residential School Syndrome is very similar to posttraumatic stress disorder and includes many of the same symptoms, such as nightmares, flashbacks, recurring invasive memories, and the avoidance of triggers that force the survivor to recall the residential school experience
Residential School Syndrome has not been formally defined by medical experts and there is no consensus on the issue; some deny that it exists.
Many Indian Residential School Survivors Also Suffering from Historical Trauma
Historical trauma refers to the way in which the culture as a whole has been hurt and even those not directly related to the residential school experience are suffering. Historical trauma is like psychological baggage that is transmitted from generation to generation, and extends through many lives. Historical trauma is transmitted in the same way that all other aspects of culture are transmitted. with the traditions and values of culture, difficulties and wounds are transmitted to younger generations.
Some survivors who have been sexually abused have kept their suffering a secret for decades after their time in residential schools
The lasting impact that schools have had is also reflected in the drug and alcohol rates among survivors. As an attempt to hide the memories and grief of many natives found themselves turning substance abuse which means that suffering continues as they and those around them are forced to deal with addiction every day.