Survivor Of Schools Prais Report

While the initial objective was for the schools to help integrate First Nations children into the mainstream society they lived in, this integration clearly became an attempt at conversion. The children were removed from their families for extended durations, attempting to ensure Canadian-Christian upbringing. The residential schools original goal drastically changed, with their disgraceful policy regarding forbidding Aboriginal children from any kind of acknowledgement and recognition of their native language and culture. There are numerous reports of physical, psychological and sexual abuse experienced by Indigenous children in residential schools and painful consequences that in most cases last a lifetime (Hanson, E.).

During this time, The Government of Canada and the Roman Catholic Church enforced all Aboriginal children to be taken away from their homes (Fontaine, 2010). This process was not for welfare concerns, however, for the process of assimilation. The practice would include: the forbidding of speaking and language that is not English, inability to participate in cultural/spiritual rituals, being treated with lack of human dignity and death. At the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School children were subjected to physical, emotional and sexual abuse, neglect, forced labour, and unfortunate segregation from families (Fontaine,

In the nineteenth century, the government of Canada felt it had an obligation to the nations people to educate the Indigenous population of the country. The federal government sought to pursue this task through the development of residential schools. Under this system, framed by the Davin Report, Congregations of Christian missionaries were responsible for providing compulsory education to Indigenous children within governmentally constructed schools. They were charged with assimilating these children into mainstream culture and convert them into members of “civilized society”. The resulting actions on part of the Canadian government and acting missionaries have caused detrimental psychological and emotional trauma to survivors of these residential schools; trauma that has crossed intergenerational boundaries since the induction of the system. The direct outcomes of the residential school system have resulted in a form of trauma with cross-generational effects among contemporary Indigenous societies, known as historical trauma.

In reflecting on that Wab shared of his father’s experience in the residential school system, information gathered from the text, as well as my own prior knowledge, operated under various religious organizations, in tandem with the Government of Canada, residential schools were one of the methods used to assimilate Aboriginal children into white society (textbook). Tasked with the responsibility to “remove the Indian from the child” such was accomplished through whatever means necessary, whereby come the stories of physical and emotional abuse, in addition placing many children under experiments involving malnutrition (Erin discus). The consequences of such schooling then included, an increased number of generations growing up outside the family environment, these individuals no longer fitting into their Aboriginal communities, yet they are not accepted in

Throughout Canada’s 150 years of being a country, Indigenous people were oppressed. The children were forced into residential schools, and eventually, over decades, the entire culture was lost. Looking back on it now, it is clear that what had happened was a “cultural genocide.” Cultural genocide is defined as, “the destruction of structures and practices that allow a group to continue as a group” (Moffit, Brown, 2017).

Aboriginal people in Canada are the native peoples in North America within the boundaries of present-day Canada. In the 1880’s there was a start of residential schools which took Aboriginal kids from their family to schools to learn the Roman Catholics way of culture and not their own. In residential schools Aboriginal languages were forbidden in most operations of the school, Aboriginal ways were abolished and the Euro-Canadian manner was held out as superior. Aboriginal’s residential schools are careless, there were mental and physical abuse, Aboriginals losing their culture and the after effects of residential schools.

From the 1870’s until the last school closed in 1996, at least 150,000 Indigenous children attended residential schools in Canada. More than 130 government mandated schools existed across the country. These schools were church administered, with the express purpose of forcibly removing Indigenous children from their native culture, in an effort to assimilate them into Euro-Canadian culture and thereby “kill the Indian in the child”. Countless families were torn apart as the Canadian government placed

The history of Canadian Indian Residential schools has attracted a considerable amount of attention in Canada in recent years. Most people do not want to revisit the pain and suffering that countless Aboriginal peoples endured, and the loss of such beautiful cultures. Since the introduction of the Canadian Indian Residential school system in 1857, through the Gradual Civilization Act, there has been concern whether the outcome of the schools would leave a positive or negative mark on the Aboriginal peoples of Canada. Although there are many recorded cases of abuse and ill treatment; within the

These residential schools put the Indigenous youth under the control of primarily the white establishment, and cut these children off from their families,

The sociological effects that Aboriginal peoples in Canada face are vast. Residential schools, stripped people of their identity, enforced a cultural genocide, abused (both sexually and physically) children and created an unjust line of intergenerational trauma. Kinship ties, for the majority were lost during the residential school period, sometimes leaving entire communities displaced. The Canadian Government fails to recognize the treatment of Aboriginal peoples during the residential school period and there hasn’t been much done to help those who are affected.

Residential schools in Canada were present for over 100 years and were created by the government to eliminate the Indigenous culture. These schools successfully separated families while creating huge cultural barriers between children and their Native culture (COHA, 2011). These children were forcibly removed from their families and taken to residential schools because Canadians saw Indigenous peoples as “backwards” or “savage” (COHA, 2011). They also believed that they were inferior to Natives and that these schools would help “civilize” aboriginals by replacing their Native traits with Western values (COHA, 2011).

The European settlement in Canada had some excruciating effects on the people – physical and mentally. She also describes in her article briefly how children were tortured and forced to convert themselves in the residential school system of Canada. The modern schools of Great Britain turned into the model for private schools in Canada in 1883;(Miller 1996; Morrissette 1994); an alteration to the Indian Act in 1894 made participation for Native kids obligatory (O'Hara and Treble 2000). Assimilation of numerous First Nations individuals of Canada started in the 1800s when they were assimilated into the representing society, compelled to surrender their overwhelming social convictions and practices, and neglected to be associated in their regular practices. To begin with Nations kids were taken from their families and put in private schools where the absence of parental supporting added to their disconnection and, over a time of quite a long while, stories of physical and sexual misuse became visible through the stories told by a percentage of the general population who went to First Nations private

Residential School’s were introduced back in the 1870’s, they were made to change the way native children spoke their languages and how they viewed their cultures. The residential school system in Canada was operated by the government, where the native children were aggressively forced away from their loved ones to participate in these schools (1000 Conversations). The government had a concept, where they can modernize the native children, aged of three to eighteen and extinguish the aboriginal culture. In the twentieth century the Canadian Public School’s had arrived and had improved treatments than residential schools. In Contrast, the treatments within these schools were both different, whereas Canadian public school students had more freedom than residential school students because children were taken away from their families. However, the treatment in these schools were different and some what similar. Even though Residential schools and Canadian Public schools were similar in some form, there were numerous amounts of differences in how the children were taught, how they were treated and how their living conditions were like throughout these schools.

In the 19th century, The Canadian government believed that it was their job to educate the Aboriginal people in Canada. European settlers felt that the aboriginal people were savage, ignorant, and like children needed guidance, and needed to be “civilized”. Ultimately, they wanted to assimilate the Aboriginal people into Canadian and Christian ways of living life in Canada. The Canadian government came up with a policy called “aggressive assimilation” to be taught at industrial schools that would be run by the churches and government funded. They chose children to go to these schools because they are easier to manipulate and mold than the adults and felt that school was the best way to do so. With the hopes of the assimilated children will teach their children their new way of life and that their traditions and culture will diminish or be completely gone in a few generations. In the 1880’s, the government began to construct the residential schools across Canada. Authorities often would take kids from their home, to isolate them from their family and familiar communities. In 1920 is when the Indian Act came in effect where every Aboriginal child was obligated to attend a residential school and it was illegal for them to go to any other institution.

Through residential schools acting in the dismantling of traditional indigenous religions, languages, and practices it becomes evident that this is a matter of cultural genocide, not simply an effort to assimilate the indigenous. Furthering this notion is the countless accounts of sexual, physical, psychological, and emotional abuse that went on in these hallowed halls. Although it took over a century for both the government and church to recognize the tremendous amount of suffering induced, attempts at paying back and correcting mistakes made in the past have been undergoing. However, despite many attempts by current or past legal bodies to reconcile, these acts of cultural genocide committed in these residential schools will never be forgotten, and will continue to cast their dark shadow in Canadian