Over the decades, more than 150000 Aboriginal kids attended residential schools; over 4000 of which have died while living there. In the novel Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, Saul, a young Aboriginal boy, struggles with the hardships that residential schools have on him throughout his life. The schools have impacted, and continue to impact Aboriginal Peoples all through Canada. Residential schools have an extreme effect on family members and family quality, indigenous culture and religion, and the mental well being of an individual.
Family is an important thing; which residential schools ruin. In the novel, Saul says about his mother, "When Benjamin disappeared he carried a part of her away with him and there was nothing anyone could do
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It is also the thing residential schools set out to destroy. To begin with, Saul says, "On the second day I was there, a boy named Curtis White Fox had his mouth washed out with lye soap for speaking Ojibway. He choked on it and died right there in the classroom." (48). This displays how the schools want to kill Aboriginal culture because they will rather have a child die, in front of a full class, before allowing the child to speak an Indigenous language. Furthermore, when Saul's brother dies, his grandmother wants to honour him the way by their native culture but his mother, a former residential school student, insists that their religion is dead and he must see a priest so he will go to heaven (31-32). This provides evidence of the influence of residential schools on culture because his mother was taught to abandon the culture and ideas she was raised with because she was told it was wrong, and catholic is right. This act of forcing a new culture and religion on children has a shattering impact on Aboriginal …show more content…
In Indian Horse, Saul says, "You drink down because after all the roads you've travelled, thats the only direction you know by heart." (189). This quote outlines Saul's mental problems caused by residential schools because it shows clearly that he drink excessive amounts of alcohol because he doesn't know any other way to deal with what he has been through at, and after the school. Additionally, Saul says, "We'd never seen anyone so composed, and so assured, so peaceful… They set out to break her." (50-51). This is evidence that the residential schools didn't have the best intentions in mind for their students because they made it their mission to mentally destroy the little girl. Saul continues saying, "That’s what she was still doing when the car came and took her away to the crazy house." (51). The effective ability for residential schools have to break children is very evident here because they made sure the little girl lost who she was to such an extent she needed professional help. The examples of Saul's alcoholism and the little girl are significant to proving residential schools harm students on a mental
Saul was taken to “St. Jeromes Residential School” at around the age of 7. He claims that when he arrived “a pair of nuns scrubbed [him] with stiff-bristled brushes” (p.44) and that “it felt as though they were trying to remove [his] skin” (p.44). Richard Wagamese provides grisly images of innocent young children committing suicide. Saul claims that he saw “a young boy impaled on the tines of a pitchfork that he’d shoved through himself” (p.55) and witnessed “wrists slashed and the cascade of blood on the bathroom floor” (p.55). Students will see how abhorrent the events that occurred at Residential Schools were if this book is taught. This will shed light to past events so that history may not repeat
Theodore Fontaine is one of the thousands of young aboriginal peoples who were subjected through the early Canadian system of the Indian residential schools, was physically tortured. Originally speaking Ojibwe, Theodore relates the encounters of a young man deprived of his culture and parents, who were taken away from him at the age of seven, during which he would no longer be free to choose what to say, how to say it, with whom to live and even what culture to embrace. Theodore would then spend the next twelve years undoing what had been done to him since birth, and the rest of his life attempting a reversal of his elementary education culture shock, traumatization, and indoctrination of ethnicity and Canadian supremacy. Out of these experiences, he wrote the “Broken Circle: The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools-A Memoir” and in this review, I considered the Heritage House Publishing Company Ltd publication.
Residential School (1931-1996) treated aboriginals unfairly and assumed that aboriginal culture is unable to adapt to a rapidly modernizing society. It was said that native children could be successful if they adapt to Christianity and speaking English or French. Native students were not encouraged to speak their own language
The kidnap of Saul into the residential school system is a product of the superiority complex that exists. The belief that the indigenous people were inferior to the whites is what drove Saul to the school in the first place. Meanwhile, at the school Saul is taught to suppress his culture and values. Saul accompanied with thousands of other young aboriginal children are assimilated into the white culture. The main goal of the school system was to “[try] to remove [their] skin” (Wagamese 44). In this text, Saul compares his first time being bathed at St. Jeromes to
Usually, the schools were built in areas where they were far away from the Aboriginal homes, which therefore cut off ties with family and community influences. In these residential schools, children were stripped of their identity of their heritage where they were forbidden to speak their native language and where only English was allowed to be spoken; not allowed to wear their native clothing, this caused children the loss of their belief in their traditions of their native culture due to not being able to put them in practice because they were the “Other” which is considered inferior (rel after 304). The most horrible things of this residential school if the children did speak their native language or did anything native such as rituals they were punished. The Aboriginal children went through a cruel amount of abuses through emotional, physical and sexual which are life threatening to the children, this is considered a scaring and impacted many Aboriginal people with repercussions of the loss of
Residential schools are educational institutions established for Indigenous children. It was funded by the Canadian government and administered by Christian churches with the sole purpose of civilizing the native children and assimilate them into the modern western culture. In the novel Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson describes the impact of residential schools on multiple characters in the story. Uncle Mick, Aunt Trudy, and Josh are just a few who have experienced many types of abuse-physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual. Those horrid memories left permanent emotional scars and still resides with them even until adulthood. Residential schools disrupted lives, isolated families, eliminated cultural identity and caused long-term problems among the Indigenous community.
The First Nations children were greatly affected by the residential schools, as it left them physically and emotionally damaged from the trauma of being isolated from their families and cultural values; being abused (physically, verbally and sexually) while also being discriminated against, which had lasting effects. Although there were many other tribes who were also neglected, such as the metis and the units, my focus will be on the First Nations boys and girls who were affected by the residential schools and how it continues to affect them in today 's society. Throughout this essay, I will be proving examples and research to show what the residential schools were followed by what type of effects it had on the boys and girls who were forced to attend the schools.
It is Saul’s future that will be affected. Firstly, Saul’s parents experienced the residential schools and went crazy. There is a chance of this occurring to Saul also. After his parents had left the school, they went into depression and resorted to drinking.
“Thousands of Canada’s Aboriginal children died in Residential Schools that failed to keep them safe from fires, protected from abusers, and healthy from deadly disease” (Kennedy). “Residential Schools were government-sponsored religious schools established to assimilate Aboriginal Children into Euro-Canadian culture” (Miller). There were approximately 130 schools in every province and territory with the exception of Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick all with an estimated 150,000 attendees, segregated by gender (CBC News). Residential schooling caused tension as well as intergenerational suffering among native communities in Canada. Acts of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse support the tragedies in Canadian
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 Indigenous community, when the community is faced with a trauma, it takes seven generations for the community to heal (Trimble, 2015). People may underestimate how oppressed and how much suffering the Indigenous communities had to struggle with, and continue to struggle with these issues today. We may underestimate how severe the situation is because many of us were not taught much about the impact of colonization on the Indigenous communities in school. There are many myths people may have concerning Indigenous life experiences, particularly schooling. To address these myths, I would begin by giving a brief history of residential schools. I would then analyze how residential schools have impacted the indigenous community and how they continue to affect them today. I would also mention the current issues children on reserves are facing today regarding school. Lastly, I would mention some of the progress that has been made. I will use the work of Sefa Dei to demonstrate the importance of community in education regarding the Indigenous people.
During the 19th century the Canadian government established residential schools under the claim that Aboriginal culture is hindering them from becoming functional members of society. It was stated that the children will have a better chance of success once they have been Christianised and assimilated into the mainstream Canadian culture. (CBC, 2014) In the film Education as We See It, some Aboriginals were interviewed about their own experiences in residential schools. When examining the general topic of the film, conflict theory is the best paradigm that will assist in understanding the social implications of residential schools. The film can also be illustrated by many sociological concepts such as agents of socialization, class
The many beatings, suicides and sexual molestations shattered many children’s human spirit and created a sense of life that wasn’t worth living. “When your innocence is stripped from you, when your people are denigrated, when the family you came from is denounced and your tribal ways and rituals are pronounced backward, primitive, savage, you come to see yourself as less than human. That is hell on earth, that sense of unworthiness. That's what they inflicted on us.”(Pg.81) The quote represents how they were stripped from everything they had ever know, such as their language, rituals, traditions and even choice of food. Over a short period of time, the beatings and threats belittled the children and instilled them with continuous fear. When taken all together, the horror of attending this Residential School stripped not only Saul’s, but all the children’s innocence, traditions and identity.
In 1907 government health inspector P.H. Bryce recorded that 24% of previously healthy indigenous children were dying in the residential schools. He estimated that between 47% and 75% of students who were sent home when they were critically ill, died. The residential schools were created to “take the Indian out of the child” and to ensure that Indian culture and traditions were not passed down to future generations, essentially trying to end their way of life and assimilate them into a Euro-Canadian lifestyle. The government committed this appalling action by using the schools as a false pretense of trying to help the aboriginals adapt, making it mandatory for indigenous children to attend residential schools and students were forbidden to
Identity is a prize possession that defines the foundation of a character's values, beliefs and language. In the story Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, Saul faces many disheartening challenges in understanding who he is and where he belongs. Both, the priests and nuns at St.Jerome's and the ‘white’ people who live in Canada negatively influence Saul’s ethnicity as an Indian Horse. The identity of the aboriginal is at great risk and is being impacted within the multiple settings of the residential school and outside world.