Evolution Of Residential Schools

Residential schools were government sponsored religious schools established to assimilate Indigenous children into Canadian culture. Some of the primary objectives of the residential schools were to remove and isolate children from their homes, cultures, traditions, and families. They believed the Aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were unequal and inferior. At first students were sent to the schools by their parents as some of the parents first believed that the school would be good for their children, thinking that it would benefit the children. But then the children started getting taken away from their homes and taken to the residential schools. The kids were ripped from their own homes, families, traditions, and language.

The peak of residential schools was in 1931. The first residential school opened in 1848 and was located in Muncey Town Ontario and it closed in 1948. There was a total of eighty schools in Canada around this point. The last residential school operated in Canada by the government, was the Gordon Indian Residential school in Saskatchewan and it closed in 1996 it had more than seventeen thousand enrolled students.
When the children first got to the school they were basically stripped of their own cultural identities.
The children had their hair cut off, they were given different clothing, and also given new names. At the schools the Teaching focused mostly on practical day to day learning skills. Girls were primarily taught to do laundry, cook, sew and clean. Meanwhile the boys were taught farming, carpentry and tinsmithing. Many students did work for the school although they went unpaid, girls did housekeeping and the boys did general maintenance. There was not a lot of time spent in the classroom most students had only reached grade five by the age of eighteen. Because of this many students were discouraged from pursuing further education and the students were sent
away.

Lots of abuse took place at residential schools. Emotional and psychological abuse also was common. Physical abuse was given out as punishment, students recall being beaten and strapped. Some students were shackled to their beds. Sexual abuse was also very common in the residential schools. These things were also met with unhealthy conditions and corporal punishment. Children at the schools were often assaulted raped or threatened by staff. Although some students have good memories of their time at residential school due to some priests and nuns who ran the schools treated the students the best that they could given the circumstances.

By the 1950’s it was clear that the assimilation was not working. The aboriginal cultures had survived. The government also acknowledged that removing children from their families was detrimental to the health of the children and the communities involved. The government started to allow children to live with their families whenever possible and the department of Indian affairs took control of the system and marked an end to the church involvement. The government started to put the aboriginal students into public schools but many Aboriginal students struggled in their adjustment. Post- secondary education was considered out of reach for the Aboriginal students and those who wanted to attend were discouraged from doing so.

Many of the leaders, teachers, parents, and grandparents of today’s Aboriginal communities are residential school survivors. Residential school survivors share the same burdens as their ancestors even if they did not attend the schools themselves. These include PTSD, loss in Aboriginal communities of language, culture, and the teaching of tradition from one generation to another. Aboriginal children have grown up feeling that they do not belong in either society. They are neither truly Aboriginal nor part of the dominant society. Most struggle to fit in and face discrimination from both societies, which makes it difficult to focus on education and skills. Poverty is very common for many Aboriginal people.

In the 1980s, residential school survivors began to take the government and churches to court, suing them for damages resulting from the residential school experience. But I beleive no amount of apologizing from the government, other communities, churches, or people in general will ever make up for the awful things that the Survivors of residential schools.