Métis Residential Schools
Nobody’s Children:
The Metis in Residential Schools
February 1, 2014
The history of the Métis and Residential Schools is not new. For a century, the mutual lives of the Métis children were controlled by the missionaries and the Catholic Church, and became wrapped up in Federal Government policies. The Metis Residential School experience was similar to the Aboriginal one; that of social exclusion and mental and physical abuse. The procedures that were created for the Métis in Residential Schools harshly exposed how bureaucrats felt about the social order of the Métis’ station in the New Canada. The Residential Schools took part in creating a lower class structure for the Métis, which separated them even further from their First …show more content…
Nations peers.
The Catholic Church Residential School System By 1870, Catholic and Anglican school systems were firmly established in Manitoba’s Métis Red River settlement. It became essential for the government to be able to control the actions of the Métis people after the battle commanded by Gabriel Dumont against Mounted constables in Batoche in 1885, which marked the Last Stand of the Aboriginal West. However, the goal of forming a civilised European society continued to be a challenge. Egerton Ryerson, a Methodist minister expressed the views of the time, "the education of Indians consists not merely of the mind but of weaning of the habits and feelings of their ancestors and the acquirements of the language, arts, and customs of a civilized life." The Roman Catholic Church already had rooted ties to the Métis community through the French Catholic culture of the Métis peoples '.
Many missionaries determined that the success of their lessons was reliant on how long these children remained in the Missionary Schools and away from the influence of their traditions and families. While many Métis did go to school, the missionaries were still powerless to sway the Francophone Métis communities. Missionaries eventually forcibly removed these French-speaking Métis children from their homes and put them in a setting where punishment, conformity, Christianity and European Values replaced Métis and First Nations traditions and culture. This was an entirely new and alien approach for the Métis, who had always had taught their children by example and …show more content…
experience. The first Catholic nuns to work among the Métis were the Grey Nuns who came to the Red River in 1843 and were followed by several other others in Western Canada. One of the most prominent was the Sisters of Notre Dames Des Missions. By creating mission schoolhouses in Métis neighborhoods, the Catholic Church effectively deprived the Métis parents an important role in the education for their children. The Church retained control. There was no say for the parents in how the school’s issues were handled or what the curriculum would include. Eradication of the culture of the Métis became one of the most extreme education disciplines of the church-run schools by their attempt to replace their language known as Michif for that of what is now the language of French Canadian. They considered the Michif language substandard to the formal, common textbook French taught in schools. The nuns saw their work as being successful by regularly assisting the officials of the parish. The nuns would distribute the rosary to those who could not speak the language or read in order for them to understand the Mass. This was hardly education of the highest order.
The Federal Government In the Constitution Act of 1867, two of the three Aboriginal Peoples were recognized by the federal government, leaving the Métis Nation in a jurisdictional midpoint jostled between the federal and provincial governments. The Métis created complications for colonial society. Because of the history of Metis 's conflict, they were seen as a threat to a peaceful settlement, which put them in a grey area in which neither the Provincial Governments of the Western Provinces nor the Federal Government wanted to offer services such as education. The Government did not have a lawful, constitutional obligation for the teaching of Métis children, unlike the First Nations children, or the Inuit children in Canada. Official policies regarding Métis children varied in different parts of the country.
While Indian Affairs did not want to make funds available for Métis children education, other areas permitted Métis children into the schools. The Missionaries found an unexpected advantage for filling up the chairs in some Catholic run schools that came with the connection between the church and the Métis. To increase school attendance, the schools would accept the Metis with the sick and underage First Nation children. Furthermore, some of the more anxious school administrators appealed to the Government to take Métis children who were existing in poverty, based on the capacity of their parents to pay for their keep, either through a work-for-education plan or by using their personal settlement funds. This is likely how the first of the Métis children may have appeared in these schools. Parents and their children would perform general repair work or labour on the school farms as a kind of
tuition. The Roman Catholic and Anglican missionaries eventually began three Residential Schools for Metis children: Île-à-la- Crosse in Saskatchewan, Saint-Paul-des-Métis in Alberta, and St. Paul in the Yukon. A grouping system was formulated for the Métis people, filing them into categories, according to their associations to First Nations groups. The closer the government thought the Métis were to First Nations communities, in a geographical or societal sense, the lower class of person they were thought to be. They were taught to judge themselves and one another by these value-laden characteristics, thus internalizing oppression.
Coming from Métis communities and large families, Métis children originally had little or no concept of Western class distinctions. The class distinctions that were formed by Indian Affairs that appeared and were memorized every day in their textbooks, spilled over to how the Métis and First Nations saw themselves. Upon entering residential school, often Métis children were learning about non-Aboriginal Canada for the first time and, at the same time, they were learning what non-Aboriginal Canada thought about them.
The Métis Native Indians had a higher priority over the Métis children in the consideration of admission to Residential Schools. However missionaries realized they had overlooked a small wandering community of children that were not exactly Aboriginal and required proper schooling. They were a different type of child, then often referred to as half-breeds or “Bois brulé” which meant burnt sticks in French. This difference was often based on physical appearance, where lighter skinned Métis children found themselves in a class higher than darker skinned children, although they had the same father and mother. These lighter skinned Métis children regularly came to the schools with a background in Christian practices and many could speak English or French but the Michif language was predominant amongst them. These language and appearance
There are no sources in the current document. traits isolated them even further from their First Nations peers. The children in the Métis residential schools saw themselves as outsiders among the First Nation students and Missionary staff. If the lighter skin of the Métis children made them different from the First Nations students in the schools, it did not stop their experience to the same abuse. Métis survivors recall events of verbal abuse, where the teachers would call the children names, based on their Métis culture. Violent abuses were just as prevalent for the Métis children as for the other students in the Residential school system. Métis children learned at a young age just what being a dog meant. The meaning of the words “breed,” “mutt,” or a half-breed became clear to the Métis. All students had regular reinforcement of the cruelty that came with church-led illusions of superiority by being spoken to, fed, and disciplined as dogs. Michif Elder Grace Zoldy pointed out the students’ view on the injustice in the schools:
" It was very hard to be there with Sisters always after you?… calling me ”sauvage” which meant “savage” in French or “le chien” that meant “dog.” That’s what they used to call us when we didn’t listen. I knew what it was because my mom and dad spoke French and the other kids didn’t know what it was; they didn’t know the French language.” In the eyes of staff and administrators, a Métis child in one instance could be seen as better off than an Indian child and, in the next, could be seen as worse off. Generally, Métis went to residential schools either because they were poor and it was a charitable act or they were identified as living the Indian mode of life. While the Métis people perceived the need to educate their children, they likely found solace in the Roman Catholic religion which was omnipresent in the schools. This reflected the teachings of their homes and was familiar to them in a school setting which was otherwise foreign to them. Unfortunately, even with their strong religious backgrounds, the students were ashamed and humiliated of who they were, and even more embarrassed of who their parents were. For the Métis students, this was a difficulty, because usually it was only one of their parents of who they were embarrassed. With the settlement of people in southern Manitoba, many Métis people in the area had little control in the schools. In St. Eustache, Manitoba, one of the oldest Métis communities in Canada, there was no input by community members in administering the curriculum as the school was, "controlled by the priest who was superior to the teaching nuns and local school committees in all aspects of education." In that community, not one Métis person was on the school board in over half a century. Yet, at times, at least half of the school population was Métis. Regardless of the precise number of children involved, Aboriginal people across the country have paid a high price, both individually and collectively, for the Government 's misguided experiment in cultural assimilation. In the eyes of the government, The Métis were neither to be assimilated as Indians or as non-Aboriginal Canadians. The Métis were ‘Nobody’s Children’, a legacy the Métis Nation is still dealing with today. The attendance of Métis students at Residential Schools and the harsh experiences they remembered is ignored by the Government. This sends a message to the Métis that any commemoration of their lives has no importance in Canadian history. The raison d 'etre of the Church-run Residential School System was to entirely erase Aboriginal culture from the Canadian backdrop. To assimilate Native children into mainstream culture by removing them from their homes and placing them into Eurocentric environments where they would learn to become “white.” This attempt at assimilation failed dramatically, while the effect for most Aboriginal communities was highly significant and still resonates today. A large number of Métis attending church-run schools have been denied the same compensation the First Nation people received under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. The survivors of Métis residential and day schools still seek justice today.
Bibliography
A Consolidation of the Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982. Ottawa: Department. of Justice Canada, 2012.
Chartrand, Larry N., Tricia E. Logan, and Judy D. Daniels. Métis history and experience and residential schools in Canada. Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2006.
Daniels, Judy, Larry Chartrand, and Tricia Logan. "Métis History and Experience and Residential Schools in Canada/Histoire et expériences des Métis et les pensionnats au Canada." Aboriginal Healing Foundation Report (2006): 1-4.
Edge, Lois, and Tom McCallum. "Métis Identity: Sharing traditional knowledge and healing practices at Métis Elders Gatherings.” PIMATISIWIN 4, no. 2 (2006): 90.
Erasmus, George, Jeff Thomas, and Richard Kistabish. “Where are the children?: Healing the legacy of the residential schools.” Ottawa, Ontario: National Archives of Canada, 2003.
Grant, Agnes. No end of grief: Indian residential schools in Canada. Winnipeg: Pemmican Pub., 1996.
Rogers, Shelagh. Speaking my truth: reflections on reconciliation & residential school. Book club ed. Ottawa, Ontario: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2012.
Thorner, Thomas. "The Whites were Terrorists: Residential Schools." A country nourished on self-doubt: documents in Post-Confederation Canadian history. Toronto, Ontario: Toronto University Press, 2010. 379.
The Metis in Residential Schools
February 1, 2014
The history of the Métis and Residential Schools is not new. For a century, the mutual lives of the Métis children were controlled by the missionaries and the Catholic Church, and became wrapped up in Federal Government policies. The Metis Residential School experience was similar to the Aboriginal one; that of social exclusion and mental and physical abuse. The procedures that were created for the Métis in Residential Schools harshly exposed how bureaucrats felt about the social order of the Métis’ station in the New Canada. The Residential Schools took part in creating a lower class structure for the Métis, which separated them even further from their First …show more content…
Nations peers.
The Catholic Church Residential School System By 1870, Catholic and Anglican school systems were firmly established in Manitoba’s Métis Red River settlement. It became essential for the government to be able to control the actions of the Métis people after the battle commanded by Gabriel Dumont against Mounted constables in Batoche in 1885, which marked the Last Stand of the Aboriginal West. However, the goal of forming a civilised European society continued to be a challenge. Egerton Ryerson, a Methodist minister expressed the views of the time, "the education of Indians consists not merely of the mind but of weaning of the habits and feelings of their ancestors and the acquirements of the language, arts, and customs of a civilized life." The Roman Catholic Church already had rooted ties to the Métis community through the French Catholic culture of the Métis peoples '.
Many missionaries determined that the success of their lessons was reliant on how long these children remained in the Missionary Schools and away from the influence of their traditions and families. While many Métis did go to school, the missionaries were still powerless to sway the Francophone Métis communities. Missionaries eventually forcibly removed these French-speaking Métis children from their homes and put them in a setting where punishment, conformity, Christianity and European Values replaced Métis and First Nations traditions and culture. This was an entirely new and alien approach for the Métis, who had always had taught their children by example and …show more content…
experience. The first Catholic nuns to work among the Métis were the Grey Nuns who came to the Red River in 1843 and were followed by several other others in Western Canada. One of the most prominent was the Sisters of Notre Dames Des Missions. By creating mission schoolhouses in Métis neighborhoods, the Catholic Church effectively deprived the Métis parents an important role in the education for their children. The Church retained control. There was no say for the parents in how the school’s issues were handled or what the curriculum would include. Eradication of the culture of the Métis became one of the most extreme education disciplines of the church-run schools by their attempt to replace their language known as Michif for that of what is now the language of French Canadian. They considered the Michif language substandard to the formal, common textbook French taught in schools. The nuns saw their work as being successful by regularly assisting the officials of the parish. The nuns would distribute the rosary to those who could not speak the language or read in order for them to understand the Mass. This was hardly education of the highest order.
The Federal Government In the Constitution Act of 1867, two of the three Aboriginal Peoples were recognized by the federal government, leaving the Métis Nation in a jurisdictional midpoint jostled between the federal and provincial governments. The Métis created complications for colonial society. Because of the history of Metis 's conflict, they were seen as a threat to a peaceful settlement, which put them in a grey area in which neither the Provincial Governments of the Western Provinces nor the Federal Government wanted to offer services such as education. The Government did not have a lawful, constitutional obligation for the teaching of Métis children, unlike the First Nations children, or the Inuit children in Canada. Official policies regarding Métis children varied in different parts of the country.
While Indian Affairs did not want to make funds available for Métis children education, other areas permitted Métis children into the schools. The Missionaries found an unexpected advantage for filling up the chairs in some Catholic run schools that came with the connection between the church and the Métis. To increase school attendance, the schools would accept the Metis with the sick and underage First Nation children. Furthermore, some of the more anxious school administrators appealed to the Government to take Métis children who were existing in poverty, based on the capacity of their parents to pay for their keep, either through a work-for-education plan or by using their personal settlement funds. This is likely how the first of the Métis children may have appeared in these schools. Parents and their children would perform general repair work or labour on the school farms as a kind of
tuition. The Roman Catholic and Anglican missionaries eventually began three Residential Schools for Metis children: Île-à-la- Crosse in Saskatchewan, Saint-Paul-des-Métis in Alberta, and St. Paul in the Yukon. A grouping system was formulated for the Métis people, filing them into categories, according to their associations to First Nations groups. The closer the government thought the Métis were to First Nations communities, in a geographical or societal sense, the lower class of person they were thought to be. They were taught to judge themselves and one another by these value-laden characteristics, thus internalizing oppression.
Coming from Métis communities and large families, Métis children originally had little or no concept of Western class distinctions. The class distinctions that were formed by Indian Affairs that appeared and were memorized every day in their textbooks, spilled over to how the Métis and First Nations saw themselves. Upon entering residential school, often Métis children were learning about non-Aboriginal Canada for the first time and, at the same time, they were learning what non-Aboriginal Canada thought about them.
The Métis Native Indians had a higher priority over the Métis children in the consideration of admission to Residential Schools. However missionaries realized they had overlooked a small wandering community of children that were not exactly Aboriginal and required proper schooling. They were a different type of child, then often referred to as half-breeds or “Bois brulé” which meant burnt sticks in French. This difference was often based on physical appearance, where lighter skinned Métis children found themselves in a class higher than darker skinned children, although they had the same father and mother. These lighter skinned Métis children regularly came to the schools with a background in Christian practices and many could speak English or French but the Michif language was predominant amongst them. These language and appearance
There are no sources in the current document. traits isolated them even further from their First Nations peers. The children in the Métis residential schools saw themselves as outsiders among the First Nation students and Missionary staff. If the lighter skin of the Métis children made them different from the First Nations students in the schools, it did not stop their experience to the same abuse. Métis survivors recall events of verbal abuse, where the teachers would call the children names, based on their Métis culture. Violent abuses were just as prevalent for the Métis children as for the other students in the Residential school system. Métis children learned at a young age just what being a dog meant. The meaning of the words “breed,” “mutt,” or a half-breed became clear to the Métis. All students had regular reinforcement of the cruelty that came with church-led illusions of superiority by being spoken to, fed, and disciplined as dogs. Michif Elder Grace Zoldy pointed out the students’ view on the injustice in the schools:
" It was very hard to be there with Sisters always after you?… calling me ”sauvage” which meant “savage” in French or “le chien” that meant “dog.” That’s what they used to call us when we didn’t listen. I knew what it was because my mom and dad spoke French and the other kids didn’t know what it was; they didn’t know the French language.” In the eyes of staff and administrators, a Métis child in one instance could be seen as better off than an Indian child and, in the next, could be seen as worse off. Generally, Métis went to residential schools either because they were poor and it was a charitable act or they were identified as living the Indian mode of life. While the Métis people perceived the need to educate their children, they likely found solace in the Roman Catholic religion which was omnipresent in the schools. This reflected the teachings of their homes and was familiar to them in a school setting which was otherwise foreign to them. Unfortunately, even with their strong religious backgrounds, the students were ashamed and humiliated of who they were, and even more embarrassed of who their parents were. For the Métis students, this was a difficulty, because usually it was only one of their parents of who they were embarrassed. With the settlement of people in southern Manitoba, many Métis people in the area had little control in the schools. In St. Eustache, Manitoba, one of the oldest Métis communities in Canada, there was no input by community members in administering the curriculum as the school was, "controlled by the priest who was superior to the teaching nuns and local school committees in all aspects of education." In that community, not one Métis person was on the school board in over half a century. Yet, at times, at least half of the school population was Métis. Regardless of the precise number of children involved, Aboriginal people across the country have paid a high price, both individually and collectively, for the Government 's misguided experiment in cultural assimilation. In the eyes of the government, The Métis were neither to be assimilated as Indians or as non-Aboriginal Canadians. The Métis were ‘Nobody’s Children’, a legacy the Métis Nation is still dealing with today. The attendance of Métis students at Residential Schools and the harsh experiences they remembered is ignored by the Government. This sends a message to the Métis that any commemoration of their lives has no importance in Canadian history. The raison d 'etre of the Church-run Residential School System was to entirely erase Aboriginal culture from the Canadian backdrop. To assimilate Native children into mainstream culture by removing them from their homes and placing them into Eurocentric environments where they would learn to become “white.” This attempt at assimilation failed dramatically, while the effect for most Aboriginal communities was highly significant and still resonates today. A large number of Métis attending church-run schools have been denied the same compensation the First Nation people received under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. The survivors of Métis residential and day schools still seek justice today.
Bibliography
A Consolidation of the Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982. Ottawa: Department. of Justice Canada, 2012.
Chartrand, Larry N., Tricia E. Logan, and Judy D. Daniels. Métis history and experience and residential schools in Canada. Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2006.
Daniels, Judy, Larry Chartrand, and Tricia Logan. "Métis History and Experience and Residential Schools in Canada/Histoire et expériences des Métis et les pensionnats au Canada." Aboriginal Healing Foundation Report (2006): 1-4.
Edge, Lois, and Tom McCallum. "Métis Identity: Sharing traditional knowledge and healing practices at Métis Elders Gatherings.” PIMATISIWIN 4, no. 2 (2006): 90.
Erasmus, George, Jeff Thomas, and Richard Kistabish. “Where are the children?: Healing the legacy of the residential schools.” Ottawa, Ontario: National Archives of Canada, 2003.
Grant, Agnes. No end of grief: Indian residential schools in Canada. Winnipeg: Pemmican Pub., 1996.
Rogers, Shelagh. Speaking my truth: reflections on reconciliation & residential school. Book club ed. Ottawa, Ontario: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2012.
Thorner, Thomas. "The Whites were Terrorists: Residential Schools." A country nourished on self-doubt: documents in Post-Confederation Canadian history. Toronto, Ontario: Toronto University Press, 2010. 379.