For over a century, residential schools played a major role in assimilating First Nations into what Europeans consider a "dominant society." (Keeshig-Tobias, 2003) As part of the British North America and Indian Acts in 1867 and 1876, respectively, the Canadian government felt it was integral for First Nations to improve their lives by educating them in what they felt were culturally acceptable. Many First Nations children lose their sense of identity, initially by having their physical appearances altered by church authorities and disposing of their belongings. As a result of this dark aspect of Canada's history, many of the residential school survivors encountered numerous problems psychologically from the …show more content…
(2013). Student-to-Student Abuse in the Indian Residential Schools in Canada: Setting the Stage for Further Understanding. Child & Youth Services, 34(4), 343-359. DOI: 10.1080/0145935X.2013.859903.
Charles and DeGagné, a professor of social work at the University of British Columbia and executive director of Aboriginal Healing Foundation, respectively, argue that residential school survivors often talk about the abuse they receive from authorities such as priests or nuns, but they rarely discuss about abusing or being abused by their schoolmates. Many factors cause student-to-student abuse such as students' passive and aggressive response to the authority, loss of sense of identity and incentives from church authorities such as improved treatment towards students who conformed to European society. Some of these factors even spread from residential schools to their own communities as their original traditions even fail to reestablish the quality of lives of these …show more content…
This also applies to the end results such as taking the blame on the Aboriginal community for the lack of help students received instead of the oppressors and psychological problems such as the trauma passed from generation to generation and emotional abuse to younger children who did not attend school. Furthermore, towards the end of the journal, they both create a powerful analogy comparing student-to-student abuse to a rippling pond to show how the effects of abuse can not only impact the abused student, but also the