The Creation Of Residential Schools

To understand the reasoning behind the creation of residential schools you need to first understand the ideals of colonialism and imperialism and how they impacted decision-making by the government of Canada. Colonialism, as defined by Webster’s dictionary, is “control by one power over a dependent area or people” and imperialism is defined as “the extension or imposition of power, authority, or influence .” Therefore, as these two concepts go hand-in-hand, it is natural that combined they form processes and practices that allow for colonizers to control both foreign territory and its inhabitants . This was the mindset of European settlers when they came to Canada. Their colonialist ideals were the root of the causes for legislation and policies
This account shows the imperialist mentality of “my culture is better than yours” that began to shape relations with aboriginals. Furthermore, these practices, while the norm, were the causes for the genocidal practices like the Indian Act, and later with the amendment that created the Indian residential school
To this end, the Indian Act was created in 1876. Members of Parliament viewed the Indian Act as a way to motivate the Indians to educate their children and become contributing members of society. However, due to cultural superior thinking, MPs did not believe Indigenous peoples could meet this goal on their own accord within the boundaries of their own culture. Therefore, in order to complete the goal, MPs thought it paramount that Euro western curricula be taught to the next generation of children . It was believed that as the adult Indigenous population could not be swayed – as was evidenced by only a single person voluntarily franchising under the Gradual Civilization Act – the focus should turn to the children, who could be indoctrinated into the superior European culture. In this way, Indian residential schools were introduced and legislated through the Indian Act. However, for the first eight years the Canadian government and churches (who ran the schools with federal funding) came to realize that once more indigenous parents would not voluntarily give up their right, in this case, the right to raise and educate their children the way they saw fit. A voluntary call for parents to send their children to residential schools was not meeting the goal set by the government for student enrollment. MP William P.C. Paterson, referring to a letter sent by a Reverend Wilson, claimed that the assimilatory processes was not working as had