The Role Of Abuse In Residential Schools

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September 11, 2014

"Residential Schools" Summary The Canadian government wanted to assimilate natives in by putting native children in residential schools. The Canadian government contacted churches to set up residential schools and provided them with funding, land and equipment. In 1884, the government passed the Indian Act, which made it mandatory for all native children under the age of 16 to attend residential schools. During the time between 1890 to 1970's, when residential schools were ended, between 100,000 and 150,000 people in Canada have attended them.

The children who went to residential schools were isolated from their families because they were not allowed to see their families for ten months in a year. The children were forced to practice Christian religion, speak English and learn more about Canadian culture and they were not allowed to talk about their own Indian culture. Abuse was a very serious concern at residential schools. The types of abuse includes physical, sexual and psychological. Today, as many as 12,000 cases of lawsuits against the Canadian government are being made by former students of residential schools.
As high as between 10% to 40% of children at residential schools did not survive to come home.
This high death rate is caused by very poor physical and sanitary situations at residential schools. There are also many cases of murders, death from escaping and freezing. The government knew about this problem, but decided not to do much about it. Residential schools have a great impact on native culture as it made many of them lose their own culture and gives them bad life experiences. The experience of physical and sexual abuse leaves many people with mental problems which lead to drug and alcohol addiction and serious mental sicknesses, which led to social
dysfunction.

"No Justice on Stolen Land" Summary BC is very different from other provinces because there is no real document that says that natives do not have title to the land in BC. There has only been the Douglas treaties and Treaty 8 in BC, which extinguished native control of land in small areas in BC but the rest of the province legally still belonged to the Indians. The Royal Proclamation is used against any cases of the unfair government takeover of Indian lands because it clearly says that Indians should have title to the land in BC. The Royal Proclamation was a issued by King George III in 1763 and it set limits to the British territory in North America and recognized Indian nations and their rights to own land. This limit was beneficial to the British because it kept strong control over French people, did not over-extend the army and made the Indians more friendly. The Canadian government tried to gain new lands legally but were not able to come as far as BC. Reserves were established beginning with the Douglas Treaties of 1950-1854. This law made it illegal to do trade in any lands that are owned by the Indians. HBC officials started to ignore the Royal Proclamation and started to sell Indian lands to people starting in 1854. The government then planned to create reserves for Indian people, which limits the size of their land, and kept making it smaller over the years. In 1971, BC becomes part of Canada and in 1974, the government passed the BC Land Act, which sold more lands to settlers and took away land from the Indians.