Between 1867 and 2000, the Canadian government sent over 150,000
Aboriginal children to residential schools across the country.
Government officials and missionaries agreed that in order to "civilize
and Christianize" Aboriginal children, it was necessary to separate them
from their parents and their home communities. For children, life in
these schools was lonely and alien. Discipline was harsh, and daily life
was highly regimented. Aboriginal languages and cultures were denigrated
and suppressed. Education and technical training too often gave way to
the drudgery of doing the chores necessary to make the schools
self-sustaining. Child neglect was institutionalized, and the lack of
supervision created situations where students were prey to sexual and
physical abusers. Legal action by the schools' former students led to
the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in
2008. The product of over six years of research, the Commission's final
report outlines the history and legacy of the schools, and charts a
pathway towards reconciliation. Canada's Residential Schools: The
History, Part 1, Origins to 1939 places Canada's residential school
system in the historical context of European campaigns to colonize and
convert Indigenous people throughout the world. In post-Confederation
Canada, the government adopted what amounted to a policy of cultural
genocide: suppressing spiritual practices, disrupting traditional
economies, and imposing new forms of government. Residential schooling
quickly became a central element in this policy. The destructive intent
of the schools was compounded by chronic underfunding and ongoing
conflict between the federal government and the church missionary
societies that had been given responsibility for their day-to-day
operation. A failure of leadership and resources meant that the schools
failed to control the tuberculosis crisis that gripped the schools for
much of this period. Alarmed by high death rates, Aboriginal parents
often refused to send their children to the schools, leading the
government adopt ever more coercive attendance regulations. While
parents became subject to ever more punitive regulations, the government
did little to regulate discipline, diet, fire safety, or sanitation at
the schools. By the period's end the government was presiding over a
nation-wide series of firetraps that had no clear educational goals and
were economically dependent on the unpaid labour of underfed and often
sickly children.
