Canadian School Types: Residential Native American Schools


Figure 1.-- The photo of the children a Residential school for Native American children was taken in 1908 at Regina, Saskatchewan. The girls wear dresses, the boys trousers and jackets. Some of the pupils wear shoes, others are barefoot. In the images we have seen of similar American schools, the children almost always have shoes.

America, Canada, and Mexico faced the issue of how to deal with Native American populations. America and Canada faced similar problems. A relatively advanced mostly European population and a small stone-age Native American people. Both countries settled upon a similar solution; a combination of separation (reservations) and assimilation. As part of that approach were residential schools for North Americans. The idea was to give the Native American children the ability to succeed in the new world into which they were thrust. The Indian residential schools of Canada were a network of boarding schools for the native peoples of Canada. They were funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches, mostly the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church. The children were removed from their parents care, often against the wishes of the parents and taken to schools at some di stance from their homes. The children were given clothes, but not uniforms like the American schools. We are not sure what the children were told about why they were there or about their families and culture. At the time this was seen as an act of kindness. We are not sure how these children fared in comparison to those who stayed on the reservation. That is important to know. Today there are some who describe this as 'cultural genocide'. One When assessing that charge, one needs to consider in an imperfect world, just what were the alternatives. One documentary describes 'the lingering and damaging effects that residential schools still have on generations of First Nation communities'. [First Nations Films] A Canadian reader writes, "In the past several years there were some major law suits against the Federal Government that ran these schools and this school system for a range of crimes including child abuse. This school system operated for most of the 20th century. The Government has had to make formal apologies and paid out or are paying out millions of dollars as restitution." Some will argue that the very idea of taking the children away from the parents was abuse. Our reader here is talking about actual cases of abuse.

Sources

First Nations Films. "Native Young!"








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Last updated: 3:17 PM 11/26/2013