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Week 4: History and Legacy of Residential schools
Canada’s dark Secret – Residential Schools
Questions:
What was the purpose of the Indian Act and what implications did it have on Indigenous Children, their education, the families and their culture? To control and assimilate indigenous peoples and their communities. Canadian government control aspects of indigenous people’s lives including health, cultural beliefs and more. What was the purpose of Residential Schools?
To educate them into a European way of life. To take away from their culture, language and traditions What means were used to get the children into the Residential Schools? Taken by force or were kidnapped by government officials. Parents who withheld their children, or tried to remove them from the school would be arrested and imprisonment. How did they the schools attempt to assimilate the children into European ways?
By separating them children from their families and communities. Also by dressing the same, haircut the same to make them look like one. To make sure they didn’t have any Indian left in them.
What was the effect on the children, the parents of the children and the children of the survivors?
Trauma. Early History of Residential schools in Canada
1620 Recollect Order of Franciscans In 1620 The Recollect Order of Franciscans (Roman Catholic) early missionaries to Canada established a boarding school at Quebec, which operated until 1629. In the beginning French boys and 8 Aboriginal boys were taught at the school. The Franciscans found it hard to curb the Aboriginal boys' freedom-loving ways and returned them to their homes by the end of the 1620s “the Recollects had abandoned their efforts at evangelization through forced cultural change”. In 1632 the Recollects were ordered to leave Canada.
1632 The Jesuits
The Jesuits began by sending promising students to school in France but that ended when parents refused to send the children away. In 1636, Jesuits established a boarding school at Quebec with several students and orphans. Many parents refused to send their children because of the distance, and they didn't like that their children would be with strangers away from their own customs. By 1639 the Jesuits decided to provide instruction in Aboriginal communities, allowing them to convert both parents and children to the Catholic faith.
The Ursuline Sisters 1639
The Ursuline Sisters arrived in 1639 along the St. Lawrence River in Quebec and established a school for girls recruiting six female students the first year. In a couple of years there were 48 girls. In 1642, the sisters moved to a large convent in Quebec City. In 1663, the new French colony of “New France” was created. The Colonial Governor in 1668 ordered the school to educate Aboriginal and European children together admitting students from both groups.
The Capuchins, The Congregation of Norte Dame, the Sulpicians
In the early 1600s in Acadia, the Capuchins educated French and Micmac students in separate institutions. In 1660, the Congregation of Notre Dame operated “Le Montagne,” a girls’ school in
Montreal. The Sulpicians operated a boys’ school in Montreal until 1677. These schools only operated for a short time.
A Cross- Cultural Vision of Education: Chief Shingwauk
Anishnaabe leader Chief Shingwauk was an influential chief of the Ojibwa people in the Sault Ste. Marie area from the War of 1812 when he fought alongside the British until his death in 1854. In 1835, he converted to the Church of England, but he did not give up his Ojibway beliefs. He believed in the value of education. His goal was to have his people learn to read and write English. He wanted a school that combined European education and Indigenous culture. Between 1827 and 1854 he worked on native rights and self-determination strategies.
To meet this goal of education, he snowshoed all the way to Toronto (then York) in 1831 to lobby Lieutenant Governor John Colborne for a school.
His vision was to create “Teaching Wigwams” across Anishnabek land with a cross cultural method combining European style education and indigenous teachings, worldview and values.
His ideas did not fit in with a government policy that was intent on integration and assimilation.
Although Christianity was important to him, his Ojibway culture played an important role in his life. He was instrumental in setting up the first school for the Ojibwa in Sault Ste. Marie and is remembered as a proponent of education that integrated modern industrial knowledge with Ojibwa culture, worldview and values. The original school named after him later became like the
other residential schools and did not live up to his ideals. His name and ideals live on in many different educational initiatives.
An example of his vision lives on in the Shingwaulk Project of Algoma University and Shingwauk Alumni Association. From their website a bit if history, "The Shingwauk School, or “Teaching Wigwam”, was originally envisaged by the great Ojibway Chief Shingwaukonse (1773-1854), also known as Shingwauk, as a crucible for cross-cultural understanding and for synthesis of traditional Anishnabek and modern European knowledge and
learning systems. Commissioned in 1832 in co-operation with Canadian Government and Anglican Church partners as part of St. John’s Mission to the Ojibway, the Shingwauk School was
opened in Sault Ste. Marie in 1833. It relocated to Garden River (1838-74), and to the current
site as the Shingwauk and Wawanosh Industrial Homes (Shingwauk 1874-1935 and Wawanosh 1876/96-1935) and the Shingwauk Indian Residential School (1935-70). As part of Chief Shingwauk’s new strategy of Aboriginal rights, self-determination and modern community development, the school’s cross-cultural educational project was also regarded as essential to the restoration of cosmological balance and of social harmony between Aboriginal and non-
Aboriginal Canadians, and between both Peoples and the natural environment."
Their mission:
"develop and deliver projects of “sharing, healing and learning” in relation to the impacts of the
Schools, and of individual and community cultural restoration; and accomplish “the true realization of Chief Shingwauk’s Vision” ....
with the special mission of cross-cultural Aboriginal education and research, in keeping with the history of the site."
Residential schools in Canada timeline What groups/organizations were the precursors to residential schools. Why did they want to educate the Indigenous Peoples? How successful were they? Religious orders
What have been the goals of government policies concerning Indigenous Peoples? What was the main goal of residential schools? Wanting to assimilate them into western culture.
What is the significance of each of the following: the Bagot Report, The Gradual Civilization Act, The Indian Act in relation to Residential Schools?
What part in the residential school system did these people play- Sir John A Macdonald, Egerton
Ryerson, Duncan Campbell Scott, Peter Henderson Bryce, and Phil Fontaine? Sir John A Macdonald -Creation of the residential school system, which is designed to isolate indigenous children from their families and cut all ties to their culture. Phil Fontaine- speaks publicly about abuse suffered at fort alexander Indian residential school and he calls for public inquiry. Egerton Ryerson- key architect In the design of the residential schools in Canada. Duncan Campbell Scott- pushed and passed on an amendment to the Indian act making school attendance compulsory for all first nations children less than 15 years old.
What was time span of residential schools in Canada? 1620-1996 Last school Closed 1996.
What have been the effects of residential schools and how did the Truth and Reconciliation Commission address them? Tremendous emotional and psychological problems also language loss and trauma. The TRC characterizes Canadas treatment of indigenous people as “cultural genocide.”
A Knock on the Door: The Essential History of Residential Schools from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
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"It can start with a knock on the door one morning. It is the local Indian agent, or the parish priest, or perhaps a Mounted Police officer. The bus for residential school leaves that morning. It is a day the parents have long been dreading. Even if the children have been warned in advance,
the morning's events are still a shock. The officials have arrived, and the children must go.
For tens of thousands of Aboriginal children for over a century, this was the beginning of their residential schooling. They were torn from their parents, who often surrendered them only under threat of prosecution. Then they were hurled into a strange and frightening place, one in which their parents and culture would be demeaned and oppressed " (Chapter 1, The History, A Knock on the Door)
Phil Fontaine, Former Manitoba Chief & Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) was himself a survivor of residential school. In his Forward to A Knock on the Door
he stresses that INDIAN ACT POLICY
to remove Aboriginal children from their families was a misguided experiment.
“It has taken until 2015 to get here. It took the revelation of the experiences of residential school
survivors to crystallize the reality that Canada was not the nation we wished to be.”
Fontaine also reiterates Chief Justice of Canada, Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin’s determination, that the government of Canada committed an act of “cultural genocide.”
Chapter 1 The opening chapter details and describes how children were ripped from their families, stripped of their clothing and cultural identity. They were supplied clothing, separated from siblings and given a number. Their life became a world of "fear, loneliness, and lack of affection."
In their fear and isolation. they had to obey. There was no crying or feelings allowed. Given a substandard diet, and a substandard education, they experienced harsh discipline and multiple forms of abuse all intended to bring them to civilization and salvation. Colonialism The first chapter details the entry and effect of Colonialism. The problem for Europeans was indigenous people blocking settler access to land. Treaties were made that European's did not intend to keep. Europeans Justified their actions by their belief that.
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their Christian god had given them the right to colonize land they "discovered" as long as
they converted the people there;
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they were bringing benefit of civilization to the heathen.
Their "civilizing mission" was based on European cultural superiority. "They" could raise up others. In some cases, contact with superior people could lead to extinction of the inferior.
The Church gave Europeans the moral justification and sent missionaries to save the heathen. Missionary zeal resulted from competing religions Catholic, Protestant,. Methodists and others. Church missionaries were global enterprises. Aboriginal culture was a barrier to salvation. There
was a need for social control and separation; everyone must have universal European values.
“The attempt to transform us failed. The true legacy of the survivors, then, will be the transformation of Canada.” (Fontaine, 2015)
Residential Schools operated in Canada from the 1800's until 1996. These schools were a primary weapon of the government and the missionaries in their attempt to systematically destroy Native culture. Generations of First Nations people have been scarred from the affects of that policy.
Grand Chief Phil Fontaine (a residential school survivor) said, "The first step in healing is disclosure." In this spirit, "Sleeping Children Awake" illuminates the voices of the many former residents and their families, including Elijah Harper (M.P.) and the late Art Solomon ( Elder, Author).
These recollections and experiences are bridged with dramatic excerpts from Shirley Cheechoo's autobiographical play, "Path with No Moccasins". Shirley shares an emotional account of her experiences in residential school, a subsequent destructive lifestyle and her journey back into wholeness.
The documentary features the songs of Maria Linklater and artwork of various accomplished artists. "Sleeping Children Awake" is both a personal record of this nations' history and a tribute to the enduring strength of Native Cultures.