Aboriginal Residential Schools: A Critical Analysis

With the world renown hallmark as the ‘lucky country’, it can be difficult to comprehend how the very people we have to thank for the prosperous land on which we live, are amongst the most disadvantaged in the world, rivalling many from developing countries. The dispossession of land, displacement of Australia’s first people and unremitting discrimination since European settlement, has given rise to intergenerational disadvantage in areas such as education, employment and health (***). Whilst the three areas are intertwined, education is unmistakably a quintessential vehicle for building resilience and improving socioeconomic outcomes for Indigenous Australians(***). Teachers and schools alike play a key role in acknowledging and addressing past and present injustices through:

The goals and visions behind my reconciliation action plan was to bring the two sides of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians together in equality and harmony. Since the colonisation of Australia there has been a vast divide between the two sides that has caused many serious outcomes for Aboriginal people. My way of contributing to this is to create a better understanding, restore trust and eradicate racism as a positive way to help close the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia’s.

In the Indigenous community, when the community is faced with a trauma, it takes seven generations for the community to heal (Trimble, 2015). People may underestimate how oppressed and how much suffering the Indigenous communities had to struggle with, and continue to struggle with these issues today. We may underestimate how severe the situation is because many of us were not taught much about the impact of colonization on the Indigenous communities in school. There are many myths people may have concerning Indigenous life experiences, particularly schooling. To address these myths, I would begin by giving a brief history of residential schools. I would then analyze how residential schools have impacted the indigenous community and how they continue to affect them today. I would also mention the current issues children on reserves are facing today regarding school. Lastly, I would mention some of the progress that has been made. I will use the work of Sefa Dei to demonstrate the importance of community in education regarding the Indigenous people.

Disadvantages include the loss of the First Nation’s right to govern themselves and the loss of the right to vote

It is not possible to talk about the lengthy history of colonial settlers and indigenous groups without addressing the devastating effects of Indian residential schools on the Aboriginal community in Canada. During the past two decades, the Canadian government acknowledged the implications and has taken responsibility for the outcomes of these residential schools. Much has been done through the framework of transitional justice in order to facilitate reconciliation with the indigenous community in Canada. Despite the government’s amends, I will argue that the reconciliation efforts were inadequate because the purpose of these initiatives was merely to draw a line between the past and the present, rather than to restore the socioeconomic wellbeing of the Aboriginal community that existed before the legacy of Indian residential schools.

Not many people are aware of how residential schools have affected First Nations people in Canada. These Christian boarding schools, which were government-sponsored and aimed at assimilating Indigenous children, have deeply impacted the native population; and descendants of residential school survivors share the same burdens as their ancestors, even though they didn’t attend the schools themselves. Because of residential schools, domestic abuse and violence is more frequent within families, many have poor mental health and live in poverty, and finally, many of them are unable or unwilling to teach their children native languages or other aspects of their culture.

Residential schools have been a part of Canadian history for many years, and it has left a large impact on many first nation communities in the 20th century such as families dealing with the effects of separation and loss of traditions, children having their natural community and supports violated and lastly how it impacted Canada as a whole. Primarily residential schools not only affected indigenous children but their parents who were left behind as well.in the 20th century, children were highly valued, greatly loved members of the community (Florence,25). parents had to manage the overwhelming impacts of division and the danger of losing the attached connection between their children. Life at residential schools resulted in having their hair cut, they were stripped out of their own clothes and forced to wear uniform-like

The shared history of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in WA is not ancient and distant. Much has happened in this time, the effects of which are still felt today. Successive governments used differing policies in order to come to terms with a culture so vastly different from their own (Hayward, K. (2014). Chris explains that with the use of gatherings within schools, students have a chance to catch up on news from distant places with a sense of shared histories and kinship which links within the communities. Students then have a chance to reflect on these ideas and create an understanding of the process from a traditional perspective and where it stands today.

Residential schools messed up people’s lives and their communities, causing long-term problems among Aboriginal people.

In the 19th century, the Canadian Government believed it was responsible to educate and care for the aboriginal people in Canada. They thought their best chance to success was to learn English and adopt Christian and Canadian customs. They would then pass their new lifestyle on to their children, and the native traditions would eventually be forgotten. The result was the creation of residential schools.

As a pre-service teacher I would respect and motivate all of my students equally, irrespective of their cultural background. In this aspect I totally agree with Mr.Jim Gallacher, Director of Aboriginal Education in the Northern Territory Department of Education, who emphasised 50 years ago that Aboriginal students must be motivated in the same way as white children if they are to succeed (Harrison, 2011, p.27). The Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority acknowledges the importance of reconciliation between indigenous and non indigenous Australians, and is currently writing the national history curriculum. Teachers need to play a vital role in the reconciliation process. Some important points to consider are:

From the late 1800s to the 1980s, more than 100,000 First Nations children in Canada attended residential schools To attend these schools, children were taken away from their families and communities. At the schools, the children suffered from emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual abuse. The worst abuses were often used as punishment for speaking their indigenous languages. The imposition of residential schools on First Nations children has led to significant loss of indigenous languages, and this language loss has led to further cultural losses for traditional First Nations cultures in Canada.

Through residential schools acting in the dismantling of traditional indigenous religions, languages, and practices it becomes evident that this is a matter of cultural genocide, not simply an effort to assimilate the indigenous. Furthering this notion is the countless accounts of sexual, physical, psychological, and emotional abuse that went on in these hallowed halls. Although it took over a century for both the government and church to recognize the tremendous amount of suffering induced, attempts at paying back and correcting mistakes made in the past have been undergoing. However, despite many attempts by current or past legal bodies to reconcile, these acts of cultural genocide committed in these residential schools will never be forgotten, and will continue to cast their dark shadow in Canadian

Achieving reconciliation is improbable, if not completely impossible, if the majority of Canadians are unaware of the historic and current injustices carried out on Indigenous populations. Addressing this exact problematic, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is committed to the acknowledgment of the discriminations and horrors experienced by Indigenous peoples, in regards to the Residential school legacy. The TRC is dedicated to reconciliation through the promotion of awareness and public education of past eradication policies (TRC, Website).

Residential schools were government endorsed schools for Aboriginal children. When children were sent to the residential schools, they were taken away from their parents and placed into a strange, unsupportive environment where the standing parental figures were often abusive towards them. The Legacy of Hope Foundation (2015) says “First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children were often away from their parents for long periods of time and this prevented the discovering and learning of valuable parenting skills” (para. 1). These children never had a good parental figure growing up, so they never learned the skills needed to be one. Therefore, when they had children of their own, they did not know how to support them. In a regional study by the First Nations Centre, it was observed that almost half of the adults who’s parents had attended residential schools believed that the schools had an effect on how they were parented as children. They also believe that their grandparent’s attendance at residential schools had an effect on the parenting their own parents had received (The First Nations Centre, 2002/2003, “The Impact of Residential Schools”, para.1). Based on the evidence in this study, one can conclude that attendance at a residential school lead to a poor quality of parenting because the attendees of residential schools did not have a positive parental figure to learn parenting skills from. The past students of the residential schools did not know how to effectively