Boarding School System

Residential schools were viewed as a way to refine the Aboriginal population and keep children from keeping their language and their cultural traditions. The purpose of residential schools was to civilize the Aboriginal people and to make them useful and good members of society with strict punishments for any of their wrong doings. Richard Pratt is the person who founded the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and he said “you must kill the Indian in him; to save the man”. (Kill the Indian in him) The goal of residential schools was to combine the Aboriginals into white society when they were children since they were much more gullible. My research paper will focus on the residential schools and will contend that the Canadian government and churches committed genocide against the Aboriginal population in an attempt to eliminate the Aboriginal culture.

Residential schools are coming into perspective as harsh and assimilating institutions. These schools have been in place from 1870s to 1990s and were operated by churches. The intent of these schools were to civilize and assimilate indigenous children at the age of 6-18 into the “European” world. The assumption that Indians were uncivilized came from an ethnocentric worldview and the institutions were as to say “to kill the indian in the child”. Attendance at these schools was mandatory according to the Indian Act of 1920. Often “Indian agents” kidnaped children from their homes if their parents did not willingly hand them over. The children were not permitted to see their families, except on rare occasions. Sometimes the children were told that their parents and tribe had perished in order to break attachments. The schools started off as a way to provide education to First Nations, however, the institutions became known for their harsh methods of instilling

Eventually, these structural grounds caused for Europeans to exercise a form of cultural genocide through residential schooling. The idea to establish residential schools for First Nations children was greatly influenced by the desire to assimilate and supposedly adapt the various First Nations

Indian Boarding Schools, which began in the late 1870’s, were started to transition Native Americans from their traditional cultures and transform them into American citizens. By the 1900’s, there were 147 day schools on and off reservations in the Great Plains. Day schools were first built before the government decided that the children needed to be removed from their Indian lifestyle in order for total assimilation to occur. The first off-reservation boarding schools appeared around 1884 in the Great Plains. By 1890, 25 federal off-reservation and 43 on-reservation boarding schools were operating nationally. Many Indian families chose to send their children to boarding schools because there were no other schools available. After $45 million had been spent and 20,000 Indian children had been put into schools, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs William Jones put emphasis on the importance of utilizing existing boarding and day schools more effectively. Jones declared that the Indian children had shown little evidence of assimilation and introduced the idea for a hierarchy of schools in order to “provide the greatest opportunity for assimilating the best students with the greatest potential for surviving in the white world” (Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, par.8).

During Westward Expansion, white settlers saw the Indians as a hindrance to civilization. Therefore the mindset of settlers were to convert Native Americans into white culture. To begin assimilating, the government should, “cease to recognize the Indians as political bodies,” adult male Indians should become a citizen to the government, Indian children shall be taken away and “be trained in industrial schools,” and Indians should be, “placed in the same position before the law.” Assimilating Indians wasn’t a simple teaching of a new culture instead, it was brutal. The boarding schools were merciless towards the Indians, mainly because they wanted to force Indians to drop their culture. Native Americans were obligated to change and lost their

The Indian Residential Schools were boarding schools that forced students to leave their families and homes in order to go and continue their education elsewhere. They were formulated with the partnership of the United Churches along with the Government. (Laing,2013:53). The Government and the Churches put these schools in place in order to separate the children from their family and cultural customs and values. The goal was to isolate the children from what they are used to in order to “kill the Indian in the child” and have them pick up the new Euro- Canadian culture and values along with the English Language. In addition to being taken away from their families, the

Boarding schools were an issue that plagued both Native Americans and Inupiats. As conveyed by the writings of Mary Crow Dog and other Native American figures, we see how the effects of such schools were devastating to the native population. Boarding schools wiped Natives of their language and culture, teaching young children to be ashamed of what makes them unique. Pupils would return from their long stays at boarding schools, unable to speak to their own family, resulting in an isolation between themselves and their community. Over the years, generations would eventually lose most of what makes them native and, for the most part, their culture slowly faded away. It seems that the Inupiat people faced a similar fate. Inupiat children were forced to learn by Western standards, eventually forgetting their crucial survival skills, language, religion and other unique aspects of their culture. However, we are exposed to a more positive outlook towards boarding schools in the book, Fifty Miles from Tomorrow, where William Hensley says he enjoyed his boarding school

“America remembers what it did to its Black slaves and is sorry. America remembers what happened to the Jews in Europe and says "never again." America refuses to remember what it has done to Native people, it wants to forget the lies and the slaughter.” (“Reservation Boarding Schools”). From 1878- 1978, Native American children were taken from their families and homes to boarding schools that stripped them of everything they were raised to believe. Schools today do not teach much on the topic of Native American boarding schools, so students either know nothing about them or very little.

Residential schools have left many scars on the Indigenous peoples, including their physical health to this day. Residential

Indian Residential Schools were a network of boarding schools that were run conjunctionally by the Canadian government under the administration of the church. Residential schools were founded in 1867 and lasted up until the late 1990’s. There were about 130 schools with around 150,000 children. The purpose of these schools was to “kill the Indian in the child;” Indian children were forcibly taken from their homes and placed in these boarding schools where they were forced to assimilate to the settler Canadian culture. Children were subject to physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and as a result, mortality rates were as high as 35 to 60

In order to do this residential schools were founded. Children were forcibly removed from their homes, often without the permission of their parents. They were brought to residential schools in order to morph them into the ideal “civilised” citizen/child. The residential school system ruined the rules, values, and traditions within Aboriginal communities/families. This can also be known as a “cultural genocide.” [3] To this day there are still lasting effects on the Aboriginal community. “According to a study conducted in Australia by Cripps et al (2009), Indigenous women (with children) who had been removed from their natural family during childhood were at higher risk of experiencing violence as adults than those who had not been removed.” [4] Many Aboriginal women dealt with both physical and emotional abuse while at these residential schools. They caused a large amount of evil on the Aboriginal community as they were taking children away from one of the most important things in life; family. This would effect many of them later on in life. The lasting effect that residential schools have on aboriginal families is visible to this

For the purpose of, residential school was to force indigenous children to Christianity and to civilize them by living Europeans lifestyle. Also to connives First Nations to abandon their traditional, culture beliefs and language so that they may adopt to Europeans values and religion. They Europeans tried to change Inuit children by cutting their long hair to short hair and getting them to dress like Europeans and by teaching them their culture, religion beliefs and values.

The Indian boarding schools had many goals; however, the primary goal was to completely obliterate the culture of indigenous people. This process was done through small goals. The Indians didn’t have many options. The only options that they were given were either to be killed or to assimilate into white civilization through Indian boarding schools. Richard Pratt, a former military man is a prime example of implementing Indian boarding schools. Indian children were taking from their home reservations to attend off-reservation boarding schools. The goals of the boarding school were to “kill the Indian, save the man.” Indians attending boarding schools were going through an assimilation process. The long-term goal was to leave with a white man’s image or with white ways. This was achieved through Indians being forced to cut their hair, wearing military uniforms, learning English, new religion (ex: Christianity). Through this process, many children forgot what their birth given name was. It was not uncommon for children to return back to their reservation with no recollection of who they are “" 'Your name's not Billy. Your name's 'TAH-rruhm,' " she told him (Bear, Charla). The white Anglo-Saxons goal was to erase anything associated with Indian culture because in their minds they viewed Indians as savages. The white people in charge of running these boarding schools went to extreme lengths to achieve erasure. These short-term goals were very traumatizing for the children

In order to make this assimilation possible, federal boarding schools were established outside the reservations, and were quite far from the reservations. The phrase chosen encapsulate this federal policy was expressed by “the Father of the US Boarding School Movement,” Richard Henry Pratt, in 1890 as follows: “Kill the Native American and save the man” (Hirschfelder 129) meaning destroy the identity of the Native Americans and then build them into the dominant White society. To achieve this goal, federal boarding schools deprived children of “all outward and inward signs of […] identification with tribal life, at the same time instructing them in the values and behaviors of White culture” (128). “Children caught speaking their Native language or performing religious rituals” (129) were severely punished. The Native American children were denied their right to use their own mother tongue, and without the words of their tribal language, over time they became unable to create their own identity because not only were the Words missing but also the traditions and the spiritual power located in it. Consequently, the emergence of identity crisis

The main goal of boarding schools was to civilize Native Americans. The federal government wanted to solve “The Indian Problem” by assimilating Native Americans into white culture and felt that education