This complicated part of Canada’s history cannot be fully explored in the following paragraphs, and the existing research includes some variation in dates and numbers from different sources. But the sending away of Indigenous children from their families, often for years at a time, is so important we must make the attempt.
In the years between the early 1800s and mid-1980s, many children from as young as four years old were taken from their homes and sent to residential schools across Canada that were run by various church organizations and the federal government. The last federal residential school closed in 1984; the last residential school closed in 1998.
Changes to the Indian Act in 1894–1895 and in 1920 included compulsory education for Indigenous children, with the purpose of assimilation. This allowed the government to forcibly remove children from their parents and usher them into bush planes, trains and vehicles. Many parents were threatened with imprisonment or having their children permanently taken away if they protested.
For the most part, the children were to be taught how to integrate into the general society and therefore had to be taught and trained in skills, religious studies, domestic work, farm labour and various trades. Some authors have called the practices of households, farms, businesses and industries using these children as labourers, under the guise of training, “child and youth slavery.” The students’ mornings were normally reserved for book learning and religious instruction, and the afternoons given to domestic work, farm labour and trades.
In earlier years of the residential school program, the students usually lived and went to school in the same location: the residential schools. In later years, in the 1960s, the students living at residential schools were integrated into city and town public schools, taking their classes with the general population of students, as is the case in this story.
It is estimated that over 150,000 children attended the 139 residential schools across the country. What took place within these institutions is a disgrace in Canadian history. The children were psychologically, physically, emotionally and even sexually abused, and many died from contagious diseases or while trying to get home. At some residential schools, the children were poorly clothed and inadequately fed, and suffered from malnutrition. The report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission states that at least three thousand children died in these schools. Chair for the Commission, Chief Justice Murray Sinclair, has said that, “seven generations of aboriginal children were denied their identity through a systematic and concerted effort to extinguish their culture, language and spirit.”
At sixteen years of age, the children were sent home. They found themselves in communities that they knew nothing about. Those who stayed in residential school for years at a time had to have name tags pinned to their jackets so that their parents would know who they were — the children were so young when they were taken, their parents could no longer recognize them.
The children who grew up in these residential schools had no knowledge of family, love or community. They had also lost their language and culture and been stripped of all identity. Many never recovered, and suffered all their lives — in many cases, with horrible social problems, often ending in suicide. Those who tried to reintegrate into the community married and had children, but knew nothing of raising children or meeting the needs of a child, since they had never experienced such things in their lives. The cycle of damaged child-rearing practices has continued for generations. Some literature describes this part of Canadian history as cultural genocide.
In the 1990s, many of the victims of the residential schools sued the churches and the Canadian government. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was created in 1991, followed by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation in 1998. In 2006, the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement was signed, a $1.9-billion settlement that prompted an apology from Prime Minster Stephen Harper, on behalf of all Canadians, on June 11, 2008. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was launched by the federal government in 2009.
For their involvement in the residential schools, churches began presenting their apologies. The Oblates of Mary Immaculate issued a formal apology in 1991; the Anglican Church in 1993. The apology from the Presbyterian Church came in 1994. In 1998, the United Church also offered an apology. The Catholic Church, which was responsible for about seventy-five percent of the residential schools, also presented its apology through the Pope in 2009.
The report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, before which thousands of Indigenous people had testified about their experiences and the effects they still lived with, was published in late 2015. All the materials, statements and documents that have been collected are now housed at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation located at the University of Manitoba, in Chancellor’s Hall.