One of the few issues on which federal residential school policy was crystal clear was that of language. First, students were to be taught to speak English (or, in certain, limited cases, French). Second, to ensure the rapid adoption of English, Aboriginal languages were to be suppressed. Although the use of Aboriginal languages was not completely banned at all times and in all places, it is clear that it was seen as a sign of progress if a principal could report that Aboriginal languages were not spoken in the school, or, even better, that children had forgotten how to speak them. Students often were punished for speaking their native language.
The school language policies created painful divisions within families, making it difficult, if not impossible, for children to communicate with their parents, grandparents, and other family members. They also struck at Aboriginal societies’ ability to transmit their cultural beliefs and practices—both intimately connected to language—from one generation to the next.
The government’s hostile approach to Aboriginal languages was reiterated in government directive after government directive. In his 1883 letter to Battleford school principal Thomas Clarke, outlining his expectations for the country’s first government-funded industrial school, Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney wrote that in the classroom, great attention was to be given “towards imparting a knowledge of the art of reading, writing and speaking the English language rather than that of Cree.”1 In 1889, Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs Lawrence Vankoughnet informed Bishop Paul Durieu that in the new Cranbrook, British Columbia, school, mealtime conversations were to be “conducted exclusively in the English language.” The principal was also to set a fixed time during which “Indian” could be spoken.2 After their visits to the Carlisle school in Pennsylvania, both Indian Affairs school inspector A. J. Macrae and Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed stressed the importance of banning the use of Aboriginal languages. Reed was impressed by the fact that at Carlisle, “so much importance is attached to the use of the English tongue alone, that all orders and explanations from the very first are given in English repeated again and again, if necessary, with patience. No books in the Indian tongue explanatory of the subject matter of the school books are allowed.” Although it was not yet Canadian policy to do so, he believed “that it will in the long run, be found best to rigorously exclude the use of Indian dialects.”3 After his visit to Carlisle, Macrae recommended that English should be “the only allowed means of communication.”4 In 1890, when Reed was instructed to develop a draft set of school regulations, he proposed, “The vernacular is not to be taught in any schools. At the most the native language is only to be used as a vehicle of teaching and should be discontinued as such as soon as practicable.” English was to be the primary language of instruction, “even where French is taught.”5
Reed’s recommendations were never incorporated into a formal regulation. However, he was promoted to the position of deputy minister of Indian Affairs in 1893, and the following year, the department published its “Programme of Studies for Indian Schools.” As noted in an earlier chapter, this document maintained, “Every effort must be made to induce pupils to speak English, and to teach them to understand it; unless they do the whole work of the teacher is likely to be wasted.”6
In 1895, Reed argued that a First Nations child “must be taught the English language. So long as he keeps his native tongue, so long will he remain a community apart.” Without English, a student was, Reed wrote,
permanently disabled, and from what Indians have said to me and from requests made by them, it is evident that they are beginning to recognize the force of this themselves. With this end in view the children in all the industrial and boarding schools are taught in the English language exclusively.7
In keeping with this policy approach, the 1910 contract between the federal government and the churches required that schools were
not to employ, except for a period not exceeding six months, any teacher or instructor until evidence satisfactory to the Superintendent General has been submitted to him that such teacher or instructor is able to converse with the pupils under his charge in English and is able to speak and write the English language fluently and correctly and possess such other qualifications as in the opinion of the Superintendent General may be necessary.8
The policy remained unchanged into the 1930s, when the “Programme of Studies for Indian Schools” advised teachers, “Every effort must be made to induce pupils to speak English and to teach them to understand it. Insist on English even during the supervised play. Failure in this means wasted efforts.” The only leeway granted was for some schools in Québec, where classes could be conducted in French.9
Even before the federal policies were developed, some school principals had linked the teaching of English with the suppression of Aboriginal languages. Principal E. F. Wilson of the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, wrote in 1884 that “it was of course a great object to make the children talk English. Twice a week I had an English class, and taught them to repeat English words and sentences, to point to their eyes, nose, ears, &c., and to bring me things I specified.” The speaking of Aboriginal languages was limited to one hour every day. Each Saturday, he gave students buttons, each marked with a specific pattern. “If any of them heard a companion speak Indian he was to demand a button, and on the following Saturday, the buttons were exchanged for nuts.”10 Those who spoke Aboriginal languages were denied treats; those who informed on students who spoke their own language were rewarded. Wilson reported, “Not a word of Indian is heard from our Indian boys after six months in the institution. All their talk among themselves while at play, is in English. Even those who knew not a word of the English tongue when they came to us last fall, now talk nothing else among themselves.” It appears that Wilson also moved on to a more punitive approach than simply denying students nuts for speaking their own language. As he described it, “We bring this about principally by great strictness—sometimes punishing heavily any old pupil, who presumes to break the rule. The boys feel the benefit of it, and do not rebel.”11
In 1887, Principal E. Claude boasted that his thirty students at the High River school, in what is now Alberta, “all understand English passably well and few are unable to express themselves in English. They talk English in recreation. I scarcely need any coercive means to oblige them to do so.”12
At the Battleford school, Principal Thomas Clarke reported far less success. He wrote in 1887 that
we have experienced a great difficulty in inducing the boys and girls to speak English among themselves in every day life. For some time indeed, the apparent results were discouraging. A change for the better, as I am gratified to say, is fast coming about, as a result of every day teaching being carried on in English.
He also thought that the use of English was encouraged by the fact that there were both Cree and Assiniboine students at the school. In such cases, it was thought that in order to communicate with one another, these students would have to learn English.13
The continued use of Aboriginal languages at the school made Clarke a target of federal criticism. In 1888, Indian Affairs inspector A. J. Macrae complained that at the Battleford school:
Teachers do not seem, in all cases, to understand the paramount importance of instruction in English, and in the ideas of the citizen. Without a knowledge of our language, when the children now being introduced grow up, they will be unable to mix with their white neighbors and cannot possibly become assimilated with them.14
Hayter Reed echoed this criticism in 1890. He said that on a recent visit to the Battleford school, there was not a proper regard “to making the children speak English. During the whole time of my visit there appeared to be a marked lack of endeavor upon the part of the officials to see that they used English in preference to the vernacular, and I did not observe that degree of tidiness which should exist in such an institution.”15
In that year’s annual report, Battleford principal Clarke wrote:
Strenuous efforts are made to prevent the use of any Indian dialect in the institution. This is, of course, no easy task, especially with the boys received newly from the reserves, who are very obstinate in adhering to the use of their own tongue; but it will, with patience, not prove impossible to accomplish.16
In October 1884, Principal Joseph Hugonnard asked to be allowed to admit five English-speaking boys to the Qu’Appelle school in what is now Saskatchewan. He said that if this were done, the First Nations students would begin to speak English during their recreation period: “I am sure that they will learn more English during recreation hours than otherwise.”17 In 1886, Hugonnard once more sought to have an English-speaking boy admitted to the school, saying “it would be of the greatest service to our efforts to induce the boys to practice speaking English.”18 These proposals met with initial opposition from Indian Affairs. Assistant Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed said he believed that instead of teaching English to the First Nations children, “the white boys would learn Indian and converse with the pupils in that language.”19 Indian Commissioner Dewdney opposed the measure because he thought the students would learn “at the best, imperfect English” from the Métis boys Hugonnard wished to admit.20 He changed his mind when Hugonnard sought admittance for a larger group of boys. Dewdney concluded that the “white boys will cultivate amongst themselves that spirit of perseverance and independence that characterizes the Anglo-Saxon race and in which the Indians are so lacking.” Ongoing exposure to the “white boys” would supply the First Nations children “with a moral educational influence which may prove to be of much service.”21 Hugonnard rejoiced in 1886 that he had been granted permission “to take in a few English-speaking boys, although the condition of $60 per annum for each pupil is heavy and even impossible for most of the farmers to pay.”22
The insistence that the students learn English and that all lessons be in English was not in keeping with the approach in which many of the early missionaries had been trained. Catholic and Protestant missionaries were expected to learn the languages of the people they were going to convert, and to carry out their work in those languages. Father Hugonnard, for example, had been born and raised in France, and came to St. Boniface in 1874. Once in the Canadian West, he learned Cree, Saulteaux, and English.23 At the Qu’Appelle school, he taught a daily catechism class in Cree. He encouraged the Sisters of Charity (the Grey Nuns), some of whom had learned Cree, to teach the students in Cree first, then in English.24 He also prepared a Cree-English primer, and arranged to have the federal government pay for the printing of 2,000 copies.25 The English-born John Horden, the founder of the Anglican school at Moose Factory, was fluent in Cree and could speak Ojibway, Inuktitut, and Chipewyan. He also translated many Christian writings into Cree syllabics.26 In 1911, eighteen years after Horden’s death, his influence was still clearly apparent at the school. Acting Principal D. D. Renison noted that although the children coming to the school did not know how to speak English, “many can read and write in the Indian syllabic character.”27 One of the two religious services the students were required to attend each Sunday was conducted in Cree.28
Measures taken by provincial and federal governments to suppress the French language in the Canadian West and in the residential schools may have given the Catholic teachers and principals, many of whose first language was French, a greater sensitivity to the issue of language loss. In Alberta, the Blue Quill school’s Moccasin Telegraph, a student publication, had articles by students written in syllabics in the 1930s.29
Although the early missionaries learned Aboriginal languages, in later years, many school staff members were discouraged from developing an understanding of the languages the children grew up speaking. On her arrival at the Methodist boarding school at Kitamaat, British Columbia, in 1916, teacher Margaret Butcher was told that the local First Nations people spoke “a language of their own which is understood nowhere else.” Consequently, it was not seen as being “worth learning.” The students, she wrote, “are forbidden to speak it in the Home so I shall not learn Kit a maat.”30
The degree to which the government policy came to override the missionary practice is perhaps best expressed in the report of Oblate Superior General Théodore Labouré. After an extensive inspection of Oblate missions and schools in 1935, Labouré expressed concern over the number of Oblates who could not speak Aboriginal languages, and the strictness with which prohibitions against speaking Aboriginal languages were enforced. He wrote:
The ban on children speaking Indian, even during recreation, was so strict in some of our schools that any failure would be severely punished—to the point that children were led to consider the speaking of their native tongue to be a serious offense, and when they returned home they were ashamed to speak it with their parents.31
In what may have been a response to Labouré’s criticism, in 1939, the Oblate Fathers’ Committee on Indian Missions adopted a resolution that First Nations people be taught “to read in their own language and in syllabic characters or Roman characters,” and that nuns and religious teachers “learn to read and understand the languages of those who are in their charge.”32
Three themes emerge from the reports of principals and inspectors in relation to language instruction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first is the great difficulty that schools and students faced when the children came to school not speaking the language in which all instruction was to be given. The second is that inspectors criticized principals if they heard children speaking Aboriginal languages, and praised them if it appeared that English was the only language being used at the school. The third is that it was seen as a great accomplishment if it could be reported that children had forgotten how to speak their native tongue. The loss of Aboriginal languages was used as an informal measure of the success of government policy.
The fact that few students spoke the language in which the schools were supposed to be conducted presented an almost irresolvable problem. In 1889, Metlakatla, British Columbia, principal John Scott noted, “The principal hindrance to progress arises from so very few of the children understanding, I may say, any English, and from an unwillingness on the part of the few to make use of the little they know.”33
When the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school opened in 1891, none of the students spoke English. As a result, Principal J. M. J. Lejacq felt he “could not proscribe the use of the native language always and everywhere. This taken into consideration, we may say that the progress made by most of the boys in the English language is very creditable.”34 In 1894, Lejacq reported,
Amongst the boys, the Indian language is a thing of the past: English is the order of the day, but I must confess that their pronunciation is not yet perfect, although improving slowly all the time. Amongst the girls the English language does not take as well as amongst the boys. The girls take no pride in being able to speak English.35
In 1896, he was still voicing the same complaint, reporting that while the boys were speaking English, “the girls do not show so much willingness to comply with the rule prohibiting the use of the Indian Language.”36
Kuper Island, British Columbia, principal George Donckele wrote in 1891, “Our greatest difficulty at present consists in making the children speak English. Although they understand a good deal of it, they are always inclined to speak the Indian dialect amongst themselves.”37
When the Red Deer school opened in 1894, Principal John Nelson noted that
in the use of English all has not been accomplished that could be desired, doubtless partially attributable to several of the staff being conversant with the Indian language, therefore the more convenient means of communication. To facilitate the use of the English tongue, every evening each pupil is required to speak at least one English sentence of their own composition.
The Reverend R. B. Steinhauer worked as a residential school teacher, and was fluent in Aboriginal languages. He was a son of Henry Steinhauer, an Ojibway man who had been converted to Methodism in Ontario in the early nineteenth century and went on to work as a missionary in the Canadian Northwest.38
As documented above, the loss of Aboriginal language skills was reported as a sign of progress. In 1893, school inspector T. P. Wadsworth wrote that, according to the principal of the File Hills school in what is now Saskatchewan, the children spoke only English, even at play, and that “one little fellow has forgotten almost entirely his native dialect.” In addition, none of the students had wished to attend “the sun dance held on the reserve near the school.”39 Battleford school principal E. Matheson wrote in the 1898 Indian Affairs annual report, “The pupils are steadily and surely acquiring the English language and the practice of speaking out distinctly. Many of them never make use of the Cree at all now, although it is their mother tongue.”40
The process began anew each year. In 1896, Kamloops principal A. M. Carion reported:
Nearly all the children have made satisfactory progress, though perhaps a little slow, owing to the fact that twenty-five new pupils were admitted at the same time; a great deal of the time of the teacher is necessarily employed in training these pupils, who do not understand a single word of English, to the routine of the school work. For two months after their admission, the new pupils were allowed to speak their mother tongue, but after that time, they were obliged to use English at all times like the older pupils.41
In 1894, Cranbrook, British Columbia, school principal Nicolas Coccola wrote, “English alone is spoken among the pupils. Those admitted at school when young easily get the correct pronunciation, which is so difficult to acquire for older ones.”42 That same year, Kuper Island principal Donckele reported, “I am happy to state that English is now the common language of the school: the Indian language is indeed seldom heard at the institution.”43 High River principal A. Naessens reported in 1897, “The use of the English language is enforced throughout the day except after supper, when the pupils are allowed to converse in their own.”44
At the Regina school in 1893, Principal A. J. McLeod reported that “English is now the common language of the school.” There, as at the Shingwauk Home, students were encouraged to report on classmates who spoke their native language. McLeod said that “nine of the most trustworthy pupils were appointed monitors, at the regular evening roll call report any pupil who has transgressed the rule that the use of any Indian words, except when addressed directly to their friends who are on a visit to the school is not allowed.”45 The following year, he reported, “Only an occasional word of Indian is heard around the institution. Some of the smaller children seem to have entirely forgotten the Indian language.”46
Little attention or concern was given to the disruptive impact that this policy would have on Aboriginal families and communities. The principal of the Roman Catholic school in Onion Lake in what is now Saskatchewan, W. Comiré, reported in 1897, “The Cree language is not heard in the school, not a word is spoken among the pupils; they seem to prefer English now. The little ones even speak English to their parents, who do not understand what they say.”47 The language policy not only disrupted the long-term transmission of Aboriginal culture, but it also could have an immediate and destructive impact on the bonds of family.
Proximity to First Nations communities made language rules difficult to enforce. In 1897, J. Hinchliffe, the principal of the Anglican school on the Peigan Reserve, reported, “One great drawback in this respect is that the school is situated where Indians can reach it too easily. Our children are in no way isolated from their people, and though almost all our children understand a fair amount of English, they are ashamed to speak much.”48
In 1898, the Kamloops school reported that “English is the only language used at all times by the pupils,”49 and from the Mission, British Columbia, school, the principal wrote, “English is the common language of the school, the Indian language is indeed seldom heard in the institution, except with the newly arrived pupils.”50 The 1898 report from the principal of the Anglican school at Onion Lake indicated that the school was one of the few exceptions. There, the children were taught to “read and write both Cree and English.”51
Into the early twentieth century, principals reported on their success in suppressing Aboriginal languages. In 1903, Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, principal W. A. Hendry reported, “As nearly all of the children are under twelve years of age, they are not in advanced standards, but they have made good progress. They speak English entirely, and during the last six months I have not heard a word of Sioux.”52 Two years later, Squamish, British Columbia, school principal Sister Mary Amy reported that “the Indian language has been eradicated, and English is spoken by all the children in the school.”53 Similarly, inspectors still viewed the continued use of Aboriginal languages by the students as a sign of failure. The principal of the Red Deer school was taken to task in 1903 by an inspector who felt that a “serious drawback to school work, as well as an evidence of bad discipline, was the use of the Cree language, which was quite prevalent.”54 A decade later, Inspector Semmens reported that at the Presbyterian school in northwestern Ontario, the “Indian language is still used by pupils to an undesirable extent.”55
School inspectors also noted the difficulty students experienced in learning English. A 1922 inspection of the Sandy Bay, Manitoba, school concluded that “the children are very diffident in speaking and should be given more practice in oral composition. Actual drill in articulating English pronunciation should be given.”56 A report on the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school the following year observed, “The big problem is to get the Indian child to express himself before strangers. This problem becomes greater as the child becomes older I fancy.”57 After a 1929 inspection of the Sandy Bay school, provincial inspector Rogers suggested that “more effort be put forth to induce the pupils to express themselves in English and that practice be given in following written and oral instruction in English.”58 A 1924 inspection report on the Cranbrook school reported that not only did all the teachers speak English, but also those who presided over classrooms could “speak good English.” Despite this, he felt that the “standard of education is low. The pronunciation of words is not clear and distinct by the pupils. The teacher of the senior pupils is not familiar with the textbooks.”59
There can be no doubt that on a system-wide basis, the schools were committed to ensuring that the students learned to speak English (or, in very limited cases in this period, French). It was also believed that the suppression of the use of Aboriginal languages would contribute to the use of English in the schools.
Interviews with students who attended residential schools during this period (from 1867 to 1939) often make reference to students being punished for speaking an Aboriginal language. Mary Angus, who attended the Battleford school in the late nineteenth century, said that a common punishment was to give students a close haircut: “They lose all their hair, cut up like men’s cut, always straight up (on the head). That’s what they did with you—bald head like. All the hair cut to be as a man, that what they do, for us not to talk. We were afraid of that, to have our hair cut.”60
Another Battleford student from that era, Sarah Soonias, recalled students being strapped and having their hair cut short for speaking Cree.61 Nellie Stonefish, who attended the Mount Elgin school at Muncey, Ontario, in the 1920s, recalled that if children spoke their own language, “they’d get a strapping. And those strappings were pretty healthy too. Our arms used to be black and blue from the elbow down.”62 Melvina McNabb was seven years old when she was enrolled in the File Hills school, and “I couldn’t talk a word of English. I talked Cree and I was abused for that, hit, and made to try to talk English. I would listen to the other little girls and that’s how I picked up English. It was very hard for me because I didn’t know why these staff were hitting me.”63 Raymond Hill, who was a student at the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, said, “I lost my language. They threatened us with a strapping if we spoke it, and within a year I lost all of it. They said they thought we were talking about them.”64
Language use often continued in secret. Mary Englund recalled that while Aboriginal languages were banned at the Mission, British Columbia, school in the early twentieth century, children would still speak it to one another.
When we were alone in some corner we did, you know, talk our own language and if the sisters caught us it was, “You talk English. You’re in school, you talk English.”
So we had to talk English and that’s where a lot of the girls, you know, kind of forgot their language. If you’re there, stayed there a certain length of time you forget certain words in Indian. And you didn’t, you couldn’t explain yourself too much in Indian so you would in English, you see.65
Clyde Peters said he stopped speaking his Aboriginal language at the Mount Elgin school after he found out the school punished students for doing so. “I never got the strap for it but I was warned enough that I didn’t do it.” Even after that, he and his friends would speak to each other when they thought no one else could hear them. “When we’d go up in the dormitories in the evening I had a friend from Sarnia who I could talk with.”66
Learning English under these conditions was stressful. Peter Smith, who went to the Mohawk Institute in the 1920s, recalled:
The small boys would come into the school—we weren’t allowed to talk Indian at all, we couldn’t say a word in Indian, just speak English, and these children would come in and maybe have no English at all and they would get in groups like cattle, trying to understand English because they would give them a licking—or they’d give you a scolding or something like that for not being able to say it in English, and they just wiped out the entire Indian language. It’s just the one thing I felt sorry about—because you’d see a group of ten or twelve small boys standing in a group and trying to learn a little English.67
Allen Sapp was born in 1928 on the Red Pheasant Reserve in Saskatchewan. He spent several years at the Anglican boarding school at Onion Lake. He described it as a lonely and unhappy experience.
No one ever abused me physically or sexually but the way we were disciplined was not like home. We were forbidden to speak Cree—the teachers and everyone connected to the school spoke English—but Cree was the only language I knew. If we were caught speaking Cree to one another we would be punished. One particular day I was caught speaking Cree to one of my classmates and told that I would have to go up and remain in my room. That afternoon there was a cowboy movie showing in town and I so wanted to go to that movie. I sat in my room and cried.68
Language policy in the residential schools was further complicated by the fact that in many of the Roman Catholic schools, staff spoke French, not English, as their first language. The early Catholic missionaries in the Canadian West had hoped not only to convert Aboriginal people to Catholicism, but also to support the development of a large, French-speaking, non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal community in the West. To this end, they were involved in campaigns to establish separate religious schools and to defend the right to education in French.69 In keeping with this approach, French could be the initial language of instruction in Roman Catholic boarding schools in the Canadian West.70 The emphasis the Catholic missionaries placed on the importance of the use and spread of French among Catholics on the Canadian Prairies—and the efforts that various governments took to limit the use of French—underscores the fact that both church and government officials were of the view that there was a close link among language, culture, and spiritual belief.
Representatives of the Roman Catholic Church opposed the provision in the 1910 contract between the government and the churches that required teachers and instructors to be able to speak and write fluent English. This, they said, was a “hard and fast provision, compliance with which is practically impossible.” They took the position that since the contract called for the teaching of gardening, farming, care of livestock, cooking, laundry, needlework, housekeeping, and dairying, it would also require that the individuals who taught those disciplines had to be able to speak and write English fluently and correctly. If such a provision were enforced, many Catholic schools might have had to replace those members of religious orders whose English was rudimentary. The Catholics unsuccessfully proposed that the contract be amended to simply require that schools “provide for the pupils being taught to speak, read and write the English language to the same extent that pupils are so taught in the ordinary schools of the country.”71
It was not just the trades instructors who did not necessarily speak fluent English in Catholic schools. Cornelius Kelleher, a half-Irish, half-Nooksack boy who attended the Mission, British Columbia, school in the nineteenth century, recalled, “We had mostly French teachers trying to teach us English.”72 There were recurring reports that classes were being taught in French. In 1894 at the St. Albert school in what is now Alberta, some subjects were taught in English and others were taught in French.73 The government had concerns that the teacher at the Roman Catholic school on the Peigan Reserve in what is now Alberta “was not sufficiently qualified to teach English and especially to give the true and exact pronunciation.” In response, Bishop Emile Legal—who felt the criticisms were not well-founded—agreed to secure “the services of an English lady teacher” in 1899.74 In her memoirs of attending the Qu’Appelle school in the early twentieth century, Louise Moine recalled “a little French nun who couldn’t speak a work [sic] of English. As she was very kind and patient with us, we all liked her.”75
In 1912, Bishop Charlebois, Vicar Apostolic of Keewatin, sought permission from Indian Affairs to have classes conducted in French at the Beauval school in northern Saskatchewan. He stated that at the Île-à-la-Crosse school, which was the predecessor to the Beauval school, classes had been taught in French only and, as a result, he said, “many of the Indians of the district understand and speak French, while very few have a knowledge of English.” Charlebois said the parents had indicated they would withdraw their children from the school if classes were not taught in French. After reviewing the matter, Indian Affairs official Martin Benson concluded that the school was already being conducted in French, since “all the staff with the exception of one Sister have no knowledge of the English language and she is not proficient.” Benson argued that the school should be required to live up to its commitments under the 1910 contract. Although French might be “more generally spoken in the school than English,” he thought the students needed to learn English, which would require that the school staff be able to speak and teach in the language.76
In this debate, a First Nations leader, described as the Montagnan of Île-à-laCrosse, wrote a letter in Cree to ”the Great Master in charge of schools” asking, “Why should it be desired to teach the children English, that would not help them with the people surrounding us.” If the government persisted in banning education in French, he said that “it will be very difficult for us to send our children to the school.”77 In 1915, Indian Affairs complained to the school principal that, according to a recent report by an Indian Affairs official, “little or no English is taught in the [Beauval] school and practically all the education the children receive is given in French.”78
Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott had reservations about the Roman Catholic Church’s proposed nominee for the position of Qu’Appelle principal in 1917, on the grounds that he did not “speak English well enough for this special position.”79 Five years later, a report on the Qu’Appelle school noted that the teacher in charge of the intermediate girls’ classroom “has very poor English.”80
In 1921, Russell T. Ferrier, the superintendent of Indian Education, instructed Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham to investigate an allegation that French was being taught at the Cluny, Alberta, school. Ferrier pointed out that “the agreement with the schools in the Prairie Provinces calls for English as the sole language of instruction.”81 Graham reported that although the students were not being taught French, “all the members of the staff are French and some of them do not speak English very well, which in my opinion is not as it should be.” He said that “on several occasions we have objected to teachers in our schools who cannot speak English properly and have a decided accent.”82 On the same topic, Indian agent G. H. Gooderham reported in December 1921 that the Cluny principal had promised “an English speaking teacher for the boys some months ago, but to date no change has been made.” Instead, he reported that “the more I visit this place, the more I am impressed with the French atmosphere which exudes from every corner.”83
The Oblates, who depended on the female religious orders such as the Sisters of Charity for much of their staff, appear to have had considerable control over who actually taught in the schools. When J. L. Levern, the principal of the Catholic school at Brocket, Alberta, was taken to task by Indian Affairs for the unsatisfactory classroom methods of one of his teachers in 1923, he asked if the department would put some pressure on the Sisters of Charity to send him better-qualified teachers. Levern asked if Duncan Campbell Scott would write to Bishop J. Brunault, who was the ecclesiastical superior of the Sisters of Charity, to complain about the poor quality of teachers the order was providing to the schools. Levern felt that Brunault did “not seem to realize the urgent necessity of preparing better teachers for our schools.”84
Later that year, Ferrier drew Levern’s attention to an inspector’s report on a different teacher at the Catholic school at Brocket, whom the inspector described as being “handicapped by the fact that she has had no professional training and also by speaking the English language with a decidedly French accent.” Ferrier stated that “a properly qualified teacher is required for this school.”85 On the same day, he wrote to the principal of the Roman Catholic school on the Blood Reserve to register the same complaint about a teacher at that school.86
Complaints persisted into the 1930s. In 1938, Qu’Appelle principal de Bretagne wrote to the St. Boniface mother provincial of the Sisters of Charity, expressing his surprise and disappointment to discover that the two sisters recently assigned to his school
do not speak English. You certainly know how much the thorough knowledge of that language is necessary to perform any duty amongst our Children and the Department is becoming more exacting about that. We already have some Sisters who know very little English in our Community and it is very disagreeable to hear justified remarks concerning that lack.87
Residential schools undermined Aboriginal languages by separating children from their parents, by ridiculing and suppressing the use of Aboriginal languages, and by giving English and, to a lesser degree, French a preferred status in the school system. Government officials believed the Aboriginal languages had no future and no cultural value. Missionaries, particularly in the nineteenth century, had a more tolerant attitude toward Aboriginal languages, and, well into the twentieth century, many missionaries conducted religious training in Aboriginal languages. This missionary tolerance for Aboriginal languages did not extend to the subject of the following chapter: Aboriginal culture. Government and missionary organizations made common cause to suppress Aboriginal cultural practices.