For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada. The establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as “cultural genocide.”
Physical genocide is the mass killing of the members of a targeted group, and biological genocide is the destruction of the group’s reproductive capacity. Cultural genocide is the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group. States that engage in cultural genocide set out to destroy the political and social institutions of the targeted group. Land is seized, and populations are forcibly transferred and their movement is restricted. Languages are banned. Spiritual leaders are persecuted, spiritual practices are forbidden, and objects of spiritual value are confiscated and destroyed. And, most significantly to the issue at hand, families are disrupted to prevent the transmission of cultural values and identity from one generation to the next.
In its dealing with Aboriginal people, Canada did all these things.
Canada asserted control over Aboriginal land. In some locations, Canada negotiated Treaties with First Nations; in others, the land was simply occupied or seized. The negotiation of Treaties, while seemingly honourable and legal, was often marked by fraud and coercion, and Canada was, and remains, slow to implement their provisions and intent.1
On occasion, Canada forced First Nations to relocate their reserves from agriculturally valuable or resource-rich land onto remote and economically marginal reserves.2
Without legal authority or foundation, in the 1880s, Canada instituted a “pass system” that was intended to confine First Nations people to their reserves.3
Canada replaced existing forms of Aboriginal government with relatively powerless band councils whose decisions it could override and whose leaders it could depose.4 In the process, it disempowered Aboriginal women.
Canada denied the right to participate fully in Canadian political, economic, and social life to those Aboriginal people who refused to abandon their Aboriginal identity.5
Canada outlawed Aboriginal spiritual practices, jailed Aboriginal spiritual leaders, and confiscated sacred objects.6
And, Canada separated children from their parents, sending them to residential schools. This was done not to educate them, but primarily to break their link to their culture and identity.
These measures were part of a coherent policy to eliminate Aboriginal people as distinct peoples and to assimilate them into the Canadian mainstream against their will. Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs Duncan Campbell Scott outlined the goals of that policy in 1920, when he told a parliamentary committee that “our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic.”7 These goals were reiterated in 1969 in the federal government’s Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy (more often referred to as the “White Paper”), which sought to end Indian status and terminate the Treaties that the federal government had negotiated with First Nations.8
The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources. If every Aboriginal person had been “absorbed into the body politic,” there would be no reserves, no Treaties, and no Aboriginal rights.
Residential schooling quickly became a central element in the federal government’s Aboriginal policy. When Canada was created as a country in 1867, Canadian churches were already operating a small number of boarding schools for Aboriginal people. As settlement moved westward in the 1870s, Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries established missions and small boarding schools across the Prairies, in the North, and in British Columbia. Most of these schools received small, per-student grants from the federal government. In 1883, the federal government moved to establish three, large, residential schools for First Nation children in western Canada. In the following years, the system grew dramatically. According to the Indian Affairs annual report for 1930, there were eighty residential schools in operation across the country.9 The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement provided compensation to students who attended 139 residential schools and residences.10 The federal government has estimated that at least 150,000 First Nation, Métis, and Inuit students passed through the system.11
Roman Catholic, Anglican, United, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches were the major denominations involved in the administration of the residential school system. The government’s partnership with the churches remained in place until 1969, and, although most of the schools had closed by the 1980s, the last federally supported residential schools remained in operation until the late 1990s.
For children, life in these schools was lonely and alien. Buildings were poorly located, poorly built, and poorly maintained. The staff was limited in numbers, often poorly trained, and not adequately supervised. Many schools were poorly heated and poorly ventilated, and the diet was meagre and of poor quality. Discipline was harsh, and daily life was highly regimented. Aboriginal languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed. The educational goals of the schools were limited and confused, and usually reflected a low regard for the intellectual capabilities of Aboriginal people. For the students, education and technical training too often gave way to the drudgery of doing the chores necessary to make the schools self-sustaining. Child neglect was institutionalized, and the lack of supervision created situations where students were prey to sexual and physical abusers.
In establishing residential schools, the Canadian government essentially declared Aboriginal people to be unfit parents. Aboriginal parents were labelled as being indifferent to the future of their children—a judgment contradicted by the fact that parents often kept their children out of schools because they saw those schools, quite accurately, as dangerous and harsh institutions that sought to raise their children in alien ways. Once in the schools, brothers and sisters were kept apart, and the government and churches even arranged marriages for students after they finished their education.
Despite the coercive measures that the government adopted, it failed to achieve its policy goals. Although Aboriginal peoples and cultures have been badly damaged, they continue to exist. Aboriginal people have refused to surrender their identity. It was the former students, the Survivors of Canada’s residential schools, who placed the residential school issue on the public agenda. Their efforts led to the negotiation of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement that mandated the establishment of a residential school Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
The Commission’s final report is divided into the following six volumes.
Volume 1: The History
Volume 2: The Inuit and Northern Experience
Volume 3: The Métis Experience
Volume 4: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials
Volume 5: The Legacy
Volume 6: Reconciliation
The first volume, The History, is divided into three sections and, due to its length, is being published in two parts. The first section places residential schooling for Indigenous people in historical context and examines the pre-Confederation roots of the Canadian residential school system. The second section describes the history and the student experience of residential schools from Confederation to 1939. This was the period in which the system was established and expanded. It was also the period of the most intense health crisis. By the end of the 1930s, government officials had come to question the value of the residential school system. The final section covers the years from 1940 to 2000, by which time the system had been brought to an end.
The volumes The Inuit and Northern Experience and The Métis Experience address topics that are often ignored in the discussion of residential schooling. The 1950s saw a dramatic expansion of residential schooling in northern Canada and the creation of a system in which Inuit children were sent to residences that could be hundreds of kilometres from their home communities. Constant changes in government policy meant that, at some times, Métis children were barred from residential schools, while, at other times, residential schools were the only schools that would accept Métis children.
The Missing Children and Unmarked Burials Report addresses three interrelated questions that were added to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s mandate: how many children died at the schools, what were the conditions that led to their deaths, and where were they buried? The report demonstrates that Aboriginal residential school students died at rates higher than non-Aboriginal students. It also demonstrates that the government failure to provide adequate funding, medical treatment, nutrition, housing, sanitation, and clothing contributed to this elevated death rate. In addition, the report makes it clear that the government had been advised of the implications of its policies and presented with options—which it chose to ignore—that would have reduced the school death rates.
The Legacy volume examines the devastating effects the residential school system has had on former students, their families, and on Canadian society as a whole. It explores the loss of language and culture suffered by Aboriginal people as well as the significant gaps they experience in health, education, and employment outcomes. The Legacy volume also analyzes in depth the dramatic overrepresentation of Aboriginal Canadians in the child welfare and correctional systems. In each of the volume’s five sections, the Commissioners present a series of Calls to Action intended to redress the injustices and inequities that are the legacy of the residential school system and the long-standing policies of assimilation that gave birth to it.
The Reconciliation volume establishes guiding principles and a framework for advancing reconciliation in Canadian society. It identifies the challenges that must be overcome if reconciliation is to flourish in the twenty-first century and highlights the critical role that Aboriginal peoples’ cultures, histories, and laws must play in the reconciliation process. The volume demonstrates that although apologies from Canada and the churches were important symbolic events, reconciliation also requires concrete measures to repair the damaged relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Crown and to establish respectful relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples. Individual chapters in the volume examine the potential for Indigenous law, public education, dialogue, the arts, and commemoration, and Canadian society more broadly, to contribute to reconciliation. Based on these findings, the Commission makes specific calls to action that, when implemented, will ensure that reconciliation has a strong foundation in Canada, moving into the future.