The central goal of the Canadian residential school system was to ‘Christianize’ and ‘civilize’ Aboriginal people, a process intended to lead to their cultural assimilation into Euro-Canadian society. This policy goal was directed at all Aboriginal people and all Aboriginal cultures. It failed to take into account the development of new Aboriginal nations, and the implications of the Indian Act’s definition of who was and was not a “status Indian” and the British North America Act’s division of responsibility for “Indians.” In the government’s vision, there was no place for the Métis Nation that proclaimed itself in the Canadian Northwest in the nineteenth century. Neither was there any place for the large number of Aboriginal people who, for a variety of reasons, chose not to terminate their Treaty rights, or for those women, and their children, who lost their Indian Act status by marrying a person who did not have such status. These individuals were classed or identified alternately as “non-status Indians,” “half-breeds,” or “Métis.” In different times or different places, they might also identify themselves by these terms, but often they did not. Instead, they might view themselves to be members of specific First Nations, Inuit, or Euro-Canadian societies. For the sake of clarity, this chapter generally uses the term Métis to describe people of mixed descent who were not able, or chose not, to be registered as Indians under the Indian Act. It should be recognized that not all the people described by this term would have identified themselves as Métis during their lives, and that the histories of these people varied considerably, depending on time and location.
Canada’s residential school system was a partnership between the federal government and the churches. When it came to the Métis, the partners had differing agendas. Since the churches wished to convert as many Aboriginal children (and, indeed, as many people) as possible, they had no objection to admitting Métis children to the boarding schools they established in the nineteenth century. Métis children were, for example, among the first students enrolled at the school at Fort Providence in the Northwest Territories.1 Métis children were also in many of the mission schools that were established by the Oblates throughout the West.2 In one case, the presence of Métis children at Catholic missions was a matter of disappointment. French-born Oblate Adrien-Gabriel Morice came to Canada in the 1880s in the hope of working with ‘exotic Indians,’ only to find that the students at the Mission, British Columbia, school were Métis.3 The churches never dropped their interest in providing residential schooling to Métis children. The Anglicans, for example, opened hostels for Métis children in the Yukon in the 1920s and the 1950s, and in Alberta, Catholic-owned residential schools maintained a high enrolment of Métis students.
The federal government policy on providing schooling to Métis children was conflicted. It viewed the Métis as members of the ‘dangerous classes,’ whom the residential schools were intended to civilize and assimilate. This view led to the adoption of policies that allowed for the admission of Métis children at various times. However, from a jurisdictional perspective, the federal government believed that the responsibility for educating and assimilating Métis people lay with provincial and territorial governments. There was a strong concern that if the federal government began providing funding for the education of some of the children for whom the provinces and territories were responsible, it would find itself having to take responsibility for the rest.4 When this view dominated, Indian agents would be instructed to remove Métis students from residential schools.
Despite their perceived constitutional responsibility, provincial and territorial governments were reluctant to provide services to Métis people. They did not ensure that there were schools in Métis communities, or work to see that Métis children were admitted and welcomed into the public school system. Many Métis parents who wished to see their children educated in schools had no option but to try to have them accepted into a residential school. In some cases, these would be federally funded schools, but in other cases, Métis students attended church-run schools or residences that did not receive federal funding.
As provincial governments slowly began to provide increased educational services to Métis students after the Second World War, Métis children lived in residences and residential schools that were either run or funded by provincial governments. The Métis experience is an important reminder that the impact of residential schools extends beyond the formal residential school program that Indian Affairs operated. The history of these provincial schools and the experiences of Métis students in these schools remain to be written.5
The existing records make it impossible to say how many Métis children attended residential school. But they did attend almost every residential school discussed in this report at some point. They would have undergone the same experiences—the high death rates, limited diets, crowded and unsanitary housing, harsh discipline, heavy workloads, neglect, and abuse—described in the other volumes of this history.
Métis people not only were educated in the schools, but they also, on occasion, played a role in their operation. Angélique and Marguerite Nolin, two Métis sisters who had been born in Sault Ste. Marie and educated by the Sisters of Charity in Montréal, opened a school at Red River in 1829. In 1834, the Nolins travelled to the parish of Baie St. Paul in what is now Manitoba, where they helped establish a school for First Nations and Métis.6 Henry Budd, James Settee, James Hope, and Charles Pratt, four of the prominent graduates of the Anglican boarding school at Red River in the early nineteenth century, all went on to become missionaries and teachers.7 In the 1860s, Louis Riel was one of a number of young Métis who were sent to study at the Catholic schools of Lower Canada.8 In the 1880s, Riel taught at a boarding school for Métis boys in Montana.9 Riel’s sister Sara was educated at the Sisters of Charity boarding school at Red River. After taking her vows in 1868, she became a teacher at the Île-à-la-Crosse boarding school.10 Anglican schools at Red River also enrolled children of mixed ancestry.
This document focuses on those elements of the residential school history that were unique to Métis people. As such, the discussion centres on government and church policy regarding enrolment, and on the history of a number of institutions that were primarily intended for Métis students. The conclusion brings the focus back to the students, making use of statements that have been given to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and of several projects that collected Métis residential school memories. One of the most significant of these is the Métis Nation of Alberta’s Métis Memories of Residential Schools: A Testament to the Strength of the Métis.