Cultural Assimilation In Canada

In the past, there have been many cultural changing events that have helped contribute to today's society. Globalization has increased the spread of culture and the thought of one culture being superior to another has caused and will probably continue to cause problems worldwide. When one group starts to develop more power, sometimes they use it to try to kill other cultures. This could include changing people and trying to assimilate them like the First Nations, or physically killing everyone that is part of a certain group of people like the Aztecs or Jewish.

In any situation, a person's power is going to make them seem more superior. Whether it is out of fear or out of love, people will follow any leaders demands. Eurocentrism, the belief …show more content…
Assimilation has changed many cultures with one major event in Canada being residential schools. For almost one hundred years, the Europeans used these schools to teach First Nations their “white” ways. When The Europeans forced the First Nations to sign their treaties, it promised education for the First Nations, however, the government hired the Catholic church to teach the children, which forced the kids to change their culture and learn a completely different one. These schools were located in every province/territories except Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland. Some examples of assimilation in residential schools are that the First Nations had to change their names, language, and clothing and had to drop all of their known culture. After going through this cultural change, the last school closed in 1996. Another example of Assimilation took place in the 1700’s when the Britains tried to assimilate India. While the British Empire was beginning to take over India, their goal was to bring order to India’s decaying society so business so that they could flourish. With this assimilation case, there was no military invasion, although force was used. The East India Company officials were only focused on making a profit, not making a western styled government. Assimilation was used by both of these groups …show more content…
It is important to have a lot of different people with say on its issues because the more perspectives on an issue will potentially lead to making the best decisions. Instead of controlling Canadian citizens in a frightening, demanding way, Canada wants to do what is best for everyone and doesn't want people to hate the government and its choices. While residential schools were still educating the Aboriginals of Canada, the idea of assimilation and only having one right culture was what the government believed in. Although, that is not the case nowadays and the government has realized that assimilation was wrong and they are trying to make up for the mistakes that we have made on things like the Indian Act, by giving money to whoever was impacted by residential schools. Canada is now very multicultural and supports lots of diversity, for example, there are so many different races and languages that are spoken by Canadians and Canada supports the growth in our population no matter what race. Obviously since Canada believes in increasing its population and diversity, there is no genocide taking place and the Canadian government wouldn’t kill an entire group unless it was the last option and its citizens were in danger. The events that have happened in the past, not only in Canada, have helped contribute to today's society and helps us to understand what we want and