Residential Schools Summary

In the report, Murray Sinclair and A.C Hamilton focused on discussing the disastrous effects that the Residential schools, along with the other aspects of European colonization and its impacts on the Aboriginal communities. The first and main focus of residential schools was, firstly to attempt to convert the Aboriginals into their religious ideals. However, their first attempt wasn’t successful, which leads them to target the children and this resulted in the making of the residential schools. The outcome of the school systems was to turn the children against their culture and to forget it.
Ever since the Aboriginals and the Europeans came in contact with each other, they’ve always had different outlooks on things. The Europeans believed …show more content…
Nicholas F. Davin was a big factor in helping the Residential Schools move forward. He conducted a study on the Americans “aggressive civilization policy” and was later convinced that their methods of “civilizing” were correct and he encouraged them to proceed. His final comment stated, “…if anything is to be done with the Indian, we must catch him very young”. The federal government gave the duty of “civilizing” and “educating” to the religious organizations. From then on, the children were taken from their homes and forced into these so-called “educating schools”. Instead of proper education, the children received brutality. They were forced to dress, speak, behave in a European way. If they failed to perform these regulations, they were to be punished. “The elimination of language has always been a primary stage in process of cultural genocide. This was the primary function of the residential school. My father, who attended Alberni Indian Residential School for four years in the twenties, was physically tortured by his teachers for speaking Tseshaht: they pushed sewing needles through his tongue, a routine punishment for language offenders… The needle tortures suffered by my father affected all my family (I have six brothers and six sisters). My Dad’s attitude became “why teach my children Indian if they are going to be …show more content…
It took a toll on everybody who was involved and affected everybody who was related to the victims. The last residential school closed in 1996 but even up to this day, the Aboriginal people have not yet recovered from the damages. Aboriginal children of today don’t know how to speak their own language due to their parents not knowing how to speak it anymore or the parents chose not to teach them because of how they remembered being punished before when they spoke in their language. They are still traumatized from their horrifying experience. The Aboriginal people today struggle to bring back their beliefs, culture, and how they were once so vibrant. It is a slow process and the horrors have not yet been