INTRODUCTION
What exactly are residential schools? And how did they impact Indigenous children and their families? This essay will attempt to answer this question by exploring the historical context and the consequences of residential schools in Canada. For more than a century, Indigenous children were forcibly taken away from their homes and families, stripped away from their culture, and forced to attend a boarding school far away from their communities. These residential schools were intentionally created to assimilate Indigenous people and eradicate their culture as well as their way of life. In other words, these institutions served as cultural genocide since their only intent was to extinguish any traces of Indigenous identity from Canada. The creation of these institutions is still …show more content…
Therefore, these schools became mandatory for Native children. Canadian authorities would forcibly take children away from their families and take them far from their homes to attend one of these schools. It is estimated that over 150,000 children were removed from their communities and went to a residential school. Finally, after all of these years of the oppression of First Nations children, the last industrial institute was permanently closed in 1996 in Punnichy, Saskatchewan. Secondly, the tortuous environment that the residential schools provided to the students plays a huge role in the mistreatment of Native Americans. Many survivors have described the living conditions as deplorable in these schools. As a way to strip them from their identity, indigenous children were forced to cut their hair short and abandon their native languages. In addition, boys and girls were separated, which led to siblings never interacting with each other for most of their time spent in school. The children had to wear uniforms and were referred to with numbers. Moreover, the education taught to Indigenous students was very different from the one taught to the rest of the
What exactly are residential schools? And how did they impact Indigenous children and their families? This essay will attempt to answer this question by exploring the historical context and the consequences of residential schools in Canada. For more than a century, Indigenous children were forcibly taken away from their homes and families, stripped away from their culture, and forced to attend a boarding school far away from their communities. These residential schools were intentionally created to assimilate Indigenous people and eradicate their culture as well as their way of life. In other words, these institutions served as cultural genocide since their only intent was to extinguish any traces of Indigenous identity from Canada. The creation of these institutions is still …show more content…
Therefore, these schools became mandatory for Native children. Canadian authorities would forcibly take children away from their families and take them far from their homes to attend one of these schools. It is estimated that over 150,000 children were removed from their communities and went to a residential school. Finally, after all of these years of the oppression of First Nations children, the last industrial institute was permanently closed in 1996 in Punnichy, Saskatchewan. Secondly, the tortuous environment that the residential schools provided to the students plays a huge role in the mistreatment of Native Americans. Many survivors have described the living conditions as deplorable in these schools. As a way to strip them from their identity, indigenous children were forced to cut their hair short and abandon their native languages. In addition, boys and girls were separated, which led to siblings never interacting with each other for most of their time spent in school. The children had to wear uniforms and were referred to with numbers. Moreover, the education taught to Indigenous students was very different from the one taught to the rest of the