Canadian Indian residential school system

their own culture and political systems. The way they lived changed after colonists took their land and tried to assimilate their communities into Canadian society. The life and culture of the Frist Nation tribes was barbaric and savage in the eyes of the Canadian people and the government. The government set up residential schools with the purpose of assimilating First Nations children into the white anglophone dominated society of Canada. We Were Children is a Canadian documentary that tells…

Dating back to Aboriginal history, education systems have not been the ideal structure of learning for students. Integrating children from reserves into nearby public and residential schools take away from their culture. Having gone through discrimination and racism in the classroom setting, Stephen Harper, in 2008, apologized for the Indian Residential School system (Statement of Apology, 2010). Consequently, an education act was made effective to build a new foundation for Aboriginal education…

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…

When Residential Schools Began 1870s Federal government and Plain Nations both wanted to have schooling for Aboriginal youth Aboriginal adults assumed schooling systems would help their youth transition into the new dominating society (European-Canadians) successfully in 1867 the British North America Act and in 1876 the Indian Act was published the acts obliged the government to provide education for Aboriginal youth and teach them to be economically self-sufficient government teamed with…

First Nations children's advocate fasting to raise awareness, retrieved from http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/manitoba-first-nations-children-s-advocate-fasting-to-raise-awareness-1.2575655, Puxley (2015) sheds light on Manitoba’s “broken child-welfare system” as she interviews Cora Morgan, a First Nations children’s advocate. (para. 1). Morgan explains her plan to “go without food or water, along with five other women” for two days, in protest of the injustices associated with Child and Family…

within the Canadian child welfare system CURRENT SITUATION: There continues to be a high over-representation of Indigenous children within the Canadian child welfare system. According to Statistics Canada, approximately 7% of the Canadian population consists of Aboriginal children. (StatCan, 2011.) However, Aboriginal children represented almost half of the population within the child welfare system at 48% (StatCan, 2011.) The population of Indigenous children within the child welfare system is…

Residential schools were made compulsory for First Nation children to attend by the amendment of the Indian Act in 1884 into the closing decades of the 20th century. (Restoule) The federal government created the schools’ system and the Christian churches administered the schools and the education styles. (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/a-history-of-residential-schools-in-canada-1.702280) Residential schools were built to serve two purposes: to remove and isolate the native children from their…

It was a common thought among Canadians that “Indians” lacked the basic means to last in what was known as civilized Canada in both thought and spirit, and they were said to behave in child-like ways. (Hidden From History, 2016, p. 26) It seemed to be general consensus that residential schools would assimilate them into the “civilized society,” but most of the population did not actually fully realized at first what was going on behind the closed doors of these schools. Boys and girls were…

evident in the slow death measure of starvation imposed on those residential school students. A 1944 report to the Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs by Dr. A.B Simes, a medical superintendent of the Qu’Appelle Indian Hospital, found that “28% of the girls and 69% of the boys [were] underweight. During this time, only 49 cents per day were allocated on food and at some schools even less. Of the food at the Fort Alexander school, former student, Faron Fontaine, said that all he could recall…

tense. The Canadian government tried on many occasion to eliminate aboriginal people. Some of these attempts include the Indian Residential School System, which were active between the years of 1880 and 1996. Furthermore, the Indian Act passed in 1876 gave the government control over most aspects of aboriginal life. The Act outlined who was part of the indigenous community and who was allowed to live on the reserves. The author of Troubling the Path to Decolonization: Indian Residential School…