Carlisle Indian Industrial School

Residential school, a gruesome institution that includes rape, torture and abuse. Residential schools have been around since the 19th century. They were created to assimilate aboriginal children into Euro-Canadian culture, and to essentially strip them of their native culture. In both the poem, “Monster” by Dennis Saddleman and the novel, Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden, the authors go in depth on the problems with residential schools. Saddleman explains how residential school obliterates native…

Stephen Harper’s “Statement of Apology to Former Students of Indian Residential Schools” The Indian Residential School system was, as former Prime Minister Stephen Harper describes, “a sad chapter in [Canada’s] history” (1). The Indian Act of 1876 essentially passed guardianship of Aboriginal children to the Government of Canada, causing the education of these children to be the responsibility of the government. These Indian Residential Schools were created with the primary aim of assimilating…

Around 1870 the first residential schools opened forging Canada’s dark history. Aboriginal children were removed from their families and homes when the residentials schools had opened. They were funded under the authority of the Government of Canada. The purpose of these residentials schools was to remove and isolate children from their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. At least 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were…

Massachusetts, a little town of Deerfield, where the family of Pastor John Williams and others are subject to a massacre from the French and Mohawk Indians. Williams, his wife, and three of his children are then taken hostage to Canada. As the book goes on, Williams and two of his children are released; however, his daughter Eunice is kept in captivity with a tribe of Indians. Demos constructs this book as stories told by Williams about faith, captivity, and family. Demos in “The…

Canada has not always been the prime example of a human rights haven. From roughly 1884 to as late as 1996, the Canadian government operated so called “Indian Residential Schools”. In all, 150,000 native Canadian children belonging to various tribes were forcibly removed from their homes and taken to various residential schools across Canada in a savage attempt to assimilate them into Canadian society. The planned agenda was to teach them values of the Christian faith, and teach them how to…

Indian School Road: Legacies of the Shubenacadie Residential School features varies perspectives of the founders, teachers, and survivors of the Shubenacadie Residential school. Even though there are gaps to the history, Chris Benjamin has drawn from several sources to give a sense of how the school came to be. It discusses the traumatizing environment that Aboriginal children were put in. The book has a similar outline as my approach for this paper and it also offers additional sources and…

Residential School Syndrome (RSS) was coined by psychiatrist Dr. Charles Brasfield, and it refers to a group of symptoms exhibited by some survivors of the Canadian residential school system. These schools operated in the early 1900s until the late 1990s, and Aboriginal children across Canada were forcibly removed from their homes to attend. The traumas that students at residential schools suffered ranged from being apart from their families to being physically or sexually abused. Brasfield’s…

run away, risking their lives. In one of many instances, four boys who ran away from Lejac school in British Columbia in 1937 faced their deaths (“Jury Hears How 4 Indian Boys Froze to Death, 1937, as cited in Truth and Reconciliation, 2012). Runaways were humiliated by having their hands tied together, or chained with other runaways and forced to run behind a buggy or ahead of the principal back to school. Other times runaways or those who spoke in Cree in the 1950s would have their heads…

In 1879, Captain Richard Pratt while viciously supporting the idea that the Indian Americans had to completely assimilate the “white man” culture, established…

down by Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse led Cheyenne, Lakota and Arapaho Indians in…