In 2008 Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered an official apology to the Aboriginal residential school survivors for the injustices that they experienced at the hands of the Anglican Church, funded by the Canadian Federal Government. Residential schools were established in the early 1800s to assist the new settlers to Canada with their mission of establishing a civilized nation. The First Nations people were seen as savage and in need of education to conform to the world that was being created. The last residential school closed in 1996 in Manitoba. By the time the final door was closed, generations of damage had been done, racism and discrimination of the First Nations were established and are perpetuated today.
Some History on Residential Schools
When explorers settled in Canada they took the land away from the indigenous people. To assist with their settlement and to eliminate the threat that was perceived by the “Indian people” the political governance systematically established boarding schools and absorbed the aboriginal children out of their communities and into schools. The design was to educate the youth to produce an industrious nation. The result was anything but. What did happen instead, was forced acculturation and systematic destruction First Nations families and their culture.
More than 150,000 children as young as 5 and 6 years old would be removed from their family homes and sent away to an established boarding school that were run by the Anglican and Catholic churches. In these residences, they were stripped of their native clothing, traditional cultural belongings and their cultural and spiritual ways. They were forced to wear uniforms, were punished if they spoke or wrote their native tongue and were segregated from their brothers and sisters as the schools were assigned by gender. The First Nations cultures and traditions were lost as generations of children were forced to behave and learn as if they were of European descent.
The devasting impact on the First Nations communities was cultural genocide. The parents who remained in the communities, lost their children, in some cases forever, because they had no way to get to their children. The fabric of their community was torn. The children lost the privilege of being parented and taught the traditional and spiritual ways of their people. The support system for the elders was removed as the children disappeared and the family unit was destroyed. At around this same time, grain alcohol was introduced into the communities. Parents who were completely succumbed to the grief of the loss of their children found that alcohol was a way that they could forget what they lost and numb the pain.
In addition to the impact on the communities, the children in the schools were treated in a substandard, dehumanized way. The education was poor with marginal curriculum and the teaching staff were poorly qualified and poorly paid. This meant that upon completion of this assimilation, the students were not adequately trained to return to any community and be effective contributors. Because the teaching staff were unqualified, this offered the opportunity for predators to position themselves in the schools where they could take advantage of the students. There is more than a century of stories about physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse and trauma which was never addressed by the church or the government. The school buildings themselves were inadequate and sometimes dangerous. Many children died as a result of the expansive, unsafe conditions they faced.
The Outcomes
Fast forward to 2008 Prime Minister Steve Harper apologized to a portion of the aboriginal communities for the atrocities faced by these students. In 2017, Justin Trudeau finished the apology by addressing the communities that were left out of the original apology. The First People of Newfoundland and Labrador were not considered as part of amends because this province was the last to join the Confederation of Canada. The apology arrived on the tails of a class action suit where the aboriginal people sued the Canadian government for the destructive psychological impact as a result of the residential schools.
The story, as sad as it is, did not end with the closing of the last school. The survivors became a generation of people who were never parented and therefore, did not know how to parent. This impact is a legacy to their children’s, children’s, children. The survivors, to address the pain that came as a result of the isolation, disconnection and trauma often become addicted to alcohol and drugs and this still remains the case. Because of this, the regeneration of the First Nations culture has been slow. Many customs, ceremonies and languages were lost forever.
Why was this story told? The racism and discrimination faced between the 1830s and 1996 continue to plague the First Nations people today. It seems that they have traded in one school for another, in this case, it is the school of hard knocks with the prison system being their keeper. The Aboriginal adult population is overrepresented in the prison system both provincially and federally at 28% and 27% respectively. Youth incarceration is 46%, in comparison to only 8% of Canadian youth. And, statistically speaking the aboriginal population has the highest suicide rate in Canada. These numbers speak for themselves. The cultural assassination of First Nations has cost these people opportunity to live a culturally rich, sustainable, community-oriented life.
By extension of this, the White community expresses its racial tendencies by profiling the Aboriginal people as alcoholics and drug addicts. There is ambivalent racism when people turn a blind eye to the statistics of Aboriginal incarceration and suicide without trying to find a solution to the problem. Some might even acknowledge that based on their experiences this culture is considered the undeserving poor because we, the European settlers created their circumstance, but that does not provide any solutions to the current day problem. Even teachers in our education system hold a racist belief in what they term “racism by low expectations”. Because they are aboriginal, and the parents lacked parenting skills, their children have no understanding of how to be a good student. The educators then have low expectations and according to social identity theory, these children who are then held to a lower standard will live into this expectation. There is an ongoing social comparison process that perpetuates a negative and hostile relationship between the Whites and the Aboriginals.
Conclusion and Opportunities
The truth and reconciliation commission is the first step to acknowledge and restore the truth of the Aboriginal people in Canada. Today, school curriculums as early as kindergarten presents historical facts about residential schools. Aboriginal educators are being sought after to create accurate and relevant curriculum. Traditional Aboriginal ceremonies are used to open events in public spaces. These new strategies are increasing the opportunity for functional diversity in Canada, being able to embrace the practices and ways of the original people of this land and to learn and restore our own integrity as an inclusive society.
References
Barnes, R., & Josefowitz, N. (2018). Indian residential schools in Canada: Persistent impacts on aboriginal students’ psychological development and functioning.Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1037/cap0000154
Malakieh, J. (2018, June 19). This Juristat article provides a statistical overview of adults and youth admitted to and released from custody and community supervision in Canada in 2016/2017. Analysis is presented at the national as well as the provincial and territorial levels. Average counts and the incarceration rates are presented. Admissions and the characteristics of adults and youth in the correctional system (such as age, sex and Aboriginal identity) are also discussed. Retrieved February 17, 2019, from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2018001/article/54972-eng.htm
McIntyre, C. (2017, November 24). Read Justin Trudeau’s apology to residential school survivors in Newfoundland. Retrieved February 17, 2019, from https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/read-justin-trudeaus-apology-to-residential-school-survivors-in-newfoundland/
Residential Schools in Canada. (2019). Retrieved February 17, 2019, from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools
Schiedel, B. (2018, August 14). Why our kids need to learn about residential schools. Retrieved February 17, 2019, from https://www.macleans.ca/society/why-our-kids-need-to-learn-about-residential-schools/
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: Sage.
Why the Muscowequan Residential School Remains Today. (2019). Still Standing. Retrieved February 17, 2019, from https://indigenouspeoplesatlasofcanada.ca/article/still-standing/