There has been a great deal of news recently about hundreds of unmarked graves of Indigenous children found on the sites of residential schools in Canada. Of particular note were the 215 found at the former Kamloops Residential School, in south-central British Columbia, and 751 at the former Marieval Indian Residential School, east of Regina, Saskatchewan.
The Canadian federal government set up 139 such schools beginning in 1883. They were in operation for over a century with the last one finally closing in 1996. During that time, over 150,000 children were forcibly removed from their families and sent to live and learn in these schools, for the most part run by the Roman Catholic, Anglican and United churches. A map of Canada showing all of the residential schools follows. A breakdown by province can be found on the Truth and Reconciliation website.
The formation and existence of
these institutions is a black mark on our history. They represent a process of
genocide under which the governments hoped to eradicate the culture of
Indigenous people by educating and training the children away from their parents and communities.
As James Daschuk states in his
book, Clearing the Plains (published by University of Regina Press,
originally in 2013, new edition in 2019), they had already achieved a
remarkable step through subjugation and confinement on limited lands. In the
introduction to the 2019 edition, writer, historian activist and public speaker
Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair says,
Canada cleared the plains coldly
and opportunistically, taking advantage of a famine caused by the exploitation
of bison populations and the flooding of Nakota, Dakota, Nehiyawak,
Niitsitapie, and Anishinaabe territories by settlers. Methodically, and while
using draconian legislation regarding Indigenous peoples and starvation,
Canadian leaders coerced First Nations leader into signing treaties and
drove their peoples onto reserves,
establishing the circumstances and conditions in which Indigenous communities
could be controlled and exterminated physically and ideologically from the
national consciousness.
Harsh words! But depressingly it is
true.
Growing up in the prairies during
the 1950s and 1960s, we were never taught about these “schools” nor about the
treatment of First Nations people. In almost all respects they were held to be
second class citizens. I doubt that our parents or grandparents knew much about
the system either. It is only during the last couple of decades that studies
have been completed and reports finished that describe the conditions in the
schools and on the reserves.
A copy of the 2015 Report of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada can be downloaded from the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada website.
Hundreds of photos of children incarcerated
(there is no other word) at the schools have been published. Most of them
showed smiling children, all dressed the same and engaged attentively in
classroom studies. The reality was quite different.
Licia Corbella wrote a recent
column in the 24 June 2021 edition of the Calgary Herald describing
some of the background which is particularly disturbing and invites readers to
put themselves in the position that native families found themselves in:
One day, armed government officials
come into the neighbourhood and forcibly remove every child without warning,
including yours. No time for goodbyes or sage final words of advice from parent
to child. No last minute “I love yous.”
Try as you might — despite all of
the resources at your disposal — you can't find where your children have been
taken. Your neighbours know as little as you do. You're told this is the law.
It's for the best. Your children will be well educated.
You don't have to be a psychologist
or psychiatrist to figure out what might happen to you and the other adults in
those posh communities. Depression very quickly will take root as the will to
live plummets. Family breakdown ensues. You start to self medicate with alcohol
or drugs or both. Or maybe you just stop getting out of bed. Self-harm and
suicides spike.
That's just for the adults.
Then put yourself into the shoes of
the children. One day you're out with your father and grandpa on their trapping
line, the next you're grabbed by strange men, thrown into a boat and taken far
from home. One moment you're picking berries with your mom, the next you're
hauled away by RCMP officers.
You are young and you don't
understand what's going on. You cry for your mother and father. You're slapped
and told to shut up. The place you're taken to cuts your long hair off. You're
stripped naked, “deloused,” your clothes and any other possessions you have are
taken away and burned. None of the adults in this faraway location speak your
language. Indeed, many of the children who come from numerous other communities
don't speak your language, either.
When you do see people you know who
speak your language you're beaten for trying to communicate with them. When you
start to understand the only language allowed to be spoken, you're told that
your language isn't important and your culture is evil.
Like many congregate settings, when
one person gets sick, everyone gets sick. Some of your young friends die from
the flu, measles or tuberculosis. In some cases you're tasked with carrying
your friend's body to a hole dug in the ground. Their body is covered with
dirt, a few prayers are said over the mound but no grave marker is placed
there.
You may be beaten. You may be
sexually abused. There is some kindness and love, but it's doled out in
minuscule amounts.
The food is not very nutritious. In
some instances, you aren't given enough. It's part of a federal government
experiment to see what will happen to children if you are underfed and denied
nutrition.
You are just six years old when you
arrive at the residential school. By the time you see your family again you're
16. Your parents are unrecognizable when you are dropped back “home.” If your
parents and grandparents are still alive, they seem much older than the vague
memory you have of them. There is no spark left in their eyes. They're
lethargic and depressed. They drink now. They tell you how much they missed
you, how sad they have been since you were stolen away by the government, how
desperately they tried to find you. But you don't understand them because you
no longer speak their language. You are strangers with the same blood.
This is the way that thousands of
families were crippled and died. Several generations were impacted during the
160 years these schools were in operation: children being stripped away from
family influences and growing up without parents; parents existing for years
without learning the fate of their children; both groups eventually turning to
alcohol and drugs in an effort to forget the experiences and trauma.
And children died by the thousands
while in attendance at these schools, most often buried in unmarked graves.
Among the causes of death were unchecked diseases (primarily tuberculosis),
malnutrition and physical abuse. The
graves are only now being rediscovered, in spite of the fact that Indigenous
communities told us for decades that they existed.
The treatment of children during
their lives and even after their deaths was egregious. The Truth and
Reconciliation Commission tried to discover what actually happened to the
thousands of “missing” children. A summary of their conclusions are:
·
The Commission has identified 3,200 deaths on
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Register of Confirmed Deaths of Named
Residential School Students and the Register of Confirmed Deaths of Unnamed
Residential School Students.
·
For just under one-third of these deaths
(32%), the government and the schools did not record the name of the student
who died.
·
For just under one-quarter of these deaths
(23%), the government and the schools did not record the gender of the student
who died.
·
For just under one-half of these deaths
(49%), the government and the schools did not record the cause of death.
·
Aboriginal children in residential schools
died at a far higher rate than school aged children in the general population. [up
to fives times higher]
·
For most of the history of the schools, the
practice was not to send the bodies of students who died at schools to their
home communities.
·
For the most part, the cemeteries that the
Commission documented are abandoned, disused, and vulnerable to accidental
disturbance.
·
The federal government never established an
adequate set of standards and regulations to guarantee the health and safety of
residential school students.
·
The federal government never adequately
enforced the minimal standards and regulations that it did establish.
·
The failure to establish and enforce adequate
regulations was largely a function of the government’s determination to keep
residential school costs to a minimum. failure to establish and enforce
adequate standards, coupled with the failure to adequately fund the schools,
resulted in unnecessarily high death rates at residential schools.
As an introspection, I compared photos of members of my family with those taken at the residential schools. Below, the top photo of the first pair shows my father and his cousins in the Keoma, Alberta area in 1926. The picture at the bottom is of children at the Kamloops, British Columbia residential school in 1931. The children in Keoma were all living at home and cared for by loving parents. The children at the Kamloops facility were separated from their families for years. One may wonder how many of those children shown in this photograph are now buried there?
When I was at school, we had well-equipped woodworking shops at my junior high school in 1960 as shown in the top photo below. While Indigenous children may have been taught trades, often what went on was more child labour than training, as shown in the bottom photo of boys cutting wood at the Fort Resolution Residential School in the Northwest Territories. One major difference is that my friends and I went home after classes were out.
Had we known more, or had our
parents or grandparents known about the conditions, could any of us have
influenced the situation for the betterment of the children involved? I like to hope so. It could not have been a secret.
There are thousands of photographs taken at these schools and innumerable
reports published where we could have easily discovered them.
This whole disaster resulted in the
death of families, one group exercising that power by taking away
children, basically to “kill the Indian” in them. In reading about historical
events, I would have said that these kinds of ideas and acts were something
that would have been part of the ancient past, not part of modern societies.
But that is wrong. In a civilized society, these events stand out as
particularly odious as leaders should have known better and shown more moral
courage.
There is still much to be done to
assist in the healing process of First Nations people and the education of the
rest of Canadians.
Have a look at the Truth and Reconciliation website, learn about the events that led us to where we are in this country concerning Indigenous people and see what you can do.
