Residential Schools in Canada: The death of families

 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. 

Miller Y-DNA: A minor break-through?

In 2013, I asked my cousin, Don Miller, to take a Y-DNA test. We have always had a brick wall with our 2^nd great-grandfather, John Conrad Miller, who was born in Germany and came to the US possibly in the 1830s. I thought that a Y-DNA test, which comes from a direct line of males like Don, might help in finding out more about the Miller line. My own relationship is through my mother, so my Y-DNA test would not do us as much good. Don died in 2016, so I am very happy that I got him to test when I did.

We don’t exactly know when John arrived as there are few passenger manifests from the early 19^th century. He also died very young, in 1846, according to his widow’s obituary, so not many US records of any kind exist that would shed light on his origins.

I found a marriage license from Tippecanoe County, Indiana, for John C. Miller and Hannah Mayfield dated 25 March 1838. There is an 1839 Cincinnati city directory listing “Miller, John (Ger), black-smith, res, Canal b Water [Walnut?] and Vine.”

We know, or think, that the family was recorded on the 1840 US census, living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where John was engaged as a blacksmith. The summary only shows age ranges with both John and Hannah each being between 20 and 29 years of age, and their daughter, Matilda, a female under 5 (she would have been just one).

Hannah’s family were living in Indiana at the time of her marriage, although over 200 miles away from Tippecanoe County. How they ended up there to get married is a mystery. My aunt, who researched the families, thought they may have met through Hannah’s brother who was also a blacksmith. At any rate, they stayed in Jefferson County for a while, where Matilda was born, and then moved to Cincinnati. Three more children were born there, or near there, including my great-grandfather, Isaac Mayfield Miller.

That is about the extent of what we know about John Conrad Miller. Isaac Mayfield Miller stated on the 1880 US census that his father had been born in “Wertemberg” [sic] so that gave us our first clue as to where in Germany John may have originated. Mind you, Issac also stated that was where his mother was born, too, which was not accurate, but I took the name of the German district as being correct for John. How would Isaac have known the name if he had not heard it from his mother?

So, what do we hope from DNA tests? The goal is to find other German descendants of John’s ancestors or relatives that would point the way to finding his birthplace and parents.

Don’s test was completed for 37 markers. Matching fewer markers gives a large number of matches, most of whom are probably too distant to make any sense. At 12 markers, there are almost 2,500 people but at the 37-marker level there are only 18. Even those did not offer a great deal of information, though, as those testing did not know a lot about their ancestors. Only one had a Miller surname – Richard. He thought his family had come from Germany but could not then pinpoint the location.

More recently I had Don’s test redone at 67 markers which would give me a much better comparison of DNA between relatives. Richard Miller is the only person to match at this level.

Subsequently to the DNA testing, Richard Miller put up a tree on Ancestry, based on a great deal of information mostly gleaned from his parents and grandparents. It showed a direct line back five generations with his 2^nd great-grandfather born in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, and a 2^nd great-granduncle born in “Worten” (Wört?), also in Baden-Württemberg. Another brother of these two individuals, along with their parents were recorded as having been born in Germany. Now I had something to work on.

Richard does not have documents that confirm the German relationships, only information from family members, so we have some way to go to prove the Württemberg connection. But I think we are certainly further along on our way to finding our Miller origins.

I have recently asked for Don’s sample to be retested for autosomal DNA. I have already done this with my own sample. These results may give us additional family matches that include females. If we can winnow out the non-Miller lines, then hopefully we will have additional data about our German roots. In my case, I am working to identify over 4,000 matches by family connections. It takes time!

What has reinvigorated my interest in the Miller line, particularly the connection to Württemberg is the news that our son and his family may be moving soon to Stuttgart, coming full circle to the homeland of one of our ancestors.

Was it Mill, Mills or Milne?

 One of my wife’s great-grandfathers was named William Milne. At least many documents show he was. But as I traced this line back, I found that the names Mill and Mills were used frequently on BMD records. That mix of surnames contributed to difficulties in finding the ancestry of this line.

William was born in Inverness, Scotland, on 21 September 1843 and baptized on 6 October 1843, as William Hugh Mills. This record, as well as the entry of his death in 1928, though, are the only documents on which his full name appears.

William’s father was also named William and he was a skinner. As the word suggests, the occupation of William Senior (as he will be referred to here) involved stripping the hide from animals to be used for tanning into leather, dealing in skins, fur and hides, or both. That job description was important in allowing me to trace the family. William Senior’s wife was Elizabeth Ross. Knowing her name also helped in demonstrating relationships as Scottish birth, marriage and death records after 1855 usually show both parents’ names.

The death record is curious as the surname of William Junior (as he will be referred to as from here on) and his parents is recorded as Mills but the informant, who was his son, is shown as Milne. His mother’s maiden name is wrong on the death record, but we may attribute that to the informant not knowing the correct information. The birth of that son was actually recorded as Fergus Mills but he later changed his name to Duncan Fergus Milne which is shown on his death record. The reason for the change is unknown but added to the complexity of surnames for this family.

William Junior could not read or write. On every document to which he applied his name, he signed with an ‘X’. That might help to explain the different surnames that were used although I have difficulty in understanding how someone recording information would not hear the difference in how he pronounced his name.

William Junior was married twice. His first was to Mary Ann Anderson, the ceremony performed in Forres, County of Elgin, on 4 September 1868. On that marriage document his name is written as Milne. The names of his parents and his father’s occupation confirm this is the person born with the name of Mills.

Mary Ann died on 19 October 1882. With young children still at home, William probably found it difficult to manage things without a partner. On 4 July 1884 he married Isabella Munro, this time in Ardclach parish, County of Nairn, the area where Isabella resided. On this record, though, his name is shown as Mill, as is that of his parents.

With Mary Ann, William Junior had five children. They were born in several different places as William moved around for work and their births were registered with a variety of names. With Isabella, two more children were born.

Children of William (Junior) Mills or Milne
Child’s Name	Birth Date	Birthplace	Year of Marriage
Mother: Mary Ann Anderson
Isabella Milne	10 November 1869	Forres, Elgin	4 September 1868
Mary Ann Milne	31 March 1872	St. Andrew, Edinburgh	4 October 1868
Elizabeth Mills	26 August 1874	Newington, Edinburgh	26 December 1872
William Mills	14 January 1877	Duffus, Elgin	26 December 1872
Thomas Robert Milne	8 July 1880	St. Nicholas, Aberdeen	26 December 1872
Mother: Isabella Munro
Margaret Ann Mill	22 August 1886	Forres, Elgin	4 July 1884
Fergus Mills	19 April 1893	Forres, Elgin	4 July 1884

The marriage date of parents is usually also recorded on birth entries in Scotland. In the case of the children of William and Mary Ann, different dates were used. The October 1868 date was the correct one. While we are confident these individuals are all from the same family, as the mother’s name does not change. The different marriage information, though, added confusion to the problem with the different surnames recorded.

The census records show the family surname as Mills in 1871 and Milne in 1881 through 1911, again inconsistent with birth, marriage and death records.

The records for William Senior were more consistent in surnames used. The surname on his birth and first marriage records were shown as Mill. His second marriage and the records of the births of his children were Mills. His death record says Milne with the informant being his brother John Milne.

It is hard to see any trend in the use of surnames. It does appear that more recent generations preferred Milne to Mill or Mills, though.

 

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