Canadian Indian Residential Schools

Canadian Indian Residential Schools was a system of schools intended to “civilise” the Aborigine people to fit into the Canadian culture. In Canada, the dominant culture was that of the Canadians. There were however indigenous cultures that were already living in Canada before the contemporary Canadians occupied the land. One of the dominant indigenous cultures was that of the Indians, or Aborigines. The Canadian Government believed that their culture was uncivilized and therefore saw the need to integrate them into the modern society. This was done through the system of Canadian Indian Residential Schools.

The Canadian Government passed laws which set up the residential schools. These schools were in form of boarding schools. The law made attendance of the schools to be compulsory for the native children. In these schools, the children would be taught about the modern way of life in a bid to completely alienate them from their indigenous cultures and ways of lives. The schools were built kilometres away from the children’s families to limit family visits to the school. The effect of this was to ensure that the students were not influenced at all by their culture. Attendance being compulsory meant that children were being forcefully separated from their families and made to attend boarding school with little to no contact with their families.

When those children who had survived the residential schools returned to their communities, the impact of their experiences on attachment and family dynamics was profound. The children would end up being completely unable to fit into their cultures. Unfortunately, these children were also unable to fit into the Canadian system. The end result was having graduates from the school with post-traumatic stress disorder, and a wide array of other psychological problems. Out of about 150,000 students who were taken to these schools, more than 6000 of them died while in school. Many survivors report that not only did they return to their communities with a high degree of trauma but they had few resources to help them cope with their experiences. They had missed out on learning their own cultural ways of coping, and practising good health, wellness and parenting. Many survivors were later targeted by the child welfare system for conditions of poverty and neglect that were a direct result of their experiences in these institutions. A great many children from successive generations were taken from the family home and placed in the child welfare system. Many of the abuses and racist discourses that underpinned the Indian Residential School System continued within the child welfare system. The Residential system therefore had terrible effects on the students as it clearly failed to achieve the intended purpose for attendance.

These schools were subsequently abolished in Canada. The schools had been an abuse of human rights to the Native Communities. The law was used to deprive families of their children based on arbitrary assumptions that the Aborigine culture was uncouth and uncivilized. The law was meant to promote diversity yet it was used in this case to create a rift between communities in an attempt to forcefully eliminate harmless cultural practices. Attempts at reconciliation are being made to date in an attempt to promote integration in Canada.