Canadian Residential Schools
Allegations of Abuse in Aboriginal Schools
A legacy of physical and sexual abuse of Aboriginal students in religious-run residential schools has come to light in recent court cases.
On November 23, 2005, the Canadian government agreed to pay out almost $2 billion to Aboriginal survivors of the legacy of physical and sexual abuse in residential schools. Almost 86, 000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit, many of whom are now more than 60 years old, will share the payment.
History of Residential Schools in Canada
Unlike the US where interest in Native American education did not take root until about 1865--and then not very successfully--Aboriginal education has a long history in Canada. Perhaps because, in Canada, assimilation was preferred to extermination, the first residential schools were begun by Catholic Missionaries in New France . Later under British Colonial rule the Methodist and Anglican churches established schools in Upper Canada in the 1830s.
Residential Industrial Schools
Post Confederation, in the 1870s, Canada began following the example of Capt. Pratt's Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. The emphasis was on removing young Aboriginal men and women from reserves and teaching them skills they could use in a Euro-American dominated culture. Though some prominent students used their English language skills to further their education and enter the professions, the emphasis was on farming and labor for the boys and housekeeping skills for the girls. In Canada, the schools were government-run jointly with various religious organizations. However, as government funding diminished over the years, the schools depended more and more on student labor to survive.
Legacy of Abuse
The Canadian (and US) residential schools' legacy of psychological abuse through restriction on native languages and alienation of children from their cultures is obvious to our modern perceptions, however against a policy of extermination, one can at least understand how religious leaders rationalized their "good intentions." What cannot be rationalized, on any level, is the legacy of physical and sexual abuse at these religiously run institutions that has come to light in current court cases in Canada.
This is not to say that similar abuses did not take place in the Indian industrial schools across the US as well. Given current scandals in the American Catholic church, one can only imagine the vulnerability of young Native American men and women removed from their already disenfranchised parents. The difference may simply be that most off-reservation boarding schools in the US closed down by the 1930s, while the last residential school in Canada closed its doors in 1998.
Canada could not close the door, however, on the legacy of abuse that may remain a factor in drug addiction, alcoholism, and myriad emotional problems from which many First Nations, Métis, and Inuit suffer.
Read about Indigenous Education Rights in Australia at Aboriginal Rights
