Assimilating
I’m looking for some background. Here’s some from something called Indigenous Foundations with an arts.ubc.ca address, i.e Arts at the University of British Columbia:
The term residential schools refers to an extensive school system set up by the Canadian government and administered by churches that had the nominal objective of educating Indigenous children but also the more damaging and equally explicit objectives of indoctrinating them into Euro-Canadian and Christian ways of living and assimilating them into mainstream white Canadian society. The residential school system officially operated from the 1880s into the closing decades of the 20th century. The system forcibly separated children from their families for extended periods of time and forbade them to acknowledge their Indigenous heritage and culture or to speak their own languages. Children were severely punished if these, among other, strict rules were broken. Former students of residential schools have spoken of horrendous abuse at the hands of residential school staff: physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological. Residential schools provided Indigenous students with inappropriate education, often only up to lower grades, that focused mainly on prayer and manual labour in agriculture, light industry such as woodworking, and domestic work such as laundry work and sewing.
Residential schools systematically undermined Indigenous, First Nations, Métis and Inuit cultures across Canada and disrupted families for generations, severing the ties through which Indigenous culture is taught and sustained, and contributing to a general loss of language and culture. Because they were removed from their families, many students grew up without experiencing a nurturing family life and without the knowledge and skills to raise their own families. The devastating effects of the residential schools are far-reaching and continue to have a significant impact on Indigenous communities. The residential school system is widely considered a form of genocide because of the purposeful attempt from the government and church to eradicate all aspects of Indigenous cultures and lifeworlds.
And, I would think, because of something perhaps less tangible, but more basic and destructive: the foundational assumption of the whole thing is that the children are being removed (or rescued) from something profoundly inferior. It frames the children’s own families and neighbors, their communities in the very literal sense, as bad, harmful, diseased, broken, horrific.
It’s painful to think about, really. The more obvious harms are bad enough – separation from family and everyone they knew, separation from familiar surroundings, imprisonment among a lot of nuns and priests – but the slightly less obvious messages about the life they knew are…well, they’re making me flinch.
From the 1990s onward, the government and the churches involved—Anglican, Presbyterian, United, and Roman Catholic—began to acknowledge their responsibility for an education scheme that was specifically designed to “kill the Indian in the child.”
It has the structure of a myth or fairy tale. The child lives with parents who are poor and humble but loving and protective; the child is “rescued” and removed to relatives who are rich but cold and distant. We all know the happy ending doesn’t involve forgetting all about the loving parents.
The early origins of residential schools in Canada are found in the implementation of the mission system in the 1600s. The churches and European settlers brought with them the assumption that their own civilization was the pinnacle of human achievement. They interpreted the socio-cultural differences between themselves and Indigenous Peoples as “proof” that Canada’s first inhabitants were ignorant, savage, and—like children—in need of guidance. They felt the need to “civilize” Indigenous Peoples. Education—a federal responsibility—became the primary means to this end.
You can see why they would think that. Look at us! We got here from way over there because we made this fabulous technology! Obviously we’re the pinnacle!
In the 1880s, in conjunction with other federal assimilation policies, the government began to establish residential schools across Canada. Authorities would frequently take children to schools far from their home communities, part of a strategy to alienate them from their families and familiar surroundings. In 1920, under the Indian Act, it became mandatory for every Indigenous child to attend a residential school and illegal for them to attend any other educational institution.
In short every Indigenous child was sentenced to prison. Quite the interesting law.
I suppose part of the obsession with mass burials is that (if they exist) they’re something tangible and real in the here and now. It’s not possible to shout at the people who passed the 1920 Indian Act, but it may be possible to find some mass graves, some day, if only we can find them.
Sounds to me like a good description of the church – not just the Catholic church.
Which is a good goal.
Without the prejudicial language and the Christianity, this is also a good goal. Shared culture benefits both the individuals and the society. Inculturation is and has always been a core purpose of education.
That’s inhumane. It’s also counterproductive, given the project’s educational objectives. Strike one against. The only way it would be more counterproductive would be if they
This. This is exactly what you don’t do if you actually care about your explicit goals. At best, the children would be in a chaotic, unbalanced state of mind unsuited to learning. At worst, you get a rubberbanding backlash, just like what happened when the English did the same to the Irish. Just like what happens with gender non-conforming children who are severely punished for their preferences and ultimately end up gender confused. Strike two against.
Okay, I was wrong. There was something else that would be more counterproductive. Strike three against. Any appeal to objectives is henceforth rejected as null and void. Their hearts were not in the right place.
The fuck is a lifeworld? Is this some Anglish construction, like worldken but folksy?
There is a lot of material freely available on the website of Canada’s National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
Yes, the attitudes in those days were deplorable. They did indeed see indigenous culture as inferior to European culture and thus try to impose the latter. And yes they did try to Christianize the indigenous children. By today’s standards this is deplorable.
[By the way, such attitudes were not limited to non-white cultures; for example, at the same time, in Wales, Welsh children would be punished for speaking Welsh in school rather than English. Ditto Gaelic in Gaelic-speaking parts of Scotland.]
But despite having lots of very real and important issues with Residential Schools about which they can quite properly complain, activists still seek to exaggerate the faults. For example:
This is just not true. (At least, I’m fairly sure it’s not true; I’m open to correction here from an authoritative source.) What the 1920 amendments to the Act did was make schooling compulsory for Indian children (it has been compulsory in Canada for European-origin children since 1871). But that allowed any sort of school that met specified standards, including day schools, and the majority of Indian children went to day schools in their neighbourhoods.
Now, given the sparse population in some areas, and the greater difficulty of travel in those days, in some areas there wasn’t the population density to support a local day school, so for children from those areas a Residential School was the only option.
But that’s not the same as “it became mandatory for every Indigenous child to attend a residential school”, and certainly not “… and illegal for them to attend any other educational institution”, which seems to be an embellishment added to demonize the Residential School system beyond the justified criticisms that can be properly made.
Those who passed those amendments, requiring formal schooling of indigenous children (which had already been mandatory for European-origin children for 50 years), were likely well meaning. They presumably thought that schooling was important for all children for the same reasons we think that today. If they hadn’t wanted schooling for indigenous children, but only for European children, presumably that attitude could also be criticized?
Do you actually want there to be mass graves to find? Thus maximising the iniquity of whites? Wouldn’t it be a good thing if the truth were that, while deplorable in many ways, the Residential School system wasn’t quite that bad?
By the way, on the “looking for some background” on Residential Schools, here’s a lengthy but worthwhile article published by Quillette last year.
That whole final paragraph is skeptical/sarcastic. I wrote a post yesterday discussing the apparent credulity about mass graves.
I later transitioned to talking about the parts that aren’t hyperbole (as far as we know). I did some reading about the “assimilation” of indigenous children and wrote about that, without sarcasm.
So no, I don’t want there to be mass graves, thanks for asking.