The first Indian Residential school was established in 1861 in British Columbia which was operated by the Roman Catholic Church. It was also the last ever operating residential school closing their doors 123 years later in 1984. More than 130 schools were build and maintained throughout the nation. These schools were the center of the Canadian genocide which still remains hidden within the fabrics of our history. A part of history that Canadians should be ashamed about.
These schools taught children from ages 7-15 how to become productive members of "white society" forcing them through physical and physically means to forget about their Indian identities. This act was founded upon the basic that it was acceptable to obliterate indigenous peoples' distinct culture in order to foster the British ideals of colonial processes of nation building. First nation parents were forced under the Indian act to send these children to school, without knowledge of the horrific tragics that happen within those schools' walls.
These children were separated from their parents by thousands of miles, often having gifts and letters being withheld from them. The school curriculum consisted of moral, academic and industrial training, often times these children would be in class for half a day while the other half they would spend outside doing physical labour or acting as servants for the staff.
Psychological, emotional and physical abuses were constant which included:
- Public beatings of naked children as well as public strip & genital searches
- Constant racism
- locking children in closets, washrooms and the basement without food for days
- separation of sexes and siblings
- proscription of native languages and spirituality, if native tongue was heard being spoken needles were injected into their tongues
- sexual violence, rape often occurred - staff-impregnated girls forced into abortions
- Burning, electric shocks, beating until unconscious
- forced to eat their own vomit, left outside in freezing temperatures, withholding medical attention with no food
WTF?
Why didn't I learn about this in highschool? This finally stopped in 1984, 3 years before my birth. How could the greatest country to live in do this a horrid thing? Now Canada is saying sorry. Sorry for breaking families apart, for putting children through torture by giving them money. Can money change the past? Can money erase all the psychological damage these schools have done? Money doesn't solve anything.
This world is corrupted.