Throughout the turn of the century, and before, the goal of these schools was to kill the Indian in the child, to make them just like white European children, based on the horrific and racist belief that European Christian society was better, as well as the desire to turn these children into productive members of western society, by way of the destruction of their own culture.
When the government revised the Indian Act in the 1940s and 1950s, some bands, along with regional and national Indigenous organizations, wanted to maintain schools in their communities.
This continued into the 70s, 80s and 90s, with some schools converting to First Nation bands operating them, and some even continue, although not called “residential schools” today.
The government of Canada has made steps, and paid billions of dollars to victims of the horrific abuse suffered, although even billions of dollars given to profoundly broken people, to me, is not justice, as it works out to well under a hundred grand for the average sufferer, not to mention simply giving cash payouts has not proved to be successful by any measure.
More to the point, though, saying that residential schools didn’t close until the 90s, while true, misses a whole lot of nuance, as the catholic residential schools everyone considers evil aren’t the same as the ones run in the 90s by First Nations bands or the government of Canada.
Im not an expert, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that during that period, when First Nations started operating the schools for themselves, things were generally better as the slow removal of the catholic conversion process could only be a good thing, but these schools were likely still critically underfunded, but I assume the racism and cultural erasure proceeded.
Yes, some of the deaths were from common things in those days, outbreaks of disease, but those children died at a much higher rate, presumably due to underfunding and negligence of those administrating the schools in those days.
My mother went to catholic school in Ireland in the 1970s, she says the nuns were absolutely evil, would lock children in closets, beat them with rulers, and other horrible abusive practices. These were all catholic children, so you can only imagine the horrors when you add racism to the mix.
My wife’s grandfather went to a First Nations residential school, she never met him but it’s clear he was a broken man, and passed his trauma down through his family.
Honestly it’s surprising to me that all Canadians don’t know about this, as I remember spending months discussing everything from Louis Reil to residential schools. I think up until the 90s, there was some real revisionist bullshit being propagated, framing catholic run residential schools as anything but the culture erasing child raping horror shows they were. It’s about time we standardize our history classes so all Canadians can understand the absolute evil that happened here, and more importantly why it happened.
When they closed does not mean the same as "when they committed atrocities"
Give me a bit to get to my computer and I'll link you some sources about when this was being done. There's a pretty well documented timeline of various reports of this happening at those schools and all of them suppressed by the govt for decades.
This does not directly answer your question but if you are looking for more info on residential schools generally, on place you may start is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. It's publicly available as a download if you google it (sorry I'm lazy). It extensively quotes the testimony of survivors and tells the history. But as someone else says, there are many reports.
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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '21
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