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Indigenous Education

TRC & Residential Schools

Reconciliation is an ongoing process that requires all Canadians to be respectful and inclusive of Indigenous peoples. Most importantly—in the spirit of reconciliation—all non-Indigenous Canadians must have the bravery to look at the past, with critical eyes, and examine the shameful colonial ideals of superiority that founded "The Indian Residential School System," namely: "To civilize and Christianize" (The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada [TRC], 2015, Preface section). "To kill the Indian in the child" (UBC First Nations and Indigenous Studies, 2017, para. 5). In order to inform all Canadians about what happened in residential schools, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) carried out extensive research, published in the form of reports, which included testimony from Residential Survivors, their families, members of their communities, former school staff and others.

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Image: Cree students and teacher in class at All Saints Indian Residential School (Anglican Mission School)  by LibraryArchives is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC)

Residential School System

In partnership with the Canadian government, Catholic and Protestant churches created Residential Schools to break the bonds between Indigenous parents and their children and, ultimately, assimilate them into Canadian society (Historica Canada, n.d.; First Nations Education Steering Committee, n.d.). 

The following quote exposes the monstrous rationale:

"When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with its parents, who are savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write. It has been strongly impressed upon myself, as head of the Department, that Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men." — Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, Official report of the debates of the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada, 9 May 1883, 1107–1108. 

The residential school system officially operated from the 1880s into the closing decades of the 20th century. Its legacy is intergenerational trauma, loss of language, and death (TRC, 2015). According to Indigenous professor keha'ka/Mohawk (Kahente Horn-Miller), it was cultural genocide, which is "the absolute destruction of our ways, our languages, our families and identities" (Historica Canada, n.d.).