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6 days ago · Historian Sean Carleton says residential school denialism is a strategy used to twist, misrepresent and distort basic facts about residential schools to shake public confidence in the stories of ...
Aug 1, 2021 · The goal of Canada’s Indian residential school system, after all, shared that of its U.S. Indian boarding school counterpart: “Kill the Indian, and save the man.” More than 150,000...
Jun 5, 2021 · Government-run boarding schools in Canada were part of a policy to attempt to assimilate Indigenous children and destroy Indigenous cultures and languages. News of the remains of 215...
Sep 1, 2020 · The efforts of residential school survivors to tell their stories and to seek justice have been a crucial catalyst in the growing public recognition of the harm and effects of residential schools. The first boarding schools for Indigenous children in what would become Canada were established by Roman Catholic missionaries in 17 th century ...
- Resistance at Residential Schools
- Friendship as Resistance
- Culture as Resistance
- Running Away from Residential School
- Parental Resistance
- Significance and Legacy
Children responded to being removed fromtheir families and institutionalized at residential schools in severaldifferent ways. Many resisted by simply being children: despite facing austereconditions, a number of them remained playful, sometimes making their schoolsupervisors the centres of their jokes. Some students gave their supervisorsand teache...
When they arrived at residential school,Indigenous children were often segregated – first by religious denomination,then by gender and by age. Because of this, siblings were often separated fromone another. Having been removed from their homes and families, they found institutionallife extremely lonely. But many children made strong friendships wit...
A key goal of the residential-school systemwas to eradicate Indigenous cultures. In many instances, the schools and theirstaff successfully did so. There were small groups of students, however, who continuedto practise their cultures while institutionalized in an effort to resistassimilation. Speaking one’s Indigenous language was one way to resist...
As a last resort, some children escaped theoppressive environment of residential schools. By fleeing, they were respondingto their poor living conditions in a very physical and visceral way. Sometimes,if they made it home or to a relative’s house, their family returned them toschool out of fear of retribution from local IndianAgents. Other children...
Student attendance at residential schoolswas compulsory according to the IndianAct and other legislation. But Indigenous parents protestedthe state of their children’s education and living arrangements as much as theirchildren did. Some parents kept their children at home despite the possible consequencesof imprisonment, hefty fines or the relinqui...
Indigenous peoples continue to resist the residential-schoolsystem in several ways. Some people, for example, have deemed Canadian child-welfareservices to be the “new residential school,” and Gitxsanscholar and activist Cindy Blackstock has been working as a tireless advocatefor Indigenous children and their parents. Many Survivors are sharing and...
Oct 10, 2012 · Residential schools were government-sponsored religious schools that were established to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture. Although the first residential facilities were established in New France, the term usually refers to schools established after 1880.
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.
