Eugene’s Mission near Cranbrook, where I grew up. on June 25, that in Saskatchewan there were 751 where the Marieval Residential School had been on June 30, that 182 had been “discovered” at St. On May 28, we learned that there were 215 unmarked graves at the site of the residential school in Kamloops, B.C. Recently, however, ground-scanning devices have begun to supply locations and numbers. Hence the uncertainty as to numbers and names and even locations of those buried. The little wooden crosses and cemetery fences, of course, are long gone. And though the education was generally good and gratefully received by some, record-keeping (or the successful preservation of records) was remarkably bad. So instead it was shallow graves and wooden crosses in fields outside the schools. The government wouldn’t, and the churches couldn’t, pay for that nor could the families. When children died at the schools, they were seldom sent home for proper burial. Children arrived already suffering from tuberculosis or other illnesses. Living conditions became crowded and less healthy. Funding was enrollment-based and (given the parlous state of the economy) very parsimonious. With the advent of compulsory education, the schools multiplied. State support for mission schools, Catholic and Protestant, became available in 1874. (In those days, schools were brought to the natives rather than the natives to the schools.) By Confederation in 1867, there were eight such establishments, but things were beginning to change. 1708), who labored long before the Ryerson era to supply a complete system of education for the peoples in his care, as also to protect them from the liquor trade and other threats to their welfare. It was still imbued with the spirit of the first bishop of New France, St.
The first residential school, the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, had opened in 1831. He held that indigenous peoples should receive an education in denominational English-only boarding schools, a system that entailed uprooting children from their tribal homes and customs. The Department of Indian Affairs quickly sought his advice and began to employ his methods in order to integrate native children into the new world in which they were to live.
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He introduced school boards, standardized textbooks, and free education for all. A Methodist minister, Egerton Ryerson (1803–82), was appointed chief superintendent of education for Upper Canada in 1844. The tragedy, as we shall see, and the crimes it involved-crimes some are falsely characterizing as genocide-began with government-mandated violation of parental rights, an error gaining currency again today.Īt the time of its establishment, the residential schools policy was seen as a progressive one. How could this be? Who is responsible? Are the religious organizations who operated the residential schools the real culprits, as many suppose? A careful examination shows that supposition to be flawed. Upward of four thousand-perhaps as many as ten thousand-passed away while attending them or expired soon afterward. Over more than a century, about 140,000 children passed through these schools. The last of the former, many of which were operated by the Catholic Church, closed its doors in 1996. The chaos ensued after discovery of the remains of hundreds of indigenous youths, buried near the residential schools in which they were enrolled under a policy backed by the Indian Act of 1876, amendments to which in 18 made attendance at residential or industrial schools compulsory for those who lacked access to day schools. “Burn it all down,” tweeted the director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, to supportive cheers even in the legal community. A dozen more, most in non-indigenous contexts, were vandalized. Over the past fortnight, some dozen churches in Canada, many serving indigenous people, were torched.
Truth and reconciliation both suffer when it is weaponized.’ Editor’s note: This essay was originally published on Jit is posted again as background to Pope Francis’s July 24-29, 2022, visit to Canada.