Residential Schools

The Residential Schools Experience for First Nations

• Schools started in 1880s

• Forcefully separated children from families to assimilate

• siblings/ gender separated/ split to break family ties

• Forbade acknowledgement of culture/ heritage and native language

• “severely” punished if rules are broken

• poor living conditions

• Horrendous abuse - physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological

• inferior education by 18 (up to grade 5)

  • manual labour in agriculture, light industrial woodworking, and domestic type work (laundry, sewing)

• Brantford, Ontario - “The Mush Hole”

  • The food Indigenous people were fed in this residential school was described as mush by survivors

How the Reality shaped First Nations

• rift/ anger and fear of white people

• many survivors and families of survivors

• disrupted families for generations severing ties to aboriginal culture and contributed to loss of language and culture “cultural genocide:

• no nurturing family role models so no knowledge of how to raise their own families

• Cycle of abuse from schools continue in families today - alcohol abuse; domestic abuse issues

• social services remove children due to high abuse rate (same issues)

• low self-esteem and high suicide rate

• feel lost between cultures

• last school closed in 1996 so recent and many survivors and families suffering from personal trauma and have compromised family systems

• the relationship between the Federal Government and First Nations as a result of their Residential School Experience

  • Strained relationship

  • public apology in 2008

    • a new beginning of mutual respect moving forward find solutions/ help them through the crisis.