EXTRACT 2

Title: Witnessing the Unspoken Truth: On Residential School Survivors' Testimonies in Canada by by Kamelia Talebian Sedehi

At residential schools, Aboriginal children underwent physical, sexual and mental abuse. The training was not sufficient for those children to be prepared for white-collar jobs; it focused on manual labor and domestic work. Aboriginal culture was overlooked and belittled by the residential school system and this attitude affected the Aboriginal community for generations. The loss of culture and language were the consequences of those schools. As the kids were taken away from their families, they were deprived of nurturing families; therefore, they could not raise their own children with success. Since the main purpose of the Canadian government and church was to eradicate Aboriginal culture, tradition and language in them, residential schools were considered as cultural genocide. Since the Europeans settled in Canada, they assumed that their culture and civilization are superior to the natives. They believed that the first inhabitants in Canada were savage, ignorant and wild and they needed to be civilized and educated. Therefore, the government intended to civilize the Aboriginal people. Nicholas Flood Davin, journalist and politician, had the duty to study the residential school system of Natives in the United States and report it to Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald. Davin believed that the Aboriginals could be civilized if they teach them while they were very young. In the 1880s, the government started establishing residential schools across Canada. The children were sent to school which was far from their own family in order to alienate them from their community.