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Introduction: Residential Schools and Decolonization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2013

Rosemary Nagy  and
Robinder Kaur Sehdev
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Extract

“Home” to more than 150,000 children from the 1870s until 1996, the residential school system was aimed at “killing the Indian in the child” and assimilating First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children into white settler society. It was, in short, a genocidal policy, operated jointly by the federal government of Canada and the Catholic, Anglican, United, and Presbyterian Churches. Children as young as four years old were torn from their families and placed in institutions that were chronically underfunded; mismanaged; inadequately staffed; and rife with disease, malnutrition, poor ventilation, poor heating, neglect, and death. Sexual, emotional, and physical abuse was pervasive, and it was consistent policy to deny children their languages, their cultures, their families, and even their given names. While some children may have had positive experiences, many former students have found themselves caught between two worlds: deprived of their languages and traditions, they were left on their own to handle the trauma of their school experience and to try to readapt to the traditional way of life that they had been conditioned to reject. Life after residential school has been marred for many by alcohol and substance abuse, cycles of violence, suicide, anger, hopelessness, isolation, shame, guilt, and an inability to parent.

First Nations leader Phil Fontaine catalysed the struggle for redress in 1990 when he stunned Canada by speaking about his residential-school experience. The second major catalyst was the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) of 1991–1996, which broadly exposed the horrors of residential schools to Canadians and called for a public inquiry.

Type
Truth, Reconciliation and Residential Schools
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , April 2012 , pp. 67 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 2012

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References

2 See Milloy, John, A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Royal Comission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), Royal Commission Report on Aboriginal Peoples (Ottawa: RCAP, 1996)Google Scholar; Chrisjohn, Roland D. and Young, Sherri L., Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential Schools Experience in Canada, 2nd ed. (Penticton, BC: Theytus, 2006)Google Scholar; Miller, J.R., Shingwauk's Vision: A History of Residential Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Grant, Agnes, No End of Grief: Indian Residential Schools in Canada (Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications, 1996)Google Scholar.

3 For a critique of this apology see Corntassel, J. and Holder, C., “Who's Sorry Now? Government Apologies, Truth Commissions, and Indigenous Self-Determination in Australia, Canada, Guatemala, and Peru,” Human Rights Review 9, 4 (2008): 465–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Assembly of First Nations (AFN), Report on Canada's Dispute Resolution Plan to Compensate for Abuses in Indian Residential Schools (2004), http://epub.sub.uni-hamburg.de/epub/volltexte/2009/2889/pdf/Indian_Residential_Schools_Report.pdf.Google Scholar The AFN's criticisms were echoed shortly thereafter in Canadian Bar Association, The Logical Next Step: Reconciliation Payments for All Residential School Survivors (2005), http://www.cba.org/CBA/Sections/pdf/residential.pdfGoogle Scholar.

5 Schedule N of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA), art. l(a–g).

6 Statement of Apology (June 11, 2008), http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644.

7 In his letter of resignation, chief commissioner Justice LaForme writes, “[The other two commissioners] see the TRC as primarily a truth commission. Unlike mine, theirs is a view that leaves much of the work of reconciliation for another day. It is a view that does not recognize the need for uncovering and recording the truths of the I[ndian] R[esidential] S[chool] past and legacy as but a part, however important, of the greater whole of reconciliation.” “Justice Harry S. LaForme Resigns as Chair of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Canada Newswire (October 20, 2008), http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/October2008/20/c7708.html. In January 2009, the remaining two commissioners, Claudette Dumont-Smith and Jane Brewin Morley, also resigned.

8 Battiste, Marie, “Enabling the Autumn Seed: Toward a Decolonized Approach to Aboriginal Knowledge, Language, and Education,” Canadian Journal of Native Education 22, 1 (1998): 16–27, 20Google Scholar.

9 Preamble, Schedule N.

10 Ibid.

11 Hayner, Priscilla B., Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2011), xiGoogle Scholar.

12 See Chief Commissioner Justice Murray Sinclair, Speech to the 9th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (New York, April 27, 2010), http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/Ffle/pdfs/TRC JJN_Speechj:MS_FINAL_April_27_2010.pdf.

13 See Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, “Health and Healing” (updated September 15, 2010), http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/l 100100015629/1100100015630. Although Health Canada does provide Aboriginal health support workers and Elder support workers, these “paraprofessional” personnel are paid at lower wages than the “professional” counsellors. Aboriginal Affairs also covers transportation costs where healing is not available in communities and a 1-800 crisis hotline. This is simply not the same as in-community, community-run healing programs.

14 In 2001, at the height of its funding allocation, the AHF funded 310 community-based projects, serving more than 1,500 communities with 60,000 participants. Of the 145 projects currently funded, almost 80% are in jeopardy of closure or financial struggle without AHF funding. Aboriginal Healing Foundation, “2010 Annual Report” (Ottawa: AHF, 2010), http://www.ahf.ca/downloads/annual-report-2010.pdf, 9–11Google Scholar.