Editing Canadian Indian residential school system

{{Important}}{{mature}}{{Act of Villainy|name=Canadian Indian residential school system|image=A group of nuns with Aboriginal students, Port Harrison, Quebec, circa 1890 Groupe de religieuses avec des élèves autochtones, Port Harrison (Québec), vers 1890 (14260482006).jpg|perpetrator=Department of Indian Affairs<br>Christian churches|date=1883 - 1997|location=Canada|motive=To assimilate First Nations, Inuit and Métis children into western culture.|crimes=Cultural [[genocide]]<br>Forced assimilation<br>Mass [[murder]]<br>[[Child abuse]]<br>[[Rape]]<br>[[Torture]]<br>[[Kidnapping]]<br>Unethical experimentation<br>[[Negrophobia]]<br>[[Anti-Native American Sentiment]]}}

The '''Canadian Indian residential school system''' was a network of boarding schools in Canada. The schools were made to forcibly assimilate indigenous children into western culture. The system has been described as an act of cultural [[genocide]], as the system was designed to [[Genocide of Indigenous Peoples|purposefully eradicate indigenous cultures]], though some consider it physical genocide as well (as part of the larger ongoing [[Amerindian Genocide]]), as the residential schools lead to the deaths of at least 30,000 children. It is estimated that a total of 150,000 children were forced to attend the school system.  

In 1828, the first boarding school, known as the Mohawk Institute, was established in Brantford, Ontario for six indigenous students. In 1876, prime minister Alexander MacKenzie passed the Indian Act, a policy that was established to force First Nations people onto [[Indian reservations|reserves]]. The Indian Act also left indigenous women disadvantaged as they lost their indigenous status upon marrying white men and indigenous men from other tribes. The Canadian government under prime minister [[John A. Macdonald]] later implemented a system of residential schools as part of an assimilation policy for indigenous peoples, which was influenced by U.S. Army general [[Richard Henry Pratt]]'s ideologies to "kill the Indian and save the man". Pratt served as the superintendent of the [[Carlisle Indian Industrial School]] in the United States.

The children were deprived of their cultures and were forced to speak English or French, while facing corporal punishment for speaking their native languages as well as being molested and sometimes killed by priests, often times having their newborn children being killed after being impregnated by their teachers. The children also faced malnutrition and died of diseases such as tuberculosis often as a result of unethical experiments projected onto them, while others committed suicide and died while trying to run away. Some survivors report teachers impaling needles and hot knives in their tongues, bleaching them in baths to lighten their skin, forcing them to wash dishes in boiling water, and starving them in isolation while feeding them salt water to keep them bloated. For the most part, school authorities got away with their crimes, although there were some rare instances where school administrators were arrested for their abuse towards children, such as the cases with [[William Starr]] and [[Arthur Plint]].

In 1907, Indian Affairs chief medical officer Peter Bryce visited 35 of the schools and found that many students have died and noticed that the schools were poorly constructed with minimal care from the staff. Bryce tried to address the problems of the residential schools to the government in an attempt to reform the system. Although [[Duncan Campbell Scott]] did agree to fight against the diseases, he refused to change the assimilationist policies. In the 1940s, the federal government proposed to abolish the residential schools, but despite their obligations, they instead made extremely petty reforms of the system. In 1969, church administration over the schools was terminated and the schools were handed over to the Department of Indian Affairs.

Starting in the late 1950s, an adoption policy known as the Sixties Scoop was enacted as a means of transporting indigenous children to white families, with Saskatchewan being the only province to implement a program solely for Métis children. This act continued up until the early 1980s.

There were some instances of indigenous people protesting against the residential school system, with at least 25 schools being set on fire by the students. Though most of the protests were ignored, some protests were brought to light when the federal government began to notice the ineffective failures of the system. Over the years, more schools began to close, while others were transferred to the tribes. In 1997, the last residential school was closed in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut.

As of 2021, thousands of unmarked graves are being uncovered near residential schools. So far, over 2,000 graves have been found near former residential schools in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the Northwest Territories, with more investigations taking place in Ontario and Quebec.

 

On July 25th, 2022, Pope Francis visited Maskwacis, Alberta and apologized to the survivors about the residential school system.