Canadian Indian residential school system: Difference between revisions

In 1831, 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 created to force First Nations people onto reserves. 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". The schools were intentionally located far off reserves in order to limit contact between the children and their parents. The schools were administered by Christian churches, with most of them being funded by the federal government. 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.