Beautiful smiles at Fort Vermilion-Saint Henri RS
THE DISCUSSION ABOUT INDIAN residential schools is one of the most passionate and intense in Canadian history. Academics have played a big role in the conversation, with stellar works by J.R. Miller and John Milloy, many other historical and sociological accounts, and numerous scholarly articles. Nothing matches, however, the emotional and dramatic testimony presented by former residential school students over the years, particularly the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and, in the 1990s, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. The 2008 formal apology by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, presented in the presence of Aboriginal leaders in the House of Commons, is one of the most powerful events in Canadian parliamentary history.
Being raised in the Yukon, I had a limited amount of direct experience with Indian residential schools. Our Anglican summer camp near Carcross was located on a beach just above the Carcross Residential School, which closed in the late 1960s. We had little direct contact with the students — most of whom had gone home for the summer — save for several of the most aggressive games of baseball ever played in the North.
A few years later, I spent a week in Inuvik, NWT, the guest of a Catholic research school. For a rule-abiding middle-class kid, the experience was enlightening, to say the least. The regular shower walks were bad enough — particularly the ear scrubbing by some tough nuns — but the rules and regulations almost turned me into a twelve-year-old Che Guevera by the time I left. We stopped our protests — and abandoned our plans to short-sheet the nuns’ beds, with the Aboriginal kids asking us to leave things alone. Many of the Aboriginal students in my high school had been in residential schools before but they were now closing down. Instead, they lived in dormitories or boarded in the community and attended the territorial school. Few of them graduated.
Related Stories
In Kamloops, Not One Body Has Been Found by Professor Jacques Rouillard
They Were Not Forced by Nina Green, Brian Giesbrecht, and Tom Flanagan
Two Thirds Did Not Attend by Nina Green
The Derogatory Use of 'Denialist' by Brian Giesbrecht and James Pew
In the mid-1980s, George Henry, a high school friend and one of the founders of Northern Native Broadcasting (Yukon), invited me to help with the preparation of a documentary on residential schools in the territory, “The Mission School Syndrome.” While I recoil every time I see the unfashionable glasses and odd haircut of my young adulthood, the experience of assisting with the documentary was transformational. The NNBY staff interviewed numerous people from across the Yukon, including a priest who insisted residential schools were a good thing, a few First Nations people who agreed, some Aboriginal students who harboured great anger about their experience, and others struggling to come terms with what was already a troubled legacy.
When the show was broadcast on NEEDA (Your Eye), the NNBY show on CBC North, the vast majority of First Nations people in the Yukon tuned in. The response was immediate and not what the producers expected. There was plenty of praise, to be sure, but two response dominated the calls from audience members:
1. “I thought I was the only one who felt that way about the schools,” and
2. “How can we get over the bad feelings we have about the experience?”
Within a few days, NNBY and their First Nations community partners had organized healing circles across the territory, bringing people together, in many cases for the first time, to discuss the impact of residential schools on their lives. In the next decade, the rest of the country went through a comparable experience as people started to talk openly about their time in residential school and, most significantly, about the sexual, physical, and cultural abuse many had suffered.
Not all students left the residential school broken. In fact, there are amazing stories of resilience and agency in every school.
I HAVE STRUGGLED over the last thirty years to make sense of the impact of residential schools on Aboriginal people. There are communities where few if any First Nations youth attended residential schools and it is not at all clear that the social pathology in these settlements is much different from those where everyone went. I have had Aboriginal friends declare to me that they were treated respectfully and kindly by teachers and principals and others make it clear that they harbour dark and painful memories of their time away from home and under the supervision of the church and/or state. The testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is heart-wrenching and extremely powerful, but I do not yet see much evidence that public opinion has been swayed by the revelations and stories. (This may now be changing in ways that are both positive and negative. — eds. [2021])
There are Aboriginal people who point out the positive aspects of the residential schools — and they were clearly in facilities without marauding pedophiles (who were more common than anyone would want but not common in all schools), but on the other hand, with compassionate teachers, and, typically, reasonable contact with parents and family. These individuals talk about several things, including the development of a pan-Aboriginal identity and the personal and professional skills they gained that let them lead political and economic movements against governments and Canadians at large. In even these cases, they knew that Aboriginal culture was being downplayed, if not suppressed, but they still viewed the schools as an educational opportunity. It will be many years, if ever, before we know the comprehensive impact of residential schools. I find the conversation and debate confusing in several key respects. Governments initially viewed the residential schools as the best means of preparing young Aboriginal children for the realities of the capitalist Canadian economy. Some parents agreed. While there were many instances of children being pulled from their parents’ arms, many parents wanted their children to have the skills needed to succeed economically and personally. For governments, residential schools were one of a number of panaceas, single-shot solutions that would address the Aboriginal “problem” and allow for smooth and permanent assimilation into the Canadian mainstream. Of course, the schools fell far short of that goal, in substantial measure because even the children who left the schools with marketable skills found themselves facing a hostile country and where the reserve economies offered precious few realistic opportunities.
Today, we have reached a stage where the residential schools are being held up as the primary cause of the social, cultural and economic distress in Aboriginal communities, as well as language loss and the decline in traditional harvesting skills. Residential schools were no doubt a major factor — in some instances completely debilitating — in the difficulties experienced by Aboriginal adults. But the focus on residential schools has actually pulled attention away from many other elements that likewise contributed to the struggles of Indigenous peoples and communities. It is obvious that for individuals who suffered grievous assaults, the residential school experience scarred them for life and caused enormous hardship and pain. The apology and compensation goes part way toward resolving these elements, although it is clearly a small gesture given the depth of the pain and the vulnerability of the young Aboriginal children.
I am also of the mind — and here a relatively inconsequential week spent in an Inuvik school has perhaps coloured my view — that we need a shared description of the experience of residential schools. People have variously outlined the colonial roots of the schools, the Christian and capitalist elements, the aspirations of the state to transform Aboriginal people into “useful” citizens, and the abrogation of government responsibility for the care and nurturing the students. All of these are useful explanatory devices. The real impact of the residential schools lay in their all-encompassing nature. The schools did not just educate.
They separated boys and girls, replaced parents, suppressed the use of Aboriginal languages, generally ignored or deprecated Indigenous cultures, and managed the young people through strict and controlling measures. While not all residential schools were this bad, many were. The aggressive approach in some of the schools stripped Aboriginal people of their pride in community and raised many of them in artificial social environments the provided little warmth, affection of care. This total immersion experience, this isolation from home and family and the submersion in a social world that bore no resemblance to anything out of school save for a prison is perhaps the greatest legacy and strongest impact of the residential school movement. But here is the rub. Not all students left the residential school broken. In fact, there are amazing stories of resilience and agency in every school — and the seeds for Aboriginal protests and organization came, in substantial part, from these very schools. There were students who remained close friends with teachers and staff well after they left school, just as there were other former students who provided devastating testimony about the abuses they suffered at the hands of teachers and staff members. There were students who attended day schools on reserve or provincial and territorial schools who shared social outcomes comparable to those of residential school students. It is impossible to say definitely what the cumulative impact of the schools was — and it will remain that way, even as the documentation of school experiences continues.
Aboriginal youth also lived, throughout the history of the country, under a veil of racial discrimination, ethnic hostility and negative stereotypes. The documentation shows that reliance on welfare was remarkably low through to the 1950s and early 1960s — only expanding with the government insisting that Aboriginal families live on reserves, send their kids to school, and otherwise engage more extensively with non-Indigenous Canadians. There were many other forces at play in the lives of Aboriginal people: the discriminatory elements of the Indian Act, rapid resource development on traditional territories, ostracism from the paid workforce in many instances, an often harsh and unforgiving policing and court system particularly after the 1960s, economic marginalization, and the slow depredations of North American popular culture on Indigenous language and cultures, particularly through radio and television (and now online movies and video games). Add to this the growing authority of the postwar Department of Indian Affairs, the challenges adapting to the rapid decline of the commercial fur trade, and the expansion of the wage economy, often harsh relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples — and you have a recipe for Aboriginal social crisis.
Critics of the continued negative commentary on residential schools often refer to the cant of victimization, the constant refrain that Aboriginal Canadians are wallowing in self-pity about the past and unwilling to tackle the future. Such commentaries are ahistorical and disconnected from the lived experiences of Aboriginal people. Indigenous Canadians feel victimized because they were — and the historical record on this is abundantly clear. From the residential schools through other government programs to general societal disdain for Indigenous societies, Aboriginal Canadians put up with a great deal of ignorance, discrimination, and hardship. They fought back, through the courts and politically, and have managed to hold the country and the non-Aboriginal population accountable for the failure to apply their own laws and honour British and Canadian commitments. The residential school protests, the compensation process, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are all parts of a broad initiative that has empowered Indigenous people, reasserted their Aboriginal rights, and brought a significant measure of control back to Indigenous communities. If they were wallowing in self-pity, we would not see so many successful court cases, impressive businesses, high post-secondary enrollments, well-managed Aboriginal governments, and improving lifestyles for many people.
Perhaps it is time to refocus attention away from Residential Schools, the devastating impact of which is well known and the constructive elements largely ignored. With the Truth and Reconciliation Commission winding down its important work, the country may be able to move away from mono-causal explanations for contemporary difficulties. The controversy over murdered Aboriginal women makes it clear that the national attention to Indigenous social ills will not soon fade, nor should the nation’s commentators allow them to. But just as there were some positive personal outcomes from residential school experiences, so there are many impressive accomplishments in other fields. It is time that the conversation expand to incorporate three elements: the roots of Indigenous marginalization (including residential schools), contemporary social, economic and cultural challenges, and significant examples of Aboriginal people moving beyond the past.
At present, many more Canadians know about the residential schools than about Aboriginal development corporations. The lingering effects of the school experiences are better understood than the reintroduction of cultural values and structures in Aboriginal community governance. The focus on the negative, while clearly justified in many personal and community instances, leaves the country with a distorted view of Indigenous realities. Just as the account of residential schools is not sufficiently nuanced, so is the general understanding of the current state of Aboriginal communities. Appawatiskat gets much more attention than Meadow Lake. Davis Inlet dominates the headlines in a way that the economic and social achievements of Osoyoos likely never will. Almost everyone has heard of Caledonia and the stand-off on Six Nations land, but few know much about what the Nisga’a are doing in northwest British Columbia.
Nuance is the essence of historical understanding and is essential for contemporary public policy making. The residential school story has been well and extensively told, and if there are gaps in the description, that is understandable given the horrendous experiences of many thousands of the Aboriginal students. We do need to take a few steps forward, however.
Canadians need to broaden the understanding of the many forces that impinged on Aboriginal community life and we need greater appreciation for the very disruptive influences of the postwar era. Many of the most serious problems and transitions occurred only in the last 60 years. Equally, we need a better appreciation for Indigenous resilience, creativity, determination and renaissance. Far from wallowing in the history of victimization, many First Nations have gotten on with life in systematic and effective ways. They do not define themselves by the residential school experiences. Neither should Canadians as a whole.
Dr. Ken Coates is Canada Research Chair in Regional Innovation, Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan.
Originally published in The Dorchester Review, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Autumn/Winter 2014), pp. 25-29.
Subscribe today!
There is no settler community only honest Canadians, who feel duped by the aboriginal activists. Whose sole purpose is to mentally and emotionally manipulate a generation into a narrative instead of the truth. As long as the aboriginal grievance industry is in full gear, there is no peace for aboriginal people noor Canadians. And aboriginal people are losing their credibility with Canadians, and Canadians are sick and tired of being blamed and being used as an ATM.
I understand the starting place of this opinion piece, “Indigenous societal crises cannot all be laid at the feet of residential schools.” Sure. However, it’s a straw man argument: where is the evidence that anyone is actually saying that? The intensity of the discussion about residential schools is not because people think it’s the only cause of how things are now. It’s because of the horror we feel for what was done to (many, many) children, as a matter of policy. It’s because of the human stakes. That is not the same at all as saying “schools are to blame for everything.” Rather the opposite: it seems to me the settler community is at last beginning to see the schools in the context of a bigger picture: not good schools and bad ones depending on the character of the teachers, but one strategy in a broad and deliberate effort to eliminate Indigeneity from this land. Seeing them in context brings with it a different kind of horror: a historical one. Second, for the life of me I don’t understand the conclusion of the piece: “so let’s lay off the schools for a while in our discourse.” How does the writer get there? Why is that a solution to anything? The settler community is still literally uncovering the fatal consequences of that school system. Just because the truth is more huge and hard to hear than you might have thought, doesn’t mean you get to stop learning it. I fail to see the logic in the piece, and it seems an odd point of view for a historically inclined person to take. This article was originally published seven years ago. You have no doubt reposted it to ride the wave of controversy generated by your recent ill considered and evidence-free tweets. Perhaps you tell yourselves you are merely engaging in healthy debate, providing the other side of the argument. Though it is true that ritualized performative aggression has metastasized out from the debating club into every corner of our shared social space, that is not the way to finding a shared, difficult truth. A true exchange of ideas that might actually lead to something can only happen in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Please show some respect. The piece’s settler-centric, memoir-y “I spent a week in a school with some Native kids once” tone is so out of tune with this moment of universal grief and sorrow, it makes me wonder whom you might have in your circles giving you counsel, and whose voice is absent. For shame.