highkey dont understand how people dont know about residential schools
[a lot of this is from memory so if its inaccurate don’t hesitate to correct me so people have the most accurate knowledge of residential schools and how disgusting they were. @allthecanadianpolitics probably has more information and facts so dont take this as absolute]
its aboriginal history month fuckers so strap in to learn some dark shit. Now remembered that residential schools went on from 1831-1996
tw: sexual assault/rape, physical abuse [ask me to tag any more]
Imagine being forcibly taken from your home, taken away to a place you don’t know where people are speaking in a language you don’t know, and the minute you try to say anything in your native tongue to ask what’s going on, you’re told its wrong and what you’ve learned, what you heritage is, is a disgrace to society. That’s what happened pretty much all of the residential schools. There might be some outliers but as a whole, it was a shitty thing. How it’s shitty will be proven as you read.
The schools were run by churches and the teachers and priests would be the people in charge. The government made it mandatory for all children from 5-18 and there were actually fines if you didn’t take your child to there. The closest reserve to me is Eskasoni [esk-a-zon-ee] and the residential school for Nova Scotia was Shuebanacadi [shoe-ban-ak-a-dee] and that’s like a four hour drive.
The thing that is so horrendous about residential schools is the amount of abuse that went on there. If they dared say a single word in their native language they’d get beaten. Everything was in English too btw so the little kids talked in their native tongue yet were beaten and degraded for it when that’s the only language they know. They were forced to talk and act like they had grown up in British high society and if they dared pray to anything but God from the bible, they’d be beat. Even if some people said they were never a victim of any abuse, they were still told that they were bad, worthless, and basically terrible all because they dared to be native.
It was a very common practice for priests to just fucking walk into the dorms and abuse these kids. There’s a story where a girl had a baby and when she gave birth, one of the nuns handed it to a girl and said, “Throw it in the incinerator.” And this young native girl, like 14-15, had just given birth only to have her kid thrown into the fucking furnace because they didn’t want it to get out that this girl got pregnant because she was raped by a priest. Yet it was so common that if you ask anybody that has a relative, they’ll most likely say that relative was abused. And the government didn’t care. A lot of the schools were over populated and people were malnourished from the bad food yet the government pushed it off to the side even though they’re the ones that paid for this entire thing.
The food, clothing, and housing they were given was terrible. Like the guys were awoken at like five in the morning to stoke the furnaces and get the school warmer while the girls were woken and forced to make bread and help prepare things for breakfast. But the breakfast was made with the oats no store could sell because they were so old and gross. And a lot of the kids grew up with foods from the land like berries, meats, vegetables and weren’t used to European foods with bread, grains, etc. This food made them sick and the kids didn’t know it was food either so it was a culture shock being forced to eat this food that didn’t even look good.
And then they went to classes where they were forced to forget their heritage, what they grew up with. Most kids didn’t even remember their parents when they were finally let out because they were taken at such a young age. Its not like it was even easy to transition too because today, if a family or person wants to leave a reserve, they loose all of their rights of not paying taxes, getting money from the government, etc and it was no better back then as reserves were actually the only place a native person could go and have full rights. But these kids had been through so much in the residential schools that made them think that practicing any part of their culture was barbaric, wrong, immoral and they’d be damned to Hell if they practiced any. So there was no way they could actually communicate with their tribe and family members, the only connection they had had to this world probably.
Over 3000 kids were killed in these schools. That’s a bullshit number because those were the documented cases. A lot of the times the schools didn’t have to say a kid died because of the fact the government gave the schools full reign. The schools could preform human experimentation on the kids and people would fucking roll with it. There are actual reports of when a kid got sick with an extremely viral So a lot more kids than 3000 died in those schools but that’s the official record.
Residential schools are the reason a lot of Native culture has been fucking destroyed. A lot of languages were lost because all the kids in the reserves were taken and forced to assimilate into British culture so they didn’t remember anything of their native language. So a lot of traditions died with the elders and parents of the community. And it’s a damn tragedy because if you don’t have traditions or beliefs from your culture, what do you believe in? You were taught that anything but God was wrong yet you have all of these stories about your own gods to share that were lost with the elders.
All in all, the residential schools were a fucking tragedy and i am appalled at the fact a lot of people don’t talk about it outside of Canadian history considering the last school was closed 20 years ago. There are 30 year olds that had to go to those schools that probably suffered some sort of effect from it. And yet, I hear my parents saying, “why should we pay for native people to buy alcohol and waste our tax money for something our ancestors did”. My parents were both alive when the schools were in the thick of their abuse. And they still think it was so long ago. 20 years might feel like an eternity but I think we can spare tax dollars to help whole communities that got fucked over from these schools.
tl;dr candian government forced millions of aboriginal/native children to forget their culture and in the process caused serious harms to all native communities for years to come all because they wanted to “kill the Indian in the child”.
Correction: It wasn’t millions of indigenous students who attended. It was ~150,000.
The mohawk institute is the closest residential school i live near a d it was one of the first and longest lasting (i think) residential schools having operated from 1831-1970 except for about 10 año (it burned down twice)
The mohawk institute also was a farm and required the children to provide manual labour in raising animals and produce, which they never get to dully enjoy as they were malnourished on oatmeal. Because of that the school was known as the Mush-hole by first nation survivors.
Currently in canada there are about 80'000 survivors living today. The effect of this cultural genocide has left many first nations with inter-generational trauma: trauma that has been passed from one generatiom to the next. Ptsd, depression, prostitution and drug abuse are a few of the damages left by the residential schools of canada, where their federal mandate was to “kill the indian(native) in the child”
My Kokum had been taken to a residential school, she’s passed now, but she would never talk about it and she refused to speak her native language even though she knew little English. Once in a while she’d have to use a word in her language but it was very rare because she was taught that speaking it was wrong.
My kokom and dad are survivors of residential school. My kokom (grandmother) is 95 years old today. The last residential school in my reserve closed in 1996 when I was a baby. Soon after it closed people from my community burned it down. The schools are the reason I do not speak my first language, those schools ruined my father and grandmother and still today they never speak of them and what had happened to them. My dad was taken from my kokom when he was 8, and released when he was 16. It took him half his life to relearn his language and to embrace our culture without fear of sinning. How people don’t know about residential school is shocking. It wasn’t that long ago, I was alive when residential schools were still a place where natives were taken, abused and brainwashed by people to forget who they were in this world.
Some more places to learn about the horrible things that went on in Canadian residential schools: (probably tws for sexual emotional and physical abuse for all)
Heritage Minutes: Chanie Wenjack (youtube)
We Were Children - a documentary telling the stories of Glen Anaquod and Lyna Hart, two survivors of the schools (this is on Canadian Netflix)
A former chief recalls the horrors of residential school: Q&A (tw vomit)
I’ve heard of rampant sexual, psychological, and physical abuse, like children having needles forced through their tongues for speaking their language. According to First Nations records, up to 50% of the children died. Many tried to escape and froze to death in the wilderness. Most of the dead children were buried in unmarked graves, so their families will never know where they are.
I refer to residential schools as a holocaust.
