History has shown us that once colonies have led to the creation of nation states, such as Canada and the United States, the next step has been to introduce policies aimed at “assimilating” native populations into the cultures of the ruling masses. If peoples refused to assimilate, they were often separated and segregated from the rest of society, or sometimes even killed. Part of assimilation often included the introduction of Christianity via the use of missionaries and the use of the church in running residential schools, as was the case in Canada and in French colonial times.
After a law was enacted in the early 1800’s in the U.S., residential boarding schools were established across the nation and used to house relocated Indigenous children, suppressing American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian cultures. Records from 1819 to 1969 were kept by the Department of the Interior, which had oversight of the facilities. Hundreds of thousands Native American children were forcibly taken from their communities to be culturally assimilated in the schools, suppressing the use of their native languages and customs. Hundreds of children died while in custody, such that the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition was partly formed to help find the graves of the ‘missing children’. The federal Department of the Interior is consulting with tribes on how to protect burial sites and use other information it had gathered.
Around 1883 in Canada, Indigenous children in many parts of the country were forced to attend residential schools in a forced assimilation program. Most of these schools were operated by churches. All of them banned the use of Indigenous languages and cultural practices, often through violence. Disease, as well as sexual, physical and emotional abuse, were widespread. An estimated 150,000 children passed through the schools between their opening and their closing in 1996. A National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up as part of the federal government’s apology and settlement over the schools, concluded that at least 4,100 students died while attending them. Recently, using ground-penetrating radar, mass graves containing the remains of what are believed to be mainly Indigenous children have been found in unmarked graves on the site of a former residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan. Governments have now introduced funding and initiatives to retrieve residential school records, some of which are in the hands of churches, in order to identify the children buried in these unmarked graves. However, as part of the reconciliation effort, Indigenous leaders believe that the government still has a long way to go.
This troubling history deserves more attention to raise our awareness and to educate others about the atrocities that Indigenous people experienced, especially through the teaching in our schools of the history of North American Indigenous peoples and their past and present treatment by Canadian and American administrations. History is history and cannot be changed or erased. Moreover, societies must learn from their history so that they can better understand their society today and work together to heal and move forward. This upcoming Canada Day and Independence Day, both Canadians and Americans should take time to inform themselves about this tragic period of history and reflect on its dreadful impact on our Indigenous peoples. We owe it to these children, their families and the survivors of residential schools.
FROLITICKS 