Aboriginal identity still haunted by residential schools
I went to my first real Canadian history class this semester. The location: an elementary school gym in Ottawa. Aside from the academic milieu, this class broke with convention. There was no professor. No textbooks. And no glazed-over eyes.
illustration: Daniel Giesbrecht
The context: a Truth and Reconciliation gathering held to acknowledge the legacy of residential schools for Aboriginals in Canada. It was an opportunity for residential school survivors to tell their stories, and an opportunity for people from the local community to hear them.
For the first time, I heard them. Sure, my grade school text books probably mentioned residential schools somewhere between the pictures of teepees and corn roasts, but that narrative was aloof. This time history couldn’t be kept at arm’s length. It was invasive as the pungent ceremonial smoke wafting through the audience, audible as the resilient pulse of the Aboriginal drum.
There may be others who are unaware of Canada’s residential school record. For anyone trapped in this state of ignorance, here’s a leg up:
The Canadian residential school system was a state-sponsored, church-run, mandatory boarding school for Aboriginal children across Canada. It was the Canadian government’s solution to the “Indian Problem” [read: their existence] and was designed to assimilate Aboriginals into European-Canadian society, or, as one government official put it, “to kill the Indian in the child.”
The first residential school opened in 1831, followed by dozens more in most provinces and territories. At their peak in the 1930s, a total of 80 schools enrolled more than 17,000 students.
The residential school experience was positive for some Aboriginal children; for others it was an education in shame and trauma. Besides the reality that Aboriginal children were separated from their families — sometimes for years at a time — students were not allowed to speak their native language or engage in Aboriginal cultural practices. Disease, hunger, and overcrowding were widespread. School survivors have shared accounts of sexual abuse, beatings, and forced labour.
The Canadian government began allowing Aboriginal children to attend mainstream schools in the 1940s, but the last residential school did not close until 1998.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered a public government apology in 2008 for Canada’s residential school program. Most church denominations involved in the operation of the schools have also publicly apologized for their participation.
Apologies are a step in the right direction. However, they also tend to legitimize what most Canadians already do: sweep the dirty truth under the rug of the forgotten past—the same place you’ll find land grabs, smallpox, and other inconvenient sagas of Aboriginal exploitation. The story is now the “history” of residential schools in Canada, found under a sub-heading of a social studies textbook in a school near you.
As I listened to the testimonies of residential school survivors, the familiar prose of the ubiquitous history textbook seemed out-of-place. And I understood why their history is in present tense:
I can’t speak my native tongue.
I am estranged from my parents.
I deal daily with the trauma of sexual abuse.
I wonder why I survived and my sister didn’t.
For these Aboriginal people the past lives on in current realities. The impact of residential schools is only part of their story. Drug abuse, poverty, and high suicide rates are the continuing legacy of Canada’s broken promises.
The question is: how can some Canadians be content to bury these narratives under the tombstone of “history” when many other Canadians are still wounded by these events? “Forgive and forget” is an audacious epitaph to propose when you’re not the one who was hurt.
Of course, most of us don’t fault ourselves for the trials of the Aboriginal peoples. Even so, we remain beneficiaries of their forced sacrifices and those of their ancestors. At the very least, we owe it to the Aboriginal peoples to hear their stories — the unbound, unabridged versions.
i have been reading this horriable things what the govermant did to these children my heart was broken i my self is a gypsy i have been ridaculed and hated growing up so i know what these natives are going through my heat goes out to them and for harper every native child should be given money for what has happen to them a apolagy is not enough the govermant has destroyed the native hertage or the money could be for native schools to bring back there culture with pride and love