Aboriginal People Attend Residential Schools Essay

Residential schools were indubitably gruesome and immoral acts by the federal government to assimilate the Aboriginal culture to gain power. I was very surprised to learn that 150 000 Aboriginal children were forced to attend residential schools. It is crazy to fathom that so many human beings were tortured, neglected, abused and treated wrongfully while others let it happen for decades. I also found it surprising that the government surveyed the Aboriginal communities and the number one complaint was residential schools and yet no action was taken. If the federal government never intended to listen to the Aboriginals then why did they bother spending time doing surveys in the first place? My assumption is that the government took these surveys to make Aboriginal people feel as if their opinion was heard as opposed to reality where it meant nothing to the Europeans. It was completely absurd of the federal government to be aware that Aboriginals did not like residential schools and that it was taking away their culture and still continue to operate the detrimental schools. In addition, something I think was very troublesome was that residential schools only hired religious officials. This was troublesome because the Aboriginal children were being taught by unqualified people who are incapable of teaching any subject

Some Aboriginals stated that they valued the knowledge they learned in residential schools, such as how to act as a European. I think it is interesting to know that some Aboriginals actually wanted to live life the European lifestyle because it was a developing nation and living as a European was perceived as more luxurious. It does seem rationale in my mind for a minority of people to actually appreciate residential schools because it was the federal government’s plan afterall. Nonetheless, this still does not make the concept of residential schools