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Aboriginal People In The 19th Century

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How did the Federal Government Treat Aboriginal Peoples in the 19th Century? In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Aboriginal Peoples in Canada were poorly mistreated and abused by the Canadian Federal Government. Children as young as four years old and as old as sixteen was taken away from their homes and families to put through years of abuse and neglect due to the Residential School System. Hundreds of thousands of aboriginal youth and children were forced to live a lifestyle that was said to kill the Indian in the child (CBC, 2011). Throughout the years that these children spent in the residential schools, they endured a significant amount of emotional stress, physical abuse and sexual assault on a daily basis, all of …show more content…

The thought process of the Federal Government was that if these children with such young and impressionable minds were to practice something aside from their Native traditions and beliefs that it would cause those traditions to go extinct. It took over one hundred years for the last residential school to shut down in Canada and an additional twelve years after the previous school had closed for the residential school survivors to receive a formal apology from a representative of the Canadian Government. Moreover, around the 1880’s the Canadian Federal Government introduced a Residential School System with the intention of exterminating an entire population of people within Canada. As said by Duncan Campbell Scott the Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs, “I want to get rid of the Indian problem… Our objective is to continue [the residential school system] until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department.” (Restoule). All the residential schools are being fully funded by the federal government but were operated by various religious institutions where the nuns and priests were considered the student’s temporary …show more content…

All of the students that were attending these schools are being addressed by the caregivers by racial slurs and suffered from various types of physical, emotional and sexual abuse from the teachers and administrators who worked in the system. For instance, if a student were to be caught speaking to a caregiver or any of their fellow peers in their native language, more often than not, a needle would be inserted into the child’s tongue as a form of punishment for disobeying the rules. These injections are only one small portion of the reoccurring strategies used by the workers in hopes of ensuring that all the students were to speak in French or English and would also abet them in regards to exterminating all sixty of the Aboriginal languages that were present in Canada at this time. The caregivers actively ignore the children’s state of health, and medical attention is usually withheld, resulting in roughly thirty-two hundred students dying due to being malnourished and suffering from diseases such as tuberculosis and influenza (Miller, 2012). As for the meals, the food provided by the Churches was extraordinarily unhealthy and did not provide all the proper nutrients needed to develop a growing mind and body. According to an interview done on Ian Mosby, in a typical

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These negative effects were further amplified with residential schools in which they were not allowed to practice their tradition and were forcefully assimilated into the “western” ways. Boarding schools were run by the new white government and forcibly taught Haudenosaunee boys agriculture and manual trades, while Haudenosaunee girls were taught domestic skills. Since residential schools targeted younger generations, it made the Haudenosaunee’s traditional

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This paper will review the first five chapters in J.R. Miller’s book Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools. These chapters examine the events that took place before residential schools were made, as well as looking into the historical context of Canada during this time period. The first chapter of the book explains the way in which indigenous communities educated their children before contact by the European settlers. The educational systems from these indigenous communities were much different than the European educational systems, in the sense of a formal, rigid, institution.

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On July 11, 2008, Stephen Harper officially apologizes for the residential school which is called reconciliation. People did feel heard but it was not enough. The movie “Rabbit Proof Fence” made in 2002, it showed that the half castes’ children were taken from their parent and got sent to residential school. Someone in the upper government has controlled power over who will be sent to school, and who will be sent to another place. But it was all done to make the American’s population more spread out.

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In the story, a character named Stazz talks about his experience being taken to a residential school, “One spring morning with the arrival of a bus that was soon filled with sobbing bodies of children'' (Wagamese 322). He along with many other children were taken in broad daylight and forced into residential schools. This was a common method of stealing Indigenous children from their families, where they were then taken miles away from home and forced to attend one of these schools. These schools were designed as a tool to alienate Indigenous children, leaving them traumatized due to the horrific situations they experienced. Children were beaten and locked away from others for things such as speaking their language and practicing their own religious traditions such as prayers.

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The TRC’s “The History” author appeals to logos through the use quantitative findings. The use of logical evidence from the collection of testimonials made by former residential school students is an effective way to aid the persuasion of a reader. Throughout “The History”, the author describes the memories of known First Nations peoples Frederic Ernest Koe, Marlene Kayseas, Lily Bruce and many others. In addition, the author quotes Vitaline Elsie Jenner’s use of ‘kaya nakasin’ (TRC, 2015, p.38) in describing her experience with residential school. The author’s example that contains the use native language reaffirms his credibility and detailed knowledge of the

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The power dynamic between these groups led to the suffering of Indigenous People, demonstrated in the novel Five Little Indians by Michelle Good. The residential schools then further reinforced the Canadian government's assimilationist policies. By forcing Indigenous People to conform to "normal'' European society, resulted in unrepairable damage between the two

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I attended the book launch for The Regina Industrial School (1891-1910): Historical Overview and Chronological Narrative by Douglas Stewart, Professor Emeritus and film screening of RIIS from Amnesia by Janine Windolph and Trudy Stewart on the evening of October 25, 2017. My first impression when I walked into the room was that there were many white faces in the crowd consisting and students and older adults as well as a few Indigenous people. The evening consisted of exploring the effects residential schools had on students, the function of residential schools, as well as the process of uncovering truth. The evening started with an introduction by James Daschuk to welcome and invite forward two members of All Nations Hope, Wesley and Audrey

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We Were Children, the documentary on residential schools, is a re-enactment of two aboriginal children and their first hand experiences in the residential school system. The kinds of problems this documentary presented include mistreatment faced by the children who attended these schools, corruption and scandal inside the administration of the schools, and the false perception about these schools that resonated amongst Canadian society. These two children talk about the bullying they had to endure from the nuns which show that the children were not seen as equal to a child of non-Aboriginal decent. Furthermore, the types of abuse administration would put these kids through was immensely disturbing considering this was a state run institution.

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The purpose of the schools was to “westernize” them to the point where there wouldn’t be anymore indigenous people, and in my opinion the people who agree with that are sick. To conclude, residential schools have a lasting effect on everyone who

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After the residential school system was put to an end, there were thousands of people searching for compensation on the unnecessary abuse they had faced. From the 1980’s onward, former students have inaugurated legal campaigns in order to receive the acknowledgement, reorganization, and compensation needed from the federal government and the churches involved (Miller 10/10/12,03/04/15). The Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) was put into place. It has established multi-million dollar funds, recognized the damage inflicted upon our indigenous peoples cultures, and help formers students recover. The IRSSA was implemented on September 19, 2007 and includes five main components; The Common Experience Payment, Independent Assessment

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government on the Native society was boarding schools that began in the late 19th century. Native children, as young as five years old, were taken from their families off the reservations thousands of miles away to boarding schools. One of those boarding schools was the Carlisle Industrial School, which opened in 1880, founded by Captain Richard Harry Pratt. The sole purpose of these schools was to assimilate the next generation of Native’s into the Anglo society. The boys were taught mechanical and agriculture skills, while the girls were taught domestic lessons such as sewing and cleaning.

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Indigenous peoples of Canada have been considered inferior to all other citizens, and have been abused and neglected through European history, and can be seen as a form of genocide. In Canadian residential schools, children were removed from the home, sexually assaulted, beaten, deprived of basic human necessities, and over 3 500 women and girls were sterilized, and this went on well into the 1980 's (Nicoll 2015). The dehumanization of Indigenous peoples over the generations has left a significant impact on society today; the generational trauma has left many Indigenous peoples heavily dependent of drugs and alcohol, and the vulnerability of Indigenous women has led to extremely high rates of violent crime towards these women. A report that

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The government believed that if the children remained with their parents the problems would only increase, with the boarding schools it would make it easier to cut off their culture and religions. They decided it was best to christianize the children making almost every boarding schools either christian or catholic. The Native American kids were forced into going to church two to three times a day. It was against the

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Imagine being ripped apart from family members, culture, tradition, and labelled a savage that needs to be educated. Imagine constantly facing punishment at school for being one’s self. Unfortunately, these events were faced head on for many First Nations people living in Canada in the late 20th century. These First Nations people were the victims of an extensive school system set up by the government to eradicate Aboriginal culture across Canada and to assimilate them into what was considered a mainstream society.

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Truth and Reconciliation For more than a century, Indian Residential Schools separated over 150,000 Aboriginal children from their families and communities. In the 1870 's, the federal government, partly in order to meet its obligation to educate Aboriginal children, began to play a role in the development and administration of these schools. Residential Schools were run by the church and funded by the government; the students were taught English while also being forced to learn Christian customs. First Nations children were taken away from their families if their parents refused to send them.

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