Imagine this. A very young child is taken away from its home, its parents, loved ones and friends and forced to live in an institution. This institution tries to unteach this child everything it has been taught and force it to live a completely new and foreign life. Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? Well, that’s exactly what the Residential schools did to many First Nations children of Canada, and that’s not even the worst part. What exactly is a residential school? The Canadian Encyclopedia puts it, “Residential schools were government-sponsored religious schools established to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian Culture.” Now, that sounds rather unpleasant, and that’s just the definition. When we take a deeper look behind the scenes of these schools the horrifying truth is much worse than just “unpleasant”. Residential schools had a negative impact on the lives of the children that went to them both at the time and in the future.
The residential schools were established by the government of Canada. They were run by a cooperation of the Department of
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It’s a time for children to learn and have fun. It’s a time for them to explore, pretend and play. The residential schools took all of that away from the First Nations children that attended them. The children forced to attend these schools did not get to have normal childhoods. They were permitted very little recreation and short play times. The girls and the boys were separated from each other, often meaning that the children were unable to be with their siblings. Never mind the fact that not being able to associate with people of the opposite gender when you are young could lead to social problems when you get older. If they were separated from each other all the time how would they learn how to communicate with people of the opposite sex? Until 1960, the children weren’t even sent home during the holidays. They truly did have a very sad