Where are the Children?

The policies of the government of Canada towards Aboriginal Education can be divided into four distinct eras:

1840 - 1910 Assimilation
Teach Aboriginal children the skills needed to take part as labourers in the mainstream Euro-Canadian economy, so that they would become amalgamated with the white population and self-supporting members of society.

1911 - 1951 Segregation
Teach Aboriginal children, out of their communities, about the "civilized" ways of white society, so that they would return to their communities as "good Indians."

1951 - 1970 Integration
Teach Aboriginal children in the same schools as other Canadian children. This approach offered "the best hope of giving the Indians [and other Aboriginal Peoples] an equal chance with other Canadian citizens to improve their lot and to become fully self-respecting." This started the long process of shutting down the residential school system.

1971 - Today Self-Determination
As part of the movement toward Aboriginal self-government, Aboriginal people have more control over the education of their children.

Assimilation 1840 to 1910
It was a constant misinterpretation that Aboriginal people wanted to take on the mantle of "white citizens" within Canada. From the earliest missionary schools until the closing of the last residential school, there existed the mindset among the dominant culture governments that all Aboriginal people were eager to leave behind their current ways of life and to embrace a life of "self-reliant civilization and thus to make in Canada but one community - a non-Aboriginal, Christian one."5 This narrow-minded and erroneous attitude would have significant repercussions for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people across the country.

By 1840, there were already a number of schools operating that were established to educate Aboriginal people. A number of different Church groups had developed schools with the purpose of Christianizing people that the religious organizations deemed uncivilized. "For example, New France's first boarding school for Aboriginal children was established by the Franciscan monks in 1620."6 Schools run by a variety of religious organizations sprang up across the continent, each group competing for students in a voracious desire to create "good Christians with an appreciation for settler mores and values."

Once the treaty process commenced, a greater urgency developed for the education of Aboriginal children. Politicians, chief among them senior official Duncan Campbell Scott, were convinced that education would provide the foundation for cultural assimilation. By placing Aboriginal youth into schools run by and with the policies and practices of the dominant culture, students would eagerly embrace this so-called superior way of living and being because they would immediately recognize the advantages of doing so. When this metamorphosis did not take place as expected, the political powers blamed the children, rather than their own blind assumptions, and redoubled their efforts to assimilate the Aboriginal people by reconfiguring the type of education the youth received.

In an attempt to speed this process of assimilation, the government of Canada determined that the industrial school model currently favoured in the United States would be "the most effective means of civilising the Indian population."8 This led to a rapid expansion of church-run boarding schools, increasing the numbers from 11 schools in 1880 to 45 by 1896.

The idea behind the industrial schools was that students would be removed from the uncivilized influence of their parents to the schools where they would spend their time partly in academic pursuits and partly in "the arts, crafts and industrial skills of a modern economy."9 This new form of education would "fit them for a life in a modernizing Canada."

The hidden agenda of the industrial school system was to ensure that modern Canada had a convenient, cheap labour supply to support its westward expansion. Either the Aboriginal students would become competent, employable workers, or they would be so broken as to present no impediment to settlement in the west. Either way, the church and the government agreed that the main priority was to prevent, in the words of Duncan Campbell Scott, "an undesirable and often dangerous element in society."11 Whether the students actually graduated with marketable skills was secondary to "industrial society's need for order, lawfulness, labour and security of property." Learning the Canadian way and becoming a civilized Canadian was expected of every student, regardless of what else they did or did not learn.

In order to accomplish this task of Canadianizing the students, it was paramount that they be removed from the influence of their families, communities, and cultures. Students needed to embrace a new world view that was Eurocentric in nature - that promoted daily schedules and adherence to European values and beliefs. "A wedge had to be driven not only physically between parent and child but also culturally and spiritually. . . Only in such a profound fashion could the separation from savagery and the re-orientation as civilized be assured."

The first step in accomplishing this goal was to make sure that all Aboriginal youth went to residential school. In 1884 the Indian Act was amended to make boarding school mandatory for all Native children under the age of 16. The Act also granted power to arrest, transport, and detain children at school, and parents who did not co-operate could be fined or jailed. Once the students were at the schools, the work of assimilation could proceed without interference.

For the residential schools, the primary means of promoting and ensuring this assimilation was through the power of language. Certainly more important that the sketchy academic curricula taught at the schools, and even more important than the requirement of developing employable graduates, was the need to promote assimilation through language. It was understood by both the government and the churches responsible for the schools that language was the one firm link between students and their parents, families, and cultures. By removing the language, the link was removed that prevented the students from embracing European values.

According to E. F. Wilson of the Shingwauk School in Ontario, speaking English was the first priority of the school. "We make a great point of the boys talking English, as for their advancement in civilization, this is, of all things, the most necessary."14 To this end, it was an offence to be caught speaking an Aboriginal language at any of the schools. Severe punishments were meted out to those who defied the language rules.

The removal of language, the teaching of vocational skills, and the indoctrination of the church were to work together to develop in the student the desire to remain apart from his or her Aboriginal community and to voluntarily give up status under the Indian Act, and become enfranchised within Canada - accepting the "privileges and responsibilities of citizenship"15 that were enjoyed by non-Aboriginal Canadians.

To ensure that graduates lived up to this desired outcome, they were to be placed in jobs in white communities where they would not have the opportunity to return to their families and reverse the advances made for them in the residential schools. However, this did not come about as the schools did not bother to develop post-graduation placement programs and the white communities were not welcoming of the Aboriginal students. They had little choice but to return to their home communities. "With the exception of labour shortages during the war, it was obvious that no appreciable number of graduates of the schools [were] in a position to earn a livelihood by working as a craftsman among whites."

By 1910, it was evident that the industrial school model was not effective in assimilating Aboriginal students into white culture. Additionally, the attempt to place graduates into white society had failed spectacularly and many former students had returned to their home communities, much worse off than when they left; for now they could not speak the language, they had no knowledge of the ways of living in those communities, and they had been sufficiently indoctrinated to believe that their parents and other family members were subhuman and inferior. They were ashamed of who they were and their heritage, but they had no other options for life or livelihood.

1911 - 1951 Segregation
Between 1911 and 1951 the number of Indian schools increased substantially to more than 80 schools. Initially called industrial and boarding schools, these labels soon fell into disuse in favour of a more inclusive term - residential schools. Though the number of schools was increasing, the effectiveness of the system was proving to be significantly less than perfect. Students were leaving the schools without the possibility of employment and returning to their reserve communities ashamed of who they were and bitter about the lack of opportunity.

Up to this point, the government of Canada had not developed any concrete plan for the school system. Rather, everything that was done up to 1911 had been a reaction to church groups who had preceded the state into the western areas. By the time the government's expansion westward reached the Pacific, church run schools had already been operating in these areas for more than fifty years.

Finally, in 1911, the "Department exercised significant leadership in setting out, by means of contracts with the churches, a comprehensive management structure for the system."17 This precipitated the rush from all the existing schools to have government funds for running the schools. Once a few schools were provided funds by the government, the flood of petitioners was virtually unending and the government was inundated with requests to fund schools that had already been running for many years, as well as new schools that had sprung up overnight in light of the funding opportunities.

It is evident that the government abdicated its authority and responsibility during this period to the churches and missionary groups that were zealously building and running schools for Aboriginal children. While this was certainly to the detriment of the students, the churches benefited from the government's almost open-wallet policy. The influence of the Church in the political arena cannot be understated and savvy politicos understood the link between church and home. Advancement within the hierarchy of the civil service could be obtained simply by favouring the "right" religious organization, and by maintaining an equitable balance particularly between the Catholic and the Anglican run schools.

While it may appear that the government automatically gave in to church petitions, this is in fact not the case. The department was equally as eager to expand the school system extensively throughout the country, even though there were those who believed that the speed of expansion resulted in "the rapid and extensive development of a system that it soon realized was inefficient and financially out of control."

A result of this rapid expansion and competition between church groups was chronic under funding of the majority of the schools throughout the country. Buildings that had been constructed rapidly and with inferior materials were deteriorating beyond the churches' ability to make repairs. The government had implemented a per capita system of financing the schools beginning in 1892. This system was intended "to bring the system, especially its rapidly rising costs, under control."

By 1911, the per capita grants had grown at all the schools, from a low of $100 in St. Boniface and Brandon, to a high of $130 in High River. The government believed the per capita grant system would force the church organizations to operate in a more fiscally responsible manner and reduce unnecessary and extravagant expenditures. The department would continue to function as the senior partner in the joint management of the schools.

These grants were still falling below actual operating costs and the students were the ones to suffer the shortfall. The government failed in its responsibility to review the contracts made with the church administrators. The contracts lapsed after five years and were never renewed, resulting in no "legal agreement to bind the parties . . . [and drifting] back into the previous unbusinesslike lack of arrangement and into discord over operation of the system."

Additionally, the continued underfunding was blamed on other priorities within the government and globally. The First and Second World Wars bracketed the Depression which each presented strains on the government's finances. The residential school system was not the only government obligation that saw cuts and reductions in funding, but no other group was so significantly affected. The government publicly blamed the voracious appetite of the churches for funds. "[P]rivately it had its own figures that demonstrated dramatically that the per capita, pegged at $180 in 1938, was exceptionally low and inadequate for the needs of the children, particularly in relation to the funding of other residential care facilties."

The school buildings, which had been substandard at the time they were built, were now even more decrepit and crisis levels had been reached in terms of the effect the schools themselves had on the students within their walls. Two government sponsored reports both outlined the tragic impact of the school buildings and the rampant spread of disease, particularly tuberculosis.

F. H. Paget had been detailed to survey the conditions of the schools in the west. His 1908 report revealed the legacy of the policy of simplest and cheapest construction.

The majority of the 21 schools he inspected were, like St. Paul's boarding school near Cardston, Alberta, "quite unfit for the purpose it is being used", with faulty heating, drainage and ventilation. The schools were "not modern in any respect." Moreover, his comments drew out what had become a tragic commonplace in the department - the connection between the condition of the buildings and disease, particularly the scourge of tuberculosis. From early in the history of the system, alarming health reports had come into the department from local officials and doctors tracing out a pattern of interwoven factors contributing to "the present very high death rate from this disease"; overcrowding, lack of care and cleanliness and poor sanitation.

Dr. P. H. Bryce, the author of the second report, confirmed the findings of Paget. Overcrowding, substandard housing, and underfunding, all contributed to epidemic levels of disease and death rate as high as 47% were not uncommon for students in the schools. Though the government was well informed of the issues in the schools, no action was ever taken to rectify the situation. Even the highest ranking officials in the department were aware of the problem. "No less an authority than [Duncan Campbell] Scott asserted that, system wide, fifty per cent of the children who passed through these schools did not live to benefit from the education which they had received therein."

Yet, in spite of the awareness of these issues, schools continued to recruit new students at a significant rate. By 1945 there were 9,149 students in the residential school system across Canada and none of them were receiving what could be called a decent education.

The actual education of the students seemed to be secondary to all of the other issues and problems in the schools. The system of spending half the day in academic classes and half the day in vocational work continued, resulting in little or no academic attainment. As well, the skills the students acquired in their technical training "contained very little of instructional value but consisted mainly of the performance of repetitive, routine chores of little or no education value."

"By the end of the first decade of the 20th century it was clear that the industrial school model was not working."26 Students were leaving the schools without an adequate education in either academics or vocational pursuits. They were not getting jobs in the non-Aboriginal communities and there were no job prospects for them in their home communities. The system's original intent of assimilation was a failure.

In 1911, new contracts were negotiated between the government and the church organizations which ran the schools. Once again, the churches demanded higher per capita rates, better pay for teachers, and government funds for repairing buildings and infrastructures. The government, for its part, raised the per capita grant and provided for other necessities like books and medicine. However, it was really too little too late, for the chronic problems of the schools had been left unattended for much too long to correct at this point. The new contracts would stand for the next thirty years, and very little improvement would be felt by the students in the residential schools.

The most significant change in this era was the overriding purpose the schools would now be operating under. The attempt to assimilate the Aboriginal population into the dominant Eurocentric culture through education had been a dismal failure. The Aboriginal students, as well as their families and communities, did not want to be "white," and the "white" communities did not want the Aboriginal people living and working so closely to them.

As it was realized that assimilation was an impossibility, a new direction was needed to justify the continued operation of the schools. This "led the government to shift the focus of its Aboriginal education policy from assimilation to segregation. In the new framework, students would be supplied with basic rural skills after which they were expected to return to their First Nations community."

In this period, increased numbers of students were enrolled in the school system through increased recruitment and also through the inclusion of Inuit and Métis children.

What followed was a period of sustained growth for Indian residential schools, as they were now known. By 1930, 75% of First Nations children between the ages of 7 and 15 years were enrolled in one of 80 such schools across the country and in the 1940s, attendance was expanded to include Inuit children as well. Although the federal government did not acknowledge any responsibility for the education of Métis children due to their lack of Indian status, it should be noted that many were enrolled covertly by the churches operating the schools.

To test the segregation policy, graduating students were given loans to return to reserve lands and buy farm equipment. The expectation was that these students would become farmers and encourage the people of their communities to take up the farming mantle, as well. The loans were to be repaid once the farms had become self-sustaining. However, neither the government nor the schools did anything to ensure that the students were successful, either as farmers themselves or at teaching the other people in their communities to be farmers. Once again, the costs associated with long term success precluded even the most rudimentary assistance to the Aboriginal people.

Just as assimilation was destined for failure, so, too, was the policy of segregation. By the 1950s, the government was forced to review and revise its Aboriginal education policy once again.

1951 - 1970 Integration
In the early 1950s, the number of students in residential schools continued to increase rapidly. As well, the government had finally started to take action concerning some of the more glaring problems concerning academics at the schools. Recruitment of qualified teachers was increased to the point where, by 1962, "91.1 per cent of the teachers it employed were fully qualified." As well, changes to the curriculum resulted in an increase in the number of students who were actually achieving at secondary levels of education. "By 1959, the number of children in grades 9 to 13 in residential and day schools had increased from none in 1945 to 2,144, and in the next decade, it rose even more rapidly to 6,834, which was just over 10 per cent of the total school population."

It was during the period that the government began to make significant changes to the residential school system. Advocates for change wanted to see new curriculum brought in that would be more representative of the lives and histories of Aboriginal people, in order to improve student achievement. It was believed that the students would do better in school if school became more reflective of themselves -- if they could see themselves in what they were learning.

However, this did not really have a chance to be tried, because it was at this time that the government determined to abandon the residential school system. Aboriginal groups had lobbied the government to stop the segregated education of their students, which the government interpreted as a supported return to some form of assimilative education. The government began "an extensive redesign of its Aboriginal education strategy that not only took the emphasis off residential schools but determined that the system should be shut down completely as soon as possible."

The government believed that a new direction of integration was now the way to deal with the education of Aboriginal students, developing a system of day schools wherein the students would return to their homes and families at the end of each day. Additionally, and most significantly, the day school system would result in integration by "transferring Indian children to provincial schools, and federal schools to provincial administrative school units."

The reasoning behind the move represented several points of perceived improvement. The financial burden of the residential schools continued to escalate beyond the government's desire to sustain it; by integrating Aboriginal students with non-Aboriginal students assimilation could be encouraged more effectively; integrated day schools represented what Aboriginal groups were asking for themselves; and lastly, educating students who returned to their homes and families each day represented an opportunity to educate the parents at the same time.

The new superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs, R. A. Hoey, advocated for the closure of residential schools, indicating that they had never really accomplished what they were intended to accomplish, and that day schools would be much more efficacious in not only educating the Aboriginal students, but in "increasing the likelihood of their absorbing non-Aboriginal culture."

One of the most radical policy changes of this time was the cultivated inclusion of parents in the education of Aboriginal students. The new system represented a complete reversal of how Aboriginal parents had been perceived less than fifty years previously.

The policy of integration, though an apparently radical redirection of educational policy, was not based on a wholly new vision of education's role in the quest for assimilation. It built upon Smart's idea of community development, but in this version, in a most surprising break with the civilizing logic of the late nineteenth century, an active part was assigned to the parents, whose dangerously savage character and baleful influence appear mysteriously to have disappeared. Indeed, the department took the position that maintaining the parent/child relationship was key - "that there can be no complete substitute for the care and concern of parents and the security which children feel when living at home."

This inclusion of parents in the lives and education of Aboriginal children did not, however, radically change the government assumptions about what the students needed to be successful, both in school and in the world. The emphasis remained securely placed on the importance of being able to function in the non-Aboriginal world, and therefore, on the importance of speaking English (or French and English in the case of Quebec) well. To this end, a new language arts program was developed for the Aboriginal students which would develop their facility in English, but which further corroded their ability in speaking their own languages, along with the resulting negative impact on culture.

These integrative changes required a complete restructuring of the residential school system. Day schools were now the primary method of education of Aboriginal students and, wherever possible, these were the schools that the students were being sent to. The residential schools became the repository of students "who for very special reasons, cannot commute to federal day schools or provincial schools from their homes."35 It was the government's intention that every effort be made to keep children in schools that afforded them the ability to return to their families at the end of each school day.

Obviously, this new policy would not be implemented overnight. Slowly, one school at a time, in different areas at different times, the residential schools saw the change brought to their buildings. In many locations, changes to access through reserve roads and the building of new schools closer to the reserves was required before the residential schools could be closed. In this period, the residential schools did what they could to accommodate the new policy by providing services based on the specific needs of their students. The schools remained full residential schools to those students who were too far from home to travel each day. For others they were only a boarding house while the students attended local provincial schools. For still others they became day schools from which the students returned to their families at night. In addition, a new residential placement system saw students boarded with local families while they attended school, replacing the need for them to be in the residential schools at all.

Ultimately, the intent of the new policy was to completely close all of the residential schools in Canada. However, this did not take place during the period of integration. The function and purpose of the schools changed during this time, from the education of all Aboriginal students, to being responsible for the education and welfare of "orphans and children from disrupted homes."36 The schools became repositories for children who were considered, by non-Aboriginal provincial and federal standards, to be at risk for neglect and abuse within their homes. In this way, the residential school system was maintained for several more years.

The churches running these schools fought long and hard to keep them open, in direct opposition to the government's policy of integration. They argued that the residential system of segregation provided students with a better education with greater opportunities for training, recreation, and socialization. The influence of the church was finally ended in 1969, when "the federal government obviated the need for that careful process when it formally ended the partnership with the churches, effectively secularizing Aboriginal education."

At the same time as the schools in most areas of the country were closing or changing their policies and operating principles, Canada was expanding its own frontiers further and further northward. New schools were opening to accommodate students from the Northwest Territories -- Inuit, Métis, and First Nations alike. Many Aboriginal students from the far north had already been sent to schools in the northern parts of the provinces, but now schools were organized closer to home.

Economic and social factors precipitated the need for a new education system for the citizens of the north. Hunting and gathering were no longer viable livelihoods. Resource extraction had significantly reduced the available hunting and population increase also reduced traditional ways of living. "It was the government's announced belief that as "[c]ivilization is now advancing into the Arctic areas at such a rapid pace . . . [it] is therefore essential that [Aboriginal people] be assisted in every possible way to face the future in a realistic manner - in a way which will result in their becoming true Canadian citizens . . ." Even with the evidence of failure from schools in the southern part of the country, the government forged ahead with northern schools that replicated the assimilation policies of the earliest residential schools.

1971 - Today Self-Determination
During the four decades that it took to finally close the residential schools there were still a significant number of students who were forced to endure the system. These students were the so-called orphans and children from disrupted homes. As the system moved sluggishly toward closure, these students continued to live at the schools. Many of them were eventually placed in foster care through new child and family service agencies run by both the federal government and the Aboriginal groups themselves.

Within the turmoil of the continuing issues of the residential school system, the government of Canada and the First Nations people were both working toward a change in the roles and responsibilities of the Department of Indian Affairs. In 1969 the Trudeau government brought forth the White Paper, under Jean Chrétien, the Minister of Indian Affairs.

"The White Paper on Indian Policy was a comprehensive land claim policy drafted by the Canadian Federal Government in 1969. It was a rejection of the former approach taken by the Government in regard to Indian policy and proposed to abolish the Indian Act and dismantle the Indian Affairs branch of Government within a five year period. The policy was aimed at assimilating Aboriginal affairs into the mainstream. It rejected land claims as incapable of remedy and treaties as regressive and argued that provisions of services for Indians should be provided through regular provincial agencies rather than specialised bodies."

The purpose of the proposals made in the White Paper was to include Aboriginal people in the social, economic, and political arenas of Canadian society. To that end, it was assumed that the best process would be for the Government to work toward complete assimilation of Aboriginal people into the Canadian economy, while allowing them to retain their unique cultural differences. The White Paper advocated for a future in which Aboriginal people would hold no special place, separate and apart from the rest of the Canadian population, and would have no special recognition as the first peoples in this country.

The White Paper was prepared without consultation with any Aboriginal groups and the government believed that it was presenting a genuinely advantageous opportunity to become part of the Canadian milieu. It believed that people would want to be a part of the prosperity and social advantages that they did not have in the reserve communities. The government was incredulous when the response to the White Paper was unanimously negative. For over one hundred years, the Government had remained incapable of understanding that the Aboriginal people did not want to become part of the cultural majority, but rather wanted to retain their ancient and unique differences, along with the obligations of the Crown that were first promised in the 1763 Royal Proclamation.

The response of Aboriginal people across Canada to the White Paper was the turning point for relations between the government and Aboriginal groups. "The release of the White Paper on federal Indian policy in 1969 generated a storm of protest from Aboriginal people, who strongly denounced its main terms and assumptions. It left in its wake a legacy of bitterness at the betrayal of the consultation process and suspicion that its proposals would gradually be implemented. However, it also served to strengthen the resolve of Aboriginal organizations to work together for a changed relationship. This marked the beginning of a new phase in Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal relations."

During this period, reports on the residential school system were being written that were honest and open about the failure of the system, both in terms of attainment of the policies of assimilation and socialization, and in terms of educational achievement for the students. Additionally, disclosure of the abuses that had been rampant at the schools was starting to be reported to the public. "What finally broke the seal on the residential school system that had been affixed by Duncan Campbell Scott, making public the story of neglect and physical and cultural abuse, was, ironically, the deepest secret of all - the pervasive sexual abuse of the children."

Slowly and for the first time, Aboriginal people started speaking about their experiences in residential school. At the same time, Aboriginal groups were organizing and developing a voice that could no longer by ignored by the government. While the primary focus of that voice was self-government, issues such as education were inherently subsumed within the framework of government lobbying and pressing for Aboriginal rights.

By 1998, the last of the residential schools was closed. The long-term effects of abuse and neglect are still felt by many people, and it will still be many generations before the healing process is complete. However, steps have been taken to provide restitution and compensation for the harm that was done, and even though this does not excuse or rectify the past actions of the Canadian government, it is a step in the right direction. Additionally, most of the churches, as well as the Canadian government, have made formal apologies to the children of the residential school system for the harm and damage they caused and allowed to happen.

Aboriginal political groups, such as the National Indian Brotherhood in the 1970s, are working very diligently to promote self-government and awareness of Aboriginal peoples, and the First Peoples of Canada now have a much stronger voice in the appropriate education of their children. One may now hope that the assimilationist policies and abuses of the past will not be revisited upon Canada's First Nations again, so long as these groups remain "committed to the belief that such support is building and that the future will yield the desired accomplishment of self-determination for each First Nation in Canada."