Where are the Children?

In its bid to force assimilation on the Aboriginal populations of the country, the Canadian government was incredibly ruthless in trying to wipe out those markers that denote the existence of a particular culture. Across the entire country, the systematic attempt to 'take the Indian out of the Indian' resulted in permanent losses of language, culture, and identity.

In making apology to the people who were placed in their care, the various church groups that ran the schools indicated that, in addition to the specific individual injuries suffered by the students, there was also "the broader issue of cultural impacts. . . the loss of language through forced English speaking, the loss of traditional ways of being on the land, the loss of parenting skills through the absences of four or five generations of children from Native communities, and the learned behaviour of despising Native identity."

Impacts on Language
Probably the most significant impact of the residential school system on Aboriginal people is the extensive loss of language that was suffered as a result of the assimilation and integration policies. It was decided from the outset that, in order to civilize the children coming to school, all things Aboriginal in nature had to be eradicated from their world view. School officials were aware that language was the carrier of culture and "department and churches understood the central challenge they faced in civilizing the children [was] . . . their identification of language as the most critical issue in the curriculum."

Only speaking the language of the dominant culture would result in the desired assimilation, as the Aboriginal languages had no discourse for the ways of the civilized world. "Aboriginal languages could not carry the burden of civilization, they could not impart ideas, which being entirely outside the experience and environment of the pupils and their parents, have no equivalent expression in their native language."

The schools were not entirely successful in their attempts to erase Aboriginal languages from existence in Canada; however, statistics show that the policies of assimilation did result in significant language losses. "The Indians (and Inuit) are different from the English and French and other immigrants in respects relevant to language. The native population . . . is not united by speaking one language. This population also does not comprise one of the officially recognized, founding ethnic groups whose languages have been entrenched in Canada as official languages, so native languages lack the institutional supports available to the English and French."

For many, the fear of punishment for speaking their Native languages went with them when they left the residential school system. Because students had been so severely chastised in school, the desire to retain the languages of their home communities was repressed. For many, even if they could still speak the language themselves, they refused to teach it to their own children because of residual fear that their children would in some way be punished as well. The resulting losses, in terms of actual languages and numbers of speakers, are significant.

In 1996, Statistics Canada released the following information regarding Aboriginal language retention:

• During the past 100 years or more, some 10 of Canada's once-flourishing Aboriginal languages have become extinct, and at least a dozen are on the brink.
• As of 1996, only three out of 50 Aboriginal languages - Cree, Inuktitut and Ojibwe - had large enough populations to be considered truly secure from the threat of extinction in the long run. This is not surprising in light of the current situation. Of some 800,000 persons who claimed an Aboriginal identity in 1996, only 26% said an Aboriginal language was their mother tongue, and even fewer spoke it at home.
• The three largest language families together represent 93% of persons with an Aboriginal mother tongue. About 147,000 people have Algonquian as mother tongue, the family that includes Cree and Ojibwe. Another 28,000 have Inuktitut, and 20,000 have Athabaskan. The remaining eight language families account for 7% of persons with an Aboriginal mother tongue, an indication of these languages' relative size.
• Since a large base of speakers is among the essential factors to ensure long-term viability, the more speakers a language has, the better are its chances of survival. Inuktitut, Cree and Ojibwe all boast more than 20,000 people with an Aboriginal mother tongue.
• In contrast, endangered languages rarely have more than a few thousand speakers, and often they have only a few hundred. For instance, the two smallest and weakest language groups, Kutenai and Tlingit, have mother tongue populations of only 120 and 145 respectively.
• Erosion of languages can be difficult to resist if an individual does not have the support of a closely-knit community and is immersed in the language and culture of the dominant society.
• Aboriginal elders, teachers and other leaders are well aware of the gravity of the linguistic situation, however, and are taking steps to preserve indigenous languages. These include such measures as language instruction programs, Aboriginal media programming, and the recording of elders' stories, songs and accounts of history in the Aboriginal language.

Many schools across the country have instituted Aboriginal language instruction as part of their school curricula. This has provided some benefit in terms of language retention and rejuvenation. In a report for the Flagstaff Centre for Excellence in Education, author Barbara Burnaby stated that:

Two recent studies provide an overall picture of the numbers and characteristics of Aboriginal language programs in schools in Canada. The most comprehensive is a survey on Aboriginal education in general by the Canadian Education Association using a sample of all reserve schools and about 500 provincial schools (Kirkness & Bowman, 1992). Overall, about one-third reported teaching an Aboriginal language, with higher levels in reserve schools and lower in provincial schools depending largely on proportions of Aboriginal students in the school. Reserve schools tended to start Aboriginal language teaching as early as pre-school, and the general tendency in all schools was to stop teaching it by grade eight. Only four per cent of the sample used an Aboriginal language (mostly Inuktitut in the Northwest Territories) as language of instruction.

Ultimately, the chances that an Aboriginal language will survive depend most upon whether the language is spoken in the home. Unfortunately, this is not the case among many Aboriginal people, particularly those who are living off-reserve. It should come as no surprise, then, that the likelihood of more languages being permanently lost is high.

Impacts on Culture
Beginning in 1884, the government determined that the Aboriginal populations needed to be saved from themselves. In that year, several west coast groups were banned from practicing their traditional ceremonies, including the Potlatch and the Tamanawas dances. Potlatch was a combination feast, dance, and giveaway that was used to celebrate and mark the events that had significance in the community. The Tamanawas dances were specifically spiritual in nature, dealing with initiations that stood in direct opposition to the Christian sensibilities of the government officials. Punishment for participating in these ceremonies carried a jail sentence of between two and six months.

For the first time, the government was now specifically attacking Aboriginal culture. Rather than just imposing Eurocentric means on Indian ways, ceremony banning represented a direct effort toward the goals of civilization and assimilation. The government did not understand the significance or purpose of the ceremonies; they only feared them. Therefore, they had to be eliminated. One British Columbia official called the ceremonies "the evil that lay like a huge incubus upon all philanthropic, administrative or missionary effort for the improvement of the Indians."

While the intent of the government was to completely end the incidence of these ceremonies, the actual effect was to drive them underground. Groups continued to hold potlatch and Tamanawas dances; they just held them in places and at times when they would not be discovered by the government agents. However, many of the government agents were not as opposed to the ceremonies as they were expected to be. Rather, the majority of the concern over the holding of the ceremonies came from the church, because the ceremonies were in direct opposition to their teachings and missionary work. In fact, "no one was jailed for potlatching until 1920, during a period of intense official enforcement of prohibitions on traditional cultural practices in British Columbia and on the prairies."

In speaking about the effects of the bans on traditional ceremonies, British Columbia Provincial Court Judge Alfred Scow, a member of the Kwakiutl First Nation of Vancouver Island, stated that the outlawing of ceremonies was particularly destructive to Aboriginal culture. He pointed out that one outcome of the banning was the prevention of transmission of oral histories and values. Justice Scow indicated that the ban effectively ended the traditional forms of government and justice that had existed prior to colonisation. Worse yet, these traditional ways were replaced with the cumbersome and ineffective bureaucracies that are the Canadian legal system today.

Additional changes to legislation resulted in the further banning of ceremonies among the Plains people. In particular, dance practices such as the Sundance and the thirst dance were banned outright. In essence, the ban was against the giving away of personal property and the self-inflicted wounds that were a part of some of the ceremonies. The dancing itself was not affected. These additional bans served to remove the spiritual component from the ceremonies, leaving them devoid of their intended purpose. Over-zealous Indian agents, however, did not stop at banning the giveaways; they tried to stop the dancing, as well.

RCMP members were reluctant to support the Indian agents in their bid to stop the dancing. This was beyond the actual word of the law and became a government departmental concern. They did, in some cases however, make some arrests, including, "one in 1904 that led to a sentence of two months' imprisonment at hard labour for a 90-year-old, nearly blind man named Taytapasahsung."

Arrests such as this were a black mark against the government. In 1914, when agricultural exhibitions and fairs began to gain popularity throughout the west, a new amendment was enacted to prevent Aboriginal people from taking part while in Aboriginal dress, without the permission of the Indian agent. Arrest numbers increased significantly and, in 1918, the actual prosecution of people dancing in regalia at these exhibitions was added to the jurisdiction of the Indian agents. Aboriginal people were encouraged to find alternate forms of recreation and amusement "for this senseless drumming and dancing."

In 1933 the law was amended once again to remove the stipulation about Aboriginal dress. Now arrests could be made of anyone caught dancing, regardless of what they were wearing. The government was attempting, by any means, to stop Aboriginal people from dancing.

Though all of the bans against traditional ceremonies have now been removed from the Indian Act, the legacy of those 75 years when dancing was prohibited lives on. "Indian traditional ways have been subverted and have sometimes disappeared. This has left many Indian communities trapped between what remains of traditional ways of doing things and the fear of importing too much more of mainstream Canadian cultural values into reserve life."

Impacts on Identity
For individual survivors of the residential school system, language and culture were not the only losses suffered. The loss of self is a prevalent and nearly universal outcome for the former students. As the government and churches were aware, but did not readily admit, the atmosphere of fear, loneliness, and mistreatment resulted in consequences for the survivors that have left scars that cannot heal. Students left the schools without having received any type of education, unfit and untrained for any marketable labour, and no longer in tune with their historic way of life.

Not only were the students unable to find a place in either the 'white' world or in the world of their home communities, but they were not welcome in either. The 'white' community did not want to see Indians working in their towns, taking the jobs of their community members. Neither did the Aboriginal communities know how to deal with people who came home filled with shame for who they were and what they represented. Even the Indian agents saw that the former students were "stranded between cultures, deviants from the norms of both."

This loss of self resulted in a turn to negative coping mechanisms in an attempt to find a way to either fit somewhere, or erase, however briefly, the fact that they did not fit anywhere. Because of this, addictions are the number one health concern for both on and off-reserve Aboriginal people in Canada today. But this is not to say that all residential school survivors have succumbed to the lure of drugs and alcohol. For many, a return to the traditional ways of life has been the saving grace and resiliency has played a substantial role in helping people to find a means of getting past and bouncing back.

For many survivors, having memories of their lives before residential school has provided them with a firm foundation on which to build and overcome the bad times of their school days. The lifestyles and daily routines of life - including hunting and gathering, traditional foods and ceremonies, and even traditional clothing and shelter - provided strength to the children for the lean and lonely years. Memories of parents, grandparents, and extended family members, who played in role in their youth, helped some survivors develop and hold on to their self-esteem, compassion, and independence.

For others, the transition was not as easy to accomplish. Many succumbed to the harsh rigours of life in the schools. The high incidence of disease and death was devastating to the ones who remained and had a long-term impact on them. For many who were second and third generation residential school attendees, the support of proper parenting was already lacking before they went to school. Alcohol abuse and violence were already a part of these children's daily lives long before they encountered it in the school buildings.

For these survivors, the continuation of abuse from home to school could not help but result in the adaptation of an abusive lifestyle for themselves. Stress and constant fear were also prominent reasons for loss of identity. Children were removed from the homes and families they were familiar with and placed in alien environments that they did not understand. They were forbidden from interacting with other students, including their own brothers and sisters. Culture and language oppression were the culminating factors, for some students, in the total loss of self.

For many students struggling to cope and function in the school system, ways were found to respond that would provide some protection. Within these coping strategies children were able to function and make their way through the days. In some cases, however, the solidarity that developed between the students could not be replicated again in the world.

For some, detachment was the means of survival. By removing themselves mentally and emotionally from what was happening to them, children could protect themselves from the pain. "For example, a former student at Kamloops Indian Residential School reports being whipped so often that eventually you get so tough that you block those things out and you can't feel things, you'd get hit and you can't feel it no more."82 Detachment also manifested itself in looking and acting tough.

A second method of coping was re-interpretation of events, putting a more positive spin on them to reduce the negative feelings. Rationalizations were made to account for the poor food and clothing, and students would interpret their own behaviour as strength of spirit rather than victim. Many of the girls would spend time daydreaming about building and designing elaborate homes that they would hope to have someday when they were done with school.

For pragmatic reasons, some of the students made accommodations with the people who were in charge of them. Through co-operation, some students were able to reduce their work assignments or be given the lighter duties. Some received extra privileges when they agreed with the people in charge and did exactly as they were told. In some instances, these accommodations were as simple as showing respect for an adult in the school. In others, the accommodations were more destructive to the students, such the case where a young boy used "sexual favours [for] protection, sweets (a rarity in the school), and even money to buy booze."

Still other students were able to exercise some control over their environment by means of resistance. The most common form of resistance was stealing, particularly stealing food. Getting extra food became not only a necessity, but also a means by which the students were able to work collaboratively toward a common goal, against a common enemy. This helped them to develop solidarity and the food that was stolen was most often shared among all the students, whether they took part in the appropriation or not.

Other acts of resistance included standing up to bullies and protecting the younger, weaker students from punishment. Students resisted by masking their true feelings, and by small acts of sabotage against the adults in the schools. The most difficult and most daring act of resistance was running away. While the results of escape could be tragic, those that attempted it were held in very high regard by the other students. Running away often brought to light the abuses that were happening at the schools and there were "several instances in which the Department of Indian Affairs was forced to launch investigations after children were injured or killed while on the run from their school."

For some, the legacy of residential school has resulted in making them stronger people, able to cope with the memories of abuse and intolerance. For others not so lucky, the spiral of poor coping strategies has led to desperate acts of abuse and self-destruction. At the present time, efforts are being made to recognize and help all the residential school survivors return to a life of peace and meaning that does not try to belittle their experience, but to acknowledge it and move on from it to a better, more positive life.