Where are the Children?

Residential school administrators and Indian agents across Canada submitted annual reports to the Department of Indian Affairs. These reports were bound together with the annual reports of other federal departments, becoming part of a larger document called The Sessional Papers. Information about the locations and conditions of the schools, the names of the teachers and the administrators, the classes taught, the number of students attending the schools, the areas from which they came, and the ideology professed by the schools and by the Department was all part of the reports. Photographs were used to illustrate some of the annual reports. The 1897 report is particularly revealing for the way in which photographs were used.