1. A Legacy of Assimilation and Abuse
Residential Schools
A Legacy of Assimilation and Abuse

2. The Legacy of Residential Schools
By Bernard Schissel and Terry Wotherspoon
“...the history of the relations between Aboriginal peoples and formal education in Canada is largely a history of cultural genocide.....Canada’s First Nations peoples were in the way of the relentless onrush of capitalist and industrial expansion.”

3. Forced Residential School – Part of the Indian Act 1876
As of 1894:
children were forcibly removed from their homes and put in residential schools for 10 months of the year,
usually from the age of 5 or 6 until they were 16.
Forced Residential School – Part of the Indian Act 1876

4. Students transported like cattle
Children were forcibly taken from their homes
Transported by cattle truck over long distances
No child was ever told where they were going, for how long, or why
Students transported like cattle

5. The aim of Residential schools was to assimilate First Nations people
First Nations Children forced to attend Residential Schools
Residential School Mission was to strip these children of their identity and pride in who they were
The aim of Residential schools was to assimilate First Nations people

6. Tactics used to strip children of their identity
Forbidding children to speak their native tongue
Forbidding students to speak with siblings
Telling children that they were “dirty, ugly Indians”
Cutting of their hair
Providing each student with a number that they were addressed by for the next decade
Torture and humiliation

7. Failed Schools System
60-80 per cent of Aboriginal children in federal residential schools failed to advance past Grade 3
This largely due to the fact that so much time was spent on religious indoctrination and using the children as labourers

8. Students used as Slave Labour
Aboriginal children in residential schools were sent to work on farms and in domestic situations as seasonal free labour.
Offset the cost of running the school
Hard work forced children into submission
Students used as Slave Labour

9. Residential School Teachers
Both governments and churches realized that qualified teachers were expensive
Federal government provided minimal funding for residential schools
qualified teachers were unaffordable

10. Residential School Teachers
Hired incapable teachers who would not be able to gain employment else ware
All teachers members of the clergy- most educated and could impose Christian believes in FN children

11. Many clerical teachers were pedophiles and/or physically abusive
1000s of children sexually assaulted by teachers and administration