“The Effects of Residential Schooling (Industrializing) on t

Since the earliest contact between Canada’s Aboriginal people and European settlers there has been conflicting values concerning family relationships and child-rearing practices. The colonists under European control agreed it would benefit all if Aboriginal people conformed to their values and beliefs. The Missionaries were the first to attempt to change Aboriginal population with an emphasis on Christianity. Christianity was the first wave of abuse in store for Aboriginal people. Aboriginal freedom was not to last as the pre-confederation government, the government of the now established Canada and religious advocators of Christianity, and other religions, were about to make Aboriginal people their problem. “In the first few decades of the new Canadian Nation, when the government turned to address the constitutional responsibility for Indians and lands assigned by the Constitution Act of 1867, it adopted a policy of assimilation.” The assimilatio

At no time in the history of the system did it produce well-educated graduates to be enfranchised into mainstream society. Graduate is also misleading, in which very few children completed full-course studies. Even though some did receive basic education few received advanced level education for the purposes of “residential vision.”

As well as physical abuse and torment, some were also sexually abused. Some were fondled in their beds, while others were sexually assaulted in washrooms. If abuse by the teachers and staff wasn’t bad enough the departmental negligence to let abuse continue did not help the situation for the children. The Church repeatedly allowed abuse by making justifiable excuses for their staff. While the mistreatment persisted the schools where also on a cash-strapped budget, in which needed funding was not spent on the schools, allowed for the cheaply constructed schools to quickly deteriorate. The conditions for these children of early residential schools only went from worse to worse. Neglect allowed disease to make things even further below par of the already abusive departmental treatment of these children. A connection also found between the condition of the buildings and disease, particularly tuberculosis. In a 1908 study doctors had found a pattern that was related to a high death rate in relation to the disease. The focus was on overcrowding, lack of care and cleanliness and poor sanitation. In part the spread of disease was fault of the system.

Funding was set up on per capita grant arrangement that put a premium on students taken from a community. Constant lobbying by the church, which was ignored by government, to permit for a compulsory education system that allows the maximum grant. As the rates for students never increased the schools pushed for full enrollment. The pressure to keep schools full meant to take as many children as possible and pushing the limits of the school. The limits would have disastrous consequences as in disease.

Some topics in this essay:
Indian Affairs, Aboriginal’s Canadian, Indian Act, British Columbia, Native Culture, Northwest Territories, Residential School, Industrial Schools, Catholic Methodist, Constitution Act, aboriginal people, residential school, school system, residential school system, residential schools, federal government, future generations, residential schooling, mainstream society, davin report, future aboriginal, reshape future aboriginal, future aboriginal culture, superintendent indian affairs, aboriginal people themselves,