Canadian Indian Residential School System
The Indian residential schools of Canada were a network of "residential" (boarding) schools for Aboriginal peoples of Canada (First Nations, Metis, and Inuit ) funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs, and adminstered by Christian churches, most notably the Catholic Church in Canada and the Anglican Church of Canada. The system had origins in pre-Confederation times, but was primarily active following the passage of the Indian Act in 1876, until the mid-twentieth century. The last residential school was not closed until 1996.
There has long been signifigant historigraphical and popular controversy about the conditions experienced by students in the residential schools. However, a new consensus emerged in the early twentieth-first century that the schools did signifigant harm to Aboriginal children by removing them from their families, depriving them of their ancestral languages, and exposing many of them to physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their teachers and other students. This consensus was symbolized by the June 11, 2008 public apology offered, not only by Prime Minister Stephen Harper on behalf of the Government of Canada, but also by the leaders of all the other parties in the Canadian House of Commons As well, just nine days previous, the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to uncover the truth about the schools. The Comission's hearings were still ongoing in October of 2012.
Read more about Canadian Indian Residential School System: History, Mortality Rates, Reconciliation Attempts, Federal Government Apology, Other Apologies, Vatican Expression of Sorrow, Portrayals in Film, Portrayals in Novels, Portrayals On Stage, Lasting Effects of Residential Schools, Discovery of Human Remains At Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario
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“Most of the folktales dealing with the Indians are lurid and romantic. The story of the Indian lovers who were refused permission to wed and committed suicide is common to many places. Local residents point out cliffs where Indian maidens leaped to their death until it would seem that the first duty of all Indian girls was to jump off cliffs.”
—For the State of Iowa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
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“It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.”
—Advertisement. Poster in a school near Irving Place, New York City (1983)
“While the system of holding people in hostage is as old as the oldest war, a fresher note is introduced when a tyrannic state is at war with its own subjects and may hold any citizen in hostage with no law to restrain it.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)