IDLE NO MORE CANADA-USA-MEXICO-AUSTRALIA-NEW ZEALAND- Suicides- Residential (boarding) School Assimilation- 1800s- 1900s- here's the facts- our First People Matter, 10,000 years
HEADS UP:
Please note- Canada says First Nations or First Peoples- USA- says American Indian -Mexico say Indigenous and Aussie and New Zealand says Aboriginals.... they are still the First Peoples 10,000 of this world..
Australia’s Aboriginal children – The world’s highest suicide rate
by Gerry Georgatos
February 27th, 2013 Photo - Brian Cassey
2012’s total spend on Aboriginal communities reached $25 billion yet Australia’s Aboriginal youth suicide rates remain high – cruelly disproportionate to the rest of the Australian population.
This horror is played out the world over for Indigenous peoples but Australia’s Aboriginal peoples are at the top of this tragic list.
Feb 27, 2013 - Australia's Aboriginal children – The world's highest suicide rate ... $25 billion yet Australia's Aboriginal youth suicide rates remain high ...
In 2011 the United Nations State of Indigenous Peoples report found that the World’s Indigenous peoples made up one-third of the world’s poorest peoples
http://thestringer.com.au/australias-aboriginal-children-the-worlds-highest-suicide-rate/
--------------
CANADA- suicides- FIRST NATIONS, METIS, INUIT, NON-STATUS INDIANS
Suicide
A Culturally-Relevant Perspective on This Issue
Introduction
The suicide rate refers to the number of suicide deaths per 100,000 population, (age adjusted) [1]. Suicidal behaviours extend beyond suicide deaths to include suicide ideation (thoughts of suicide), as well as suicide attempts (suicidal behaviour not resulting in death). Suicide is a major problem among Aboriginal communities and is the leading cause of potential years of life lost (PYLL) among First Nations and Inuit populations. In British Columbia between 2005 and 2007, 20% of youth suicides were among Aboriginal youth, with one quarter of those Aboriginal youth suicides being among girls [2]. There are a number of factors contributing to the high suicide rates among First Nation, Inuit, and Métis peoples, including: loss and/or changes in language and culture; poverty; low levels of education; limited employment opportunities; inadequate living conditions; historical legacy of residential schools including family life disruption; physical, sexual and abuse [3]; and high levels of alcohol and drug misuse [4].
First Nations
The First Nations suicide rate is exceptionally high at 24 per 100,000 in 2000. First Nations women are more likely to have thought about committing suicide than men (33% versus 29%) and are much more likely to have attempted suicide (19% versus 13%).Youth suicides are also very prevalent in First Nations populations. On-reserve First Nations youth are 5-7 times more likely to die from suicide compared to the Canadian youth in the general population [5]. Gender differences in suicide ideation and attempts are apparent in youth suicide as well. For example, 21% of girls aged 15-17 reported attempting suicide, a rate that is three times that of boys in the same age group. This pattern is apparent between males and females of all age groups [6].
Métis
Nationally collected suicide data for Métis people are currently unavailable. Suicide has, however been identified as a major concern among Métis communities [7, 8]. According to Women of the Métis Nation report, about 16% of Métis women reported contemplating suicide and 8% reported attempting suicide. Although Métis men are more likely to complete suicide, 14% of Métis women reported having attempted suicide compared to 4% of men. The number of Métis women who have considered attempting suicide (14%) is higher compared to women in the Canadian population (3.8%) [8, 9].
Inuit
The Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami identified suicide prevention as the number one health concern among the Inuit population. According to 2001 Census data, the suicide rate of all Inuit regions was 135 per 100,000, which is more than 10 times the Canadian rate [10]. In 2002, the suicide rate for the Inuit population as a whole was 79/100,000. The suicide rate is higher among Inuit men; 15% of suicides occurring among women [11]. The rate of youth suicide among Inuit youth is among the highest in the world and is 11 times the national average [12]. The suicide rate is highest in Nunavik ( 82 per 100,000) followed by Nunatsiavut (80 per 100,000) and Nunavut (77 per 100,000). Inuvialuit had the lowest suicide rate of the Inuit regions (18/ 100,000) [13].
http://www.aboriginalgba.ca/category.aspx?catid=136&rt=2
AND..
Suicide Among Aboriginal People in Canada | Canadian Mental ...
london.cmha.ca › Mental Health?
The overall Canadian rate has declined, while in some Aboriginal ... bands, and nations, the overall suicide rate among First Nation communities is about twice ... From the ages of 10 to 29, Aboriginal youth on reserves are 5 to 6 times more ...
AND..
CANADA
Youth leader's death raises alarm over suicide rates - Manitoba ...
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/.../mb-first-nations-suicide-rate-winnipeg.html
May 6, 2013 - Friends of an inner-city Winnipeg youth, who recently committed suicide, are sounding the alarm over the high suicide rate among First Nations people. ... Canadian Institute of Child Health, aboriginal youth commit suicide five ...
AND..
Suicide - Our Voices | First Nations, Métis, Inuit, GBA Toolkit
www.aboriginalgba.ca/category.aspx?catid=136&rt=2?
The First Nations suicide rate is exceptionally high at 24 per 100,000 in 2000. ... die from suicide compared to the Canadian youth in the general population [5].
AND..
Mental Health and Wellness -- First Nations and Inuit Health
www.hc-sc.gc.ca › ... › First Nations & Inuit Health › Health Promotion?
Feb 4, 2013 - (A Statistical Profile on the Health of First Nations in Canada for the Year ... Suicide rates for Inuit youth are among the highest in the world, ...
----------------
USA- AMERICAN INDIAN YOUTH- SUICIDES EPIDEMIC
Suicide is epidemic for American Indian youth: What more can be ...
investigations.nbcnews.com/_.../14340090-suicide-is-epidemic-for-ameri...?
Oct 10, 2012 - A youth-suicide epidemic is sweeping Indian country, with Native American ... Dorgan is founder of the Center for Native American Youth, which promotes ... Diabetes rates are sky high, and untreated mental illnesses such as ...
AND..
Suicide Among American Indian Youth: The Role of - Journal of ...
jaie.asu.edu/v36/V36S1sui.htm?
by A Metha - ?1996 - ?Cited by 7 - ?Related articles
Suicide risk factors are discussed for the general adolescent population as well as ... Of these, the highest suicide rates are found among American Indian youth ...
------------
MEXICO
Scholarly articles for mexican indigenous youth suicides hit crisis rate
… bibliography of sources relevant to indigenous suicide … - ?Reser - Cited by 4
Struggling against suicide - ?De Leo - Cited by 48
… urban American Indian young people from suicide - ?Pettingell - Cited by 14
--------------------------------
000000 idle no more canada-usa-australia-mexico- new zealand Ancient pictographs on Agawa Rock in Lake Superior Provincial Park were a form of communication and story telling
TURTLE ISLAND- TRYING 2 HELP GLOBAL INDIGENOUS, ABORIGINAL, FIRST PEOPLES
Turtle Island Native Network
Online Since 1998
You are Invited to Advertise Here to Support this independent,
Aboriginal - Owned and Operated news and information network.
Your support can help us continue to operate Turtle Island Native Network.
Your contribution is appreciated.
You or your group will be profiled here as a donor or sponsor.
Contact: Bob Kennedy
Turtle Island Native Network is Powered by
Objectified Software
http://www.turtleisland.org/culture/culture-youth.htm
First People of America and Canada - Turtle Island.
America Indian Jewelry by Barbara Shingingstar.
Lakota Sioux dolls by Diane Tells His Name.
Native greeting cards by James King Studio.
Helping Native Americans.
Medallion and rosette necklaces by Joni Stinson.
Possible bags by Kate Goodhands.
Scott Denny, Oneida Nation photographer.
Welcome to our web site, dedicated to all First People of North America and Canada, better known as Turtle Island. This is a child friendly, educational site about Native Americans (American Indians) and members of the First Nations.
Click on my little kachina friends below to show you what's recently been added
http://www.firstpeople.us/
---------------------
FREEDOM- the ways of the First Peoples- 10,000 years- leave something 4 the children
AND NOW RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL - CANADA, USA, MEXICO, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND....
Please note- Canada says First Nations or First Peoples- USA- says American Indian -Mexico say Indigenous and Aussie and New Zealand says Aboriginals.... they are still the First Peoples 10,000 of this world..
0000000 A National Crime-The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879-1986 books
OBSERVATION- more below- mi'kmaq nova scotia -Nouvelle-Écosse
Let's say I'm somewhat encouraged, not overwhelmed, by Mr. Harper's apology - it touches the tip of the iceberg. I will congratulate him on this, he has gone further than any Prime Minister has gone to-date in acknowledging Canada's inglorious past mistreatment of First Nation Peoples, but, he didn't go overboard.
June 11. 2008
Text of Harper's residential schools apology
THE CANADIAN PRESS
June 11, 2008 at 5:23 PM EDT
OTTAWA — Text of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's residential schools apology Wednesday:
Mr. Speaker, I stand before you today to offer an apology to former students of Indian residential schools.
The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history.
In the 1870's, the federal government, partly in order to meet its obligation to educate aboriginal children, began to play a role in the development and administration of these schools.
Two primary objectives of the residential schools system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture.
These objectives were based on the assumption aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal. indeed, some sought, as it was infamously said, "to kill the Indian in the child." Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country.
Most schools were operated as ‘joint ventures' with Anglican, catholic, Presbyterian or united churches.
The government of Canada built an educational system in which very young children were often forcibly removed from their homes, often taken far from their communities.
Many were inadequately fed, clothed and housed. all were deprived of the care and nurturing of their parents, grandparents and communities.
First Nations, Inuit and Metis languages and cultural practices were prohibited in these schools.
Tragically, some of these children died while attending residential schools and others never returned home.
The government now recognizes that the consequences of the Indian residential schools policy were profoundly negative and that this policy has had a lasting and damaging impact on aboriginal culture, heritage and language.
While some former students have spoken positively about their experiences at residential schools – these stories are far overshadowed by tragic accounts of the emotional, physical and sexual abuse and neglect of helpless children and their separation from powerless families and communities.
The legacy of Indian residential schools has contributed to social problems that continue to exist in many communities today.
It has taken extraordinary courage for the thousands of survivors that have come forward to speak publicly about the abuse they suffered.
It is a testament to their resilience as individuals and to the strength of their cultures. regrettably, many former students are not with us today and died never having received a full apology from the government of Canada.
The government recognizes that the absence of an apology has been an impediment to healing and reconciliation.
Therefore, on behalf of the government of Canada and all Canadians, I stand before you, in this chamber so central to our life as a country, to apologize to aboriginal peoples for Canada's role in the Indian residential schools system.
To the approximately 80,000 living former students, and all family members and communities, the government of Canada now recognizes that it was wrong to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this.
We now recognize that it was wrong to separate children from rich and vibrant cultures and traditions, that it created a void in many lives and communities, and we apologize for having done this.
We now recognize that, in separating children from their families, we undermined the ability of many to adequately parent their own children and sowed the seeds for generations to follow and we apologize for having done this.
We now recognize that, far too often, these institutions gave rise to abuse or neglect and were inadequately controlled, and we apologize for failing to protect you.
Not only did you suffer these abuses as children, but as you became parents, you were powerless to protect your own children from suffering the same experience, and for this we are sorry.
The burden of this experience has been on your shoulders for far too long. the burden is properly ours as a government, and as a country.
There is no place in Canada for the attitudes that inspired the indian residential schools system to ever again prevail.
You have been working on recovering from this experience for a long time and in a very real sense, we are now joining you on this journey.
The government of Canada sincerely apologizes and asks the forgiveness of the aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly. we are sorry.
In moving towards healing, reconciliation and resolution of the sad legacy of Indian residential schools, implementation of the Indian residential schools settlement agreement began on September 19, 2007.
Years of work by survivors, communities, and aboriginal organizations culminated in an agreement that gives us a new beginning and an opportunity to move forward together in partnership.
A cornerstone of the settlement agreement is the Indian residential schools truth and reconciliation commission. This commission presents a unique opportunity to educate all Canadians on the Indian residential schools system.
It will be a positive step in forging a new relationship between aboriginal peoples and other Canadians, a relationship based on the knowledge of our shared history, a respect for each other and a desire to move forward together with a renewed understanding that strong families, strong communities and vibrant cultures and traditions will contribute to a stronger Canada for all of us.
God bless all of you and God bless our land.
OBSERVATION
Let's say I'm somewhat encouraged, not overwhelmed, by Mr. Harper's apology - it touches the tip of the iceberg. I will congratulate him on this, he has gone further than any Prime Minister has gone to-date in acknowledging Canada's inglorious past mistreatment of First Nation Peoples, but, he didn't go overboard.
Today, I would encourage National Chief Phil Fontaine, and others, to keep in mind that our First Nations are owed an apology for a long list of horrors perpetuated against our Peoples by Canadian and British colonial governments. A few examples, the extermination of the Beothuk, the use of scalp proclamations to try to exterminate the Mi'kmaq, medical experimentation, Indian Act sections that barred us from pool rooms, from hiring lawyers to fight our claims, centralization in the Maritimes, economic exclusion, etc., etc., the list is extensive.
When the day comes that a Canadian Prime Minister gets up in the House of Commons and make a full unequivocal apology for all the wrongs we and our ancestors suffered, it will be the day that we can fully celebrate.
Daniel N. Paul, June 12, 2008
---------------------------
MEXICO- INDIGENOUS BOARDING- RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS OF HORROR
Histories and Memories of the Indian Boarding Schools in Mexico, Canada, and the United States
Alexander S. Dawson
Abstract
Indigenismo can be found in almost every country in the Americas. Most indigenistas attempted to write the Indian into their national pasts and adopted similar modernizing projects. Still, what appears to be a common history can be deceiving. Examination of one indigenista project in three distinct American contexts—the indigenous boarding schools in Mexico, Canada, and the United States—indicates considerable differences in practice. For one thing, while the boarding schools north of the border aimed to separate students from the deleterious influence of their communities and bring them into the cultural mainstream, in Mexico indigenous communities were essential to development strategies, and the internados, as an important element of these strategies, sought to cultivate rather than break down ethnic affiliations. These and other differences in the politics that emerged from these projects suggest that the study of indigenismo may require attention to the ways in which particular power arrangements give meaning to indigenous identities.
El indigenismo se encuentra en casi cada uno de los países de las Américas. La mayor parte de los indigenistas intentaban inscribir al indio en sus pasados nacionales y adoptaron similares proyectos modernizantes. Aún así lo que aparenta ser historia común puede engañar. El examen de uno de los proyectos indigenistas en tres distintos contextos americanos—los colegios internados indígenas en México, Estados Unidos, y Canadá—indica diferencias considerables en la práctica. Para mencionar una, aun cuando los colegios al norte de la frontera buscaban separar a los alumnos de los efectos perjudiciales de sus comunidades y traerlos a la corriente principal de la cultura, en México las comunidades indígenas formaban parte esencial en los planes de desarrollo, y los internados, como elemento importante de estos planes, buscaban cultivar y no desmantelar las afiliaciones étnicas. Estas y otras diferencias en la política que emerge de estos proyectos sugiere que el estudio del indigenismo puede requerir que se le de atención a la manera por la cual los arreglos políticos particulares le dan significado a la identidad indígena.
http://lap.sagepub.com/content/39/5/80.abstract
-----------------
CANADIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA...
Residential Schools in Canada
ARTICLE CONTENTS: | Suggested Reading | Links to Other Sites
Residential schools refer to a variety of institutions that include industrial schools, boarding schools and student residences. Although residential schools are usually considered part of the assimilative policies that the Canadian government directed at Aboriginal peoples from the 1880s onward, their roots lie deeper. The first residential facilities were developed in NEW FRANCE by Catholic missionaries to provide care and schooling. These early attempts, like a similar institution in colonial New Brunswick, failed abysmally thanks to the autonomy that FIRST NATIONS still enjoyed and the Europeans' economic and military dependence on the Aboriginal population. Residential schools became an enduring phenomenon with the creation of Anglican and Methodist institutions in UPPER CANADA (Ontario) from the 1830s onward. These colonial experiments set the pattern for post-Confederation policies.
Both the federal government and PLAINS NATIONS wanted to include schooling provisions in the treaties of the 1870s and beyond, though for different reasons. Aboriginal leaders hoped Euro-Canadian schooling would enable their young to learn the skills of the newcomer society and help them make a successful transition to a world dominated by the strangers. With the enactment of the BRITISH NORTH AMERICA ACT in 1867, and the implementation of the INDIAN ACT, the government was required to provide Aboriginal peoples with an education and to integrate Aboriginal peoples into Canadian society. The government pursued schooling as a means of making First Nations economically self-sufficient, with its underlying objective being a lessening of Aboriginal dependency on the public purse. The government collaborated with Christian MISSIONARIES to encourage Aboriginal self-sufficiency and religious conversion through the Aboriginal educational policy developed after 1880, which relied heavily on custodial schools.
Beginning with the establishment of 3 industrial schools in the prairies in 1883, and through the next half-century, the federal government and churches developed a system of residential schools stretching from Nova Scotia to the Arctic. In 1884 the Indian Act was amended to include compulsory residential school attendance for status Indians under age 16. Most of the residential schools were in the four Western provinces and the territories, but there were also significant numbers in northwestern Ontario and, later, in northern Québec. Three of the four Atlantic provinces had no schools, apparently because government assumed that Aboriginal people there were sufficiently acculturated. At its height around 1930, the residential school system totalled 80 institutions. The Roman Catholics operated three-fifths, the Anglicans one-quarter and the Methodists and Presbyterians the remainder. (Most of the Presbyterian schools became United Church schools in 1925 with the formation of the United Church of Canada.)
From their inception until the late 1950s, Aboriginal residential schools operated on a half-day system, in which students spent half the day in the classroom and the other at work. The theory behind this was that students would learn skills that would allow them to earn a living as adults, but the reality was that work had more to do with running the school inexpensively than with providing students with vocational training. Funding was a dominant factor in the residential school system. From the 1890s until the 1950s, the government tried constantly to shift the burden of the schools onto the churches, whose members made donations, and onto the students, whose labour was a financial contribution. Only with the affluence of the later 1950s was funding increased, and the half-day system eliminated.
School days began early, usually with a bell that summoned students to dress and attend chapel. Breakfast, like all meals, was spartan, consumed hurriedly in a refectory, and followed by three hours of classes or a period of work. The late afternoon might see a short play period before supper. Evening recreation was limited, and bedtime was early. Weekends varied the routine by eliminating classes, but Sunday usually meant more time spent on religious observances. Until the 1950s, holidays for many of the students included periods of work and play at the school. Only in latter years did the schools routinely send children home for holidays.
Although some students left with happy memories and would look back with a mixture of pleasure and pain, the experiences of residential school students were more negative than positive. The food was low in quantity and poor in quality; preparation did nothing to enhance its limited appeal. Clothing was universally detested: ill-fitting, shabby and, in the case of winter clothing, not adequate protection for the season. The pedagogical program, both academic and vocational, was deficient. Students had to cope with teachers who were usually ill-prepared and curricula and materials derived from and reflected an alien culture. In the workplace, the overseers were often harsh and the supposed training purpose of the work was limited or absent. In contrast, missionary staff lavished time and attention on religious observances, often simultaneously denigrating Aboriginal spiritual traditions.
While many staff tried to be good instructors and parental surrogates, the institutional setting and the volume of work defeated the best of intentions. Impatience and correction too often gave way to excessive punishment. Almost universally, the way the schools operated prevented staff from providing the emotional support that children needed. Some of the staff were sexual predators, and often the emotional distance was made worse by the cultural denigration that missionaries inflicted on their students. Aboriginal languages were forbidden in most operations of the school, Aboriginal ways were disparaged and the Euro-Canadian manner was held out as superior.
Such a harsh regime naturally provoked resistance, both by Aboriginal students and adults. Some children refused to co-operate and sabotaged the operations of the kitchen or classroom, stole food and supplies, ran away, or, in extreme cases, burned down their schools. Their parents and Aboriginal political leaders protested the schools' harsh conditions and pedagogical shortcomings, though their objections were mostly ignored. By the 1940s it was obvious to both the government and most missionary bodies that the schools were ineffective, and Aboriginal protests helped to secure a change in policy. In 1969 the decision was taken to close the residential schools, and the last school, located in Saskatchewan, closed in 1996.
Aboriginal communities, often with church support, and since 1998 with government financial assistance, have been carrying out the difficult work of supporting their members with residual issues surrounding family breakdown, violence and the aimlessness brought about by residential schools. Since the late 1990s former students pressed, often through litigation, for acknowledgment of, and compensation for, their suffering. In 2005 the federal government established a $1.9-billion compensation package for the survivors of abuse at Aboriginal residential schools, and in 2007 the federal government and the churches that had operated the schools agreed to provide financial compensation to former students under the Aboriginal residential schools settlement agreement.
On 11 June 2008, Prime Minister Stephen HARPER, on behalf of the Government of Canada, offered an apology to all former students of Aboriginal residential schools in Canada. The apology openly recognized that the assimilation policy on which the schools were established was "wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country." The apology recognized the profoundly damaging and lasting impact the schools had on Aboriginal culture, heritage and language and was one of the steps that the government has taken to forge a new relationship with Canada's Aboriginal peoples.
See also NATIVE PEOPLE: EDUCATION.
Government School
Father Joseph Hugonnard, principal, with staff and aboriginal students of the Industrial School, May 1885, Fort Qu'Appelle, Sask (O.B. Buell/Library and Archives Canada/PA-118765).
Metlakatla Indian Residential School Students
Metlakatla Indian Residential School Students
Aboriginal students attending the Metlakatla Indian Residential School. (Credit: William James Topley / Library and Archives Canada / C-015037)
R.C. Indian Residential School
R.C. Indian Residential School Study Time, [Fort] Resolution, N.W.T. (Credit: Library and Archives Canada / PA-042133)
Author J.R. MILLER
Suggested Reading
J.R. Miller, Shingwauk's Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (1996); John S. Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986 (1999).
Links to Other Sites
Canadian Aboriginal Writing and Arts Challenge
The website for the Canadian Aboriginal Writing and Arts Challenge, which features Canada's largest essay writing competition for Aboriginal youth (ages 14-29) and a companion program for those who prefer to work through painting, drawing and photography. See their guidelines, teacher resources, profiles of winners, and more. From the Historica-Dominion Institute.
Four Directions Teachings
Elders and traditional teachers representing the Blackfoot, Cree, Ojibwe, Mohawk, and Mi’kmaq share teachings about their history and culture. Animated graphics visualize each of the oral teachings. This website also provides biographies of participants, transcripts, and an extensive array of learning resources for students and their teachers. In English with French subtitles.
Aboriginal Healing Foundation
The website for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, which supports Aboriginal people engaged in sustainable healing processes that constructively address the legacy of physical abuse and sexual abuse in the residential school system.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
The website for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which provides a forum for disclosure of incidents of abuse encountered by Aboriginal youth in Canadian residential schools.
CBC: Aboriginal
This website offers links to various CBC programs and features concerning Canada's Aboriginal communities.
A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986
Read online excerpts from historian John S. Milloy's book that covers the history and reality of the residential school system. Includes photos and references to rare government documents. From Google Books.
English: Contemporary Aboriginal Voices
Learning activities in which students analyse the relationships depicted by Aboriginal writers, with specific reference to cultural, spiritual, and societal interaction. From the website for Curriculum Services Canada.
'Older than America' doesn't pull its punches
A brief article about Georgina Lightning, writer, director, and lead actress in "Older than America," a film that focuses on abuses suffered by aboriginal children in residential schools in Canada and the US. From Minnesota Public Radio.
Older Than America
Watch the spine-chilling trailer for "Older Than America," a film by Georgina Lightning. Click on "Press" for a link to "FOX Interview Georgia Lightning" and other media items.
Dreamspeakers Film Festival: Georgina Lightning
An article about Georgina Lightning's feature directorial debut, "Older Than America," which opened the 2008 Dreamspeakers Film Festival in Edmonton. From canada.com.
Egerton Ryerson and Indian Residential Schools
A biographical note about prominent 19th century Canadian Egerton Ryerson. From Ryerson University.
Older Than America - Tantoo Cardinal
Watch a video featuring Tantoo Cardinal discussing how her life story relates to the themes of her movie "Older Than America." From the Tantoo Cardinal website.
Statement of Apology
See the full text of the "Statement of Apology" to former students of Indian Residential Schools on behalf of the Government of Canada that was delivered by the Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Honourable Stephen Harper in the House of Commons on Wednesday on June 11, 2008.
Indian Horse
A review of "Indian Horse," Richard Wagamese's stark novel about Canadian residential schools.
Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement
This site offers a summary of statistics relating to the implementation of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. From Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada.
Indian Residential Schools Settlement
The official court website for the Indian Residential Schools Settlement. Offers the Court-ordered notices, the Settlement Agreement, updates, links to claim forms, and related information.
Phil Fontaine
A profile of Dr. Phil Fontaine, one of the foremost First Nations leaders in Canada. From the University of Winnipeg.
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/residential-schools
----------------
A National Crime-The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879-1986
Front Cover-John Sheridan Milloy
------------------
USA- LET ALL THAT IS INDIAN WITHIN U DIE--The Reservation Boarding School System
in the United States, 1870 -1928
USA Pupils at Carlisle Native American school, Pennsylvania - 1900 Carlisle_pupils
PHOTO:
[A personal story by Carol M. Hodgson: "When I go home I'm going to talk Indian"]
[September 8, 2000 - Remarks by the Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs]
[February 6, 2001 - An excerpt from the Winter 2000 Issue of Native Americas Journal]
[December 17, 2001 - An excerpt from the book "Shaping Survival"
Four Native women sharing their educational experiences]
[January 6, 2003 - Hampton Normal & Agricultural Institute: American Indian Students (1878-1923)
Personal Accounts written by students and student lists by name and Tribal affiliation]
[April 9, 2003 - A class action law suit Zephier, et al. v. United States of America filed by former
reservation school students.]
THE STORY
The Reservation Boarding School System
in the United States, 1870 -1928
Justification and Rationalization
Day Schools vs. Boarding Schools
Carlisle Indian School and Richard Henry Pratt
The System Begins to Fail
By way of introduction:
The Reservation Boarding School System was a war in disguise. It was a war between the United States government and the children of the First People of this land. Its intention was that of any war, elimination of the enemy. The reason this war is difficult to recognize is because it was covered by the attractive patina of a concept called "Manifest Destiny." Manifest Destiny was a philosophy by which the white european invader imagined themselves as having a divine right to take possession of all land and its fruits.
The reason that the Concept of Manifest Destiny was so effective was because, as it steam rolled across the land, it dragged the masses with it. The hooks that dragged these masses were many and were forged by Christianity and the Christian imprimatur. Although the fuel that energized Manifest Destiny was economic, the inspiration was in its alignment with divine will. This quote from the essay "God and the Land" illustrates this alignment:
"Although many natural historians and most natural theologians saw a specific signs of God in nature, few of them, however, would interpret the evidences of divine design as specifically as did John Archdale in his 1707 "Description of Carolina" in which he wrote, "And courteous Readers, I shall give you some farther Eminent Remark hereupon, and especially in the first Settlement of Carolina, where the Hand of God was eminently seen in thinning the Indians, to make room for the English....it at other times pleased Almighty God to send unusual Sicknesses amongst them, as the Smallpox, etc., to lessen their Numbers..."
The reservation school movement was "invented" by the descendants of those who rode the Manifest Destiny band wagon. Educating Indians was the refinement of the times, a continuation of the process, its effort was to confine Indians to sedentary life and open more land for use by whites. The "reformers" of the 1890's were just another group of torchbearers...doing their part in this ongoing process of cultural genocide and providing additional strands to strengthen the rope that forms the noose of genocide around the neck of Native people.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Justification and Rationalization
To the white pioneer and his government, education of Indians was a convenient, and at the time, attractive adjunct to the efforts to "settle" this land. To these white Christian people and the ersatz Indian educators, to "kill the Indian, save the man" was an appealing as well as justified idea.
In any encounter with mainstream historical accounts, it is obvious that Native People were very little more than a "problem" to be solved by the colonizers. To white society, they were heathens and behaved like savages. They had no written language, their children were unschooled, and for the most part they didn't know how to stay in one place, many moved their villages according to the seasons. If these people, these Natives, were ever going to amount to anything in this United States of America, they had to be taught the proper and acceptable way to live. All aspects of Native culture or way of life were unacceptable to the white european mind.
As this country's use of land increased and as "civilization" moved west, the Indians remained a problem. The developing white society felt that it was obvious, to anyone with eyes to see, that these people with such a primitive lifestyle needed to become civilized in order to survive in American society. Additionally, in order for this American society to have the land to expand, the Indians had to be moved out of the way.
The european settlers, mostly Christians, were convinced that "Christian" civilization was for this land and it inhabitants, the ideal, the goal to be achieved. And it was their belief that it was in keeping with Divine intent that society move forward toward ever more desirable stages of cultural development.
In comparison to white christian culture, Indians lived a savage, subsistence way of life. The Tribal organization and the adherence to "paganism" were a reflection of a lesser, a lower form of society. Many reformers believed that Indians were in fact not intellectually inferior but lived and organized their lives in an inferior manner. Because of this way of thinking, it was deemed that indeed Indians were worth "saving."
Contact between whites and Indians became more prevalent as the century wore on and it became clear to the white settlers that something would have to be done so that Indians might become productive members of this new American society.
Government Indian Policy was coming increasingly under fire from Congress as well as many well meaning voices from the Christian pulpits. The "Indian Rights Association" group with its roots in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, sought to reform the government's relationship with the Indian Nations. Philadelphia provided the venue for another group, the "Women's National Indian Association," while in Massachusetts the "Boston Indian Citizenship Association was formed.
These so called "reform" or "support" organizations recognized that Indians had been handed only lies, trickery, disappointment, and in some cases, death in exchange for the land that was taken from them. It is obvious, at least to me, that these people thought of themselves as obligated to "do" something to remedy a situation that was going from bad to worse. The organizations vowed to make amends by seeing to it that Indians would receive the education that would ultimately make them productive members of American society. I find it difficult to understand why the concept of respect for Native people never seemed to develop itself in these philanthropic reformers. Absolute assimilation of was the goal of white society and nothing short of the complete elimination of Native culture would satisfy them. So clouded by their sense of their own superiority these "civilized whites" were unable to see the value of another culture.
"Indians must be taught the knowledge, values, mores and habits of Christian civilization...Since the days of the common school movement, the schoolhouse had come to achieve almost mythological status. Reformers viewed it as a seedbed of republican virtues and democratic freedoms, a promulgator of individual opportunity and national prosperity, and an instrument for social progress and harmony. Moreover, because of the common schools alleged ability to assimilate, it was looked upon as an ideal instrument for absorbing those peoples and ideologies that stood in the path of the republic's millennial destiny." (Adams, p.18)
Many whites saw the "social evolution" of the Indian as a progressive process that could be accelerated by education. Education also promised to relieve the government of the cost of feeding and clothing Native people by encouraging and providing the tools for economic self-sufficiency. Waging war on Indians and protecting frontier communities was also costly and it was thought that in this area too, education could save money. Then again there was the question of land:
" A wild Indian requires a thousand acres to roam over, while an intelligent man will find a comfortable support for his family on a very small tract...Barbarism is costly, wasteful and extravagant. Intelligence promotes thrift and increases prosperity." (Adams, p.20)
up
Day Schools vs. Boarding Schools
The reservation day school was the first part of this venture into Indian education. The children lived in the village with their families and attended school nearby during the day.
"In 1870, Congress authorized an annual appropriation of $100,000 "for the support of industrial and other schools among tribes otherwise not provided for,..." The facilities involved were run by various churches and missionary societies which, in 1869, had been provided with overall authority to act in behalf of the government, appointing all Indian agents and hiring all personnel employed on the reservations. Attendance at these mission schools was made mandatory by regulation on many reservations for all native children aged six through sixteen." (Jaimes p.380)
Speaking any language other than English was strictly prohibited, as was any attempt to adhere to any Native spiritual practice. The force that lay behind these prohibitions, is readily seen upon reading this statement from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs E.A. Hayt:
"I [have] expressed very decidedly the idea the Indians should be taught in the English language only...There is not an Indian pupil whose tuition is paid by the Untied States Government who is permitted to study any other language that our own vernacular - the language of the greatest, most powerful, and enterprising nationalities under the sun. The English language as taught in America is good enough for all her people of all races [emphasis added]" (Jaimes, p.380)
In a relatively short time it was decided that as a tool for assimilation these day schools were not and would never be successful. The children were too close to their homes, families and cultures to be fully and successfully indoctrinated with white society's language and values.
The next step was to establish reservation boarding schools that were located near the agency headquarters. Children attending these schools were only permitted to go home during the summer months and perhaps for a short period at Christmas time. Even with the children removed from the daily influence of home and family, the assimilation process was not proceeding at an acceptable pace as far as the government was concerned. One of the reasons was, it was found that parents often came to visit their children, thus allowing the children the opportunity to speak their language and stay in contact with their tribal ways. This was distinctly counter-productive in the eyes of the assimilationists
The third and final plan to be adopted was the off-reservation boarding school. This was finally to be the way to rid Native children of their language and culture. The children were sent, in many cases, hundreds of miles away from family, language and Native ways. What started as an experiment with Indian prisoners, soon became the model upon which this latest educational effort was patterned. In St. Augustine, Florida, with volunteer teachers, Lt. Richard Henry Pratt, the officer in charge of a group of Indian prisoners at Fort Marion, began to teach the Native prisoners the white man's language. With the teaching of the language came heavy doses of Christianity.
Separation of church and state seemingly did not apply when it came to Christianizing Indians. In the 1890's the US government in the name of the Indian Office stipulated that students in government schools were to be encouraged to attend churches and Sunday schools. The reformers, the government and society in general, knew Christianity was essential for the development of the "good" Indian. It mattered little at the time that the governmental mind and the Christian mind were in fact one. Church and state shamelessly walked hand in hand.
" Christian proselytizing suffused the educational effort during these decades. Missionaries, of course, attempted to indoctrinate denominational creeds into young Indians. But even as the government edged the mission societies to the margin, its teachers also sought to imbue pupils with some form of Christianity. For most secular as well as missionary educators, "civilization" was inconceivable unless grounded in Christian - especially Protestant - values." (Coleman, p.115)
up
Carlisle Indian School and Richard Henry Pratt
Pratt arrived in 1875 in Florida with the prisoners and by the end of 1878 he was told that he was free to continue the education of the Indians being released from prison. After spending one year at the Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute, Pratt was permitted to take his students to an unused military barracks in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Thus was the beginning of one of the most significant of the residential Indian schools.
Carlisle and Hampton were the beginning of the system of schooling for Indian children that would prevail into the next century. At one point Pratt was told that an Army officer's place was with his regiment. Pratt answered angrily and with passion with a letter sent to President Hayes:
"Here a Lieutenant struggles to evolve order out of the chaos of fourteen different languages! Civilization out of savagery! Industry and thrift out of laziness! Education out of ignorance! Cleanliness out of filth! And is forced to educate the courage of his own instructors to the work, and see that all the interests of his Govt. and the Indian as well are properly served." (Adams, p.55)
In the opinion of the government and the white Christian reformers, the reservation schools were not only good for the Indian, but they were good for the surrounding community. The schools provided employment for local residents, and regularly purchased supplies from local merchants. The students themselves were a welcome source of cheap labor for the owners of the surrounding farms. At Carlisle, Pratt required students to live with "good white" families for at least part of every school year in order to see the benefits of having good moral character and living in the nuclear family structure as opposed to the tribal structure. This "outing" program, as Pratt called it, was to give the students "first hand" knowledge of civilization, and the beneficial influence of Christianity.
The policy makers proceeded towards their goal of assimilation in an orderly manner. The students, upon their arrival, were required to have their hair cut short, an act that produced much resentment among the new students. Tribal dress or clothing was not permitted as school uniforms were provided and required to be worn. Their children's names were another connection to their home and family and so they too were changed and new "pronounceable" names were assigned to each. No effort was spared when it came to breaking the Native cultural ties.
The school, the new physical environment, was also used as a teaching tool. The wild and natural was pushed back and orderly, managed grounds were constructed. The land was tamed, controlled and conquered and mirrored the process outlined and established to deal with the students, all an expression of the power of the white man. The formality and order of the English garden was an elemental expression of civilization, and therefore another useful, illustrative educational tool. Never think for one minute that the Native children attending these schools were not at every turn reminded of their lesser status in comparison with white society.
There was great effort put into building character, instilling good morals and responsible citizenship, even though it would not be until 1924 that the Curtis Act declared that all Indian people to be citizens of the United States.
As I encounter information about how this period of government schools began and subsequently developed, I find myself wondering how the idea of assimilation never left a sour taste in the reformers collective mouths. The children in these schools were captive in much the same way that a prisoner is captive. Regimentation, structure, discipline and uniform clothing were characteristic of the reservation school system, and all established to produce the glorified end of making one culture disappear into the underbelly of another. The fact that any of these children succeeded in remaining connected to their tribal ways after their experience in the government school system is remarkable. They seemed resilient in the face of oppressive disrespect.
On February 1887, the General Allotment Act, or the Dawes Act became law. By way of offering context and some definition, I offer this short excerpt from Ward Churchill:
"By 1890, fewer than 250,000 Indians remained alive within the United States, a degree of decimation extending into the upper 90th percentile. The survivors were lodged on a patchwork of "reservations" even then being dismantled by the application of what was called the "General Allotment Act." Under provision of this statute, effected in 1887, a formal eugenics code was utilized to define who was (and who was not) "Indian" by U.S. "standards." Those who could and, were willing to, prove to federal satisfaction that they were "of one-half or more degree of Indian blood" and to accept U.S. citizen in the bargain, received a deed to an individual land parcel, typically of 160 acres or less. Once each person with sufficient "blood quantum" had received his or her allotment of land, the remaining reservation land was declared "surplus" and opened up to non-Indian homesteading, corporate acquisition, or conversion into national parks and forests. Through this mechanism, the best 100 million acres of the reserved native land was stripped away by 1930." (Churchill, p.31)
Two years later, the Indian Office directed that all schools use the anniversary of the passing of the Dawes Act as an opportunity to impress on the students the opportunity given to them by this legislation. A new school "holiday" was therefore created, called "Indian Citizenship Day." The Native students were treated as though they were new immigrants in their ancestral land.
I am going to quote some lengthy excerpts from Adams' book "Education for Extinction," because I think one can get a better sense of the pressure of the assimilationist intent from reading the original wording. The excerpts are from a stage production written by Helen Ludlow and performed at Hampton in 1892. The name of the piece is "Columbia's Roll Call." All of the "players" are, of course, Indian students. How much more "instructional" it is to be able to participate in a stage production than to merely view it. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for some of the students, and how rewarding and edifying for their teachers. It seems to me that it takes a certain kind of twist in a mind to create something such as this, and force Native students to be a part of it.
The pageant's structure revolves around the mythic American goddess Columbia, who summons forth, one by one, familiar historical figures upon whom she bestows a badge of citizenship.
"The first figure to step forth is none other than Columbus...he describes the moment when land is sighted.
Then boomed the Pinta's signal gun!
The first that ever broke
The sleep of that new world - the sound
Echoing forest depths profound,
A continent awoke!
Captain John Smith comes forward then Miles Standish and Pricilla Alden, next is John Eliot the puritan missionary, followed by George Washington. As these historical heroes, all of them white, make an appearance, each is given the badge of citizenship.
The next to speak is an "Indian" character who pleads:
You have taken our river and fountains
And the plains where we loved to roam, -
Banish us no to the mountains
And the lonely wastes for home!
Our clans that were strongest and bravest
Are broken and powerless through you;
Let us join the great tribe of the white men,
As brothers to dare and to do!
Indians were now willing to join the white man's march of progress.
And the still ways of peace we would follow -
Sow the seed and the sheaves gather in,
Share your labor, your learning, your worship,
A life larger, better, to win.
Then, foeman no longer nor aliens,
But brothers indeed we will be,
And the sun find no citizens truer
As he rolls to the uttermost sea.
Columbia replies by challenging the Indians to name individuals of their race equal to those white heroes "that have made me great and established my throne in the New World."...One by one they come forth. There is Samoset, whose lines are, "I said to my paleface brother, welcome Englishmen." There is the chieftain who says to Washington, "We welcome you to our country." And an Indian convert recites a Bible verse in Algonquian.
In the end Columbia is convinced. She gazes upon a group of Indians dressed a farmers, teachers, and mechanics. Their plea for a place of honor and citizenship seems too reasonable to deny, and she says to her Indian wards: "You have gained your cause. Your past, your present, and your purposes for the future prove your right to share all I have to give. Take my banner, and your place as my citizens." (Adams, pp.196-9)
What arrogance and gall it took to write those words and demand that they be spoken by Native tongues. How like salt ground into the wounds already inflicted on the Native people. The idea that children were coerced to speak these words that reversed the truth is hard to imagine. Indian people were being told that they in effect had a right to "share" in what had belonged to their ancestors. The divinely driven concept of Manifest Destiny could be couched in no more descriptive words than those of Helen Ludlow.
Many Indian parents resisted sending their children to the reservation schools, and opposition was widespread. Indians agents had strong powers of persuasion in this regard. Sometimes rations were withheld from uncooperative families, and in cases where there was continued resistance, police were sent to take the children by force. The "fanaticism" of the Ghost Dance was blamed for some of the opposition to sending Native children to the boarding schools. Some students, after arriving at the school became so ill that they had to be sent home and some students displayed their resistance by running away. The children who remained frequently practiced their culture and spoke their language in secret and in fear. In any case the schools had difficulty both in gaining the student's cooperation and attracting the support of the parents. For those students who did not resist, it was a matter of practicality; many were convinced that their choice was between assimilation and extinction. Past associations with whites had taught Indians that they were never again to be permitted to live on their own terms. The buffalo were all but gone and the freedom to travel as their ancestors had, was gone.
Graduation ceremonies at the schools gave further opportunity to reiterate the white agenda.
"Two themes permeated commencement rhetoric. The first was transformation; Indians arrived in a state of savagism, but now returned thoroughly civilized. This had been the school's quintessential mission. "the Indian is DEAD in you," the Reverend A. J. Lippincott proclaimed at one Carlisle commencement. "Let all that is Indian within you die!...You cannot become truly American citizens, industrious, intelligent, cultured, civilized until the INDIAN within you is DEAD." (Adams, p.274)
The reformers who had so strongly supported the idea of education as a tool for assimilation began to see that the desired end was not forthcoming. Some students returned to their homes and to their tribal ways and others although not returning completely to their old ways, became in a sense "bicultural". Those who so strongly supported Indian education viewed neither of these situations as a success.
up
The System Begins to Fail
As support for reservation schools began to wither, voices of opposition began to rise. The schools were criticized as tools for making Indians dependent rather than self-reliant. Schools were criticized as cruel for separating the children from their families. The structure and political support for the philosophies and activities of the reservation boarding schools was fast eroding by the early 20th century. The writings of Zitkala-Sa and others were encouraging the development of new educational theory. One of the voices of the child study movement, G. Stanley Hall..."urged teachers to build on an Indian child's natural capacities and background rather than obliterate them. Hall asked, " Why not make him a good Indian rather than a cheap imitation of the white man?""
Regardless of this seeming reasonable movement away from the overt assimilationists, these new philosophies were not remarkable for their respect for Native culture. Quite the opposite, these new thinkers were never willing to acknowledge the equality of Native Culture. So, even if the rhetoric had changed, the intent remained the same.
In 1928, a report entitled "The Problem of the Indian Administration", otherwise known as the Meriam Report, was produced at the direction of the Indian Commission. The Meriam report was highly critical of government Indian policy with regard to education. The poor quality of personnel, inadequate salaries, unqualified teachers and almost non-existent health care were some of the criticisms leveled by the report.
The assimilationists had failed, Indian culture had survived. The misguided efforts of the reformers had profound negative effects on the Native children. For a People that had endured almost 400 years of oppression, the reservation school system was just another of the deplorable anti-Indian actions of white America and its government.
"For tribal elders who had witnessed the catastrophic developments of the nineteenth century - the bloody warfare, the near extinction of the bison, the scourge of disease and starvation, the shrinking of the tribal base, the indignities of reservation life, the invasion of missionaries and white settlers - there seemed to be no end to the cruelties perpetrated by whites. And after all this, the schools. After all this, the white man had concluded that the only way to save Indians was to destroy them, that the last great Indian war should be waged against children. They were coming for the children." (Adams, p.337)
Adams is correct; the war at the turn of the last century was waged against the children. But, fortunately for this country, the children had not listened to those who told them to "let the Indian within you die." One would think that would be enough to open the ears and eyes and the mind of white America - that war against children, but sadly it is not. America still has her "Indian problem." Native people are still told to "get over" the past. America remembers what it did to its Black slaves and is sorry. America remembers what happened to the Jews in Europe and says "never again." America refuses to remember what it has done to Native people, it wants to forget the lies and the slaughter.
Think, America. Remember what happened. And meanwhile...
The war continues; the genocide has not stopped.
Shame...
Endnotes:
David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction - American Indians and the Boarding School Experience 1875-1928, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, 1995.
Ward Churchill, Since Predator Came - Notes from the Struggle for American Indian Liberation,Aigis Publications, Littleton, Colorado,1995.
Michael Coleman, American Indian Children at School, 1850-1930, University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, Mississippi,1993.
M. Annette Jaimes, ed.,The State of Native America - Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance,South End Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1992.
AND..
Statement by the Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
Included in the remarks of Kevin Gover, Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Department of the Interior at the ceremony Acknowledging the 175th Anniversary of the Establishment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs September 8, 2000, were the following comments:
This agency forbade the speaking of Indian languages, prohibited the conduct of traditional religious activities, outlawed traditional government, and made Indian people ashamed of who they were. Worst of all, the Bureau of Indian Affairs committed these acts against the children entrusted to its boarding schools, brutalizing them emotionally, psychologically, physically, and spiritually. Even in this era of self -determination, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs is at long last serving as an advocate for Indian people in an atmosphere of mutual respect, the legacy of these misdeeds haunts us. The trauma of shame, fear and anger has passed from one generation to the next, and manifests itself in the rampant alcoholism, drug abuse, and domestic violence that plague Indian country. Many of our people live lives of unrelenting tragedy as Indian families suffer the ruin of lives by alcoholism, suicides made of shame and despair, and violent death at the hands of one another. So many of the maladies suffered today in Indian country result from the failures of this agency. Poverty, ignorance, and disease have been the product of this agency's work.
And so today I stand before you as the leader of an institution that in the past has committed acts so terrible that they infect, diminish, and destroy the lives of Indian people decades later, generations later. These things occurred despite the efforts of many good people with good hearts who sought to prevent them. These wrongs must be acknowledged if the healing is to begin.
The entire text of the remarks made by Gover is available here
Links to Related Sites:
The Seattle Times, February 3, 2008 - "Tribes confront Indian boarding school's painful legacy."
More than 70 years ago, Native American children suffered abuse and loneliness at Indian boarding schools. Now, tribes and others in Washington and nationwide are reaching out to elders, their children and their children's children in hopes of repairing the damage. (text of article can be found here)
The New York Times, January 31, 2008 - "Australia to Apologize to Aborigines."
The new Australian government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will apologize for past mistreatment of the country¹s Aboriginal minority when Parliament convenes next month, addressing an issue that has blighted race relations in Australia for years. (text of article can be found here)
Indian Country Today, April 21, 2004 -- Boarding school abuse didn't break Lakota aerospace engineer - The story of Seymour Young Dog (text version of article)
Canada - Hidden from History - Voices of the Candian Holocaust
Listen to online mp3 audio files of the voices of residential school survivors and their accounts of murder, electro-shock experiments, involuntary sterizations and other atrocities.
Canada - Native man leads class-action quest for residential school compensation
December 8, 2002 - " Charlie Baxter was nine years old when a bush plane landed near his family's remote trap line to take him off to a native residential school. It was 1959..."
From the Minnesota Historical Society site - Indian Grammar, Primary and Day Schools: The Purposes of Government Explained.
"...They should be made familiar with the lives of great and good men and women in American history, and be taught to feel a pride in all their great achievements. They should hear little or nothing of the 'wrongs of the Indians,' and of the injustice of the white race. If their unhappy race is alluded to, it should be to contrast it with the better future that is within their grasp." - Thomas J. Morgan, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, ca. 1885.
NAMING THE INDIANS - BY FRANK TERRY, SUPERINTENDENT OF U. S. BOARDING SCHOOL FOR CROW INDIANS, MONTANA.
"...The Indian Department has continually urged this matter upon its agents, superintendents, and other workers "in the field." The command to give names to the Indians and to establish the same as far as possible by continuous use has been a part of the "Rules and Regulations" for years past..."
An excerpt from the Winter 2000 issue - An Article concerning the reservation schools in Canada.
Native Americas Journal: EDUCATION-THE NIGHTMARE AND THE DREAM A SHARED NATIONAL TRAGEDY, A SHARED NATIONAL DISGRACE BY BRUCE E. JOHANSEN.
"Even after decades, the memories of Native people who were forced to attend Canadian boarding schools have a searing quality. "It was like jail," Warner Scout, age 54, told the Calgary Herald."
Central Michigan University Site - the Clarke Historical Library This discussion of federal education policy toward Native Americans and the experiences of Indians who attended off-reservation boarding schools includes the following components: Federal Education Policy & Off-Reservation Schools 1870-1933
Assimilation Through Education:Indian Boarding Schools in the Pacific Northwest - University of Washington web site with photographs.
Duke University, Native American Education: Documents from the 19th Century.
LISTENING TO NATIVE AMERICANS: Making Peace With the Past for the Future
The Colonization Process - We Must Do The Necessary Thinking For Them, by Jordan S. Dill.
The Only Good Indian is a Dead Indian - The History and Meaning of a Proverbial Stereotype.
American Indian Stereotypes: 500 years of Hate Crimes, by Stephen Baggs.
Dead Indians, Live Indians and Genocide
An article "The Indian Question Past and Present" by Herbert Welsh, secretary of the Indian Rights Association, which was published in the October 1890 issue of The New England Magazinep.257 is available online at Cornell University's Making of America Journals Collection.
An Indian Boarding School Photo Gallery
This Hampton site: Provides a roster of students (1878-1892), arranged by Tribe. The student rosters presented on these pages were found in the U. S. Senate Executive Document No. 31, 52nd Congress, 1st Session, entitled Letter from the Secretary of the Interior in response to Senate resolution of February 28, 1891, forwarding report made by the Hampton Institute regarding its returned Indian students. This document was ordered printed February 9, 1892.
The Sherman Names Project Student Archives: A searchable index of names of the many students attending Sherman Indian Boarding School from 1890 to 1939.
Fort Lewis Indian School
Carlisle Indian School
Sherman Indian School
http://www.twofrog.com/rezsch.html
----------------
post/post
AUSTRALIA
Aboriginal Curriculum Integration Project
Socials
The Apology to the Stolen Generations of Australia:
Relating to Canada's Aboriginal Experience
Teacher Note: Depending on the length of class time available, this lesson may take 2-3 sessions to complete.
Learning Outcomes
Students will:
•demonstrate knowledge of the challenges faced by Aboriginal people in Canada during the 20th century and their responses, with reference to residential schools.
Steps to the Unit
1.Watch a movie discussing Australia's Stolen Generation and the removal of Aboriginal children from their homes by government authorities. Students complete a Four Quad organizer while viewing video.
2.Complete a Jigsaw Instructional Activity on three articles discussing how Canadian government policy and legislation have impacted Canadian Aboriginal populations.
3.Discuss key vocabulary.
4.Compare and contrast the experiences of Canada's and Australia's Aboriginal populations in response to government policy and action.
5.Reflect on new understanding.
CONNECT
Goals:
•Students will understand the impact Australian government policy had on Australia's Aboriginal populations; leading to the Stolen Generation.
•Students will understand the impact Canadian government policy had on Canada's Aboriginal populations; specifically, the residential school system.
•Students will compare and contrast the Canadian Aboriginal residential school experience and the Australian Aboriginal Stolen Generation experience.
Task:
Students will create a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting the Canadian Aboriginal residential school experience and the Australian Aboriginal Stolen Generation experience.
Activate Prior Knowledge:
Canada's Aboriginal populations have faced many challenges as a result of federal government policies and legislation that govern Aboriginal life in Canada. In fact, there are many other Aboriginal and indigenous populations throughout the world that have also faced challenges as a result of immigration into their traditional territories. One example is the Aboriginal population of Australia and what has become know as the Stolen Generation.
•"The Stolen Generations (also Stolen Generation and Stolen children) is a term used to describe those children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian and State government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments. The removals occurred in the period between approximately 1869 and 1969, although, in some places, children were still being taken in the 1970s." (www.wikipedia.org)
The experience of the Stolen Generation is one very similar to that of Canadian Aboriginals and the residential school system.
To increase student understanding of Australia's Stolen Generation, students watch the movie Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002, Alliance Atlantis: 90 mins) and complete a Four Quad Organizer while viewing the video. Students should record any new vocabulary words, important events from the movie, important images and pictures, and any emotions or reflections they have while viewing the movie.
Reminder: It is important to stop throughout the video and give students (A/B partners) opportunity to talk or respond to the video.
(Note: Rabbit-Proof Fence may be available at your School District Resource Center. If not, it should be available at most video rental stores.)
Once students have finished watching and discussing Rabbit-Proof Fence, teachers print out and distribute a What's Important and Why fact sheet and information from the European Network for Indigenous Australian Rights website. In A/B partners, students read the information and record the important facts under each heading; discussing the reasons why the facts were important. Facts under the heading What is Being Done should be recorded on the back of the What's Important and Why sheet.
Predict and Question:
Once the students have finished viewing and discussing Rabbit-Proof Fence, students now think about the residential school experience for Aboriginals in Canada and consider the following questions:
What do the students already know about the residential school experience in Canada?
Is the Australian Aboriginal experience similar to Canada's Aboriginal experience?
What are the students wondering about residential schools?
PROCESS
To increase student understanding of policies and legislation affecting Canadian Aboriginal populations, teachers print off the following three articles:
•The Indian Act
•Banning Traditional Practices
•Residential Schools
(Reed, K., & Quinlan, D. (1999). Aboriginal Peoples: Building for the Future (p. 44-49). Toronto: Oxford University Press Canada.)
Students break into groups of three and teachers distribute the articles using a Jigsaw format. For more information on conducting a Jigsaw learning activity, please visit the following link on the Jigsaw Instructional Strategy.
(Note: Depending on the size of class, expert groups should be no larger than 4-5 students.)
TRANSFORM
Students now take the information learned in the previous sections and create a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting the Canadian Aboriginal residential school experience and the Australian Aboriginal Stolen Generation experience. Students may work in A/B partners or work individually. The Venn Diagrams may be created either on large poster paper or using a graphics program on a computer. Once completed students/student partner groups present their findings to the class.
REFLECT
On the back of their graphic organizers, students write at least two new ideas or questions they have regarding the Aboriginal experience in Canada and Australia. How has their thinking changed?
Extend Learning or Next Lesson
Students view footage of the Australian Prime Minister's Apology to the Stolen Generations. Students complete a What's Important and Why organizer while viewing/listening to the apology and consider the following questions:
•Why did the Prime Minister make a national apology in Parliament?
•What were the main reasons that led to this apology?
•What promises did the Prime Minister make to help alleviate the problems Australian Aboriginals face?
•Should Canada's Prime Minister make a similar apology in Canada's House of Commons?
Other suggestions to extend student learning include:
•Researching more about Austrialia's Stolen Generation
•Researching more about Canada's Aboriginal populations and the residential school experience.
•Viewing the Canadian produced movie Where the Spirit Lives (1991, Cineglobe)
http://abed.sd79.bc.ca/acip/grade11/socials11_lessons/canada_australia_aboriginals11.html
--------
AUSTRALIA- SOUND FAMILITAR CANADA
The ideology underlying the assimilation era had been
that if Aboriginal Australians could adopt the values and
behaviours of White Australians, they would be accepted
into the majority society. Education was seen as the
vehicle for assimilation.Tatz explained,
The fundamental assumption is that the Australian
state educational systems and their values should
be taught to Aborigines: one must teach the
Aborigine how to become a white Australian, then
teach him a trade, and then expect achievement in
the white Australian sense of the term (1969, p. 6)
Introduction
It would be safe to say that, over the past 30 years in
Indigenous education, despite substantial improvements
in some areas,much remains to be done. In this paper,we
will compare the challenges and the perceived solutions
within the field of Indigenous education in the late 1960s
as compared with those in the early years of the twentyfirst
century.We will observe some of the lessons we
have learned and some we still need to know, the
achievements we have made and the many that have
eluded us.We will demonstrate how the aspirations of
Indigenous families regarding their children’s education
remain largely unmet. Despite substantial advances in
education policy and numbers of programs dedicated to
increasing Indigenous participation in schools, the
statistics on school retention and attainment, numbers of
practicing Indigenous teachers and university graduates
remain far below those for the rest of the population.
Similarly, there remains a huge disparity between
Indigenous and non-Indigenous people’s life expectancy,
health, rates of employment and imprisonment. Both the
literature and experience tell us that this social context
creates a serious barrier to Indigenous children’s school
success.We will examine how the various aspects of this
social context have been found to impact on education
and how education, in turn, can influence that context.We
argue that greater collaboration between the different
sectors of social service providers is required in order to
both dismantle these social barriers to learning for
Indigenous children and their families and provide access
to an education that is meaningful and empowering.
In order to ascertain how far Indigenous education
has come, we will provide a snapshot of the issues of
most currency in the late 1960s by referring to the
proceedings of two national seminars (Dunn & Tatz,
1969; Roper, 1969). These seminars brought together a
broad range of practitioners, educators, historians,
writers, social scientists, psychologists and citizens who
were involved in what was then called "Aboriginal
Affairs" to discuss ways to improve the education
prospects of Indigenous Australians. In this paper, we
juxtapose these issues with contemporary issues in the
early 2000s. We conclude with the example of two
contemporary educational programs with which we are
familiar, which have been developed as alternatives to
the mainstream programs. These emerging programs
highlight a process of community development and
ndigenous education, despite substantial improvements
in some areas,much remains to be done. In this paper,we
will compare the challenges and the perceived solutions
within the field of Indigenous education in the late 1960s
as compared with those in the early years of the twentyfirst
century.We will observe some of the lessons we
have learned and some we still need to know, the
achievements we have made and the many that have
eluded us.We will demonstrate how the aspirations of
Indigenous families regarding their children’s education
remain largely unmet. Despite substantial advances in
education policy and numbers of programs dedicated to
increasing Indigenous participation in schools, the
statistics on school retention and attainment, numbers of
practicing Indigenous teachers and university graduates
remain far below those for the rest of the population.
Similarly, there remains a huge disparity between
Indigenous and non-Indigenous people’s life expectancy,
health, rates of employment and imprisonment. Both the
literature and experience tell us that this social context
creates a serious barrier to Indigenous children’s school
success.We will examine how the various aspects of this
social context have been found to impact on education
and how education, in turn, can influence that context.We
argue that greater collaboration between the different
sectors of social service providers is required in order to
both dismantle these social barriers to learning for
Indigenous children and their families and provide access
to an education that is meaningful and empowering.
In order to ascertain how far Indigenous education
has come, we will provide a snapshot of the issues of
most currency in the late 1960s by referring to the
proceedings of two national seminars (Dunn & Tatz,
1969; Roper, 1969). These seminars brought together a
broad range of practitioners, educators, historians,
writers, social scientists, psychologists and citizens who
were involved in what was then called "Aboriginal
Affairs" to discuss ways to improve the education
prospects of Indigenous Australians. In this paper, we
juxtapose these issues with contemporary issues in the
early 2000s. We conclude with the example of two
contemporary educational programs with which we are
familiar, which have been developed as alternatives to
the mainstream programs. These emerging programs
highlight a process of community development and
capacity building directed at fulfilling Aboriginal family
or community aspirations through school, adult
education and work programs. Such family-based,
inter-generational and holistic programs require
synchronised, effective inter-agency and interdepartmental
collaboration in order to be successful.
Where We Have Come From
http://www.google.com/search?q=residential+schools+for+First+peoples+history+-australia#sclient=psy-ab&q=australia+new+zealand+aboriginal+schools&oq=australia+new+zealand+aboriginal+schools&gs_l=serp.12...250526.263841.0.264869.40.29.0.11.11.1.743.6711.0j15j12j1j6-1.29.0....0...1c.1.23.psy-ab..3.37.5536.u3XzSXnFljQ&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.50165853,d.aWc&fp=9f0837fc3d24d577&biw=919&bih=577
-----------
------------------
Reconciliation Australia
Home > Opinions > Reconciliation interviews > Language & Education
Language and Education
In 1988, a group of Indigenous people issued a statement to the Federal Government outlining national Aboriginal political objectives. It became known as the ‘Barunga Statement’ and included the following words:
"We, the Indigenous owners and occupiers of Australia, call on the Australian Government and people to recognise our rights… to respect and promote our Aboriginal identity, including the cultural, linguistic, religious and historical aspects, and including the right to be educated in our own languages and in our own culture and history."
Education for both non-Indigenous and Indigenous people about Indigenous history and culture is a key element of reconciliation. In New Zealand, elements of Maori culture and language have been mainstreamed into national identity and Maori language is taught in secondary schools. Schools can play a vital role in strengthening and supporting positive Indigenous identity, as former Cherbourg school principle Dr Chris Sarra says;
"It is in Australia’s interest I believe, to have young Aboriginal people with a very strong and very positive perception of what their Aboriginal identity means to them. Schools must play a part in getting Aboriginal children to reflect positively and accurately on their identity so that being Aboriginal is seen as something truly great. The reality is that if we do nothing, then the society we live in will somehow imply to them that they are somehow inferior… and the greatest tragedy is that many Indigenous young children will believe this."
View high profile and everyday Australians speaking about Indigenous language and education. Directed and Presented by Tim Gibbs.
EMBED VIDEO Video on page: http://www.reconcile.org.au/getsmart/pages/get-really-smart/language-and-education.php
For more information visit the following links:
Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre.
Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre was officially established in 1987 when Aboriginal people of the Pilbara came together to discuss how they could save Aboriginal languages of the region and educate others about Aboriginal languages and culture.
Aboriginal Languages of Australia.
A comprehensive list of resources and links to sites about Indigenous languages.
Aboriginal Australia Map.
View the language groups of Australia with this interactive map.
Yothu Yindi on the Web.
Listen to Youthu Yindi, an Indigenous band with famous lyrics in both English and Yolgnu matha.
The Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages.
The Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages was established in 1994 to address the issues of language loss and coordinates community language programs throughout Victoria. This page includes an audio file that talks about language and its connection to culture, stories and the land.
The New Zealand Ministry of Education – Maori Programmes.
New Zealand has a range of Maori education initiatives in both mainstream and specialised education.
Dare to Lead.
Australian Principals Associations Professional Development Council programme aimed at achieving educational equality for Indigenous Australians.
The Indigenous Education Leadership Institute.
The activities of the Institute are designed to improve Indigenous student outcomes throughout Australia.
http://www.reconciliation.org.au/home/opinions/reconciliation-interviews/language---education
-----------------
USA- RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS...
Native American boarding schools
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Indian school" redirects here. For other uses, see Indian school (disambiguation).
Pupils at Carlisle Native American school, Pennsylvania (c. 1900).
An Indian boarding school refers to one of many schools that were established in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to educate Native American children and youths according to Euro-American standards. They were first established by Christian missionaries of various denominations, who often started schools on reservations and founded boarding schools to provide opportunities for children who did not have schools nearby,[1] especially in the lightly populated areas of the West. The government paid religious societies to provide education to Native American children on reservations. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) founded additional boarding schools based on the assimilation model of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
Children were usually immersed in European-American culture through appearance changes with haircuts, were forbidden to speak their native languages, and traditional names were replaced by new European-American names. The experience of the schools was often harsh, especially for the younger children who were separated from their families. In numerous ways, they were encouraged or forced to abandon their Native American identities and cultures.[2] The number of Native American children in the boarding schools reached a peak in the 1970s, with an estimated enrollment of 60,000 in 1973. Especially through investigations of the later twentieth century, there have been many documented cases of sexual, physical and mental abuse occurring at such schools.[3] Since those years, tribal nations have increasingly insisted on community-based schools and have also founded numerous tribally controlled colleges. Community schools have also been supported by the federal government through the BIA and legislation. The largest boarding schools have closed. In some cases, reservations or tribes were too small or poor to support independent schools and still wanted an alternative for their children, especially for high school. By 2007, the number of Native American children in boarding schools had declined to 9,500.
Contents
[hide] 1 History of education of Native Americans
2 Non-reservation boarding schools
3 The Meriam Report of 1928
4 Assimilation efforts
5 Canada
6 List of Native American boarding schools
7 See also
8 References
9 External links
History of education of Native Americans[edit]
How different would be the sensation of a philosophic mind to reflect that instead of exterminating a part of the human race by our modes of population that we had persevered through all difficulties and at last had imparted our Knowledge of cultivating and the arts, to the Aboriginals of the Country by which the source of future life and happiness had been preserved and extended. But it has been conceived to be impracticable to civilize the Indians of North America — This opinion is probably more convenient than just.
—Henry Knox to George Washington, 1790s.[4]
In the late eighteenth century, reformers starting with Washington and Knox,[5] in efforts to "civilize" or otherwise assimilate Native Americans (as opposed to relegating them to reservations), adopted the practice of educating native children in current American culture, which was at the time largely based on rural agriculture, with some small towns and few large cities. The Civilization Fund Act of 1819 promoted this civilization policy by providing funding to societies (mostly religious) who worked on Native American education, often at schools established in Indian communities.
I rejoice, brothers, to hear you propose to become cultivators of the earth for the maintenance of your families. Be assured you will support them better and with less labor, by raising stock and bread, and by spinning and weaving clothes, than by hunting. A little land cultivated, and a little labor, will procure more provisions than the most successful hunt; and a woman will clothe more by spinning and weaving, than a man by hunting. Compared with you, we are but as of yesterday in this land. Yet see how much more we have multiplied by industry, and the exercise of that reason which you possess in common with us. Follow then our example, brethren, and we will aid you with great pleasure ...
—President Thomas Jefferson, Brothers of the Choctaw Nation, December 17, 1803[6]
Non-reservation boarding schools[edit]
Harvard College had an Indian College on its campus in the mid-1600s, supported by the English Society for Propagation of the Gospel. Its few Indian students came from New England, at a time when higher education was very limited for all classes and colleges were more similar to today's high schools. In 1665, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, "from the Wampanoag...did graduate from Harvard, the first Indian to do so in the colonial period".[7] In early years, other Indian schools were created by local communities, as with the Indian school in Hanover, New Hampshire in 1769, which gradually developed into Dartmouth College. Other schools were created in the East, where Indian reservations were less common than they became in the late nineteenth century in western states.
Chiricahua Apaches Four Months After Arriving at Carlisle. Undated photograph taken at Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
West of the Mississippi, schools near Indian settlements and on reservations were first founded by religious missionaries, who believed they could extend education and Christianity to Native Americans. Some of their efforts were part of the progressive movement after the Civil War. As Native Americans were forced onto reservations following the Indian Wars, missionaries founded additional schools with boarding facilities, to accommodate students who lived too far to attend on a daily basis.
The Carlisle Indian Industrial School, founded by the US Army officer Richard Henry Pratt in 1879 at a former military installation, became a model for others established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Pratt said in a speech in 1892, "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man."[8] Pratt professed "assimilation through total immersion."[8] He had arranged for education of some young Indian men at the Hampton Institute, a historically black college, after he had supervised them as prisoners at a fort in Florida.
At the prison, he made efforts to have the Indians taught English and United States culture, while giving them leeway to govern themselves. From seeing the progress of both his younger prisoners and the ones who attended Hampton, he came to believe that removing Indians from their native culture could result in their successful assimilation into the majority culture of the United States. As at the Hampton Institute, he included in the Carlisle curriculum vocational training for boys and domestic science for girls, including chores around the school and producing goods for market. They also produced a newspaper, had a well-regarded chorus and orchestra, and developed sports programs. The vocational training reflected the administration's understanding of skills needed at most reservations, which were located in rural areas, and reflected a society still based on agriculture. In the summer, students often lived with local farm families and townspeople to continue their immersion in European-American culture, and provide labor at low cost to the families. Carlisle and its curriculum became the model for the Bureau of Indian Affairs; by 1902 there were 25 federally funded non-reservation schools in 15 states and territories, with a total enrollment of over 6,000 students. Federal legislation required Native American children to be educated. Parents had to authorize their children's attendance at boarding schools, but sometimes officials used coercion to gain a quota of students from any given reservation.[citation needed]
As the model of boarding schools was adopted more widely by the US government, many Native American children were separated from their families and tribes when they were sent or sometimes taken to boarding schools far from their home reservations. These schools ranged from those similar to the federal Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which became a model for BIA-run schools; to the many schools sponsored by religious denominations.
In that period, when students arrived at the boarding schools, their lives usually altered dramatically. They were given short haircuts (a source of shame for boys of many tribes), uniforms, and English names; sometimes these were based on their own, other times they were assigned at random, and sometimes children chose new names. They were not allowed to speak their own languages, even between each other, and they were expected to attend church services and encouraged to convert to Christianity. Discipline was stiff in many schools (as it was in families and other areas of society), and it often included chores and punishments.[citation needed]
The following is a quote from Anna Moore regarding the Phoenix Indian School:
"If we were not finished [scrubbing the dining room floors] when the 8 a.m. whistle sounded, the dining room matron would go around strapping us while we were still on our hands and knees."[9]
The 1928 Meriam Report noted that infectious disease was often widespread at the schools due to insufficient funding for meals providing good nutrition, overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions (an element shared by many towns in the early 20th century) and students weakened by overwork. The report said that death rates for Native American students were six and a half times higher than for other ethnic groups.[9]
The Meriam Report of 1928[edit]
In 1926, the Department of Interior (DOI) commissioned the Brookings Institution to conduct a survey of the overall conditions of the American Indians and to assess federal programs and policies. The Meriam Report, officially titled The Problem of Indian Administration, was submitted February 21, 1928 to the Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work. Related to education of Native American children, it recommended:
abolition of "The Uniform Course of Study", which taught only European-American cultural values;
education of younger children at community schools near home, while providing for older children to be able to attend non-reservation schools for higher grade work; and
provision by the Indian Service (now Bureau of Indian Affairs) to Native Americans of the education and skills to adapt both in their own communities and United States society.
Despite the Meriam Report, attendance in Indian boarding schools generally grew throughout the first half of the 20th century and doubled in the 1960s.[9] Enrollment reached its highest point in the 1970s. In 1973, 60,000 American Indian children are estimated to have been enrolled in an Indian boarding school.[9][10] The rise of pan-Indian activism, tribal nations' continuing complaints about the schools, and studies in the late 1960s and mid-1970s (such as the Kennedy Report and the National Study of American Indian Education) led to passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. This emphasized decentralization of students from boarding schools to community schools. As a result, many large Indian boarding schools closed in the 1980s and early 1990s. By 2007, 9,500 American Indian children were living in Indian boarding school dormitories.[8] This figure includes those in 45 on-reservation boarding schools, seven off-reservation boarding schools, and 14 peripheral dormitories.[8] From 1879 to the present day, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of American Indians as children attended Indian boarding schools.[11]
Today, a few off-reservation boarding schools still operate, but funding for them is in decline. Some American Indians found their experiences and education at such schools to be valuable and have wanted to retain the schools as alternatives to reservation-based education. Many others found their times at boarding schools to be repressive.
Assimilation efforts[edit]
Portraits of Native Americans from the Cherokee, Cheyenne, Choctaw, Comanche, Iroquois, and Muscogee tribes in European American attire. Some are of mixed race. Photos date from 1868 to 1924.
Native American boarding schools in the United States were seen as the means for the government to achieve assimilation of American Indians, which it believed was the best way for them to live in the changing society.
Canada[edit]
For more details on this topic, see Canadian Indian residential school system.
A similar system in Canada was known as the Canadian Indian residential school system.[10][11] On June 11, 2008, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a 3,600-word formal apology to First Nation, Métis and Inuit people for the legacy of Indian Residential Schools, which he called a "sad chapter in our history." The Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief John Beaucage said, "Our first thoughts today are for our elders, many of them have suffered life-long physical and emotional pain because of their residential school experiences."
Similarly, the Anglican Church of Canada, which ran many of the boarding schools and was sued for abuses, has issued an official apology in addition to paying court-ordered settlements. It has further adopted a policy of a "living apology" and has been working to support First Nations and other indigenous peoples within their own cultures.
List of Native American boarding schools[edit]
Albuquerque Indian School, Albuquerque, New Mexico[12]
Bacone College, Muscogee, Oklahoma,[12] 1881–present
Bloomfield Seminary, Hendrix/Ardmore, Oklahoma
Bond's Mission School or Montana Industrial School for Indians, run by Unitarians, Crow Indian Reservation near Custer Station, Montana 1886-1897 [13]
Carlisle Indian School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania,[14] open 1879-1918[15]
Chamberlain Indian School, Chamberlain, South Dakota[14]
Chemawa Indian School, Salem, Oregon[12]
Cheyenne-Arapaho Boarding School, Concho, Oklahoma[12]
Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, Chilocco, Oklahoma, open 1884-1980[16]
Chinle Boarding School, Many Farms, Arizona[14]
Dwight Mission, Marble City, Oklahoma[12]
El Meta Bond College, Minco, Oklahoma[12]
Euchee Boarding School, Sapulpa, Oklahoma[12]
Eufaula Indian School, Eufaula, Oklahoma[12]
Flandreau Indian School, South Dakota[14]
Fort Bidwell School, California[14]
Fort Shaw Indian School, Fort Shaw, Montana[14]
Genoa Indian Industrial School, Genoa, Nebraska
Greenville School, California[14]
Hampton Institute, began accepting Native students in 1878
Haskell Indian Industrial Training School, Lawrence, Kansas, 1884–present[15]
Hayward Indian School, Hayward, Wisconsin[14]
Holbrook Indian School, Holbrook, Arizona[14]
Ignacio Boarding School, Colorado[14]
Intermountain Indian School, Utah
Jones Male Academy, Hartshorne, Oklahoma[12]
Mekosukey Academy, Oklahoma[14]
Morris Industrial School for Indians, Morris, Minnesota,[17] open 1887—1909
Murray State School of Agriculture, Tishomingo, Oklahoma,[12] est. 1908
Nenannezed Boarding School, New Mexico[14]
Nuyaka School and Orphanage (Nuyaka Mission, Presbyterian), Okmulgee, Oklahoma,[12] 1884–1933
Oklahoma Presbyterian College for Girls, Durant, Oklahoma[12]
Oklahoma School for the Blind, Muskogee, Oklahoma[12]
Oklahoma School for the Deaf, Sulphur, Oklahoma[12]
Old Goodland Indian Orphanage, Hugo, Oklahoma[12]
Oneida Indian School, Wisconsin[14]
Osage Boarding School, Pawhuska, Oklahoma[14]
Pawnee Boarding School, Pawnee, Oklahoma,[14] opened 1878
Phoenix Indian School, Phoenix, Arizona[12]
Pierre Indian School, Pierre, South Dakota[14]
Pine Ridge Boarding School, Pine Ridge, South Dakota
Pinon Boarding School, Pinon, Arizona[14]
Pipestone Indian School, Pipestone, Minnesota[14]
Rapid City Indian School, Rapid City, South Dakota[14]
Red Moon School, Oklahoma[14]
Riverside Indian School, Anadarko, Oklahoma
St. Agnes Academy, Ardmore, Oklahoma[12]
St. Agnes Mission, Antlers, Oklahoma[12]
St. Boniface Indian School, Banning, California[18]
St. Elizabeth's Boarding School, Purcell, Oklahoma[12]
St. Josephs Boarding School, Chickasha, Oklahoma[12]
San Juan Boarding School, New Mexico[14]
Santa Fe Indian School, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Seger School, Oklahoma[14]
Sherman Indian High School, Riverside, California[15]
Shiprock Boarding School, Shiprock, New Mexico[14]
Seneca Indian School, Wyandotte, Oklahoma[12]
Sequoyah High School, Tahlequah, Oklahoma[12]
Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, Albuquerque, New Mexico[14]
Springfield Indian School, Springfield, South Dakota[14]
Stewart Indian School, Carson City, Nevada[14]
Tomah Indian School, Wisconsin[14]
Thomas Indian School, near Irvington, New York
Wahpeton Indian School, North Dakota[14]
Tuskahoma Female Academy, Muskogee, Oklahoma[12]
Wheelock Academy, Millerton, Oklahoma[12]
Wittenberg Indian School, Wittenberg, Wisconsin[14]
Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School, Mount Pleasant, Michigan[12] 1893-1934
See also[edit]
Native Americans in the United States
Canadian residential school system
Native schools in New Zealand
Our Spirits Don't Speak English, documentary on Native American boarding schools
Stolen Generations, children of Australian Aboriginal descent who were removed from their families by the Australian and state government agencies
References[edit]
Notes
1.^ "What Were Boarding Schools Like for Indian Youth?". authorsden.com. Retrieved February 8, 2006.
2.^ "Long-suffering urban Indians find roots in ancient rituals". California's Lost Tribes. Archived from the original on August 29, 2005. Retrieved February 8, 2006.
3.^ "Soul Wound: The Legacy of Native American Schools". Amnesty International USA. Retrieved February 8, 2006.
4.^ Eric Miller (1994). "Washington and the Northwest War, Part One". Retrieved 2010-08-11.
5.^ The Great Confusion in Indian Affairs: Native Americans and Whites in the Progressive Era, Tom Holm, http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exholgre.html
6.^ "To the Brothers of the Choctaw Nation". Yale Law School. 1803. Retrieved 2010-10-24.
7.^ Monaghan, E. J., Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America, University of Massachusetts Press. Boston: MA, 2005, p. 55, 59
8.^ a b c d Charla Bear, "American Indian Boarding Schools Haunt Many", Part 1, NPR, 12 May 2008, accessed 5 July 2011
9.^ a b c d Author unlisted (2001). Native American Issue: "The Challenges and Limitations of Assimilation", The Brown Quarterly 4(3), accessed 6 July 2011
10.^ a b Smith, Andrea. "Soul Wound: The Legacy of Native American Schools", Amnesty Magazine, from Amnesty International website, [1]
11.^ a b [2] Union of Ontario Indians press release: "Time will prove apology's sincerity", says Beaucage.
12.^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Carter, Kent, compiler. "Preliminary Inventory of the Office of the Five Civilized Tribes Agency Muscogee Area of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Record Group 75). Appendix VI: List of Schools (Entry 600 and 601)" RootsWeb. 1994 (retrieved 25 Feb 2010)
13.^ Margery Pease, A Worthy Work in a Needy Time: The Montana Industrial School for Indians (Bond's Mission ) 1886-1897, Self-published in 1986. Reprinted in Billings, Mont.: M. Pease, [1993]
14.^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac "Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs." National Archives. (retrieved 25 Feb 2010)
15.^ a b c "American Indian Boarding Schools." 15 Sept 2003 (retrieved 25 Feb 2010)
16.^ "Indian Boarding and Residential Schools Sites of Conscience Network." International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. (retrieved 25 Feb 2010)
17.^ City of Morris: Morris Human Rights Commission
18.^ Harley, Bruce (1994). Readings in Diocesan Heritage Volume VIII St. Boniface Indian School. San Bernardino, CA: Diocese of San Bernardino. pp. i–137.
Further reading
Child, Brenda J. (2000). Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, Lincoln: U of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-6405-2.
Meriam, Lewis et al., The Problem of Indian Administration, Brookings Institution, 1928 (full text online at Alaskool.org)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_boarding_schools
-----------------------------------------------------------
CANADA
WE WERE NOT THE SAVAGES-FIRST NATION HISTORY- nova scotia- canada- by dan paul
Shubenacadie Indian Residential School
PHOTO- Daniel Paul (Mi'Kmaq Nova Scotia)- We Were Not the Savages
TERRIFIED
TWENTIETH-CENTURY EDUCATION
FOR NATIVE AMERICANS
RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS
"I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill." Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott - 1920
Scott made his mark in Canadian history as the head of the Department of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932, a department he had served since joining the federal civil service in 1879.
Even before Confederation, the Canadian government adopted a policy of assimilation (actually, it was the continuation of a policy that British colonial officials had pursued since 1713). The long term goal was to bring the Native peoples from their ‘savage and unproductive state’ and force (English style) civilization upon them, thus making Canada a homogeneous society in the Anglo-Saxon and Christian tradition.
In 1920, under Scott's direction, it became mandatory for all native children between the ages of seven and fifteen to attend one of Canada's Residential Schools.
********************
Shubenacadie Indian Residential School
Quoted from We Were Not the Savages:
"In 1936 a fifteen-year-old girl from the nearby Shubenacadie Reserve refused to return to the school and gave the following statement to the agent and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police:
"I have been going to Indian school for the past five years.... Before my holidays this year I was employed in kitchen for eleven weeks.... In the eleven weeks ... I spent a total of two weeks in school. The Sister has beaten me many times over the head and pulled my hair and struck me on the back of neck with a ruler and at times grabbed ahold of me and beat me on the back with her fists.
I have also been ordered to stand on the outside of the windows with a rope around my waist to clean windows on the fourth floor with a little girl holding the rope. When I told the Sister I was afraid to go out the window she scolded me and made me clean the window and threatened to beat me if I did not do it. This is being done to other children.
After we get a beating we are asked what we got the beating for and if we tell them we do not know we get another beating. The Sisters always tell us not to tell our parents about getting a beating."
Although available on paper, education, a vital tool to provide First Nations citizens with the ability to appreciate and modernize their ancient cultures, was all but denied until recent times. This unwritten requirement of White society: "You may have an education, but only if you agree to assimilate and accept the eventual extinction of your culture." Plus, the racism encountered by students attending White schools made an education practically unattainable.
In spite of these impediments, through the efforts of private organizations and churches, by 1867 some First Nations Peoples were able to read and write. However, after Confederation, even in the knowledge that the vast majority of Natives were illiterate, the government made no real effort to provide education until the passage of the Indian Act in 1876. Then, it was made unattractive by the provision that automatically enfranchised a Band member who graduated from university. Assimilation was the motivating factor behind these laws.
To hurry assimilation along, during the first six decades of twentieth century, First Nations tongues came under attack across the country. In Nova Scotia, Mi'kmaq children were forbidden to speak their language at schools and discouraged to do so in many other public places. Administrators at the Shubenacadie residential school informed Mi'kmaq and Maliseet children upon enrolment that it was a cardinal offense to speak their own languages. If caught, retribution was swift.
The same rule was followed and strictly enforced by bureaucrats administering schools and other public institutions in First Nations communities across Canada. But nowhere was it pursued with the same dogged determination as on mainland Nova Scotia. This was not unusual, because from the time the British took over in 1713, the Mi'kmaq of peninsular Nova Scotia had always been singled out for special hatred.
Despite the determined effort made by White society to eradicate the Mi'kmaq language, it is still alive and healthy today throughout most of Cape Breton, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island; and surprisingly, almost half of the Mi'kmaq on mainland Nova Scotia can still converse in their mother tongue-another example of the Mi'kmaq's dauntless spirit.
In 1892, trying to come up with a way to educate Maliseet and Mi'kmaq children, the Department toyed with the idea of building a residential school farm in Nova Scotia. However, probably because education was not much of a priority in the Department's estimation, the decision to actually build such a school in Canada's Maritime Provinces was not made until 1927. It was opened off-Reserve in the village of Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, in 1930.
The teaching staff were recruited according to the section of the Indian Act that mandated that teachers be of the same faith as the children they were teaching. As most of the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet were Catholic, the teachers were Roman Catholic nuns and the principal a priest. The curriculum was the same as that prescribed by the Nova Scotia Department of Education for the provincial school system except for the courses in religion and in how to be ashamed of being an Indian. Children were taught about all the advantages of White life and all the evils of First Nations' isolation, language and culture.
Besides delivering second-rate education, these institutions were also used by Indian Affairs for many other purposes, enforcement, punishment and terrorism, to name a few. Because of their "wards of the Crown" status, no possibility for legal redress was available to Registered Indians victimized at these facilities. So, when reading the following material, please bear in mind that the fights waged by parents and other relatives in trying to access and protect their children incarcerated in the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School were taken on without access to the laws that protected White Canadians from being victimized by the heavy hand of the state. Thus, many suffered greatly.
I'll start this short overview of the Shubenacadie residential school by relating the less than fond experiences of distinguished former resident Elsie Basque, née Charles. Elsie was born in 1916, to Margaret Labrador and Joe Charles, at Hectanooga, Digby County, Nova Scotia. She has many fond memories of her early years, but they were not without tears and tragedy. By the end of her third year, Joe was hospitalized with tuberculosis and her mother had left the family permanently. But things got better. In 1922 Joe's TB stabilized and life at home in Hectanooga returned to a peaceful existence.
Elsie remembers "papa" as being her most important childhood influence. His advise that "To be somebody, one needs a good education" is still fondly recalled. In tune with his belief, Joe enroled her in the old one-room school in Hectanooga where she completed grade 7. Then her life was drastically changed by the information contained in an article her father had read in a 1929 edition of the Halifax Chronicle which touted the new horizons being opened up for the Mi'kmaq by the opening of the residential school. Believing the school was a golden opportunity to secure his daughter's education, Joe enroled her.
This is Elsie's assessment of the two years she spent there:
"I've always regarded these years as time wasted.... I was in the 8th grade when I arrived at the school in February 1930 and in the 8th grade when I left in 1932. What had I learned in those 28 months? How to darn a sock, sew a straight seam on the sewing machine, and how to scrub clothes on a washboard. Educationally, how to parse and analyze a sentence.
Volumes have been written about the school. Its total disastrous effect upon the Mi'kmaq/Maliseet Nations will never be known. Generations later, the scars remain. It was not an education institution as we define education. Older children, boys and girls were taken out of the classroom to do chores-milk cows, clean the barn, plant and harvest, etc. The girls were ordered to launder clothes, make uniforms, scrub the floors and so on."
After this disappointment, Elsie, who is fluent in French, returned to Clare and enroled at Meteghan's Sacred Heart Academy, where she graduated with a high school diploma in 1936. She then entered classes at the Provincial Normal College in Truro and was awarded a teacher's certificate in 1937. Thus she became the first licensed Mi'kmaq teacher in Nova Scotia. Notably, she was well treated at the college by peers and administration. The students elected her class president and she describes her time there as a "fun year."
The year was capped by a rare honour. The principal of the college, Dr. Davis, permitted very exceptional students to use his name as a reference. In 1937 only three were permitted to do so, and Elsie was one of them! With teaching license in hand, she applied by mail in mid-1937 to the Inverness County School Inspector for a teaching job at Mabou Ridge. This is how she describes her first face-to-face meeting with the inspector-it was also her first experience with overt racism:
"On our short drive to his home in Port Hastings, he advised that it would be best for me to turn around and go home. He was certain that the good people of Mabou Ridge would never accept a Micmac to teach their children. After much discussion it was agreed that I could at least try. The next day, teaching duties were undertaken without opposition from the community, the year passed without incident." [In the mid-1980s Elsie returned to Mabou Ridge and was given a warm welcome.]
If Elsie had applied in person she would not have got the job. Incidents such as this prove that officialdom was at the forefront of racial discrimination in Nova Scotia.
In view of the racism afoot in this province at the time, I had often wondered where Elsie had got the courage to attend a White institution and become a teacher. Then she gave me an explanation that reflected Maritime history. Raised among the Acadian people, Elsie had not experienced the self-confidence-destroying racial discrimination in youth that was suffered by most of Nova Scotia's Mi'kmaq:
"I grew up in the area of Nova Scotia known as Clare ... an area where one is accepted for who and what one is, not on ethnic background. The bonds of friendship and understanding that began with Chief Membertou, Champlain, De Monts, Poutrincourt, have never faltered. Their legacy lives on."
In 1992, Marilyn Millward wrote an article about the residential school entitled "Clean Behind the Ears?" These are some shocking excerpts from it:
"Many of the students who attended the old Shubenacadie Indian Residential School carry with them the scars of that experience. But they were not the only ones to suffer. A look at surviving records reveals the anguish many parents endured, and shows the determination to speak and be heard that was their reaction to the way the educational and governmental bureaucracy dealt with them and their children.
The Indian Residential School at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, operated between February 1930 and June 1967. It was intended to accommodate Micmac (and Maliseet) children who were deemed to be "underprivileged," defined by the Federal Department of Indian Affairs as orphaned, neglected, or living too distant to permit attendance at any day school. While children who were orphaned or remote from schools could be easily identified, it was more difficult to interpret the term "neglected." This was a matter to be determined by the local Indian Agent.
Here, the Department intended to "consolidate Indian educational work in the Maritimes" and planned to "mould the lives of the young Aborigines and aid them in their search towards the goal of complete Canadian Citizenship." Duncan C. Scott, then Deputy Superintendent General of the Department of Indian Affairs, told the Halifax-Chronicle that their object and desire in establishing the new school was that its graduates should become self-supporting and "not return to their old environment and habits."
Millward states that parental permission was necessary for admission. Although she later qualifies this statement, it isn't true. She may not have been aware that, because we were "wards of the Crown," the law as it then stood gave control of such things to Indian Affairs. The parental permission portions of the forms for admission to the school were simply window dressing. The Indian Agents did not legally need our permission to do anything they wanted to do with us, and they used these powers at will.
Ms. Millward substantiates this fact when describing how a Mi'kmaq parent tried to keep a child home:
"A mother wanted to keep her children home after their vacation, and believed that only a note to her agent to that effect was necessary. When she learned "it wasn't her decision to make," she had a justice of the peace write to the Department on her behalf. His help consisted of a note saying that this mother "says she 'loves' her children"-the word "loves" was belittled and negated by quotation marks. The agent wrote that she wanted them home only to take care of the house and their younger siblings, and so her request was apparently unsuccessful."
The Department's control over the lives of children and parents was all-encompassing. Ms. Millward reports of vacations:
"Perhaps because of the difficulty in having some of the children returned to the school after summer vacations, holidays at home were not allowed for any children during Christmas. Although specific reasons for this policy are not clear from the existing records, they are implied in a 1938 letter from the Department to an agent in the Annapolis Valley: "For many reasons which will no doubt suggest themselves to you, the Department does not allow holidays at Christmas, and I might say further that no valid reason has yet been given to us why holidays should be allowed at that period of the year. There is no question that the children attending the Shubenacadie Residential School receive every possible care and attention, and in addition at Christmas time there are always special festivities which the children enjoy.
In 1939, the parents at the Cambridge Reserve in Nova Scotia were determined to have their children home for Christmas, but the agent refused their request and advised them of the Department's rules. Reporting on the matter to the Department, he wrote: "These people went so far as to have a man go to the school for their children, [but] they did not get the children. The Principal would not let them take them."
When one of these parents then sent her request to the Department herself, the agent reported: "She thought by writing she would be able to get her children home for Christmas. These people think that they can have their own way and would like to do so and when they find out they cannot they get mad."......
For the full story please go to Chapter 13, Twentieth-Century Racism and Centralization, of We Were Not the Savages.
********************
1935 - 2007
A Tribute to Nora Bernard - a proud lady who said "no more"
By Daniel N. Paul, January 3, 2008
Nora was born, September 22, 1935, to the late Mary (Cope) and Michael Bernard. Her place of birth was the Mi’kmaq First Nation Community of Millbrook. She is survived by her six children, thirteen grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and four of her seven siblings, an uncle, and hundreds of other relatives, who are so numerous that at the time of her untimely passing, December 27, 2007, she had not met a great many of them.
The large extended family into which Nora was born includes me and my siblings. Her mother Mary and ours, Sarah, were double first cousins. Mary’s parents were brother and sister to my mother’s parents. Our ancestry on the Cope side can be traced back to Sipekne’katik District Chief Sachem Jean Baptiste Cope, who negotiated with the British the Treaty of 1752, and beyond.
Nora and I first became acquainted when we were very young, so young that I don’t have any recollection of the first time. But, I do recollect that she had a great smile that she greeted me with whenever we met. The last time I enjoyed it, a few pleasantries, and a hug, was at the Millbrook Elders dinner on December 12, 2007. It will be a fond memory for me for the rest of my time on Mother Earth.
During our early years, our families, as well as most other Mi’kmaq families, shared a dreaded thing in common, dire poverty. On many days meals were missed, our cloths were second-hand, and our homes were little better than decrepit shacks. Luxury items, such as choice meat cuts, were few and far between. However, even in such dire conditions, love and laughter were not absent in our lives.
Another thing our families shared in common was family members incarcerated in the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School. My two older brothers, Bob and John, were incarcerated there in the late1930s, and during their stay were witness to many of the horrors that occurred within its confines during that period. Their description of them to us were so scary that we were in dread of ever being incarcerated in the place. Thankfully, I never had the personal experience of residing within its walls.
However, Nora and her siblings were not so lucky, they were incarcerated there, which experience later inspired her to take on the powers that be and demand redress. When she got her project for justice underway in the 1980s, she labored at it with tenacious dedication, nothing could derail her from realizing her dream. The formation of the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School Association was soon a reality.
In 1996, John McKiggan, a lawyer that Nora finally found who would take on their case, filed a class action lawsuit on Nora’s behalf. It inspired similar suits across Canada, which eventually led to the 2006 class action settlement of approximately five billion dollars, the largest in Canadian history. McKiggan says of Nora: ""I firmly believe that if it wasn’t for Nora’s efforts, and other survivors like her across Canada, this national settlement never would have happened."
Hats off to Nora, who had the courage to take on the impossible and stay with it until justice was found. I do hope that her efforts will inspire more and more First Nations Peoples across the Americas to say "no more, we want and will fight for justice for the injustices that we and our ancestors suffered at the hands of Caucasian societies now!"
May the Great Spirit grant Nora a happy place in the Land of Souls for eternity!
Nora was named Posthumous to the Order of Nova Scotia on September 4, 2008. Her name will be invested into the Order on October 8, 2008.
********************
Halifax Chronicle Herald
1935 - 2007
Jason Bernard accepts the Order of Nova Scotia from Lt.-Gov. Mayann Francis
on behalf of his mother, late native rights activist Nora Bernard, during a ceremony
at Province House in Halifax on Wednesday. (PETER PARSONS / Staff)
Province honours slain native activist, Bernard, 5 others join Order of N.S.
By AMY SMITH Staff Reporter, Oct 9, 2008
NATIVE RIGHTS activist Nora Bernard would have been proud and a little bit shy about receiving the Order of Nova Scotia Wednesday, said the man who nominated her for the honour.
Dan Paul, the slain woman’s second cousin, said Ms. Bernard’s fight for justice for residential school survivors truly deserves recognition.
Ms. Bernard was the driving force behind the largest class-action suit in the country, which represented 79,000 survivors, and in 2007 the federal government settled the suit for more than $5 billion.
"When you are looking at Nora Bernard and what she did, I think it’s a pinnacle in Canadian history that somebody had the courage to face down the powers that be across this country," Mr. Paul, a historian who received the Order of Nova Scotia in 2002, said after the ceremony at Province House that honoured Ms. Bernard and five other Nova Scotians.
"Let’s put it this way: The opposition to what she accomplished was formidable. When you are taking on several levels of government, the churches and what have you across the country and you overcome, maybe there’s not an honour high enough that can be awarded to such a person."
Ms. Bernard, 72, was found stabbed and beaten in her Truro home last December. Her grandson James Douglas Gloade, 25, of Millbrook First Nation pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
During Wednesday’s investiture ceremony at the legislature’s Red Room, Ms. Bernard’s son Jason accepted the honour on her behalf.
Ms. Bernard was definitely with her son in spirit, her sister Linda Maloney said.
"She would have been very proud to walk up there and receive this honourable award," Ms. Maloney said, her voice breaking. "And she would have displayed it proudly."
Sister Dorothy Moore, chairwoman of the Order of Nova Scotia Advisory Council, described Ms. Bernard as "a beautiful, thoughtful person who cared deeply for her friends, family and community."
"I think Nora left a legacy," Sister Moore told reporters. "She died but she didn’t die. She continues to live."......
asmith@herald.ca
********************
June 11. 2008
Text of Harper's residential schools apology
THE CANADIAN PRESS
June 11, 2008 at 5:23 PM EDT
OTTAWA — Text of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's residential schools apology Wednesday:
Mr. Speaker, I stand before you today to offer an apology to former students of Indian residential schools.
The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history.
In the 1870's, the federal government, partly in order to meet its obligation to educate aboriginal children, began to play a role in the development and administration of these schools.
Two primary objectives of the residential schools system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture.
These objectives were based on the assumption aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal. indeed, some sought, as it was infamously said, "to kill the Indian in the child." Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country.
Most schools were operated as ‘joint ventures' with Anglican, catholic, Presbyterian or united churches.
The government of Canada built an educational system in which very young children were often forcibly removed from their homes, often taken far from their communities.
Many were inadequately fed, clothed and housed. all were deprived of the care and nurturing of their parents, grandparents and communities.
First Nations, Inuit and Metis languages and cultural practices were prohibited in these schools.
Tragically, some of these children died while attending residential schools and others never returned home.
The government now recognizes that the consequences of the Indian residential schools policy were profoundly negative and that this policy has had a lasting and damaging impact on aboriginal culture, heritage and language.
While some former students have spoken positively about their experiences at residential schools – these stories are far overshadowed by tragic accounts of the emotional, physical and sexual abuse and neglect of helpless children and their separation from powerless families and communities.
The legacy of Indian residential schools has contributed to social problems that continue to exist in many communities today.
It has taken extraordinary courage for the thousands of survivors that have come forward to speak publicly about the abuse they suffered.
It is a testament to their resilience as individuals and to the strength of their cultures. regrettably, many former students are not with us today and died never having received a full apology from the government of Canada.
The government recognizes that the absence of an apology has been an impediment to healing and reconciliation.
Therefore, on behalf of the government of Canada and all Canadians, I stand before you, in this chamber so central to our life as a country, to apologize to aboriginal peoples for Canada's role in the Indian residential schools system.
To the approximately 80,000 living former students, and all family members and communities, the government of Canada now recognizes that it was wrong to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this.
We now recognize that it was wrong to separate children from rich and vibrant cultures and traditions, that it created a void in many lives and communities, and we apologize for having done this.
We now recognize that, in separating children from their families, we undermined the ability of many to adequately parent their own children and sowed the seeds for generations to follow and we apologize for having done this.
We now recognize that, far too often, these institutions gave rise to abuse or neglect and were inadequately controlled, and we apologize for failing to protect you.
Not only did you suffer these abuses as children, but as you became parents, you were powerless to protect your own children from suffering the same experience, and for this we are sorry.
The burden of this experience has been on your shoulders for far too long. the burden is properly ours as a government, and as a country.
There is no place in Canada for the attitudes that inspired the indian residential schools system to ever again prevail.
You have been working on recovering from this experience for a long time and in a very real sense, we are now joining you on this journey.
The government of Canada sincerely apologizes and asks the forgiveness of the aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly. we are sorry.
In moving towards healing, reconciliation and resolution of the sad legacy of Indian residential schools, implementation of the Indian residential schools settlement agreement began on September 19, 2007.
Years of work by survivors, communities, and aboriginal organizations culminated in an agreement that gives us a new beginning and an opportunity to move forward together in partnership.
A cornerstone of the settlement agreement is the Indian residential schools truth and reconciliation commission. This commission presents a unique opportunity to educate all Canadians on the Indian residential schools system.
It will be a positive step in forging a new relationship between aboriginal peoples and other Canadians, a relationship based on the knowledge of our shared history, a respect for each other and a desire to move forward together with a renewed understanding that strong families, strong communities and vibrant cultures and traditions will contribute to a stronger Canada for all of us.
God bless all of you and God bless our land.
OBSERVATION
Let's say I'm somewhat encouraged, not overwhelmed, by Mr. Harper's apology - it touches the tip of the iceberg. I will congratulate him on this, he has gone further than any Prime Minister has gone to-date in acknowledging Canada's inglorious past mistreatment of First Nation Peoples, but, he didn't go overboard.
Today, I would encourage National Chief Phil Fontaine, and others, to keep in mind that our First Nations are owed an apology for a long list of horrors perpetuated against our Peoples by Canadian and British colonial governments. A few examples, the extermination of the Beothuk, the use of scalp proclamations to try to exterminate the Mi'kmaq, medical experimentation, Indian Act sections that barred us from pool rooms, from hiring lawyers to fight our claims, centralization in the Maritimes, economic exclusion, etc., etc., the list is extensive.
When the day comes that a Canadian Prime Minister gets up in the House of Commons and make a full unequivocal apology for all the wrongs we and our ancestors suffered, it will be the day that we can fully celebrate.
Daniel N. Paul, June 12, 2008
********************
Please click the following to read a 1999 newspaper column I wrote about Canada's efforts to use adoptions and the schools as tools to exterminate First Nations Cultures. It's entitled "All-consuming desire to kill First Nations' cultures. http://www.danielnpaul.com/Col/1999/All-ConsumingDesireToKillFirstNationCultures.html
For an overview of American Indian Residential Schools Please Click: http://www.danielnpaul.com/CarlisleIndianSchool.html
The Fallen Feather Website has some very interesting films about the Schools: http://www.fallenfeatherproductions.com/
********************
Winnipeg Free Press - November 6, 2009
Long buried truths emerging
Unmarked graves of aboriginal people who died in government care a disgrace
By: Catherine Mitchell
Among the many euphemisms we have constructed to describe dying is the idea that in death we lose a loved one or a part of ourselves. It is an apt description of the pain that takes hold -- a life is "lost" to us.Imagine the anguish if it were literally true, if a loved one vanishes without a trace. There is no rite of passage, and no physical place to unload the sorrow.
So the anguish carries on.
In Canada, there are hundreds of graves, unmarked and overgrown, holding the remains of thousands of "lost" souls. The grave sites are the resting places of so many aboriginal people who died after being forcibly taken from their families by government policy, to residential schools for assimilation or to urban hospitals when disease overwhelmed rudimentary medical care in Canada's rural or remote areas.
Many, and perhaps most, of the burial sites are nearly obliterated by the passage of time and bereft of markers. They sit like pockmarks on Canada's conscience.
The story of the abuse, neglect and indignity inflicted by government policy is erupting finally into the national consciousness.
My colleague Jen Skerritt did a terrific job in Wednesday's paper documenting the pain of First Nations families who saw loved ones lifted out of their communities for treatment of tuberculosis in Manitoba sanitoriums.
I was struck by the similarities of that story to the tales I heard last spring from residents of the Eastern Arctic communities of Rankin Inlet and Arviat whose loved ones, killed in a Northern Manitoba plane crash in 1949, were buried in a mass, unmarked grave at the nearby Norway House reserve. The seven Inuit passengers, on their way to polio treatment in Winnipeg, were the only ones of the 20 Canadians aboard the plane whose bodies were not transported back to their home towns for burial. All others were non-aboriginal.
Canada was quick to assert its authority and responsibilty to "rescue" the sick, but its humanity had limits. In death, a body became an inconvenience.
How many died in government "care" remains to be documented -- the story yet untold from Canada's sorry history of inhumane treatment of indigenous people, a local historian told me. They were buried in fields adjoining schools, or municipal cemeteries. Most of those schools have been torn down and the plots forgotten and grown over.
One cemetery used by the United Church residential school in Brandon is in private hands now, part of a trailer park, a private researcher hired by the church told me.
Government policy deemed as unacceptable the expense of transporting bodies back to their families.
It has yet to be documented exactly how many children, for example, died while attending 145 residential schools across Canada (but mostly in the West) from the late 1800s until the late 1960s when most were closed.
Justice Murray Sinclair, in a recent address at the University of Winnipeg, gave a compelling description of how impotent the parents and community leaders were when their children were forced into Christian schools for assimilation starting in 1870s, long before education became compulsory in Canada. Parents had been stripped by federal law of the right to protest or resort to the court, noted Sinclair, now the chairman of the national Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission. First Nations parents could be forbidden to visit their children, requiring a pass to leave the reserve from the very Indian agents that gathered and transported children to the schools.
When the kids died, they were buried by the schools without notice to the families left to wonder why they never came home.
But the dead often don't stay down and people are starting to ask questions. Skeletons are beginning to poke up through the soil of their ignominious resting grounds. Graves, forgotten and unrecorded, are being bulldozed for development and the truth is emerging. The protests and outrage, ever legitimate but today abundantly legal, of the people are being heard.
The clamour to find the graves, to identify the remains and repatriate them to their family lands is growing. I encourage all Canadians to join in the campaign for a reconciliation past due.
It will be tough because little care, not surprisingly, was paid to the details of burials, plots and cemeteries. Records, where they existed, were lost and the unmarked graves have been reclaimed by the elements. Forgotten, except by some loved ones who spent a lifetime wondering.
The search for the remains is part of the debt Canada owes to make amends for a history of institutionalized abuse against indigenous people, to set right the denial of basic decency to those often regarded as something less civilized.
Catherine Mitchell
********************
John Duncan, Canada’s Minister of Indian Affairs, recently stated that cultural genocide was never attempted in Canada, my response:
In one of his so-called "Indian Poems", white supremacist Duncan Scott Campbell, Deputy Minister of Canada’s Indian Affairs, wrote:
She stands full-throated and with careless pose,
This woman of a weird and waning race,
The tragic savage lurking in her face,
Where all her pagan passion burns and glows;
Her blood is mingled with her ancient foes,
And thrills with war and wildness in her veins;
Her rebel lips are dabbled with the stains
Of feuds and forays and her father’s woes.
And closer in the shawl about her breast,
The latest promise of her nation’s doom,
Paler than she her baby clings and lies,
The primal warrior gleaming from his eyes;
He sulks, and burdened with his infant gloom,
He draws his heavy brows and will not rest.
The Canadian Government’s denial that Cultural Genocide and out and out Genocide were never attempted by British colonial and Canadian governments in what is today Canada is ludicrous, preposterous, and delusional! The extinction of the Beothuk and three British proclamations for Maliseet and Mi’kmaq scalps, plus other horrors under British colonial rule that are too numerous to mention here, if not Genocidal attempts, what were they, warped insane attempts to assure survival? Then, under Canadian rule, malnutrition rations, minimal health care, Indian residential and Indian day schools that were set up specifically for taking the Indian out of the Indian, other government Indian Affairs policies that were also enacted for the express purpose of exterminating First Nation Cultures, etc., if these were not an all out attempt to commit Cultural Genocide what were they, more warped insane attempts to assure survival? As one who is old enough to remember the humiliation of being degraded by overt white supremacist racism in my youth, my advice for elected and non-elected Canadian Indian Affairs officials is to take your heads out of the sand and have a reality check! They could begin to acquire enlightenment by reading the following short story.
Prime Minister Harper’s Indian Residential School apology draws attention to Duncan Scott Campbell, the Deputy Minister in charge of Indian Affairs Branch from 1913 to 1932. Campbell described the residential school program as an attempt "to kill the Indian in the child."
Mortality rates at the residential schools soared during Campbell’s reign. Many students contracted tuberculosis and were forced to sit through classes as their health deteriorated, ensuring that healthy students would be exposed to the virus.
Campbell addressed the issue in 1924 in one of the most chilling statements in Canadian history. "It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habituating so closely in the residential schools and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this does not justify a change in the policy of this Department which is geared towards a final solution of our Indian Problem."
About Duncan Scott Campbell
As the bureaucratic head of Indian Affairs Branch from 1913 to 1932, Duncan Scott Campbell had among his responsibilities the direction and management of Canada’s Indian residential school system.
The Encyclopedia Britannica reports that he "allowed school staff to use a variety of inhumane punishments to implement and enforce the assimilation of these children."
Campbell left a record of his thoughts during his 20 year command of the Department of Indian Affairs. His duplicitous writing reveals a carefully crafted policy of cultural genocide. It is chilling to realize that Campbell wrote the following policy statements in the 1920’s.
"The policy of the Dominion (of Canada) has always been to protect Indians, to guard the identity as a race and at the same time to apply methods which will destroy that identity and lead eventually to their disappearance as a separate division of the population."
Reference: From a work of literary criticism produced as a Masters thesis by Nancy Chater at OISE in Toronto in 1999.
Library of Canada 0-612-45483-5
TECHNOLOGIES OF REMEMBRANCE:
LITERARY CRITICISM AND DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT'S "INDIAN POEMS"
Nancy Chater: A thesis submitted in confomity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Department of
Curriculum, Teaching and Learning
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto
Copyright by Nancy Chater, 1999
Chater pulled the quote from a book titled The Age of Light, Soup and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada 1885 - 1925 by . Valverde is a criminology prof at University of Toronto Mariana Valverde Also Wikipedia Mariana Valverde
Scott’s role as Canada’s top Indian Affairs bureaucrat enabled him to travel on Indian territory at tax payer expense and write pretentious lamentations about the people he was determined to destroy.
Thanks to Michael Jack Lawlor for his input.
Daniel N. Paul, November 26, 2011
********************
On December 6, 2011, I received a memo from an Acadien Friend, Cyrille LeBlanc, commenting about the renaming of the Cornwallis school, and another issue, the Nova Scotia education Department’s past policy of forbidding the use of a person’s non-English mother tongue on the Province’s school grounds. It’s a most interesting comparison of the cultural abuses suffered by both Acadiens and First Nation’s children.
Daniel,
That's great regarding the (renaming of the Cornwallis School). I heard that on the news yesterday and thought of you.
On another issue. The sad story of the residential schools which is troubling. Acadian can relate to this story - minus the sexual abuse. That part was the domain of our Acadian priests. That didn't happen to me, but many of my age, including some close friends, were victims.
There were schools in Acadian villages of Richmond County and Yarmouth County where the Acadian Francophone students were punished for speaking French. Fifty one years ago this year the Pinkney's Point school in Yarmouth County was closed and the students (all Acadians) were sent to the Arcadia School in an Anglophone community. They were punished for speaking French on the school grounds. At recess time they would post a guard to be on the look out for teachers to tell their friends to stop speaking French.
Some Pinkney's Point parents stopped speaking French at home to their children so they would not get punished at school. The French language is now lost among the young of this Acadian community. Pinkney's Point was originally established by New England Planters who came to Yarmouth County to replace the Acadians who were deported. An Acadian Surette family from Wedgeport moved to Pinkney's Point. Gradually other Acadians moved in. The descendants of the Planters moved out.
Spinghaven, where most Acadians are Métis, in Yarmouth County there were a few Anglophones who ran things such as the school. At the Spinghaven School the Acadians were also punished for speaking French. Acadian families stopped speaking French in the home. However I don't know anyone who does not speak French.
In Richmond County catholic nuns of Scottish descent would punish Acadian Francophone students if they spoke French on the school grounds. Today most residents of Richmond County are of Acadian descent. But only a minority speak French and they live in the Petit-de-Grat area.
These issues are being discussed today because of the Electoral Boundaries Legislative Committee going around the province.
Cyrille LeBlanc, Wedgeport NS
********************
At least 3,000 died in residential schools, research shows
Dormitories for aboriginal children in disgraced system were disease 'breeding grounds'
The Canadian Press
Posted: Feb 18, 2013 12:18 PM ET
Last Updated: Feb 18, 2013 12:32 PM ET
At least 3,000 children, including four under the age of 10 found huddled together in frozen embrace, are now known to have died while they were attending Canada's aboriginal residential schools, according to new unpublished research.
While deaths have long been documented as part of the disgraced residential school system, the findings are the result of the first systematic search of government, school and other records.
"These are actual confirmed numbers," Alex Maass, research manager with the Missing Children Project, told The Canadian Press from Vancouver.
"All of them have primary documentation that indicates that there's been a death, when it occurred, what the circumstances were."
The number could rise further as more documents — especially from government archives — come to light.
The largest single killer, by far, was disease.
'The schools were a particular breeding ground for [tuberculosis]. Dormitories were incubation wards.' Research manager Alex Maass
For decades starting in about 1910, tuberculosis was a consistent killer — in part because of widespread ignorance over how diseases were spread.
"The schools were a particular breeding ground for [tuberculosis]," Maass said. "Dormitories were incubation wards."
The Spanish flu epidemic in 1918-1919 also took a devastating toll on students — and in some cases staff. For example, in one grim three-month period, the disease killed 20 children at a residential school in Spanish, Ont., the records show.
While a statistical analysis has yet to be done, the records examined over the past few years also show children also died of malnutrition or accidents. Schools consistently burned down, killing students and staff. Drownings or exposure were another cause.
In all, about 150,000 First Nations children went through the church-run residential school system, which ran from the 1870s until the 1990s. In many cases, native kids were forced to attend under a deliberate federal policy of "civilizing" Aboriginal Peoples.
Many students were physically, mentally and sexually abused. Some committed suicide. Some died fleeing their schools.
One heart-breaking incident that drew rare media attention at the time involved the deaths of four boys — two aged 8 and two aged 9 — in early January 1937.
A Canadian Press report from Vanderhoof, B.C., describes how the four bodies were found frozen together in slush ice on Fraser Lake, barely a kilometre from home.
The "capless and lightly clad" boys had left an Indian school on the south end of the lake "apparently intent on trekking home to the Nautley Reserve," the article states.
A coroner's inquest later recommended "excessive corporal discipline" of students be "limited."
The records reveal the number of deaths only fell off dramatically after the 1950s, although some fatalities occurred into the 1970s.
"The question I ask myself is: Would I send my child to a private school where there were even a couple of deaths the previous year without looking at it a little bit more closely?" Maass said.
"One wouldn't expect any death rates in private residential schools."
In fact, Maass said, student deaths were so much part of the system, architectural plans for many schools included cemeteries that were laid out in advance of the building.
Maass, who has a background in archeology, said researchers had identified 50 burial sites as part of the project.
About 500 of the victims remain nameless. Documentation of their deaths was contained in Department of Indian Affairs year-end reports based on information from school principals.
The annual death reports were consistently done until 1917, when they abruptly stopped.
"It was obviously a policy not to report them," Maass said.
In the 1990s, thousands of victims sued the Canadian government and the churches that ran the 140 schools. A $1.9-billion settlement of the lawsuit in 2007 prompted an apology from Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The research — carried out under the auspices of the commission — has involved combing through more than one million government and other records, including nuns' journal entries. The longer-term goal is to make the information available at a national research centre.
For an overview of American Indian Residential Schools Please Click: http://www.danielnpaul.com/CarlisleIndianSchool.html
"Let all that is Indian within you Die" Shocking reading: http://www.twofrog.com/rezsch.html#statement
http://www.danielnpaul.com/IndianResidentialSchools.html
-----------------------
Addressing Indian Residential Schools in the U.S. & Australia
MEMORANDUM
TO: CLAIHR
DATE: November 15, 2007
FROM: Mark Gustafson
AT: University of Toronto, Faculty of Law, International Human Rights Clinic
RE: Addressing Indian Residential Schools in the U.S. & Australia
Issues
This memorandum addresses the following question:
• How have other countries who had residential schools (US, Australia) tried to achieve the stated goals of Canada’s TRC? [1]
To answer this question this memorandum will look at the two countries listed above individually to identify the following:
• What types of mechanisms/initiatives have they utilized?
• How effective have they been?
• Was there civil litigation/class actions involved?
Executive Summary
Very little has been done formally in the United States to achieve goals similar to those of the Canadian IRS TRC. First, the only goal substantially met in the United States has been the creation of a historical record. This has been achieved through independent scholarship and the publishing market. Second, the United States Government has partially acknowledged past abuses in government reports but has not significantly addressed other goals of Canada’s TRC. Lawsuits have neither played a role in meeting goals of the Canadian TRC nor in forcing the US Government to pursue such goals. Non-profit groups have not been a significant mechanism.
The Australian government has been more directly involved in achieving the stated goals of Canada’s TRC. The major mechanism in addressing these goals has been the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s Bringing Them Home Report which was essentially a TRC. While lawsuits were important for providing the impetus for the Bringing them Home Report, lawsuits have not played a large role since the Report. Other mechanisms have included the post of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and the Counsel for Aboriginal Reconciliation. While the above mechanisms were initially effective, that has been limited by the current federal government’s refusal to apologize for and address past abuses. As a result, sub-national governments and non-profit organizations have begun to take more responsibility for meeting the goals of Australia’s TRC. The effectiveness of these initiatives is hard to gauge given the availability of resources.
Discussion - The stated goals of Canada’s TRC
There are 8 stated goals in the mandate for the Canadian TRC. They are summarized as follows:
1. Acknowledge IRS experiences, impacts and consequences;
2. Provide former students, their families and communities with an opportunity to tell their stories in a holistic, culturally appropriate and safe setting;
3. Promote truth and reconciliation events at both the national and community levels;
4. Promote public awareness of and education about the IRS system and its impacts;
5. Create a complete and accurate historical record which will be available to the public;
6. Submit a report with recommendations to the government; and
7. Support commemoration of former IRS students and their families.
These goals will be referred to herewith by the corresponding letter listed above.
United States
Brief History
The boarding school system in the United States is perhaps most well known for a single quote delivered by the man who designed the first Indian boarding school, Captain Richard Pratt. Pratt stated that the goal of his school, the Carlisle Indian School, towards each of its students was to "Kill the Indian in him and save the man."[2] In the late 19th century this policy became the founding principle behind a growing number of boarding schools which aimed to strip young Indians of their culture and educate them in white culture. During this period federal legislation required parent authorization for the removal of their children to these schools, but coercion was widespread.[3] By 1902 there were 25 off-reservation boarding schools in operation.[4] At the schools children faced a range of physical and psychological abuses. Native languages were not allowed to be used, names were changed, corporal punishment was used routinely and living conditions were abhorrent leading to malnutrition and epidemics of disease.[5]
The role of off-reservation boarding schools began to decline in the 1920s and 1930s as local day schools were promoted as more culturally friendly alternatives. By 1930 only one-sixth of Indian students attended off-reservation boarding schools.[6] Assimilationist policies were reintroduced in the 1940s and 1950s until a new wave of government reforms beginning in the late 1960s allowed for more Indian control over education and greater protection of Indian children.
Mechanisms and Effectiveness
The mechanisms with which the United States has attempted to address the legacy of the boarding school system can be dividing into four categories; government reports & legislation, independent scholarship, lawsuits, and other mechanisms.
(i) Government Reports and Legislation
The United States government has focused almost exclusively on goal (f) of the stated goals of the Canadian TRC, i.e. gathering recommendations. In particular, on two occasions the United States government has commissioned reports to review the curriculum and treatment of students in Indian schools and has enacted legislation as a result of the findings.
The first was "The Problem of Indian Administration" Report, better known as the Meriam Report, in 1928. The Report characterized the Indian education policies as a failure and made a number of recommendations such as hiring qualified personnel, changing the curriculum, increasing the role of Indian parents and communities in education, and reducing the dependence on off-reservation boarding schools.[7] The result of the Report was the closure of some boarding schools, increased inclusion of Indian culture in schools and Senate hearings on boarding schools.[8] While these steps did acknowledge the abuses taking place at boarding schools, there was no attempt to aid those who had suffered abuses either by allowing them to testify at the Senate hearings regarding the Meriam Report or by facilitating reconciliation events.[9] In short, students and others affected where not able to tell their own stories on either a local or federal level thus precluding Goals (b) and (c).
The second report in 1969 was entitled "Indian Education: A National Tragedy–A National Challenge" but is better known as the Kennedy Report. While focused on Indian education as a whole, the Kennedy Report had particularly strong criticism for the 19 boarding schools in existence at that time. It stated that elementary boarding schools destroyed students and their families emotionally and culturally, and that off-reservation boarding schools had become dumping grounds for students considered to have serious social and emotional problems that the schools did little to address and even exacerbated.[10] The Kennedy Report led directly to the passage of numerous pieces of legislation designed to solve these problems. The first was the Indian Education Act in 1972 which increased federal funding and oversight of schools.[11] This was followed by the Indian Child Welfare Act which, inter alia, aimed to prevent Indian children from being removed to boarding schools and by the Tribally Controlled Schools Act of 1988.[12]
In sum, while these two reports recognized the links between inadequate education policies and entrenched social problems such as alcoholism, these reports were not concerned with giving those affected by abuses an opportunity to tell their stories (Goal (c)). Additionally, both reports were only concerned with acknowledging students’ experiences to the extent that they identified trends that should be fixed for future Indians.
Interestingly, the closest the United States government came to meeting the Canadian TRC’s goals of acknowledging boarding school experiences and encouraging testimony arose not out of a government sponsored report, but from an anniversary. On the occasion of the 175th anniversary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs [BIA] in 2000, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Kevin Grover gave a speech in which he apologized on behalf of the BIA for abuses at boarding schools and for the consequences the abuses have had.[13] Grover quickly retreated from this position and said subsequently that the apology, while sincere, had no legal effect and was not given on behalf of the American government, only the BIA. The most recent attempt to prod the federal government into acknowledging IRS experiences was a bill introduced by Senator Ben Nighthouse that, if adopted, would be an official federal apology for many instances of mistreatment inflicted on Indians.[14] As part of the bill writing process, some Indians were invited to give testimony to Congress which was a first step in meeting goal (b) of Canada’s TRC.[15] However, opportunities for testimony were very limited. The bill, S.J. Res. 37, has been tabled since 2004 and the testimonies were not published.[16]
In sum, the United States Government has slightly met Goals (a) and (f) of Canada’s TRC through two government reports and one partial apology. Yet, it is important to note that the government’s response has focused on preventing subsequent abuses rather than meeting Goals (b), (c), (d), and (e) of Canada’s TRC.
(ii) Independent Scholarship
To date, the only significant mechanism for creating an accurate and comprehensive historical record of the boarding school system in the United States (goal (e)) is the publishing market. Largely since the 1990s, numerous books have been published in the United States on both specific Indian boarding schools and on the broader development of governmental policies towards Indian education from the 1870s to the present. A few titles are "They called it prairie light: the story of Chilocco Indian School", "Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience", "The Rapid City Indian School, 1898-1993" and "Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940."[17] These books combine historical records from the schools and government archives with materials taken from diaries and letters of students at boarding schools. Similarly, in the age of the internet multiple sites now exist which document experiences at boarding schools. As such, both these books and websites are cognizant of Indian perspectives and responses to boarding schools and thus meet goal (a) of the Canadian TRC to some degree.
The problems with leaving the establishment of a complete and accurate historical record to independent scholars and the publishing market are numerous. Because scholars are normally interested in particular aspects of larger issues, this approach places the responsibility of interested parties to track down numerous books and articles in order to get a comprehensive history of boarding school experiences. Additionally, and related to the foregoing, in the absence of any publicity campaigns or government sponsorship, it may not matter that these books are publicly available, for it is unlikely that a large percentage of the population will seek out these books. Thus, while in the aggregate a fragmented but comprehensive, accurate and public historical record is available in the United States as a result of independent scholarship, using the publishing market as the main mechanism for disseminating this information does not effectively address Goal (d).
(iii) Lawsuits
Unlike the situation in Canada, lawsuits have played an utterly minor role in encouraging the United States to meet goals similar to Canada’s TRC. In fact, there have only been 2 lawsuits relating to abuses at Indian Boarding Schools. Neither has been successful.
The first Begay v. United States (Begay Iand later Begay v. United States (Begay II) was filed by 11 Navajo women who claimed that they had been sexually abused at an on-reservation boarding school. The first complaint was dismissed for failing to exhaust all administrative remedies, namely filing a claim with the BIA. The BIA found no proof of the allegations and the second claim in federal court was dismissed on the grounds of the BIA findings.[18]
Most recently, a class action was filed in 2004 in South Dakota seeking $25 billion for abuses at boarding schools between 1921-1924 and "perhaps unspecified dates".[19] The named plaintiff, Sherwyn Zephier, did not consult any tribes before filing this suit and it is unclear whether it has any support within tribal communities.[20] Regardless of its level of support, this case was dismissed on the same grounds as the Begay I case, ie, for failure to exhaust all administrative remedies.[21] The case’s current status within the BIA administrative system is not publicly available.
Even if by some chance the BIA doesn’t dismiss the action and it returns to federal court, the ability of any Indian to sue successfully for abuses at Indian boarding schools is tenuous at very least. First, most, if not all, claims will be barred by the statute of limitations which is 6 years.[22] To overcome the statute of limitations issue, potential plaintiffs will most likely have to argue that there was a breach of the "Bad Men" clause treaty provision.[23] If a breach of this treaty obligation is found, then the Tucker Act gives United States Court of Federal Claims jurisdiction regardless of when the breach occurred. Unfortunately, the parameters of claims based upon the "bad men" clause have not yet been fully defined. Additionally, as boarding schools were run by the BIA which is part of the executive branch of power, the plenary power doctrine will probably be used as a defense to argue that the decision on how to handle a boarding school case is an executive branch decision over which the judiciary has no power.[24]
Thus, lawsuits have neither achieved success on their own nor forced the United States government to more vigorously pursue the stated goals of the Canadian TRC.
(iv) Other Mechanisms
In reaction to the failure of the main plaintiff in the Zephier case to consult any tribes before filing, a coalition of Indian rights groups formed the Boarding School Healing Project [BSHP] in 2004. Its stated goals are 1) Healing through the creation of support groups, 2) Education through public events, 3) Documentation through gathering oral testimony and 4) Accountability of the government and churches to Indians as a whole community, not as individuals.[25] These goals align very closely with those of the Canadian TRC, with the primary difference being that the BSHP is a purely non-governmental organization without any ties to the government.
Unfortunately, the work of the BSHP has gone nowhere, and it appears to have stopped its work before it really began when the Zephier complaint was dismissed.[26] It seems that the group’s primary purpose was to convince people not to join the Zephier complaint in the fear that it if the Zephier case were decided negatively it would preclude any and all future recovery relating to abuses at boarding schools and potentially other treaty violations.[27]
Summary
In the United States little has been done to address any of the goals of Canada’s TRC. The United States government seems satisfied with its role in initiating fact finding reports which led to legislation that has helped prevent future abuses and which has transferred much responsibility for education to Indians. Other than a non-legally binding apology from the BIA, there has been no governmental action to acknowledge the consequences of boarding schools or to promote public awareness of the past. Rather, this has been left in the hand of the publishing market and independent scholars. Litigation has not played a factor in any sense.
Australia
Brief History
Unlike the situation in the United States where Indian child removal was limited to children’s tenure at boarding schools, in Australia aboriginal child removal was connected to a broader policy of forced adoptions, orphanages and labor. It is also interesting to note that the policies authorizing child removal were not driven by federal legislation. Rather each state and territory developed its own laws regulating aboriginal child removal.
Despite the local nature of child removal laws, the policies were strikingly similar across Australia: child welfare laws were used as a pretense for removing children from their families in order to control reproduction and destroy aboriginal cultures. Most children removed from their families were placed in foster homes or forced to work and were not allowed any contact with their families. In most Australian states and territories, the practice of removing aboriginal children from their families continued from the 1860s through the 1960s.
Mechanisms and Effectiveness
(i) Federal Government Initiatives
In 1991 the federal government in Australia sponsored the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody [Royal Commission] which revealed a complex and devastating picture of the effects of dispossession, colonization and institutional racism on Aboriginal peoples.[28] Since that time, the federal government has initiated three key mechanisms which address the goals of Canada’s TRC: the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, the position of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner within the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, and the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, better known as the Bringing them Home Report.
The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation [CAR] was established in 1991 when the government passed the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act. CAR was given a 10 year mandate.[29] CAR members were made up of Aboriginals, Torres Strait Islanders and non-Indigenous Australians suggesting that CAR meets goal (b) of Canada’s TRC. However, the forum created by CAR was not predominately concerned with facilitating discussions about abuses stemming from child removal policies. Rather CAR focused on "reconciliation" in the sense of closing the gap between native and non-native socioeconomic, health and political conditions.[30] These development goals are not expressly stated as goals of Canada’s TRC.
Yet, CAR did make important contributions in addressing goals (c) and (d) through public advocacy and social research. CAR promoted national reconciliation events such as Bridge Walks for Reconciliation and National Reconciliation Week which have attracted wide levels of public participation in Australia: over 250,000 people participated in one Bridge Walk and CAR claimed that over 10,000 people participated in regional learning circles.[31] CAR also created learning kits which were distributed to public schools countrywide.[32] Although the ultimate purpose of these materials was to promote socioeconomic development in Aboriginal communities, a positive byproduct was much greater awareness of Aboriginal issues within Australian society. After its mandate ended in 2001, CAR converted into a non-profit organization, Reconciliation Australia which will be discussed below.[33]
Also arising out of the Royal Commission was the creation of the post of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner in 1992 [Commissioner] within the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. The Commissioner is responsible for keeping Indigenous issues before the federal Government and the Australian community and to promote understanding and respect for the rights of Indigenous Australians.[34] Specifically, the Commissioner’s duties are broken into 4 areas: advocating for the rights of Indigenous peoples, promoting an Indigenous perspective on different issues, building support and understanding for an Indigenous perspective, and empowering Indigenous peoples.[35]
The area in which the Commissioner most clearly addresses goals similar to those of Canada’s TRC is through its annual Social Justice Reports, which have been delivered to the federal government since 1993.[36] These reports analyze the key human rights issues facing Indigenous Australians over a given year and a central part of these reports are sections on the current status of reconciliation efforts and recommendations for improvement in that regard. For example, in its 1998 Social Justice Report, the Commissioner reported on the status of church apologies for their role in the removal of aboriginal children and outlined a plan for monitoring how local governments address reconciliation efforts.[37] The 2000 report described structural factors which were impeding reconciliation efforts.[38] In 2003 the Commissioner strongly criticized Prime Minister Howard for failing to take steps to sufficiently acknowledge the impact of child removal.[39] These Social Justice Reports play an important role in maintaining both public awareness and making recommendations to the government.
While CAR and the Commissioner have been instrumental in meeting goals (d) and (f) of Canada’s TRC, the main mechanism used in Australia to address all of the goals of Canada’s TRC was the Bringing them Home Report. While officially titled a National Inquiry, the Bringing them Home Report was in most respects a formal TRC. The National Inquiry had four terms of reference: tracing past laws of child removal, examining the need for changes in laws and assistance for those affected, determining the justification for compensation, and advising on policies of self-determination.[40]
From 1995-1997, the National Inquiry received evidence and submissions from 777 people and organizations. Of that number, 535 were Indigenous people who had been affected by child removal policies and wished to share their experiences.[41] In order to obtain this information, the Inquiry both travelled around the country to hear evidence and allowed written submissions. All witnesses were provided with a social worker during their testimony and a psychologist for follow-up consultations. Additionally, an Indigenous Advisory Council was appointed to help in the drafting of recommendations.[42]
The result was a comprehensive historical report which combined historical documentation interspersed with testimony. Once the historical policies were laid out, the Report then examined the impacts and consequences of removal policies. The Report also provided a thorough discussion on grounds for reparations, including a finding that the policies of child removal constituted genocide under international human rights law.[43] The Report contains 54 recommendations ranging from the need for further testimony, grounds for compensation, the need for an official apology and suggestions for a variety of legislative changes. [44] In short, the Bringing them Home Report thoroughly met the goals of acknowledging child removal experiences and consequences, allowing those affected to tell their stories, creating an historical record and making recommendations to the government. The fact that over 60,000 copies of the Report were sold during its first year of publication suggests strongly that it was also effective in addressing the goal of raising public awareness.[45]
Unfortunately, while the Bringing them Home Report succeeded in meeting all of the stated goals of Canada’s TRC, its effectiveness has been limited by the failure of the federal government to implement the Report’s recommendations. Prime Minister Howard has refused to address most of the recommendations contained in the Report and has even criticized the Report for being biased and telling only one side of the story.[46] Many in Australian society have relied on the government position as a justification for not acknowledging the experiences and impacts of those affected by child removal policies. While this group is in the minority, the effect of the Bringing them Home Report will continue to be hampered unless the government accepts at least some of the Report’s recommendations, particularly the issuance of a governmental apology.
(ii) State and Territory Initiatives
Unlike the federal government, most state and territorial governments have issued formal apologies for their policies of child removal which is an important step in meeting goal (a) of Canada’s TRC. However, these governments have not taken any additional steps to provide settings for those affected to continue to tell their stories. Rather, they have introduced a variety of initiatives similar to those of CAR to address the socioeconomic and health disparities that have arisen out of the policies of segregation and child removal. For example, the ACT Government established the Interdepartmental Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Issues to improve the delivery of social services.[47] The Victorian Government has declared its intention to develop a public consultation process to address land claims, past injustices and health issues.[48] The status of that process is unclear. In sum, it seems that most sub-national governments in Australia are satisfied that the Bringing them Home Report has provided a sufficient opportunity for Indigenous Australians to tell their stories and thus that they can focus solely on "practical reconciliation", ie, closing gaps in economic, health and education levels.
The Tasmanian Government stands out for more directly addressing goals similar to those of Canada’s TRC. Firstly, the Education Department of Tasmania has produced a learning-kit for primary school students which details Tasmanian Aboriginal history through to today’s Tasmanian Aboriginal community.[49] Additionally, the Tasmanian Parliament passed the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal Children Act 2006 which created a compensation fund, increased access to records and a streamlined claims process.[50] It is unclear how many claims have been filed to date and thus it is hard to judge the effectiveness of the Act.[51]
(iii) Lawsuits
While Australia did not experience the flood of lawsuits relating to its child removal policies as Canada did, lawsuits have played an important role. The introductory section of the Bringing them Home Report acknowledges that the filing of two cases in 1994 and 1995 regarding injuries resulting from child removal policies were a pivotal factor in causing the government to commission the National Inquiry.[52] The two cases, Williams v Minister, Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983 and The State of New South Wales[53] and the consolidated case Kruger and Bray v. Commonwealth[54] were ultimately dismissed on the grounds that the legislation authorizing their removal from their families was constitutional at the time of removal.[55] Interestingly, while both cases were dismissed, the decisions in both cases are over 100 pages and create a large historical record of the policies, actions and effects of child removal which contributes to the creation of a historical record.
After the Bringing them Home Report, a handful of lawsuits have been brought in state and territory courts in Australia. [56] Most have been unsuccessful. On one occasion the lawsuit was withdrawn because the plaintiff found the process too traumatic.[57] This suggests that Australian courts are not culturally sensitive environments that Goal (b) of Canada’s TRC envisages. Most recently, the case of Trevorrow v South Australia (No 5) found that the South Australian policy of child removal was unconstitutional and awarded damages to the plaintiff.[58] Similar to the cases of Williams and Kruger, the decision in the Trevorrow case was over 300 pages and created a substantial historical record of government policies and their effects on the plaintiff.
In sum, the two lawsuits in 1994 and 1995 played an important role in leading the government to begin addressing the goals of Canada’s TRC. Since that time, the few court cases that have been filed have had little success. Those cases that have been fully litigated have led to the creation of comprehensive historical records. However, it seems unlikely that others would elect to pay for litigation if there is little to no possibility of success.
(iv) Non-Governmental Organizations
In the era after CAR and the Bringing them Home Report non-governmental groups have begun to play a larger role in maintaining a focus on the goals of Canada’s TRC. The increased role of these groups is largely due to government inaction, for the federal government has largely washed its hands of continuing to pursue goals similar to Canada’s TRC since the Bringing them Home Report.
When CAR’s mandate expired in 2001, it morphed into a non-profit organization called Reconciliation Australia with the same mission and goals as CAR.[59] It continues to create educational kits and to promote dialogue between Aboriginal groups and business and community groups. It has also created semi-autonomous spin-off reconciliation organizations in each state and territory in Australia.[60] These groups continue to keep reconciliation in the public eye by sponsoring events such as National Reconciliation Week, but as stated above, their focus is largely on development needs as opposed to creating a setting to hear evidence of past abuses.
Additionally, groups such as Link-Up are working to help those affected by child removal policies to reunite with their families.[61] As such, these groups are helping to alleviate the consequences of child removal policies.
Summary
Largely through federal initiatives in the early and mid 1990s, Australia has been very effective in meeting goals similar to those of the Canadian TRC. The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation effectively promoted awareness of past abuses and facilitated educational initiatives. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner has consistently helped to continue acknowledging past abuses and the government’s failure to provide adequate remedies. The Bringing them Report stands out as a powerful and effective mechanism which successfully addressed all of the goals of the Canadian TRC. However, the current conservative government has somewhat undermined the Report’s effectiveness by not addressing its recommendations and by not sponsoring forums for further reconciliation events. Still, the Report has created a comprehensive record consisting in large part of actual testimony of those affected by child removal policies and has been read widely in Australia. Lastly, most current mechanisms for continuing to meet the goals of Canada’s TRC are proceeding on the level of sub-national governments and through the non-governmental organizations. The effectiveness of these initiatives requires more research.
[1] Other countries with large indigenous populations, such as those in South America and Africa, have not had large-scale institutionalized programs of boarding schools and will not be discussed here.
[2] David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction : American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928, (Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 1995) at p.52
[3] Brenda J. Child, Boarding School Seasons: American Indian families, 1900-1940, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998) at p. 13.
[4] Ibid., at 52.
[5] Supra note 2.
[6] Margaret Szasz, Education and the American Indian: The Road to Self-Determination Since 1928, (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1999) at p. 2.
[7] Allison M. Dussias, "Let No Native American Child Be Left Behind: Re-Envisioning Native American Education For The Twenty-First Century" (2001) 43 Ariz. L. Rev. 819 at 840.
[8] Supra note 3, pp. 40-44.
[9] Supra note 6 at p. 21.
[10] Supra note 7 at pp. 853-854.
[11] Ibid, at 860-864.
[12] John E. Silverman, "The Miner’s Canary: Tribal Control of American Indian Education and The First Amendment" (1992) 19 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1019 at 1030-1032.
[13] Christopher Buck, "’Never Again’: Kevin Grover’s Apology for the Bureau of Indian Affairs" (2006) Wicazo SA Review 97.
[14] Ibid, at 111.
[15] Andrea A. Curcio, "Civil Claims for Uncivilized Acts: Filing Suit Against the Government for American Indian Boarding School Abuses" 4 Hastings Race & Poverty L. J. 45 at 63-64.
[16] For current status, check http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:SJRES00037:|
[17] K. Tsianina Lomawaima, They called it prairie light: the story of Chilocco Indian School (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994); Supra note 2; Scott Riney, The Rapid City Indian School, 1898-1993 (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999); Supra note 3.
[18] Begay v. United States, 219 Ct. Cl. 599 (1979); Begay v. United States, 224 Ct. Cl. 712 (1980). See also, Andrea A. Curcio, "Civil Claims for Uncivilized Acts: Filing Suit Against the Government for American Indian Boarding School Abuses" 4 Hastings Race & Poverty L. J. 45 at 80-81.
[19] Sherwyn Zephier et al v. United States No. 03-768L, at 2-3, 8, 13-14 (Fed.Cl. Oct. 29, 2004).
[20] Andrea Smith, "Boarding School Abuses, Human Rights and Reparations" (2004) 31 No. 4 Social Justice 89.
[21] Supra note 19. See also David Melmer, "Boarding school case dismissed" Indian Country Today (December 06, 2004), online: ICT < http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096409963>
[22] Supra note 15 at 78-80
[23] Ibid, at 78-80.
[24] Ibid, at 81-82.
[25] Supra note 20 at 95.
[26] See, http://boardingschoolhealingproject.org/index.html
[27] Supra note 20 at 95.
[28] The full report is available at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/rciadic/
[29] http://www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/info_sheet.html
[30] CAR’s Final Report "RECONCILIATION Australia’s challenge" is available online at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/IndigLRes/car/2000/16/index.htm
[31] http://www.reconciliation.org.au/i-cms.isp?page=97
[32] The toolkit is available online at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/IndigLRes/car/2000/17/
[33] Supra note 30.
[34] http://www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/info_sheet.html
[35] Ibid.
[36] All Social Justice Reports are available at http://www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/sj_report/index.html
[37] http://www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/sj_report/sjreport98/index.html
[38] http://www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/sj_report/sjreport00/index.html
[39] http://www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/sj_report/sjreport03/index.html
[40] National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, "Bringing them Home" (Sydney: Sterling Press Pty. Ltd., 1997). Also available online at http://www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/bth_report/index.html
[41] Ibid at 21.
[42] Ibid at 20.
[43] Ibid at 247-599.
[44] Ibid at Appendix 9.
[45] Anne Orford, "Commissioning the Truth" 15 Colum. J. Gender & L. 851 at 867.
[46] Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee’s inquiry into the Stolen Generation, June 8, 2000. http://www.humanrights.gov.au/pdf/social_justice/stolen_senate_submission.pdf
[47] http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/IndigLRes/car/2000/16/text05.htm
[48] Ibid.
[49] Ibid.
[50] Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, "Tas stolen generation Act a substantial step towards justice for Aboriginal peoples" November 29, 2006 http://www.humanrights.gov.au/about/media/media_releases/2006/96_06.htm
[51] Supra, note 47.
[52] Supra note 40 at 18.
[53] Williams v Minister, Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983 and The State of New South Wales, [2000] NSWCA 255 (12 September 2000) http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/nsw/NSWCA/2000/255.html?query=title(Williams%20%20and%20%20Minister,%20Aboriginal%20Land%20Rights%20Act%201983)
[54] Kruger and Bray v. Commonwealth, 112 FCR 455, [2001] FCA 1213.
[55] Michael D. Schaefer, "The Stolen Generations in the Aftermath of Kruger and Bray" (1998) 21(1) UNSW LJ 247.
[56] Chris Cunneen and Julia Grix "Chronology of Stolen Generation Litigation 1993-2003" (2003) 17 Indigenous Law Bulletin. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ILB/2003/17.html
[57] Ibid.
[58] Trevorrow v South Australia (No 5) [2007] SASC 285, 2007 WL 2194967
[59] http://www.reconciliation.org.au/
[60] For a complete list see http://www.reconciliation.org.au/i-cms.isp?page=96. Some examples are: NSW Reconciliation Council http://nswrecon.com/, Reconciliation South Australia Incorporated http://www.reconciliationsa.org.au/, Reconciliation Victoria http://www.reconciliationvic.org.au/,
[61] http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/library/family_history_tracing/link_up_services
http://www.claihr.ca/projects/addressingIndianResidential.html
--------------------------
Histories and Memories of the Indian Boarding Schools in Mexico, Canada, and the United States
Alexander S. Dawson
Abstract
Indigenismo can be found in almost every country in the Americas. Most indigenistas attempted to write the Indian into their national pasts and adopted similar modernizing projects. Still, what appears to be a common history can be deceiving. Examination of one indigenista project in three distinct American contexts—the indigenous boarding schools in Mexico, Canada, and the United States—indicates considerable differences in practice. For one thing, while the boarding schools north of the border aimed to separate students from the deleterious influence of their communities and bring them into the cultural mainstream, in Mexico indigenous communities were essential to development strategies, and the internados, as an important element of these strategies, sought to cultivate rather than break down ethnic affiliations. These and other differences in the politics that emerged from these projects suggest that the study of indigenismo may require attention to the ways in which particular power arrangements give meaning to indigenous identities.
El indigenismo se encuentra en casi cada uno de los países de las Américas. La mayor parte de los indigenistas intentaban inscribir al indio en sus pasados nacionales y adoptaron similares proyectos modernizantes. Aún así lo que aparenta ser historia común puede engañar. El examen de uno de los proyectos indigenistas en tres distintos contextos americanos—los colegios internados indígenas en México, Estados Unidos, y Canadá—indica diferencias considerables en la práctica. Para mencionar una, aun cuando los colegios al norte de la frontera buscaban separar a los alumnos de los efectos perjudiciales de sus comunidades y traerlos a la corriente principal de la cultura, en México las comunidades indígenas formaban parte esencial en los planes de desarrollo, y los internados, como elemento importante de estos planes, buscaban cultivar y no desmantelar las afiliaciones étnicas. Estas y otras diferencias en la política que emerge de estos proyectos sugiere que el estudio del indigenismo puede requerir que se le de atención a la manera por la cual los arreglos políticos particulares le dan significado a la identidad indígena.
http://lap.sagepub.com/content/39/5/80.abstract
------------------
AFGHANISTAN- CANADA TROOPS- Idle No More- God Bless our Aboriginal Peoples Baby - and in Canada it's about r troops and hockey and kids ooyah
POST HONOURING R MILITARY
CANADA MILITARY NEWS: August 2-Videos Honouring our Nato troops- our Canadian troops serving-pls thank those wearing flags of our Nato Nations- it's called FREEDOM
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2013/08/canada-military-news-august-2-videos.html
-----------
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.