Residential Schools
The Indian Act created Residential Schools and forced a new form of education on First Nations peoples. The decades long strategy of 130 government-funded Residential Schools was to kill the Indian in the child. Under the Act, more than 150,000 children were legally shipped off to institutions where they would have their hair cut, their language killed, their relationships with family and community severed, their sense of belonging destroyed, and their physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health compromised. The Indian Act did provide in minute detail for punishment and consequences. For example when deemed to be Truant, the child could be apprehended and conveyed to school, using as much force as the circumstances require. The Act did not provide for love, support, respect, and caring.
Imagine, as a child, being taken from your parents and community and not seeing them again for many years.
The last of the Residential Schools did not close until 1996. Today, there are an estimated 80,000 former students still living and the catastrophic impacts of the Residential Schools have been, and will continue to be, felt for generations. See Plain Talk 6, Residential Schools.
