Residential Education In Canada Essay

“Thousands of Canada’s aboriginal children died in residential schools that failed to keep them safe from fires, protected from abusers, and healthy from deadly disease” (Kennedy). There were about 130 schools in every province and territory except Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick with about 150,000 attendees, segregated by gender (CBC News). Residential schooling caused tension and intergenerational suffering among native communities in Canada. Events of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse support the tragedies in Canadian history as a form of cultural genocide (Hanson). The government still seeks retribution, latest led by Justin Trudeau, accepting Canada’s failure to aboriginals at being a self-proclaimed land of acceptance.
Natives were a minority, giving Europeans the power needed to reinforce chauvinistic ideas. New-coming Europeans took everything from the natives, their land, resources, and children. Aboriginals had let the children go, assuming they would be kept in civil conditions and get the care needed (Treble, O’Hara). Aboriginal communities were unaware of the system’s disastrous goal of assimilation by stripping children of language and culture. They assumed the Europeans could not possibly take anything more from them, but they were wrong. At the institutes children would be subject to vigorous labor without much learning due to how underfunded the system was (“Moving Beyond-Impacts of Residential Schools”), unable to communicate in own tongues or practice traditions. “Survivors recall being beaten and strapped, some students were shackled to their beds; some had needles shoved in their tongues for speaking their native languages” (Miller). “Some schools did attempt to use positive reinforcement to encourage assimilation, but often children who did not conform were punished” (Rheault). No positive experiences were gained from such events. Therefore, the system was