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Aboriginal People In Canada Essay

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Aboriginal People In Canada Essay
Over the past few weeks in Social Studies, I have learnt about the history, culture, and traditions of Aboriginal people in Canada. There were many different topics that were discussed including, Residential Schools, life on reserves, and missing Indigenous women. All of these topics contain information that I found extremely concerning and appalling. To begin with, I would like to discuss the conditions in which people on reserves live in. Aboriginal people living on reserves live in horrendous conditions. They live in small, tight, trailers with up to 40 other people. The housing is inadequate. Many of the trailers come with holes in the walls and leaks in the ceiling. Adding onto the inadequacy of the housing is the lack of clean …show more content…
The First of the Indian Residential Schools started up in the 19th century. The purpose of these schools was to “take the Indian out of the child”. All Aboriginal children were required to attend Residential Schools. If they failed to do so, their parents would be locked up in prison. Once the children started school, they were forbidden from speaking their native language and if they failed to comply by these rules, they would be punished severely. The last Residential School was closed in 1996. To this day, there are still numerous people who have gone through the torturous experience of Residential Schools. A vast majority of these survivors suffer from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), because of this, many of them turn to alcohol and find themselves unable to work and provide for their families. Referring back to the previous paragraph, this results in the children dropping out from school in order to earn money in place of their parents. Due to the fact that the last Residential School closed a mere 20 years ago, I believe it will still take quite some time for the First Nations community to heal from its wounds. The government has apologized for the Indian Residential Schools, however it will take something much larger than an apology to heal the anguish of the
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