Canada Day Thread [Archive]

m0nde

07-01-2020, 12:44 AM

r.i.p. indigenous peoples raped and pillaged by the frenchthe french, eh?

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools

Residential schools were government-sponsored religious schools that were established to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture. Although the first residential facilities were established in New France, the term usually refers to schools established after 1880. Residential schools were created by Christian churches and the Canadian government as an attempt to both educate and convert Indigenous youth and to assimilate them into Canadian society. However, the schools disrupted lives and communities, causing long-term problems among Indigenous peoples. The last residential school closed in 1996. (Grollier Hall, which closed in 1997, was not a state-run residential school in that year.) Since then, former students have demanded recognition and restitution, resulting in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement in 2007 and a formal public apology by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2008. In total, an estimated 150,000 First Nation, Inuit, and Métis children attended residential schools.

https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1307460755710/1536862806124#chp4
"Civilizing the Indian"
As First Nations' military role in the colony waned, British administrators began to look at new approaches to their relationship. In fact, a new perspective was emerging throughout the British Empire about the role the British should play with respect to Indigenous peoples. This new perspective was based on the belief that British society and culture were superior; there was also a missionary fervour to bring British "civilization" to the Empire's Indigenous people. In the colonies of Upper and Lower Canada, the Indian Department became the vehicle for this new plan of "civilization." The British believed it was their duty to bring Christianity and agriculture to First Nations. Indian agents accordingly began encouraging First Nations to abandon their traditional lifestyles and to adopt more agricultural and sedentary ways of life. As we now know, these policies were intended to assimilate First Nations into the larger British and Christian agrarian society.

Starting in the 1820s, colonial administrators undertook many initiatives aimed at "civilizing" First Nations. One early assimilation experiment took place at Coldwater-Narrows, near Lake Simcoe in Upper Canada. A group of Anishinaabe were encouraged to settle in a typical colonial-style village where they would be instructed in agriculture and encouraged to adopt Christianity and abandon hunting and fishing as a means of subsistence. But because of poor management by the Indian Department, chronic underfunding, a general lack of understanding of First Nations cultures and values, and competition between various religious denominations, the Coldwater-Narrows experiment was short-lived and a dismal failure.