The last residential school in Canada was closed 21 years ago, thousands of kids were taken from their homes and sent to these schools where they were forced to learn English and to believe Catholic religion. In the books The Secret Path and Sugar Falls we can see two different stories about the experience of first nation childs in these schools. Loneliness and discrimination are powerful themes in these two stories. In The Secret Path the theme of loneliness is demonstrated through the image were Chain, a first nation kid uses 6 matches while escaping from a residential school.…
Having been homeschooled for the first twelve years of my life, I had a rather untraditional childhood. While my friends were required to go to school from 6:20 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon, I was at home studying or on a field trip to some relevant lecture, the library, or a museum. Because of this less rigid environment, I usually had a lot of time available to me in addition to my school time. Using this excess time for my own personal interests, I developed a penchant for reading at an early age.…
I was afraid to sharpen a pencil in second grade. My most vivid elementary school memories spring from instances when I was being reprimanded by an adult for doing something wrong. I did everything in my power to avoid those dreadful moments, but they still presented themselves on occasion. Even now I feel a pit in my stomach when I recall the way I felt during those times, regardless of the fact that almost all of them would easily roll off my back if they occurred today.…
A story of a time when I proved somebody wrong. Even though my parents felt like I was not ready to go back to a public school Because of my behavior in the past. They said I was not going to be able to keep up with the work and graduate on time with a standard diploma. Therefore, I had to prove them wrong. I told my foster parents that I was ready to go back to public school.…
I was ten years ago and I can still vividly remember sitting on an old, wooden rocking chair while the words of The Very Hungry Caterpillar trembled off my lips to a room full of second graders. I can recall the eagerness and excitement that filled their little faces as I flipped from page to page. There was an abundance of curiosity and desire to learn in that classroom that made me happy that I decided on skipping recess to read to the younger students. There was a fire that lit in my ten-year-old body that day. That was the day where I finally had an answer to all the “What do you want to be when you grow up?”…
One hundred or so years ago, many believed that assimilation of First Nations in Canada was a good policy. No one was aware about the horrid conditions of residential schools at the time. 93,000 residential school students are still alive today. They are the limited survivors of a cultural genocide that many did not even realize had occurred in Canada until very recently. The last residential school did not close until 1996, and to this very day Indigenous society is taut with corruption as a result of centuries of horrors and traumatic experiences .…
Changing schools was the turning point in my life. Coming to a new school gave me a chance to meet new people who shared a similiar interests with me and find a place to fit in. For as long as I could remember I had trouble connecting with people. My parents both came to America to create a better life for their children but unfortunately they could not speak English. They also did not allow me to interact with kids of different races because they were fearful it would corrupt me.…
Residential schools have caused irreparable damages throughout the generations of First Nations people and families. Today, the children and grandchildren of residential school survivors suffer the consequences of what their past generations went through. Its effects have manifested in self-abuse, resulting in high rates of substance abuse, alcoholism, and suicide. Among First Nations people aged 10 to 45, suicide and self-injury is the top cause of death, responsible for 40 percent of mortalities. Residential schools have arguably been the most damaging of the many components of the Canadian government’s colonization of First Nations land, as their consequences still affect the lives of Aboriginal people today.…
Imagine going to school and being striped of your culture, your ways of living, your religion, your rights, and your family. The Canadian government's decision on implementing residential schools was inferior and inhumane. One of the most discriminatory and racist events in canadian history which was the creation of residential schools. The native children that attended these schools had to fear for their lives every day.…
Residential schools refer to a governmental system that is operated to care and educate aboriginal children in Canada. The majority of students in residential schools are aged under 16 years old, so they are easier to manipulate with the commands of teachers than adults. Although the schools’ primary objective of civilizing First Nations children seems to be implemented in a good manner, they are actually depriving those young people of their human rights. The government of Canada holds the perspective that young people are more easily acceptable and susceptible to external factors; therefore, the Canadian government forcefully attempts to assimilate those young people into dominant Canadian society. Despite the fact that the prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, gave a speech and made a sincere apology to the general public, it still cannot change the reality that thousands of people had died from attending residential schools.…
Over a hundred years ago, the aboriginal people of Canada had a great systematic health structure that catered to their beliefs and spirituality (Reading & Wien, 2009). Their ideology of health was centered around the importance of emotional, physical, mental and spiritual well-being to enhance their health, but this has altered over the years (Reading & Wien, 2009). When the Europeans first arrived in what is now called Canada, the relationship they had with the aboriginal people started off as a civil interaction to then shifting to the Europeans reinforcing European ideologies, forbidding Aboriginal people from speaking their native language, associating or learning about their original cultural beliefs and practising their religious and…
Canada has not always been the prime example of a human rights haven. From roughly 1884 to as late as 1996, the Canadian government operated so called “Indian Residential Schools”. In all, 150,000 native Canadian children belonging to various tribes were forcibly removed from their homes and taken to various residential schools across Canada in a savage attempt to assimilate them into Canadian society. The planned agenda was to teach them values of the Christian faith, and teach them how to read and write English; however many children were subject to severe physical, psychological, and sexual abuse.2 Over 4,000 children died while attending the schools, and the vast majority of the survivors still suffer post traumatic stress disorder.…
Around 1870 the first residential schools opened forging Canada’s dark history. Aboriginal children were removed from their families and homes when the residentials schools had opened. They were funded under the authority of the Government of Canada. The purpose of these residentials schools was to remove and isolate children from their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. At least 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were separated from their families to attend residential schools.…
The Residential School era was a dark time in Canadian as well as Indigenous history and is a topic that is still “swept under the rug” today. During this gloomy time Indigenous children were forcible taken from their communities and sent to Residential Schools in efforts to “civilize” Canadian society (Zalcman, 2016, pg.76). In these horrific efforts to cultivate Canada, children were made to look like an “average” Canadian. Their hair was cut to how the Government saw fit and they were given uniforms to wear.…
Residential School is set up by the Canadian government and administered by a church that has an objective to educate Aboriginal children and turn them in Euro- Canadian and in a Christian ways. It started prior to Confederation and signing of the treaties in Canada. The first residential school was established in 1840. The government and the church were the ones who were responsible for the children at residential school. In 1883 until 1923 the Residential School were created as a part of government’s policy that were intended to focus on young Aboriginals by eliminating their aboriginal cultural beliefs and practices from a young age.…