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INDIGENOUS INSTITUTE of the AMERICAS
INSTITUTO INDIGENISTA de las AMERICAS
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Natives Win Compensation for Canadian Residential Schools
Reuters News Service
May 11, 2006
Anglican Residential Schools in Canada in 1955
OTTAWA (Reuters) - The government has agreed to a C$1.9 billion deal to compensate thousands of native Indians who say they were sexually and physically abused as children at church-run residential schools, the new Conservative government announced on Wednesday.
The money will be shared among the 90,000 or so survivors who attended the schools, regardless of whether they allege they were abused. The agreement is subject to court approval.
Under the terms of the plan, which was unveiled last November by the previous Liberal government, each eligible student will receive C$10,000.
"We hope that today's announcement will bring closure to former students and their descendants. The settlement is just and honorable," said Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice.
The schools -- most of which were shut down by the mid-1970s -- were supposed to educate native children who came from sparsely populated areas. Many who attended allege they suffered from sexual, physical and mental abuse.
One aboriginal leader has referred to the episode as "the single most disgraceful, harmful and racist act in our history."
Canada has around a million aboriginal people, many of whom live in poverty on rural reserves.
IMPORTANT DATES
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Residential schools chronology
1820 - The Rev. John West brings students from as far away as York Factory to the first residential school at Red River.
1872 - Shingwauk School established on the initiative of chiefs Augustin Shingwauk and Buhkwujunene at Garden River, Ont. (Relocated to Sault Ste. Marie.)
1885 - Miss Kate Brown organizes a school for girls on the Blood Reserve, Alberta, with the support of the Woman’s Auxiliary.
1880s - The Indian Department changes from providing only food rations and small grants for capital costs to providing grants based on annual school attendance.
1910 - The Church Missionary Society (England) announces it will no longer provide for the salaries of Anglican residential schools principals.
1913 - The Missionary Society of the Church in Canada (MSCC) had established an Indian Residential Schools Committee to administer residential schools.
1919-1947- Residential schools administered from Winnipeg.
1945 - General Synod initiates a National Commission on Indian Work.
1953 - Half-day system of education in the schools ends.
1960s - A review of arrangements leads the Anglican Church to withdraw from the schools’ administration as of April 1969.
1969 - Publication of Beyond Traplines, the Hendry Report.
1991 - Creation of Residential Schools Advisory Group and fund for healing and reconciliation.
1993 - Primate’s apology.
1994- Adoption of the Native Covenant.
1996 - Publication of the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.
1999 - A BC court finds the church and the government both liable for abuse at St. George’s School, Lytton.
The Cree Residential School at La Tuque, Québec
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Prolonged residential school experience not only severely limited the ability of Cree youths to participate in the subsistence and social life of their parents and kin. It also promoted assimilationist goals that actively denigrated their language and culture. Hugh Brody, a British anthropologist with years of experience in Arctic and Subarctic Canada, has described this devaluation of indigenous Canadians with particular succinctness:
[We regard] the native person [as] at the very edge of, or just beyond, the world of culture....People in that condition do not know what is best for them (they cannot understand progress) and can only learn by acquiring religion, schooling, housing, money, modern conveniences, jobs. As these are supposed to be the very hallmarks of culture, of civilization, and as they are the indices by which we measure progress; then if the people do not have them, and do not get them, they cannot progess.
This photographic collection offers a brief glimpse into the northern world of the Québec Crees in the mid-1960s -- too little to effectively illustrate the impact of resource development and education on their lives and those of generations to come. But together with the commentary by Hugh Brody, they do raise an important question regarding the relationship between Euro-North American society, its indigenous people, and the utilization of nature -- an issue that was to be raised far more forcefully several years later when the Québec government decided to construct the largest hyrdoelectric complex ever attempted on lands occupied by the Crees.
along with classroom participation.....
On rising in the morning, Cree boarding school children learn a whole new set of behaviors.
Reading too, involves new subject matter....
and a pictorial introduction to southern farm life.
Afternoon includes knitting lessons...
and hair styling....
followed by meals in the dining room.
In the evening, there is time for socializing...
followed by evening prayers.
Boys may take in an afternoon game of hockey in the gym.....
or play in the snow.
As the months go by, home and family seem farther and farther away.
