Residential School

Jeff came home from work the other day, where he listens to podcasts for background noise, and said, “we should watch this video of an interview with a First Nations woman. When she was four and a half she was taken with her eight year old brother by the Indian Agent from her front yard and sent to boarding school where she stayed until she was 16. She later became a Christian.”

I immediately burst into tears.

I know about the boarding schools and the statistics. I even know many stories, but it still gets me. How did people ever think that was a good idea?

Stuart, the ministry’s executive director told us, “From my reading, it seems that most of the social problems facing First Nations people today can be traced directly back to residential schools.” Native people lost their sense of community, family, identity, and worth. Over a hundred years ago, the Canadian government decided that all “Indians” (as they called them then), regardless of age, were wards of the state with all the rights and privileges of a child in foster care. Therefore, parents had no jurisdiction over their own children and the government agent could take them from their homes and send them to residential school. But I’ll let Susie tell you about it and how it affects people today.