Residential Schools Essay

Were Residential Schools Harmful or Beneficial to the Indigenous people of Canada? In school we are always taught about the lighter parts of Canadian History, but only until recently have Canadian students been taught about the darker parts of our history. Residential Schools were included in these dark parts of Canada’s history. In the 19th century, the Canadian government believed that Residential Schools were responsible for educating and caring for the country’s aboriginal people. The goal of these schools was to teach the aboriginal children about Christianity and Canadian customs, in hopes of them passing these practices on towards their own children and it would eventually be adopted into the aboriginal culture. The Canadian

The schools provided environments for students that made them feel alone and helpless, by completely taking away the students culture, traditions, and native language. The students went into the school with little to no English skills and yet, were expected to speak English and were beaten for speaking anything but English. An article written by BBC stated, “The schools, which operated from the late 19th Century, were designed to assimilate the children into European-Canadian society by removing their language, religion, and culture. Many students recall being beaten for speaking their native language.” (BBC News). This was an extremely unhealthy environment for the students because they were always scared and couldn’t really express themselves having no prior knowledge of the English language. In an interview with artist and former Residential School student Freddy Taylor stated, “When he couldn’t recite the Lord’s Prayer, he was beaten; when he couldn’t spell an English word, he was beaten; when he spoke in his native tongue of Ojibwa, he was beaten” (Eagle). These children were stripped of their identity and were beaten when they tried to recover what was left of it. Even when the children tried to adapt to the European-Canadian culture, if they would make a mistake when learning the English language, they

Some of the residential school students were so scarred from the way they were treated in the schools, that they even started putting the same abuse that they had received in the schools, onto their own children. The abuse has left the students with mental trauma and many of the students were unable to erase the memories of abuse from their minds. Many the survivors of the Canadian Residential Schools have been inflicting their children and spouses with physical abuse similar to the abuse that they had received previously in the Residential Schools. In an article talking about the victimization of aboriginals they stated, “Males who had experienced abuse as children were found to be at a significantly high risk to repeat the cycle of violence with future spouses” (Scrim as cited in McGillivray and Comaskey 1996). This sad cycle shows that even though the last Residential School closed in the late 1990’s, the experiences that students had during their time is still negatively affecting their lives today. Many of the former students of the Canadian Residential Schools have turned to substance abuse in hopes to try and cope with their struggling mental health. It is shocking to see that a school this harsh could have such long lasting impacts on its students. In an article related to helping people understand the trauma