The discovery of what is believed to be the remains of 215 children at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C., has stunned Canadians and renewed focus on what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a “dark and shameful chapter of our country’s history.” It is also another reminder for Indigenous peoples living in Canada of a painful history they’ve known about all along.
More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were forced to attend church-run, government-funded schools between the 1870s and 1997, it is unknown exactly how these Children died, they where placed in unmarked graves, were forcibly removed from their families and culture and forced to learn English, embrace Christianity and adopt the customs of the country’s white majority.
As a person who spent my first 17 years in an orphanage in the UK, I am shocked that a government can make these types of decisions, then they pursued a policy of cultural genocide, simply because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources.
Many of the children at residential schools were physically, sexually or psychologically abused in a system described by the TRC in its landmark 2015 report as cultural genocide. The residential school system was just one tool in a broader plan of “aggressive assimilation” and colonization of Indigenous Peoples and territories in Canada. My question is this, what is the difference between what the Nazi’s did to the Jews, and what the government of Canada has done to these children?
Who will be brought to justice, the answer is no one, the Canadian government and Canada’s churches built the residential school system to solve the “Indian question” in Canada — the perceived threat and barrier posed by Indigenous Peoples to the ongoing construction of the newly forming nation of Canada? They developed a system that mimicked schools in the United States and in British colonies, where governments and colonial powers used large, boarding-style industrial schools to convert masses of Indigenous and poor children into Catholics and Protestants and turn them into “good industrious workers.”
In 1910 the Canadian Parliament went on record saying “We want to get rid of the Indian problem. we do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are unable to stand alone… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation examining residential schools has identified the names of, or information about, more than 4,100 children who died while attending these schools, most due to malnourishment or disease.
Former senator Murray Sinclair, who chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) examining residential schools, has said he believes the death count could be much higher because of the schools’ poor burial records.
Residential school survivor Phyllis Webstad, founder of Orange Shirt Day, speaks as Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Kúkpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir listens after the B.C. Lions CFL football team announced that it would recognize the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, held on September. 30th 2021, at their Sept. 24 game against Saskatchewan in Vancouver. Orange T-shirts with an Indigenous B.C. Lions logo by Kwakwaka’wakw-Tlingit artist Corrine Hunt will be handed out to 10,000 people at the game and tickets will be provided to 350 residential school survivors to attend
Dr Bill Pomfret; MSc; FIOSH; RSP. FRSH;
Founder & President.
Safety Projects International Inc, &
Dr. Bill Pomfret & Associates.
26 Drysdale Street, Kanata, Ontario.K2K 3L3.
www.spi5star.com pomfretb@spi5star.com
Tel 613-2549233