Midterm Studying Part 5 Flashcards
Is education a treaty right?
Yes
“Purpose of Residential School System” (4 Points)
Pedagogy: Change learning and education from holistic to western
Paganism: Needed to be Christianized
Culture: Needed to take on White values
Appearance: Needed to “look” more like white people
“Indians Were Pagans”
Missionaries taught the children to live in fear of God because of their and their family’s beliefs instead of positive Christianity.
Culture and beliefs were seen as being pagan and morally wrong, if practiced would go to hell.
Missionaries were trying to discourage the children from following their beliefs and culture.
“English Language”
Indigenous languages were considered pagan.
A tool of assimilation and not as a tool to help the First Nations people
English language was taught through methods of punishment and humiliation.
“Role of the Church”
Christian duty and self-interested foundations of the residential school system.
Church/government partnership that managed the system jointly until 1969
1969: Residential schools on reserves were largely transformed into day schools.
Only a few residential boarding schools continued to exist
Last school (Gordons)
Through partnerships, churches were able to earn federal grants through the number of children attending their schools.
More children = more money which made missionaries want to enlist more children
Anglican, Catholic, Methodist and Presbyterian churches
What was on Davins Report?
Recommended only 4 Residential schools
1931: 80 schools
1950: Hundreds
Cost increased
“Numerical Breakdown”
1800-1990: Over 130 residential / boarding schools
Early 1900’s about 1/6 of children between the ages of 6 and 15 attended these schools.
By the 1940s about 8,000 children (about half the First Nations student population) were enrolled in 76 schools across the country.
The Child Welfare System took over where Residential Schools left off.
In 1992, there were approximately 93,000 former students alive
“Impact on Families, Culture, and Language”
Indigenous children lost their language, identity, culture, basic skills, such as parenting.
Residential schools mission was to acculturate the children into mainstream society
“Impacts on Self-Worth / Identity”
Loss of familial connections,
Shame
Not worthy of love
“Metis in Residential Schools”
Métis were largely excluded there is evidence that they attended residential schools in considerable numbers.
At least 9% of those who attended residential schools identified as Métis.
Most Métis were excluded from official education until 1930 (much later in Saskatchewan) as neither the federal / provincial governments wished to pay for their education.
“Canadians”
Canadians denied a full and proper education as to the nature of Aboriginal societies, and the history of the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples.
“Language”
Bases all teaching and learning on the oral tradition is that it transmits the collective memory of the people.
Aids in the preservation of their histories; oral histories are the archives.
To inhibit the transmission of this oral history is to render a culture mute, which was precisely what was hoped would happen as assimilation took place.
Residential Schools Part 1
Catholic and Methodist churches wanted federal government to fulfill the educational clauses in the numbered treaties quickly.
Nicholas Flood Davin to report on the Industrial Schools in the United States (1987)
Looked at the feasibility of establishing similar institutions throughout the western part of the Dominion.
Recommendations called for four centrally based industrial boarding schools teach the arts, crafts and industrial skills of a modern economy.
Ensure that the children were removed from their homes and away from the influence of their families.
Children would be kept within their civilization, receiving the “care of a mother” and an education that would fit them for a life in a modern Canada
Residential Schools Part 2
It would be through residential education that the ‘Indian problem’ would be solved
Problem was the responsibility the Crown had in terms of its treaty obligations and duty to protect the Indians and act in their interest.
As long as First Nations people remained tied to their culture and traditions, the Crown and later the Federal Government would have to uphold its obligations and duties to First Nations descendants.
Duncan Campbell Scott, Head, Dept. Of Indian Affairs, 1920 wanted to get rid of the Indian problem
The Department of Indian Affairs was supposed to be a temporary measure to protect, civilize, and eventually assimilate First Nations people into mainstream population.
Residential Schools Part 3
Department realized that First Nations people did not want to become “white’ so they increased their efforts of assimilation through policies.
The Indian Act gave considerable powers to the Superintendent General, while appointing Indian Agents onto reserves
Sought to disenfranchise any Indian who obtained a degree, or became a doctor, lawyer, or clergy member (Remove their status)
Any Indian person wishing to pursue higher education risked losing his/her status as an Indian, including all benefits such as living on the reservation, inheriting property, or being buried on the reserve.
The aggressive assimilation policies wanted to assimilate Indigenous people into Euro-Canadian society as fast as possible.
Residential Schools Part 4
After 1885 the Department of Indian Affairs’ education policy increasingly favored the removal of Indian children to church-administered industrial and boarding schools.
Language / culture could be systematically removed and replaced by behaviors and beliefs calculated to turn them into civilized beings
Compulsory attendance policy at the residential schools, introduced 1894.
Prior to this time, First Nations families had the choice of sending or not sending their children to school.
The compulsory attendance was not fully enforced until 1920. After this date Government and church worked together to make it happen
Segregating the children from their parents the missionaries and the government felt that they could “civilize” them.
Residential Schools Part 6
The policies of the residential schools in the late 1800’s “aim was to produce children who would be interchangeable with white children except for color”
In order to produce this desired effect, the educators at the school had to force the “Indian out of the child” by telling them their ways were evil
The children were usually taken from the parents around the age of 7 until 16.
Residential schools were secluded geographically.
Department of Indian Affairs considered it necessary not only to remove children from parents and community and place them in the guardianship of the Department and the churches, but also to maintain that separation for as long as possible
Visits by the family were limited during the year, in addition to the two months’ summer holidays.
“Nutritional Issues / Nutritional Experiments”
Children at Brandon Indian Industrial School are not being fed properly to the extent that they are rummaging around in barns for food that should be only fed to the Barn occupants
In 1942, researchers, including Canada’s leading expert on nutrition, travelled to Northern Cree communities in Manitoba to study ‘the state of nutrition of the Indian’.
The team quickly observed immense malnutrition and health issues:
“While most of the people were going about trying to make a living, they were really sick enough to be in bed under treatment and that if they were white people, they would be in bed and demanding care and medical attention.”
“Nutritional Experiments / Nutritional Issues Part 2”
It is not unlikely that many characteristics, such as shiftlessness, indolence, improvidence and inertia, so long regarded as inherent or hereditary traits in the Indian race may, at the root, be really the manifestations of malnutrition. Furthermore, it is highly probable that their great susceptibility to many diseases, paramount amongst which is tuberculosis, may be directly attributable to their high degree of malnutrition arising from lack of proper foods.”
Researchers concluded that many health conditions would improve with the provision of nourishment.
Researchers did not provide this nourishment instead used the opportunity to study the impacts of vitamin therapies in assisting in malnutrition.
The researchers and the government’s response to extreme nutritional deficiencies was not a humanitarian one, but instead was one that aimed to answer scientific questions at the expense of Aboriginal communities.
“The Sixties scoop”
In the 1960s, the Canadian government extended its assimilation from education into the realm known as child welfare.
Through changes in the Indian Act, social workers received a legal mandate to enter reserves and remove Aboriginal children from their parents.
In response to these changes Patrick Johnson (1983) coined the term “The Sixties Scoop” to describe the mass redirection of Aboriginal children into European-Canadian residences and communities, as well as into adoptive homes abroad
Aboriginal children taken from their homes and communities and placed with white middle class Christian families.
“The Sixties Scoop part 2”
Prior to 1960, Aboriginal children made up only one percent of children in the child welfare system.
By the late 1960s, Aboriginal children made up to 40% of children in care.
Similar to residential schools, the removal of children was justified through claims that it was in the child’s best interest.
Strategy of assimilation
Justifications were made to warrant the removal of children from a family. Two common justifications were on the basis of:
o Income
o Christian beliefs
“Sterlization”
Another tool used to fulfill assimilative policies was sterilization.
In the US, between 1973-1976, 3406 involuntary sterilizations occurred in just 3 Indian Health Services hospitals.
Performed through coercion, force, and sometimes without the patient’s knowledge.
Estimated between 1/3 and 1/2 of Native American women who were of child-bearing age were sterilized during this time in the United States
Canada’s history of forced sterilization does not have the same magnitude as the US, but there is evidence to show that Aboriginal women were more likely to be targeted for sterilization without consent.
“Sterlization Part 2”
Both Alberta and British Columbia had legislation in favor of eugenics.
The Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act was passed in 1928-1972.
A disproportionate amount of First Nations women was sterilized
Those of First Nations and Métis ancestry were also disproportionately assigned the diagnosis of “mentally deficient”, which denied them legal rights and made them eligible for sterilization without consent.
Patient consent was needed in only 17% of sterilizations performed on Aboriginal women, in comparison to 49% for non-Indigenous women
“Disenfranchisement Act”
Anyone entering into Euro-Canadian society was no longer considered “Indian” as they were now Canadian citizens
Women marrying non-Indigenous men
Those who obtained education / Professionals
Soldiers
This meant that they lost their reserve homes, lands and treaty rights
“Bill C-31”
Bill C-31 continued the full Indian status of those already recognized in as 6(1)(a), but reinstated women and children who had lost status because of sex discrimination to a second-class status category, 6(1)(c).
The difference is in the future: Indians who never lost status confer status to their children and grandchildren, while reinstated Indians have a diminished status that they can confer to their children, but not to their grandchildren.”
Bill C-3 was developed to ensure that eligible children and grandchildren of women who lost their status become entitled to registration (Indian status). It was estimated that approximately 45,000 people would become entitled to registration.
Bill C-3 still has some issues: “The legislated inability of one Indian parent to transmit status, known as the second generation cutoff, will apply to these women’s descendants one generation earlier than to male lineage descendants”
“Indian Act”
Between 1876 and 1985 one’s “Indianness” was traced through the male line.
Indian women who married non-Indians ceased to be Indians under the Act. These women were not Indians according to the Act, but neither were they considered to be Canadian citizens between 1876 and 1960.
Indian men could not lose status through marriage, in fact, if they married non-status women, those women GAINED status under the Act.
In 1985 a revision to the Indian Act was made as this policy conflicted with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The revision, Bill C-31, allowed for Indigenous women (who married non-Indigenous men) to reapply and regain their status.
“Discrimination and Assimilation of the Indian Act (2000)”
The revision did not eliminate the sexism within the Indian Act.
Many women and families who regained their status were not necessarily welcomed back to their communities (many were unknown to their communities as a result of having lived off reserves for many years).
In 2010, Bill C-3: Gender Equity in Indian Registration Act received Royal Assent and was effective starting in 2011. This bill came about as a result of a B.C. Court of Appeal that found the Indian Act to be unconstitutional in the case of McIvor v. Canada.
“Blood Quantum Formula for Assimilation”
Retaining Indian status is governed by complex formulas outlined in the legislation of the Indian Act.
The following simplified example demonstrates how the rules and formulas are somewhat arbitrary
The descent provisions in the Act are essentially blood quantum formulas that perpetuate colonial, racist ideologies about what it meant to be a “real” Indian.
“Why is the Indian Act so Disturbing?”
The use of different wording does not cover up what Canada is doing - it is requiring that all status Indians be “real” Indians as viewed from Eurocentric ideologies around blood purity and race.
Recall: United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) provides that no Indigenous peoples shall be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture. Further, the State has an obligation to prevent the loss of such culture and identity.
“Genocide”
United Nations (1994):
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
