Week 6 Intergenerational Trauma and Risk Factors for Crime Flashcards
1
Q
Learning Objectives
A
- Understand the history of Indian residential schools
- Know the significance of the Davin Report
- Describe the Sixties Scoop and the Millennium Scoop
- Understand the trauma theories applied to residential school survivors and note how these theories are used to explain factors that are related to both crime and victimization
- Understand the factors that contribute to Indigenous over-representation in the Canadian CJS
- Describe the categories in the four-category risk factor model (RFM)
- Describe the nature of Indigenous gangs in Canada
2
Q
The Davin Report (1879)
A
- John A. Macdonald commissioned Nicholas Davin to investigate industrial schools established for Indigenous Peoples in the US
- These schools were based on a model used to educate former slaves in the US
- Official title: Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds
- Report conclusions:
- Indigenous adults could not be “civilized”
- Incapable of learning
- Too connected to their own traditions
- Indigenous children could be schooled and trained to be like “non-Indians” * “Wemustcatchthemveryyoung”
3
Q
The Davin Report
A
Nicholas Davin promoted a policy of “aggressive civilization” look at the slide as well
4
Q
Canadian Indian Residential Schools
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- Opened from 1831 – 1996
- The first was the Mohawk Institute boarding school for boys in Ontario * Increased interest in their utility in 1880 (after the Davin Report)
- Every province in Canada established residential schools except Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island
- Schools were usually administered and run by the Church
- The RCMP and Indian agents forcibly removed children from their homes
and put them in residential schools - In 1931 there were 80 schools operating in Canada
- 7 generations of families attended
- Approximately 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children attended Indian Residential Schools
5
Q
Life in Residential Schools
A
- Education was not the priority
- Usually educated to grade five and then trained for manual and menial labour
- In order to keep costs low, children lived under horrible conditions * Government reports include evidence of the severity of the
conditions - Cheap buildings, poor insulation, inadequate safety, and overcrowding
- An inspector noted raw sewage seeping into dormitories in 1953 * Conditions led to spread of tuberculosis (TB) epidemics
- File Hill Industrial School lost 69% of students to TB
6
Q
Life in Residential Schools
A
- Students typically stayed for 10 months of the year
- Denied communication with their families to limit cultural influence
- Discouraged family visits and facilitated this by placing children in schools that were far away from their home communities
- Predominately funded and operated by the Government of Canada and Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and United churches
- Churchianity: indoctrination into Christianity; the interpretation of Christian teachings destructive (not necessarily the teachings themselves)
- Children assigned numbers and Eurocentric names * Traditional hair and clothing removed and replaced
7
Q
Residential School
Abuses
A
- 1000s of survivors have testified about their experiences
- Severe sanctions for breaking rules
- Abuseswerephysical,mental,andsexual
- Lashes and beatings (permanent injuries including broken limbs,
fractured skulls, shattered eardrums, death) - Forcibly confined (sometimes in straightjackets)
- Shocked in an electric chair
- Needles stuck through their tongues
- Called names
- Hungerwasacontinualandsystemicproblem
- Nutrition experiments conducted on Indigenous children
- Control group: kept malnourished with the normal residential school diet
- Experimental group: given vitamins or food enriched with vitamins and minerals
8
Q
Residential School Abuses
A
- Special Advisor to the Minister of National Health and Welfare on Child Sexual Abuse noted sexual abuse rates reached 100% at some schools (Rogers, 1990)
- Abusescommittedbypriestsandnuns
- Some children used in pedophile rings organized by
clergy, police, and govt. officials - Some female students were forced to have abortions and involuntarily sterilized
- Murdered babies and students
- Witness accounts include live babies being incinerated
- Many schools had unmarked graveyards where they buried bodies
- The TRC’s Calls to Action 72-76 requested funding to find unmarked burial sites in 2009
- The request was denied
9
Q
Residential School Deaths
A
- Renewed interest in residential school deaths following the discovery of 215 children’s bodies in an unmarked grave at Kamloops Indian Residential Schools
- Notsurprisingtothe families and communities the children did not return to
10
Q
Residential Schools: Settlements and Apologies
A
- Legal challenges brought by survivors started in the 1990s
- In 1995 residential school administrator Henry Plint was convicted of assault
against 18 former students - Victims ranged from ages 6-13
- Sentenced to 11 years in prison for sexual abuse
- Former student Willy Blackwater was the first to sue (and win) a case against the federal government of Canada citing post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- BC Supreme Court Justice Douglas Hogarth called Plint a “sexual terrorist” and stated the school was “institutionalized pedophilia”
11
Q
Residential Schools: Settlements and Apologies
A
- The Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) signed by the government of Canada on May 10, 2006
- The biggest class action lawsuit in Canadian history
- $60 million allocated to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for public awareness and to provide space for survivors to share their stories
- Common Experience Payment (CEP) $1.9 billion total supplied as lump sum payments to survivors whose attendance could be documented
- $10,000 for first year of residential school, $3,000 for each additional year * Additional payments allotted for those who experienced abuse
12
Q
The Sixties Scoop
A
- Another large-scale child removal tactic employed by government agencies * Most apprehensions occurred between the 1960s-1980s
- Children removed from Indigenous communities and adopted out or put in foster care
- Often newborns
- The process began in 1951 when amendments to Indian Act (section 88) gave the provinces control over Indigenous child welfare where none existed federally
- The provinces were unprepared and unfunded for the numerous issues that had been created by the federal government
- The provinces removed children rather than providing community resources and support
- In 1951 there were 29 children were in provincial care in BC
- By 1964 there were 1,466
13
Q
The Sixties Scoop
A
- Parents and bands had no input or notice of the decision to remove their children
- It was not until 1980’s Child, Family and Community Services Act that it became a requirement to notify band councils
- Children removed from Indigenous households and adopted by non- Indigenous families in 70% of cases
- Children sent to families in Canada, the US, and as far away as New Zealand * In 1981 45-55% sent to non-Indigenous American families
- Research suggests the number to be above 20,000
- Many children were not told that they were Indigenous
14
Q
The Millennium Scoop
A
- There are more Indigenous children in govt care today than at the height of the residential school system
- 7.7% of children in Canada are Indigenous and they account for 52.2% of foster children (Census, 2016)
- In Manitoba 10,000 of the 11,000 children in care are Indigenous
- Canada has also discriminated against Indigenous children and families on-reserve and in the Yukon on the basis of race by providing inequitable and insufficient funding for child welfare services
15
Q
Modern Issues for Indigenous Children
A
- Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (2016)
- First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada et al. v. Attorney General of Canada (for
the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada) - Case originally filed in 2007
- Found the federal government discriminating against Indigenous children by underfunding child
welfare services - Canada was ordered to immediately cease its discriminatory conduct and institute:
1. 2. 3. 4.
Immediate relief to address the most egregious impacts of the discrimination Mid term reform to address some of the structural factors
Longer term reform
Compensation for children harmed by Canada’s discriminatory conduct - In 2019 the tribunal awarded $40,000 to each child (total limit allowed under its statute) in damages for the willful and reckless discriminatory conduct and for pain and suffering from the discriminatory conduct
