|
Canada's Dark Secret
Video Documentary - By Al Jazeera
The story of Canada's residential school system and the
indigenous survivors who bear witness to its abuses.
Posted February
05, 2017
Press Play - Video
may take a minute to load
n 1996, the
last residential school in Canada was closed down,
bringing to light horrifying stories about the methods
used to sever indigenous children from the influence of
their families and to assimilate them into the dominant
"Canadian" culture. Over more than a century, tens of
thousands of families were torn apart as children were
kidnapped or forcibly removed from their homes
Residential
schools were part of an extensive education system set
up by the Canadian government and administered by
churches with the objective of indoctrinating Aboriginal
children into the Euro-Canadian and Christian way of
life.
Bud Whiteye, a survivor of the Mohawk Institute
Residential School, was "picked up" and taken to the
school along with four other children as they walked
along a public road to visit his grandmother.
"They didn't
put us in a room and indoctrinate us all day long or
anything like that," he explains. "It was in the routine
of the place.
"You didn't speak anything but English. You went to the
white man's school. You went to the white man's church.
You wore white mens' clothes. All those were built in.
It wasn't a classroom-type lecture. It was ingrained in
the system."
In 2008, the
Canadian government launched the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which finally enabled
survivors to give their testimonies on life in the
residential schools. Abuse - mental, physical and sexual
- was rife and, although research and statistics vary,
it is estimated that 6,000 children died in these
schools. Some evidence puts the casualties at three
times that number.
Denalda is also
a residential school survivor. She cannot remember how
she arrived at the school, only that she was there for
some part of her childhood. She was also a witness to
abuse at her residential school - abuse that may have
resulted in the death of a friend.
"I met this
older girl who kind of took care of me when I was
growing up. She was going to ask her mother to come and
take me home to be her little sister," Denalda recalls.
"But it didn't happen because she got hurt. She got hurt
bad. I think somebody hit her against a tree."
The education
provided by the schools was also controversial. Formal
schooling was often given up in favour of manual labour,
such as agriculture.
"I worked on a farm so long that I picked up a certain
discipline for hard work, to get me where I'm going,"
says Bud Whiteye.
Royal Canadian
Mounted Police (RCMP) officers were often charged with
the task of removing children from their family homes or
"picking them up" to take them to the residential
schools. Families who refused to give up their children
were either arrested, fined or both.
Many officers still live with feelings of regret over
what their government did and the role they were made to
play in it.
"At the time I
didn't like the idea of taking kids away from their
family and it bothered me," says Ron Short, a former
RCMP officer.
"Of course, being in the RCMP I had no alternative. You
couldn't complain about it. The only thing I knew about
the Indian residential schools was that they were places
where you could get a formal education.
"Since then, I've come to realise what they were about.
And I know differently now."
Although
survivors had begun to speak out about the atrocities in
the late 1980s, it was only in the mid-1990s that courts
finally ruled in favour of the witnesses, enabling them
to sue the government for the abuses and claim
compensation.
After its formation, the TRC travelled around Canada for
six years, gathering testimony from thousands who bore
witness to the tragedies of the residential schools.
Numerous "Aboriginal healing" programmes were put in
place to help those affected to move on with their
lives.
"When every
residential school survivor is healed, I'll be healed,"
reflects Short. "Until they're healed, I won't be. And
I'll keep talking to anybody who will listen."
Source: Al
Jazeera
The views
expressed in this article are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of
Information Clearing House. |
