Aboriginal Survivors Female Aboriginal Survivors

Aboriginal Survivors

Female Aboriginal Survivors of Residential Schools in Canada

In 1993, many Native Indian women stood up before a Joint Commission to explain their hurt and despair resulted from their stays at Canadian Residential Schools. More recently the Canadian government asked the Law Commission of Canada (LLC) to investigate child abuse within the schools. The LLC report, "Restoring Dignity: Responding to Child Abuse in Canadian Institutions" was released in 2000. The report dealt with the history, the legacy and the demands for reparations for Native Aboriginal survivors of the residential boarding schools and reparation for the child abuse which took place there.

Paying increasing attention to disparities in health status between U.S. ethnoracial groups, one study by Gone examined cultural practices, including disparities in mental health status in American Indian communities. He found that the American or Native Indians had higher stress levels than any other ethnoracial groups, and suffered from alcoholism, drug use, suicide and depression (Gone 1).

The Residential home school system in use in Canada between 1892 and 1996 was an operational partnership between the government of Canada and the Roman Catholic, the Methodist, the Anglican, the Presbyterian and United Churches to bring Aboriginal children into Euro-Canadian society. Native Indian children, both girls and boys, were sometimes forcibly, sometimes willingly removed from their parents' homes and placed into residential dorimitories. There they would live, work and sometimes play, under conditions reminiscent of the scenes in a Charles Dickens novel. As to discipline, physical and sexual abuse was common, as was starvation. The mortality rate was as high as 50% in some schools. (Tungilik 1).

The Canadian government paid the families an allowance while their children were in the schools as an incentive to send them. When incentives did not work, legal force was used. The reason behind the movement to place all Native Indian children in residential schools was to immerse them in the European/Christian culture so that their indigenous culture would be removed, replaced by what was considered a "better life." They were not allowed to speak their native language under threat of severe punishment (having tongues stuck to frozen fences, being whipped, locked up or ridiculed). They were not allowed to wear their native clothes or practice their native religion. They received a number by which they were called, rather than their name (Tunglik 1).

The political support from the government came from Indian Affairs, which perpetuated this cruel and demeaning way of incorporating the native inhabitants into the ruling population. Duncan C. Scott, head of Indian Affairs made the statement in 1920 that he wanted "to get rid of the Indian problem. Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed" (Tunglik 1).

The first "Home for Indian Girls" was established at Port Simpson in the mid-1800s. The Rev. Thomas Crosby felt that the condition of "Indian" women on the Pacific coast was so deplorable and degrading that in order to save some of them, he gathered them into a home to be looked after by Christian people, and safeguarded against violence. Conditions were so bad for these young women that Rev. Crosby risked his own financial situation to finish what was only partially financed by donations from his friends for a building to house them (Miller 217).

Food, clothing and money were requested of the good townspeople of Toronto. These homes were exclusively for females, who were also chosen for their aboriginal race and low class stature. Although race, class and gender affected the general townspeople's prejudices, the idea of protecting women was seen as a positive thing to do. There were reasons for this - the officials and missionaries who had come into power in Toronto perceived females to be the weaker sex and as a matter of course, they should be sheltered.

The school was modeled after the Euro-Canadian schools, in that the social relationships of the persons in the school were expected to be similar to the prevailing customs of the occupying culture. The way that the administrators perceived aptitudes, destinies and the roles of both male and females were deeply instilled in the operation of the institution. Eventually, the natives who were part of the school population and many members of the missionary staff appreciated the power and presence of these gender roles.

In Post-Confederation schools in Canada, there were differing expectations of females and male students. Unlike the Ursulines in New France and the Jesuits, who assumed both sexes need to be educated, the administrators of the Canadian schools of Native Aboriginals reserved the industrial schooling for the males. Ottawa designed the residential institutions to replace an economy largely dependent upon buffalo with an economy based on industry. Aboriginal schools located in Mount Elgin and Wikwemikong, Ontario housed both males and females, while the Catholic schools at Libret, High River and Battleford were primarily for males who wished to learn a trade, though Libret and High River also housed a small group of girls.

Women were, according to the Victorian ideals of the day, to be the center of the home and would be the ones who influenced the children, so should be ethically and practically educated, for they would become the bedrock of future generations. Therefore a good education for women was the goal of the clerics and school administrators. Peter Jones, a Methodist Mississauga missionary, appealed for funds in 1835 to provide girls with "proper instruction in work... And other domestic duties," because the poverty they lived in created for them a situation in which, "when they leave the schools and become parents themselves [they] are very little prepared to take care of a family" (Miller 218).

Edward Blake, in 1883, voiced the same opinion when he criticized the Tory's initial provisions for industrial schools for boys only, urging schooling for girls as well. Father Hugonnard of Lebret also found that a school for females was "absolutely necessary to effect the civilization of the next generation of Indians." He felt that only educating boys, who would then marry uneducated and unindoctrinated women, would ensure "reversion to 'heathen' ways. 'It will be nearly futile to educate the boys and leave the girls uneducated"(Miller 218).

The current Prime Minister agreed with this attitude toward schooling of the Native Aboriginals and within a year of the institution of these schools conceded that the education of women was "of as much importance as a factor in the civilization and advancement of the Indian race, as the education of the male portion of the community." Citing the example and influence of the mother in a household, he pointed out that her advice and instruction has as much influence as the example set by the father. He feared the result of any marriage where a male residential school graduate married an unschooled woman would be either they would relapse into savagery or the children of these marriages, following the teachings of the mother, would probably adopt "the life and habits of the pure Indian." (Miller 219).

The idea of coeducational schools, however, was quite different in the 1800s than it is today. In the mid-1800s, boys and girls scarcely saw each other, they were so fanatically segregated. The Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs in 1895 announced that the department was opposed to coeducation, unless separate buildings were built for boys and girls "or by some other perfect arrangement they can be kept from the possibility of access to each other." Communication between the sexes was shunned and any breach was met with a severe reproof, if not corporal punishment. In 1993, a former female student of the Williams Lake Catholic school said "I was whipped for talking to my brother. He was my brother, for God's sake!" She was testifying at an open hearing of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Another group of sisters recalled sneaking out in the evenings to meet their brother in the bushes to visit. Nowhere was there allowed any kind of communication between the sexes, not in the playrooms, tables in the dining halls, pews in church and sometimes not even in the classrooms. For children used to freely playing with each other to arrive at and be severely segregated in a residential school where boys and girls could not even talk to each other seemed harsh and alien.

The term "industrial" replaced "residential" in defining the role of the schools in the early part of the 20th century. In Toronto during the 1880s and 1890s, charitable organizations and philanthropists created places where "vicious" children from poverty-stricken neighborhoods might be housed and educated. In 1874, Ontario passed an Industrial Schools Act which set up limited provisions for neglected children to be educated. In 1887 the Industrial Schools Association of Toronto opened the Victoria Industrial School (Miller 252).

During and after World War II, however, while the rest of the world watched women take places of responsibility, and fill in men's roles in industry, conditions at the residential schools in Canada became more relaxed, while segregation of the sexes became weaker. The older children at Kuper Island School were allowed to have Valentine parties under the watchful eyes of their chaperones and Father Renaud, at Lower Post, observed in 1956 that "boys and girls eat together, not only in the same dining room but at the same tables, just like at home. On Sunday night they dance together to music" (Miller 220).

Separate but unequal treatment was the standard in recreation, leisure time and instruction, though gender differences in the classroom was less noticeable. Both sexes were taught the same subjects and the official curriculum statements did not reflect any differences between instructions for male or female students. There was the opportunity for some boys, however, to work full time at operation and upkeep of the institution, rather than attend classroom instruction. It appeared common for boys to be removed from the classrooms permanently when they took on these jobs. Some girls, also graduates of these schools, complained of losing time in the classroom to work for the institution. In keeping with the culture of the day, boys were trained in vocational skills outside the classroom, while girls were taught the "duties of home." Industrial training for girls was generalized, whereas for boys it was specialized in carpentering, farming, stock-raising, boot and shoe-making, blacksmithing or printing. Some girls were taught printing when they worked on the Na-Na-Kwa, the Methodist school at Kitimaat paper, but they usually were taught sewing or "domestic science" to prepare for their futures as wives, homemakers and mothers (Miller 220).

In preparation for farm life, boys were taught agricultural skills and weeded gardens during the summer season. Girls were taught to cook, clean and wash, iron, mend, make break, and sew. As for recreation, boys played sports while "the girls go for walks almost daily. They have small plots of garden in their grounds in the summer" (Miller 251).

During the 19th and 20th centuries, as these Native Aboriginal women grew, they were supposed to spend more time being spiritual, but more than that, they were supposed to do their chores, clean the house, make the beds, cook the meals and serve them. They were also required to clean outer buildings and, in some cases, assist with farming. Taken as children from a free life, where they might also have worked hard, but outdoors more often than not, these young women now became laborers indoors, where clocks, whistles and schedules dominated. They were required to do half a day's labor and were schooled for half a day. The labor was considered to be their contribution to subsidizing the operation of the schools. Taken unwillingly from their parents, these children were submitted to involuntary labor, a condition under which the Aboriginal people of Canada have suffered for a century (Miller 252).

Taken screaming from the arms of their frightened and anguished parents, Indian children were rounded up from Indian reserves by the Indian Agents, the RCMP constables. They were each given a number, herded onto cattle cars and transported to the residential school in Winnipeg or other cities (Miller 289).

In the 1960s, a worker at the Anglican Chooutla school at Carcross, Yukon, reflected at how closely the school resembled a stockyard and the children cattle, where "their health, nutrition, shelter and physical well-being were looked after. 'The children are moved, fed, cared for, and rested by a rotating crew of overseers who condition the herd to respond to sets of signals.'" This worker found the Carcross school "impersonal, homogenized and insensitive."

Women who survived these schools testified at hearings in 1993 that labor was the main occupation during the day for them as schoolchildren. They felt that they were only valued for their strong backs. The women's negative memories were of bad "food, clothing, health care, supervision and protection, discipline and punishment." They experienced, more than anything else, however, a pervasive lack of emotional support and nurturing by the staff members, usually something that only parents can give a recalcitrant teenager. The resulting depression and mental problems that plagued these women into their adult life may have come from this inhumane treatment and care.

All of the women recalled with bitterness the lack of food and the inferior quality of the little food they got. Institutional meals are never excellent, no matter in what institution they are served, but growing teenagers and young adults have appetites that are demanding, because of their growing bodies. While the food was too little and unappetizing, the setting in which it was consumed and the inhospitable surroundings created an unforgettably bad memory in most of the women's minds. "We were always hungry" (Miller 290).

Mistreatment at the hands of a poorly trained and insufficient staff became the lot of children following 1945, when a lack of personnel confounded the nation. Especially non-Catholic schools, such as the Methodist missionary schools, weaknesses in character on the part of staff members compounded the normal problems in dealing with youth. Children were submitted to cruel physical, sexual and emotional abuse at the hands of those who were supposed to be caring for them.

Some children detached themselves emotionally from the hurt they were suffering. In 2000, a female survivor testified that she acted like a clown "so that I wouldn't be hurt," and that "right to this day I won't let anybody see me feeling hurt" (Aboriginal 44).

Finally, in the late 1950s and during the 1960s, the Indian Affairs and missionary organizations began to observe and attempt to correct the training of administrators, childcare workers and teachers in the Native Aboriginal schools. Even though staff at the religious schools were chosen and served because of their religious beliefs, at other schools competing salaries and better conditions elsewhere created a dearth of good teachers and staff. In these places workers were hired without questions about their qualifications, their past or their training for the job they were to do (Miller 318).

But toward the middle of the 1990s, there was an extreme movement for change from the public and from government. Multiple Native Indian political organizations in the communities and within the schools put pressure on the system to advance to more human treatment and better conditions within the residential schools. The Indian Affairs policy was resisted by the groups of Native Aboriginals and the children and young adults within the schools made their objections known, as well. Children resisted being taken from their homes, parents resisted the authority's demands for their children, children ran away from the schools and Indian Affairs caved in to the mass of demonstrations and protests on the part of the Native Aboriginals. School officials realized that ignoring objections could lead to political problems which might cost them their jobs, while missionaries tried to reconcile the parents' demands that their schools become more like other denominations' schools. Parents removed their children from schools when they felt that a rival denomination might have a better school (Miller 344).

The testimony of former students has had a great deal of influence on the changes that have taken place in residential schooling for Inuit and other Indian children since World War II. Following a major parliamentary inquiry into the Indian Act in the 1940s, and policy reviews in the '50s and '60s, widespread doubt was spread among Canadians that custodial educational institutions for Native Aboriginal children was beneficial to the children, or to society at large. Public support was undermined and the availability of Christian workers began to taper off. Native Aboriginal leaders had influenced government leaders to the extent that it was with increasing reluctance that funding and support of residential schools was given (King 2).

At a Special Joint Committee meeting of the Senate and House of Commons, the Indian Act was considered by Committee in 1946 and 1948. The Committee made its recommendations, but did not know with what to replace Indian Affairs. Native and non-Native groups pressed for an overhaul of the laws. It was pointed out that Indian men had turned out in extremely large numbers to join Canadian armed forces. Racism became frowned upon and the Canadian public was embarrassed by their segregation of the ethnic group in their midst through the Indian Act and the denominational residential schools (Miller 378).

Overwhelmingly, the Native bands and other groups were in favor of changes in the educational system forced upon the Native Aboriginal people. Out of 127 briefs submitted to the committee, 5 were in favor of the current system, while 110 stated they were unhappy, dissatisfied and demanded change. The mood was summed up by Joseph Dreaver, a spokesman for the Union of Saskatchewan Indians: "Our greatest need today is proper education" (Miller 378).

The women who had grown up and suffered under the Native Aboriginal residential school system testified in great numbers and offered important criticisms to the Special Joint Committee and were crucial in helping to defeat the old system and bring in the new one, administered by the Native Indians themselves. Even though the Native Huron men were the ones to ask for the original schooling for their youth in the 1800s, it is interesting to note that the Native women tried to prevent this. However, in the ages that ensued, when poverty and starvation at Sussex Vale was a real threat to these Native Indian families, the Micmac and Maliseet mothers surrendered their children to the New England Company schools, where they might at least be sheltered and fed. Little did they know how the decades to follow would find the schools mismanaged and deteriorating into labor camps, rather than institutions of learning.

The resulting legacy of misery on the part of those who were reduced to laboring animals as children is all around now. Sexual, physical and emotional abuse has scarred a large portion, so much so that suicides and crime are common and physical abuse of children is carried on down to the present day. Dysfunctional families are the norm. Hatred, rather than respect for one's elders and depression left over from humiliation and starvation has brought a once-proud Native Indian nation to its knees (Miller 439).

Despite all of their disastrous history, the women of the Nation have survived and are attempting to bring up their children in wisdom, to have pride in their heritage. They are seeking again the ancient teachings of their ancestors to pass along to their children. They work at home and teach in the classrooms. Edna Weber, a 60-year-old Cree woman, teaches children math and geometry. Mary Rose Opekokew has helped develop and introduce a new Meadow Lake Tribal Council Indian childcare program to ensure that children and infants will grow up with loving care and education. She has worked jointly with the University of Victoria in the development of this program (Miller 440).