Some Questions on Residential Schools

 

Studying on the quad at Assiniboia Indian Residential School

It is surprisingly hard to get reliable contemporary information on the Indian residential schools. A lot of people are playing politics. To get the facts, one has to go back to original documents.

One assertion often made is that Indian families were obliged to send their children to a particular residential school. It was all done against the Indians’ will.

I suspect this may be no more than a reference to the general Canadian law that parents must send their children to school; the law against truancy. 

For I find references in the Truth And Reconciliation Commission final report to concern about Indian parents pulling their children out of the schools.

“Student complaints about food hurt recruitment. Kuper Island school principal J. N. Lemmens pointed out in 1891 that it was very important to provide the students with good food and clothing at his school on the British Columbia coast. He said that, unlike First Nations in other parts of the country, coastal First Nations ‘did not suffer for want of food.’ Their children were ‘used to being well fed at home.’ If the quality of food provided at the school was poor, the school might fall into disrepute” (TRC Final Report, Volume 1, pp. 488-9)

The same concern is expressed in a government report in 1907: that student attendance at the residential schools has been falling off, as parents did not want to send their children so far from home. (P.H. Bryce, Report on the Indian Schools of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, Department of Indian Affairs, p. 16).

For this to have been a concern, attendance at any particular school must have been voluntary.

Indeed, how could it not have been? The schools were generally denominationally run. Wouldn’t it have been obvious and necessary to send Catholic children to a Catholic school, regardless of their home address, and Anglican children to an Anglican school, and so forth? Meaning parents would have a choice of which residential school to have their children attend, by declaring their denominational preference. Even if students had to attend some residential school, the schools would be in competition for students. Meaning they would have a need to keep the students, and their parents, satisfied.

And it is not logically possible that Indian students were even required to attend a residential school. Because only about one third of Indian school-aged children ever did, even at the height of the residential schools.

It is also obvious that the government itself would prefer they not attend: at a residential school, the government had to pay for the student’s food and lodging. If they attended regular day schools, or just stayed at home, the government spared considerable expense.

The simple fact that parents could withdraw their children seems, at a stroke, to discredit most accusations of abuse, starvation, or cultural genocide.

Now as to those unmarked graves so much in the news recently.

We have always known there was a high mortality rate in the residential schools. For whatever reason—and science cannot agree on the reason—Canada’s First Nations have always been highly vulnerable to tuberculosis, among other diseases.  A 1907 survey of schools across the Prairies reports: “of 1,537 pupils returned from 15 schools which have been in operation on an average of eleven years, 7 percent are sick or in poor health and 24 percent are reported dead.” All of these deaths were believed to be from tuberculosis. (P.H. Bryce, Report on the Indian Schools of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, Department of Indian Affairs, p. 18).

Can the schools fairly be blamed? There was no cure for tuberculosis until 1946. Granted, bringing students together to educate them might cause the infection to spread to previously uninfected students; but what was the government to do? Not educate the children? They could and did turn away any students showing active symptoms; but TB can remain latent for a lifetime. The rate of tuberculosis in the schools ended up being only half that on the reserves, so the average student was still safer there than at home.

What about the charge that the schools tried to destroy Indian culture by requiring students to speak English or French?

There are several reasons for this requirement that have nothing to do with “cultural genocide.” First, given that the schools were in the business of teaching English or French, the best method is by immersion. Anyone who has studied in a language school will be familiar with this “English only” policy. Second, in almost no cases would the students at a school all be from the same language group. Speaking their first language instead of French or English would freeze out any minorities. Third, why would learning a new language cause you to unlearn a language you already knew? Does learning geometry make you forget your arithmetic? Granted that it is possible, through lack of practice, we have never considered this an important argument against further education. 

Finally, the evidence is ambiguous that this prohibition on using one’s first language was either widespread or, when imposed, was strictly enforced.

Many Indian children, no doubt, hated school. Me too. Perhaps we all deserve compensation.