Residential Schools Notes
- The Government of Canada partnered with Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, and United churches in the 1870’s to create residential schools for the Aboriginal children.
- The reasons for the residential school system were to assimilate, integrate, and assimilate Aboriginal people into Canadian society.
- Residential schools were mandatory for all Aboriginal children in Canada and if parents didn’t send their children to these schools the parents were punished sometimes imprisoned.
- The federal government and churches operated over 130 residential schools across Canada. The number of active schools peaked in 1931 at 80. The last federally-administered residential school closed in 1996.
- The federal government currently recognizes that 132 federally-supported residential schools existed across Canada. This number does not recognize those residential schools that were administered by provincial/territorial governments and churches.
- Over 150,000 children (some as young as 4 years old) attended federally-administered residential schools.
- It is estimated that there are approximately 80,000 Residential School Survivors alive today.
- Many Aboriginal children were taken from their homes, often forcibly removed and separated from their families by long distances. Others who attended residential schools near their communities were often prohibited from seeing their families outside of occasional permitted visits.
- Students were forbidden to speak their language or practice their culture, and were often punished for doing so.
- Many students were forced to do manual labour, and were fed poor quality food. There are many accounts of students being provided moldy, maggot-infested and rotten foods.
- Other experiences reported from Survivors of residential schools include sexual and mental abuse, beatings and severe punishments, overcrowding, illness, children forced to sleep outside in the winter, the forced...