What Really Happened in Residential Schools
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Hate speech
3
sentences flagged
Summary
Canadian Indian Residential Schools were government-funded, mostly church-run boarding schools. Their purpose was to assimilate native children into superior European culture by giving them a Western education and practical skills. However, a quick Google search on them turns up almost nothing but horror stories. Incidentally, much of it is exaggerated or outright false.
Transcript
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The other day, I said this about residential schools.
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Canada's Indian residential schools were government-funded, mostly church-run boarding schools.
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Their purpose was to assimilate native children into superior European culture
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by giving them a Western education and practical skills.
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However, a quick Google search on them turns up almost nothing but horror stories.
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Incidentally, much of it is exaggerated or outright false.
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Those dramatic testimonies surged after 1996 when the last school closed and compensation programs begun.
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Claims from thousands of former students were largely anonymous and unverified.
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Accused staff were often dead and unable to defend themselves.
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While the schools were in operation, you almost never heard of these so-called nightmares since they were widely seen as positive.
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Leah Meadows, whose mother was both a student and later a teacher at Brandon Residential School, asked the obvious question.
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What was the alternative? Leave kids illiterate and unable to function in the modern world?
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Len Marchand, Canada's first status Indian MP, called his time at Camp Loops life-changing.
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He said, by getting educated, I would be able to do something to help my people.
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His son is now the Chief Justice of British Columbia.
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Playwright Thompson Highway described his nine years at Guy Hill Residential School as the best
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years of his life. His parents sent him voluntarily so he would not die like half his siblings from
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pneumonia. There he learned piano and English, skills that made him an international success.
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Wilton Littlechild, who spent 14 years as a residential school student, said he'd probably
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be dead on Skid Row if they hadn't existed. Burning Sky, a very early residential school
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graduate, was a good friend of our very first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald, and supported
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him politically. Native communities fought hard to keep many schools open. In 1930, over 100 families
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at Cross Lake petitioned to rebuild theirs after a fire. In 1970, Saddle Lake parents occupied
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blue quills to stop it from closing. As late as the 1920s, native bands in Alberta and the
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Northwest Territories lobbied for more residential schools. By the 1940s, residential schools expanded
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from prioritizing education to also acting as care homes for native children removed from abusive,
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dysfunctional, or overcrowded homes for their welfare. In 1971, eight Saskatchewan bands begged
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to keep their medieval residential school open for orphans and kids from broken homes.
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Attending residential schools was wildly voluntary. Parents had to apply in writing for admission,
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and 50% of students left after grade one at their parents' request. And yes, there was abuse,
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sometimes by staff and often student on student, but it was minimal, not everywhere, and it was
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on par with what occurred in white orphanages and boarding schools at the time. Also, a major
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tuberculosis epidemic swept the prairies. It began on native reserves and spread into residential
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schools. As a result, many children died in the schools, but even more died on the reserves.
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That means residential schools actually saved lives. The claim of the 215 unmarked children's
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graves at Camp Loops still has no evidence. In fact, there are far more unmarked children's
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graves on reserves, and they are well-documented. While not perfect, residential schools deliver
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literacy, skills, and opportunity to Native children. The good far outweighs the harms
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obsessively exaggerated by the grievance industry that fabricates falsehoods to delegitimize
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Canada's founding and morally blackmail us white people to extract reparations. It is a major scam
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and we are falling for it by uncritically accepting the dominant narrative around
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residential schools. They were a massive net positive, and I will defend them until the day