English - Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies

status as a result of marrying non-Indian men will become entitled to Indian
Status. As a result of this legislation approximately 45,000 individuals became
newly entitled to Status.
RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS
Created in the 19th century to comply with the provisions of the Indian Act, the
Canadian residential school system was intended to force the assimilation of
Aboriginal peoples in Canada into European-Canadian society.
The Indian residential school system was designed to teach Aboriginal children the
English language, as well as the religion, values, and work skills of Canadian society.
Between 1831 and 1998, 130 industrial, boarding and residential schools would operate
(Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2006).
Like the Indian Act, the federally-funded, church-administered residential schools
were developed to annihilate the “Indian” identity and to further assimilate
Aboriginal children into the broader Canadian society. Over the nearly 170 years,
130 schools were opened in every province and territory except Newfoundland, New
Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. The Federal Government, in collaboration
with various religious organizations, operated residential schools until 1969, at which
point the government assumed total control for the residential school system. The last
band-run residential school closed in 1998.
At its core, the Indian residential school system was an organized effort to “ kill the
Indian in the child.” Missionary Hugh McKay, writing in 1903, characterized the system
itself as an effort “to educate and colonize a people against their will.” Residential
schools came to represent both in theory and in practice a deliberate systemic effort
to remove generations of Aboriginal children, one by one, from family, community,
language, culture, and, broadly speaking, Aboriginal ways of living in the world. For
those traumatized by their experiences in the residential school, the policy of forced
assimilation has resulted in pervasive loss: loss of identity, loss of family, loss of language,
loss of culture (AHF, 2006).
For decades, Aboriginal children were subjected to different forms of trauma: physical,
psychological, spiritual and sexual abuse perpetrated by school officials and staff.
In 1909, Dr. Peter Bryce, general medical superintendent for the Department of Indian
Affairs (DIA), reported to the department that between 1894 and 1908 mortality rates at
residential schools in Western Canada ranged from 30 percent to 60 percent over five
years (that is, five years after entry, 30 percent to 60 percent of students had died, or 6-12
percent per annum). These statistics did not become public until 1922, when Bryce, who
was no longer working for the government, published The Story of a National Crime:
Being a Record of the Health Conditions of the Indians of Canada from 1904 to 1921. In
particular, he alleged that the high mortality rates were frequently deliberate, with
healthy children being exposed to children with tuberculosis (RCAP, 1996c).
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