Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

The history • 103The high deaths rates in the schools were, in part, a reflection of the high death ratesamong the Aboriginal community in general. Indian Affairs officials often tried to portraythese rates as simply the price that Aboriginal people had to pay as part of theprocess of becoming civilized. In reality, these rates were the price they paid for beingcolonized. 387 Aboriginal livelihoods were based on access to the land; colonizationdisrupted that access and introduced new illnesses to North America. Colonial policieshelped wiped out food sources and confined Aboriginal people to poorly locatedreserves, with inadequate sanitation and shelter. The schools could have served asinstitutions to help counter these problems. To do that, however, they would have hadto have been properly constructed, maintained, staffed, and supplied. Governmentofficials were aware of this. They were also aware that death rates among students atresidential schools were disproportionately high. It would be wrong to say the governmentdid nothing about this crisis: the 1910 contract did provide a substantial fundingincrease to the schools. But the federal government never made the type of sustainedinvestment in Aboriginal health, in either the communities or the schools, that couldhave addressed this crisis—which continues to the present. The non-Aboriginaltuberculosis death rate declined before the introduction of life-saving drugs. It wasbrought down by improvements in diet, housing, sanitation, and medical attention.Had such measures been taken by the federal government earlier, they would havereduced both the Aboriginal death rates and the residential school students’ deathrates. By failing to take adequate measures that had been recommended to it, the federalgovernment blighted the health of generations of Aboriginal people.Burial policyMany of the early schools were part of larger church mission centres that mightinclude a church, a dwelling for the missionaries, a farm, a sawmill, and a cemetery.The mission cemetery might serve as a place of burial for students who died at school,members of the local community, and the missionaries themselves. For example, thecemetery at the Roman Catholic St. Mary’s mission, near Mission, British Columbia,was intended originally for priests and nuns from the mission as well as for studentsfrom the residential school. 388During the influenza pandemic of 1918–19, many of the schools and missions wereoverwhelmed. At the Fort St. James school and mission in British Columbia, the deadwere buried in a common grave. 389 At the Red Deer school, four students who diedthere were buried two to a grave to save costs. 390 In some cases, student and staff graveswere treated differently. At the Spanish, Ontario, school, the graves of staff memberswere marked with headstones that, in the case of former priests and nuns, provided