Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

52 • Truth & Reconciliation CommissionThe Christian churches not only provided the moral justification for the colonizationof other peoples’ lands, but they also dispatched missionaries to the colonizednations in order to convert ‘the heathen.’ From the fifteenth century on, the Indigenouspeoples of the world were the objects of a strategy of spiritual and cultural conquestthat had its origins in Europe. While they often worked in isolation and under difficultconditions, missionaries were representatives of worldwide organizations thatenjoyed the backing of influential individuals in some of the most powerful nations ofthe world, and which came to amass considerable experience in transforming differentcultures. 67 Residential schools figured prominently in missionary work, not only inCanada, but also around the world.Christian missionaries played a complex but central role in the European colonialproject. Their presence helped justify the extension of empires, since they were visiblyspreading the word of God to the heathen. If their efforts were unsuccessful, themissionaries might conclude that those who refused to accept the Christian messagecould not expect the protection of the church or the law, thus clearing the way for theirdestruction. 68 Although missionaries often attempted to soften the impact of imperialism,they were also committed to making the greatest changes in the culture andpsychology of the colonized. They might, for example, seek to have traders give fairprices and to have government officials provide relief in times of need, but they alsoworked to undermine relationships to the land, language, religion, family relations,educational practices, morality, and social custom. 69Missionary zeal was also fuelled by the often violent division that had separated theChristian world into Catholic and Protestant churches. Both Catholics and Protestantsinvested heavily in the creation of missionary organizations that were intended toengage overseas missionary work. The most well-known Catholic orders were theFranciscans, the Jesuits, and the Oblates. The Oblates originally focused their attentionon the poor and working classes of France, but from the 1830s onwards, they engagedin overseas missionary work. They established themselves in eastern Canada, thePacific Northwest, Ceylon, Texas, and Africa. 70 The Oblates administered a majorityof the Roman Catholic residential schools in Canada. They could not have done thiswork without the support of a number of female religious orders, most particularlythe Sisters of Charity (the Grey Nuns), the Sisters of Providence, the Sisters of St. Anne,and the Missionary Oblate Sisters of the Sacred Heart and of Mary Immaculate.The British-based Church Missionary Society was also a global enterprise. By themiddle of the nineteenth century, this Anglican society had missions across the globein such places as India, New Zealand, West and East Africa, China, and the MiddleEast. The society’s Highbury College in London provided missionaries with severalyears of training in arithmetic, grammar, history, geography, religion, education, andthe administration of schools. 71 By 1901, the Church Missionary Society had an annual