29. Indigenous Children Were Deliberately Cut Off From Their Families
For about a century and a half, from 1863 to 1998, over 130 Indian Residential Schools were funded by the Canadian government, and until 1969, many of them were run by Christian churches. In 1894, attendance at day schools where available, or boarding schools where day schools were unavailable, was made mandatory for Indigenous children. The remote nature of many Indigenous communities meant that boarding schools were the only option for their children. If families refused to part with their kids, the authorities went ahead and forcibly seized them, and placed them in boarding schools.
There, the kids were often cut off from contact with their families. Both because of the long distances involved and because their parents needed passes to leave the Indigenous reservations – passes that the authorities often refused to grant. In the meantime, their children were often abused by teachers and administrators, both physically and sexually. The Indigenous kids in the boarding schools were poorly fed – and sometimes not fed for days on end – and frequently suffered from malnutrition. They were frequently subjected to harsh discipline, including severe corporal punishment, that would not have been tolerated in white Canadian schools.
