Imagine that you and your family have a nice house and property upon which you make a living. Then imagine that strangers descend upon you, occupy your house and your property, take away your means of making a living, abduct your children, and then ridicule you for your disadvantaged situation. This, in some ways, is a thumbnail sketch of the history of European-Aboriginal relations in Canada.
One sometimes hears that the struggles that many Aboriginals experience are a result of Colonialism. While this seems like an abstract term, a direct manifestation of colonialism was the residential school system in Canada. This week the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is holding a series of events in Vancouver that are open to the public. (UBC, under President Stephen Toope’s leadership, has decided to close the university on Sept. 18, so that faculty and student can attend these events. A variety of other institutions are also observing these events in various ways.)
A couple of important objectives of the Truth and Reconciliation process are to allow survivors of the residential school system to tell their stories, and to inform the public about the tragic legacy of this episode in our history.
In his oficial apology of June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Harper had this to say: “Two primary objectives of the residential school system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. These objectives were based on the assumption Aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal. Indeed, some sought, as it was infamously said, ‘to kill the Indian in the child’. Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country.“
The residential school system operated in Canada from 1875-1996. For much of this period, Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their homes, and in many cases transported to distant boarding schools. Many did not return to their families for years. Many never returned. The mortality rates in some schools at times were over 50 per cent at certain times.
A number of cities, like Vancouver, are comprised of numerous recent immigrants (and less recent immigrants) who often know very little of this history. Further, most adults of a certain age who were raised in Canada also know very little if any of this history. Personally, I went to secondary school in British Columbia the 1970s. Like many Canadians, I was not taught about the history and legacy of the residential school system in school.
In thinking about Aboriginal issues it is important to recognize diversity. There are a variety of Aboriginal cultures and languages in Canada. Similarly, there is substantial variation of experiences among Aboriginal peoples in Canada, and there are many great Aboriginal success stories in business, the legal profession, the arts, education, the natural resources sector, and elsewhere. And some Aboriginals had positive experiences in residential school. Nevertheless, the legacy of the residential school system still casts a dark shadow across Canada — and it is a shadow that many Canadians fail to recognize.
In the aggregate, as social scientists have documented, people of Aboriginal descent fair very poorly relative to other ethnic/racial groups in Canada. The specific statistics are staggering, and involve indicators such as: infant mortality, life expectancy, rate of suicide, school dropout, rate of substance abuse, low-income, unemployment, incarceration in prison, as well as many other things.
However, for many Canadians there is a blame-the-victim mentality about these facts. Aboriginal are blamed for being victims of these various social maladies. Average Canadians often fail to reflect on the consequences of the residential school system, and to connect the dots.
In some instances, seven generations of Aboriginals were subject to the residential school system. Many suffered physical and psychological abuse. Some suffered sexual abuse. Most were punished for speaking their native language, and ridiculed for their traditional culture and beliefs. This had an enormous negative effect on the self-esteem of many Aboriginals. Many who were abused passed on the abuse to their children. For many, substance abuse resulted from these experiences. In many families, parenting skills vanished, as children were raised by parents who themselves had not been raised by their own parents and had suffered abuse, and in many cases also succumbed to substance abuse.
As Justice Murray Sinclair, Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has said, this situation was created over many generations, and it will take at least a few generations to be able to say we are making progress.
In places like British Columbia a number of contemporary processes are linked to the legacy of the residential school system, and efforts to move forward. Aboriginal communities have taken control of education in many communities in an effort to provide education in a supportive and culturally sensitive context. In many Aboriginal communities there is still a capacity problem because of the aftermath of the residential school system. For example, in some sectors, such as the natural resource industry sector, it is sometimes a struggle to meet the demand for people with sufficient training in particular technical and professional disciplines. This can be a problem for things like planning processes, and economic development projects.
Of course, the residential school system is only part of the puzzle. While many British Columbia are unaware of this, in British Columbia, Aboriginal peoples were never conquered through wars, nor (in most areas) was the land given up by Natives through treaties. It was just declared Terra Nullius (empty lands — or lands without owners) by Europeans and subsequently settled upon by them.
For many decades Aboriginals persistently claimed the lands of British Columbia as their own. The governments of B.C. and Canada systematically took power away from Aboriginal peoples, in an effort to negate these claims, and to assimilate Aboriginal peoples. For example, in 1872, the right to vote in B.C. elections was withdrawn from Indians. In 1884, parliament outlawed the potlatch, the major social, economic, and political institution of the coastal peoples. In 1927, the federal parliament amended the Indian Act to outlaw receipt of money by any person (including Indians) from any Indian for any claim-related activity. In other words, Indians could not hire lawyers or other related personnel in an effort to get their claims before the court.
This effectively made it illegal for Indians to pursue lands claims. For many decades both the province and the federal government denied that Aboriginals had any rights or title.
Finally, in the 1990s, the British Columbia Treaty Process began.
Despite resistance from some political quarters, support has grown for the treaty process across the political spectrum. (Former Premier Bill Van der Zalm played an important role in getting the process initiated.
Former Premier Gordon Campbell had a remarkable political transformation on this issue. It might also be noted, that former Premier Michael Harcourt was a strong supporter of the treaty process, and later became a B.C. Treaty Commissioner.) Not all First Nations support the process, and there are a number of problems with it.
A final irony related to the residential school system is worth noting.
While the residential school system has overwhelmingly had a negative impact on Aboriginal people, it did bring together Aboriginals from different cultural and language groups. A consequence of this, is that Aboriginals who previously had relatively separate cultures, identities, and languages, learned a common language, developed (to some extent) a Pan-Indian identity, and developed social network ties across communities and Nations. In the long run, this new network served as a basis to mobilize for Aboriginal rights and title across B.C. and Canada, and led to the formation of a variety of broader Aboriginal organizations serving the interests of diverse groups.
Today, it is time to talk about some of the truths that have led to current social conditions for Aboriginal peoples in British Columbia and Canada.
David Tindall is an associate professor at the University of British Columbia. After he became an adult, he learned that an ancestral branch of his family was Cree.