Assimilation and Residential School


At the same time that the Historical Treaties were being negotiated with the commitment of good faith and respect, the newly founded country of Canada was preparing another legal instrument: The Indian Act. This piece of legislation betrayed the nation-to-nation Treaty relationship between Canada and Indigenous nations, creating instead a relationship of sovereign-to-subject. Indigenous peoples were legally made wards of the state – under the protection of a legal guardian and deemed incapable of managing their own affairs. The Indian Act, along with other policies, extinguished Indigenous self-government structures and replaced them with Canada-defined systems; separated Indigenous peoples from their traditional lands and confined them to small parcels of Crown-owned ‘reserve’ lands with restricted travel and economic activity; defined legal Indian status and terms of enfranchisement (extinguishment of status);  criminalized ceremonies, gatherings, legal representation; and more. The laws were enforced by force and starvation. Learn more about what?! was in The Indian Act.

Indian Residential Schools, a collaboration of the Canadian government and Christian churches, was a key instrument in the colonial project with the explicit purpose of ‘civilizing the Indians’ by cutting off children from their heritage and indoctrinating them with Western, Christian ways. Over seven generations, at least 150,000 young children were forcibly removed from their families and communities to be placed in distant schools marked by malnutrition, disease, hazards, and abuse.

Chief Perry Bellegarde of Little Black Bear Cree First Nation paints this image of the impact: Can you imagine a five-year-old taken from their parents, institutionalized and told everything good about being a First Nation is no good. Their beautiful long hair (a symbol of Indigenous identity) was cut; their beautiful languages weren't allowed; their access to families and ceremonies were disallowed. Everything they’ve known and pride in who there were as a First Nation is no good. Your family’s no good, your community’s no good, your First Nation's no good. In fact, you’re no good. And you put on top of that physical abuse, and sexual abuse, and mental abuse. (Watch this film 17:31-18:05). George Manuel, an Indigenous leader and Residential School Survivor, put it this way: learning to see only what the priests wanted you to see and hear... even the people we loved came to look ugly; we witness the brutal sophistication and irresistible force of racism, applied bureaucratically... working insidiously as psychological terrorism. The violence turned inward becomes a toxic self-loathing, culturally and individually. Can there be a more elegant violence than this? (Read this excellent book, p. 115).

It wasn’t just individual acts of violence. It was deliberate genocide by cultural obliteration: by erasing languages, cultural beliefs, values, and spirituality, Canada sought to eliminate the distinct identity and existence of Indigenous peoples and assimilate them into Euro-Canadian society. Why? If Indigenous peoples ceased to exist, Canada would be able to extinguish Aboriginal Title to the land and their Treaty obligations, without violating the legal framework that upholds these titles and rights. Essentially, genocide elegantly disguised as good will of ‘civilization’ and ‘education’ was a cover-up by settler Canadians for the greed and theft of Aboriginal lands.

The Bible has a story like this, in the life of Israel’s beloved King David (2 Samuel 11-12). Uriah was a faithful and upright man in King David’s kingdom, who respected and served the King diligently in the military. King David saw Bathseba, Uriah’s wife, and coveted her for himself, and so sent orders for her to be brought to his palace, and slept with her. When word came that she was pregnant, King David acted swiftly to cover his ‘theft’, eventually orchestrating a very elegant violence: sending instructions to the Israelite army to abandon Uriah in battle so he is “killed with the sword of the Ammorites” (12:9). With Uriah dead, King David took Bathseba as his wife, concealing his wrongdoing before the nation of Israel, but “the thing that David had done displeased the LORD” (11:27). The LORD sends his prophet Nathan to call out David’s secret evil, and David responds, “I have sinned against the LORD.”

Questions to consider:
  • How have I tried to hide sins in my own life?
  • As Canada's collective sins (and the Church's complicity) towards Indigenous people are exposed, how might I respond?


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