Legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools

The systemic impact of colonization influences the lives of all North Americans, and knowledge of the legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools is vital to understanding the reality today. It also impacts the wellbeing of peoples and societies all over the world where colonization was and is a part of history. Non-Indigenous Canadians, known as the Settlers, need to open their hearts to learn their history.  Non-Indigenous Canadians generally go about life with little knowledge and understanding of the devastating effect of the Indian Residential Schools on Indigenous peoples. About 150,000 Indigenous children were forced away from their families to attend residential schools. This impacted numerous generations in most families. There is a disconnection between the cause and the effect. People may hear about the struggles of individuals and families in Indigenous communities in the news today, but rarely do they pause to draw a link to the residential schools and destructive legislature as the key underlying reason for the hardships that are endured today.  This is the legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools.

Frequently, any recognition is filed away by the unconscious mind as an emotional protective mechanism, and conscious acknowledgement is not generated. There may be a brief thought that the government has to deal with that, it’s not my issue. Another unfortunate result of this head in the sand approach is that new Canadians are sometimes even more intolerant of the legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools because they are usually passed misinformation from members of dominant society. First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples live with transgenerational cyclical dysfunction in their communities as a result of over a hundred and thirty years of Canadian government policy enforcing assimilation and cultural genocide, encouraging dependence through its tool, the Indian Residential Schools. That is our history, the legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools, and healing begins when we take responsibility. Step one is learning the history, not as it was taught in the history books for decades through the eyes of the “winners”, but through the eyes of those who lost so much.

Read blog post Part 1: Residential Schools to learn about the impact of the schools on individuals, families, and communities.     https://www.peacefulpossibilities.ca/family-constellation-calgary-residential-schools/

Reality Revealed

When did the discussion on the residential schools finally begin? Many residential school survivors kept their emotional secrets suppressed and intact for decades. Many took them to their grave. Most did not share them with family or friends. For others the pressure to remain silent became impossible and they finally began to speak about their experiences twenty-five years ago. Some have now shared them with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission statement gatherers the past five years or during the Settlement Agreement process. Some have written books. In the late 80s the truth began to trickle out. A great number of the Indigenous children who attended Canada’s federally funded, mostly church operated, Indian Residential Schools were the victims of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse during their years at the schools. Many children died without proper notification to the family about the cause of death and proper burials were frequently non-existent.

In addition to the intentional destruction of the indigenous peoples’ cultural identity, language, traditions, ceremonies, intergenerational skills, parenting skills, survival skills, spiritual beliefs, songs and dances, many children also left the schools carrying terrible shame and guilt imposed on them by adults in positions of trust. Administrators, supervisors, government agents, teachers, clergy, church workers, and other older oppressed and abused indigenous students forced abuses on the children. It wasn’t enough just to tear these children away from their families at five or six years of age but school treatment included: violence, constant fear tactics, inappropriate discipline, degradation, cruelty, a foreign language, forbidden use of mother tongues under threat of punishment, isolation from siblings and often placement in different schools, the loss of long hair worn traditionally, the wearing of strange European clothing, hunger and a sudden and complete diet change, the loss of valued mementos from parents and grandparents, and a sterile, institutional atmosphere to replace loving family members. For the parents and grandparents, the abrupt loss of their children and grandchildren from the family unit and community was devastating.  Would you want this for your children and grandchildren?  You can stop wondering why Indigenous peoples are still struggling today. This unresolved emotional trauma travelled epigenetically down from one generation to another. As I write this blog, another Indigenous baby has been born carrying this emotional inheritance.

Assimilation

Indigenous communities are living with the legacy of destructive Canadian legislation. It intended to create dependency.  The Indian Residential Schools were implemented to ‘“kill the Indian in the child,” to “civilize” and Christianize. It is only fair to note that many people complicit in this process thought they were involved in an effort to “better” the Indigenous people. I must also emphasize that not all residential school experiences were negative and some people feel their time at the school gave them a positive boost in life. However, many of these individuals have suppressed the negative aspects of the schools in an effort to move forward. The reality is that unresolved emotional trauma experienced in the past has been passed down to the living generations of today – the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.  You can’t leave your family system behind.  The emotional environment experienced plays out in the expression of your genes.  One generation may succeed in moving forward without the healing work being done but in all probability the children and grandchildren will reveal the unresolved emotional trauma in their lives.  Repetitive life patterns of the mother, father, and grandparents will occur in the new generations until the healing work is done.

It’s Your History and Mine

Discussing any positive aspects of the residential schools does not right thousands of wrongs or abusive situations. This was a shameful period in Canadian history. Through my own healing work, and through systemic family constellations, I have learned to acknowledge and accept the past for what it was and is. It was what it was. We cannot change the past. It does not resolve anything to carry the negative emotions of anger, shame, guilt, pain, trauma, resentment, or hate. These emotions only keep you stuck, paralyzed emotionally, and unable to live your full potential.  I am referring to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples here.  Addressing the emotional wounds brings healing.  In the present, we can acknowledge the past and learn from it. If we don’t take the time to learn from the past we will continue the same patterns in one form or another. We continue to witness more of this oppression all over the world today including within Canada. Canadian colonization of Indigenous peoples continues today. Governments cannot seem to put together healthy new legislation, even with the input of Indigenous peoples, without trying to eliminate their rights as First Peoples. Over and over new legislation is overturned by Indigenous peoples because the papers put forward are still destructive. The government representatives obviously have not taken the time to understand the past or the Treaty signing process of their forebears.

Nation or state history passes down from generation to generation just as family history does.  The nation has a greater consciousness that is bigger than all of us.  What is left unresolved from the past in the nation will flow down to the new generations until it is resolved or healed.  What arrives with immigrants also needs to be addressed.  Canadian governments do not recognize the Indigenous peoples as nations and they don’t accept their right to self-determination.  They plead ignorance of the true intentions behind the Treaties.  They act as if their forebears signed real estate deals with the First Peoples.  Canadian governments have not taken the time to build relationships with First Peoples and their governments.

Healing the Wounds

Just as a family heals when it welcomes in those who are missing, forgotten, or excluded; nations heal their wounds when those who are excluded or shunned to the margins of society are welcomed and live with a standard of living comparable to dominant society.  Canada has a loooooong way to go.  Canada usually ranks in the top six or seven on the United Nations Human Development Index each year for standard of living but if we were ranked at the living standard of Indigenous peoples living in Canada we would be ranked around 50th worldwide.  For more information please read the final report of James Anaya, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples in Canada, dated July 4, 2014.

http://unsr.jamesanaya.org/docs/countries/2014-report-canada-a-hrc-27-52-add-2-en.pdf

What we learn from the past can be used to change the future, if we are open, ready, and willing to change. What we learn from the past can be used for healing systemically at the individual, family, community, regional, national, and global levels.

“Reconciliation is about forging and maintaining respectful relationships.
There are no shortcuts.”
– Justice Murray Sinclair, Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner, Canada

People are often given the impression that the Indian Residential Schools (IRS) are part of Canada’s long ago distant history, but that is misinformation. The last IRS closed in the province of Saskatchewan in 1996. I find the following quote so appropriate and it comes from someone who experienced the trauma of colonization in Australia:

“Let no one say the past is dead
The past is all about us and within.”

(We Are Going (Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker), Brisbane: Jacaranda Press, 1964)
(My People: A Kath Walker Collection (Brisbane: Jacaranda Press, 1970, rev. eds. 1981, 1990, p 86)

Positive Steps

Nevertheless, this story is not entirely one of bleakness as there has been much wonderful positive action over the past decade. Many people and organizations are making a difference. The healing of many generations is just beginning. When a government apologizes, as Canada’s did in June 2008, and then cuts funding to Aboriginal healing programs, there is a blatant mix message sent. The healing is only just beginning and that must not be forgotten. When there is several hundred years of damage done, it may take just as long to heal the wounds. We benefit from the resourcefulness, talent, and success of our ancestors and now it is time to take responsibility and address their emotional burdens.

There are many great resources to supply you with information about the Residential Schools and healing actions including:
• The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada http://www.trc.ca
• The Aboriginal Healing Foundation http://www.ahf.ca
• Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015576/1100100015577 where you can find a timeline of relevant dates and events since The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples filed its 1996 report and brought the experiences of former residential school students to national attention.

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