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Solving the “Indian Problem”

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Solving the “Indian Problem” © 2011 D‟Arcy Rheault Solving the “Indian Problem” Assimilation Laws, Practices & Indian Residential Schools D’Arcy Rheault 1842 1844 The 1910 “History of Canada” text book for Ontario Public - The Bagot Commission report (named for Sir Schools taught young Canadians that: Charles Bagot, Governor General of British North America) proposed federally run Indian residential “All Indians were superstitious, having strange ideas about schools as a good tool for separating children from their nature. They thought that birds, beasts...were like men. Thus parents and forcing Aboriginal peoples away from their an Indian has been known to make a long speech of apology to a wounded bear. Such were the people whom the pioneers traditional life. It also mandated that individuals carry of our own race found lording it over the North American only one legal status (e.g., Indian or citizen) thus continent – this untamed savage of the forest who could not disenfranchising most Indian and Métis people in bring himself to submit to the restraints of European life.” Canada by forcing British citizenship upon them and completely erasing tribal identity and nationality.. First missionary operated schools established near Indian Affairs Superintendent, P. G. Anderson, in 1846, Quebec City, 1620-1629 at the General Council of Indian Chiefs and Principle Men in Orillia, Ontario stated “... In 1830 jurisdiction over "Indian" matters was it is because you do not feel, or transferred from the military authorities to the civilian know the value of education; you governors of both Lower and Upper Canada. would not give up your idle roving habits, to enable your children to 1831 , Mohawk Indian Residential School opens in receive instruction. Therefore you Brantford, Ontario. It will become the longest operated remain poor, ignorant and 1969 residential school closing in miserable. It is found you cannot 1840‟s, Among Imperial figures, perhaps the most govern yourselves. And if left to be influential commentator on the "Native Question" during guided by your own judgement, the early 1800‟s was Herman Merivale, a Professor of you will never be better off that Political Economy at Oxford, who became permanent you are at the present; and your Under-Secretary of State for the Canadian Colonies. children will ever remain in ignorance. It has therefore been determined, that your children shall be sent to Merivale believed that control of Indian affairs in the Schools, where they will forget their Indian habits and colonies was essential in order to maintain law and order be instructed in all the necessary arts of civilized life, and "civilize" the Indian population. and become one with your white brethren By 1841, Merivale developed and implemented four First federally run Residential School in Canada opens policy alternatives to be used to solve the “Indian two years later, in 1848, in Alderville (Alnwick), Question.” They were direct and purposeful to say the Ontario least. 1. Extermination (by death or enfranchisement), 2. Slavery, 3. Insulation (reserves) and/or 4. Assimilation 1 1857, The Gradual Civilization Act is enacted. communities in order to discourage runaways. Automatic enfranchisement (loss of status) of any Indian Children were taken from Walpole Island and sent to male over 21 who Shingwauk RS in Sault Ste. Marie (1200kms) can speak, read and write either English or French At school they is of good moral character were held captive, is free from debt isolated from their After the adoption of the 1867 Constitution Act, Canada families of origin formally instituted in law a policy of assimilation, and their siblings, designed to transform Native communities from and forcibly “savage” to “civilized” stripped of their language, religion, In 1879, the Nicholas Flood Davin Report noted that traditions and "the (residential) school is the principal feature of the culture policy known as that of 'aggressive civilization'....Indian culture is a contradiction in terms...they are Many Native uncivilized...the aim of education is to destroy the parents travel sometimes hundreds of kilometers to camp Indian." next to a school hoping to see their children from a distance. 1885, traditional Indian ceremonies are declared illegal in Canada Many Native children grow up with little or no knowledge of their original culture. 1892, Canadian Government and Christian Churches enter into a formal agreement for religious institutions to In 1930, three-quarters of all Indian students are in run the schools: grades 1 to 3 in Residential School and one-quarter in grade 4 to 6. The Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England (Anglican), the Methodist (United) Church, and the Generally children as young as 3 and as old as 16 are Presbyterian Church attend residential schools. It is for Status and non-Status Indians, Métis and Inuit Only 3% of all students progressed past grade 6 children Students were discouraged by school officials to go on Children were referred to as “inmates” to higher grades and were often ordered out of the school by age sixteen Against the law for „Indians‟ to attend regular “public” schools until 1945 Some of the schools did attempt to use positive reinforcement to encourage assimilation, but usually Canadian authorities „strongly encouraged‟ parents, children who did not conform were punished, often by under threat of possible prosecution and fines, to send corporal punishment their children to residential schools 1931, Peek of 82 active Residential Schools in Canada Parents had to sign over custody of their children to the school superintendant or Principle, by law In the 1940‟s at a residential school in northwestern Ontario, near Kenora, a Federal Inspector, in a letter to Children were forcibly taken from their families by the school‟s administrator, admonished him for priests, Indian agents and police officers; often being encouraging Native students to go to grade 9 and kidnapped beyond. without the community‟s “If we let the Indian go to grade 9 then they‟ll want to knowledge. go to grade 10, and then they‟ll want to go to university, and that‟s what we don‟t want!” Children were taken 1948, compulsory attendance ends but residential long schools would continue to operate for almost another 50 distances years from their 2 Dr. Peter Bryce In 1919 Scott abolishes the post of Medical Inspector for Indian Agencies effectively getting rid of Dr. Peter Medical Inspector for the Department for Bryce and ending reports about the death rates in Indian Affairs (1904 -1920) Residential Schools. He visited 15 Western Canadian residential In 1920, while tabling a new Government Bill for the schools compiling mortality statistics from Compulsory residential school attendance of all Indian, 1892 to 1907 finding that 30 to 60% of Métis and Inuit children, Scott stated: students had died from smallpox and tuberculosis over those 14-15-years and “I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think further that 25 to 50% had died in the very first year of as a matter of fact, that this country ought to continually school. He suggested the overall numbers could be even protect a class of people who are able to stand alone. higher, noting that in one school alone, the death toll That is my whole point. Our object is to continue until reached 69 per cent. (Globe and Mail, April 24, 2007) there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian Submits full report to the Department of Indian Affairs question, and no Indian department, that is the whole in 1909. The government and Indian Affairs does object of this Bill” (D. C. Scott, 1920) nothing. The Bill is passed in 1920 and compulsory attendance 1922 – Out of frustration, he self -publishes “The Story for all Native children ages 7-15 years becomes law in of a National Crime” exposing the Churches and Canada Canadian government‟s agenda of genocide. He wrote that Catholic and Protestant churches were Adolph Hitler‟s Interest in the American „Wild West‟ deliberately exposing native Hitler liked to draw an example of mass murder children to smallpox and from American history. He viewed the fighting tuberculosis in residential schools between cowboys and Indians in racial terms. across Canada, and letting them In many of his speeches he referred with die untreated and that thousands of admiration to the victory of the white race in children had died as a result. settling the American continent and driving out (Globe and Mail, April 24, 2007) the inferior peoples, the Indians. (James Pool, “Hitler and His Secret Partners” 1998) His book is largely ignored by the Federal Government and the public He was very interested in the way the Indian population had rapidly declined due to epidemics and starvation Duncan Campbell Scott when the United States government forced them to live on reservations. He recognized the American In 1910, Duncan Scott (a high level government's forced migrations of the Indians over great Indian Affairs Agent) in a letter to distances to barren reservation land as a deliberate policy British Columbia Indian Agent General- of extermination. (Pool 1998) Major D. MacKay, (in response to Peter Bryce‟s 1909 report) states: “Hitler's concept of concentration camps as “It is readily acknowledged that Indian well as the practicality of children lose their natural resistance to genocide owed much, as illness by habituating so closely in the residential he himself claimed, to his schools and that they die at a much higher rate
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