{"id":776,"date":"2015-10-02T23:15:37","date_gmt":"2015-10-02T23:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/postconfederation\/?post_type=chapter&p=776"},"modified":"2019-07-16T21:43:33","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T21:43:33","slug":"11-7-from-agricultural-training-to-residential-school","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/postconfederation\/chapter\/11-7-from-agricultural-training-to-residential-school\/","title":{"raw":"11.7 From Agricultural Training to Residential School","rendered":"11.7 From Agricultural Training to Residential School"},"content":{"raw":"[caption id=\"attachment_2862\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"640\"]\"Map<\/a> Figure 11.11 The Numbered Treaties cover all of the Prairie West, the western North, most of northern Ontario, and a quarter of British Columbia.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nBy the time the numbered treaties and the\u00a0reserve system were created, Indigenous peoples in what is now Western Canada faced dire conditions. Many communities were ravaged by diseases such as smallpox, and devastated by the whisky trade. The bison, on which they relied, was almost extinct.[footnote]See James Daschuk, Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life<\/em> (Regina, SK: University of Regina Press, 2013).[\/footnote] The Canadian government once again decided that the solution was model farms to accompany a policy of peasant farming through which Indigenous families were to receive \u201c2 acres and a cow\u201d --\u00a0<\/span>and through which they were not encouraged to utilize any labour-saving machinery. The government felt this would ensure Indigenous peoples would be converted to sedentary farmers, but would not be so successful that they would compete with the new settlers moving west. Not surprisingly, the plan failed. Government bureaucrats at the time blamed the supposed \u201clazy\u201d nature of First Nations peoples. Historian Sarah Carter has since proven that Indigenous peoples were interested in farming, but that the government\u2019s policies and practices undermined reserve agriculture.[footnote]See Sarah Carter, Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy<\/em> (Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press, 1990).[\/footnote] More important to the government was a new system of schools for Indigenous children.\r\n\r\nThough they had weak results in the early schools in central Canada, the Federal Government was optimistic that expanding schools into the Prairies made sense, hopeful that the Indigenous peoples there could also be \u201ccivilized and Christianized.\u201d[footnote]See J. R. Miller, Shingwauk\u2019s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools<\/em> (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1996) and John Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System,\u00a01879 to 1986<\/span><\/em> (Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Press, 1999).[\/footnote] Starving and destitute, some Indigenous peoples also hoped the schools would teach their children the skills necessary to adapt to changing conditions and, ideally, to learn a trade that would make them self-supporting. What remained to be determined though was what kind of education system would best serve the Indigenous peoples living in the West. To help answer that question in 1879, the government enlisted Nicholas Flood Davin (1840-1901), a Regina newspaper editor and the M.P. for Assiniboia West, to study the American system of industrial schools for Indigenous peoples. Notably, as was the pattern in government dealings with Indigenous peoples, Davin did not consult First Nations. He concluded that industrial schools in which children learned a trade and which were similar to those in the United States would be appropriate and useful in the West, despite disappointing results in similar schools in Central Canada. Davin also suggested that the Canadian government forge alliances with the churches to manage the schools.[footnote]Canada, Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds<\/em> by Nicholas Flood Davin. 14 March, 1879. Library and Archives Canada, Record Group 10, Vol. 6001, File 1-1-1.[\/footnote] These \u201cindustrial\u201d schools were costly, however, and as a result, a parallel system of day and boarding schools was also created. Boarding schools were similar to the industrial schools, but were typically smaller with a much reduced focus on trades instruction. The first of the industrial schools --<\/span>\u00a0the Qu\u2019Appelle Industrial School and the Battleford Industrial School located in the future province of Saskatchewan, and the St. Joseph\u2019s School (also known as the High River or Dunbow school) southwest of Calgary --<\/span>\u00a0opened in the 1880s. These schools would lay the groundwork for a system of schools that would eventually spread across the Prairies and into British Columbia and the North.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_2708\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"640\"]\"Tents<\/a> Figure 11.12 The Fort Qu'Appelle Indian Industrial School was one of the first to open. Seen here ca. 1885 with teepees and carts outside the fence.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nBy the time the last school closed in 1996, over 130 would have operated and over 150,000 Indigenous children would have been forced to attend what would ultimately be deemed tools of cultural genocide.[footnote]Canada, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, \"Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada\" [PDF]<\/a>, last modified July 23, 2015, http:\/\/publications.gc.ca\/collections\/collection_2015\/trc\/IR4-7-2015-eng.pdf<\/a>[\/footnote] Indigenous children were taken from their homes, separated from their communities and families, and were forbidden to speak their languages or practice their culture. Students were poorly fed; subjected to medical experiments; forced to undertake manual labour; and were subjected to physical, sexual, and mental\u00a0or\u00a0spiritual abuse.[footnote]Ian Mosby, \u201cAdministering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942-1952,\u201d Histoire sociale\/Social History<\/em> 46, no. 91 (2013): 615-642.[\/footnote] The legacy of this appalling treatment is still being felt in Indigenous communities today.[footnote]Canada, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Vol. 5: Renewal: A Twenty-Year Commitment. In For Seven Generations: An Information Legacy of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples<\/em> [CD-ROM] (Ottawa: Libraxus, 1997.)[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nTo ensure the schools \u201csucceeded,\u201d the government enacted a number of measures including compulsory attendance in 1894 (and reinforced in further legislation in 1920). However, the parents of Indigenous students were not passive participants in the plans of church and state to \u201ccivilize\u201d their children, and many did whatever they could to prevent their children from attending these schools and to demonstrate their displeasure. Parents were angered that their children were being abused and that they were taken so far away from the reserves. Parents were also upset that students were alienated from their culture, were forced to work long hours, were not properly cared for, and could not find employment after graduation. This opposition took place, however, in a power relationship in which Aboriginal peoples were unable to bring about real change. Thus, their opposition had only a limited effect. What did sway the administrators was rising costs.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_2710\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1000\"]\"Panorama<\/a> Figure 11.13 St. Joseph's (Cariboo) Indian Residential School was established in 1891 as one of the several schools run by the Catholic Church in BC.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nOriginally thought to be a quick and relatively inexpensive way to deal with what administrators deemed the \u201cIndian Problem,\u201d the schools had evolved into a costly and complicated system that was not producing significant results. As a consequence, Duncan Campbell Scott (1862-1947), who was appointed to the position of Superintendent of Indian Education in 1909, changed the professed goal of schools for Indigenous peoples from integration to segregation (in the words of Scott: \u201cfor civilized life in his own environment\u201d). In 1923 officials merged the industrial and boarding schools to create a new category of schools known as \u201cresidential schools.\u201d[footnote]Brian Titley, A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada<\/em> (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 1986).[\/footnote] Scott, though, still very much believed in a policy in which Indigenous peoples should be obliterated as a distinct community. In 1920 he made this now famous statement: \u201cI want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone.\u2026 Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question\u2026.\u201d[footnote]Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Superintendent General of Indian affairs, testimony before the Special Committee of the House of Commons examining the Indian Act<\/em> amendments of 1920, Library and Archives Canada, Record Group 10, vol. 6810, file 470-2-3, volume 7, pp. 55 (L-3) and 63 (N-3).[\/footnote]\r\n
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Key Points<\/h2>\r\n