>> What, what kind of, where education, really, I think is appropriate to use is in this colonial model. And so, I should perhaps talk about that. With the introduction of schooling, we start to see like Aboriginal education or Indian education, as it would have been called in the, that time becoming like the primary mode of learning for, for the young people. And, and it's really a strategy of assimilation on the part of the state to assimilate indigenous peoples into the British and then Canadian subjectivity. What is the crossing point here? Again, there is no like real, any one real date you can kind of choose. You know, some of the mission schools and boarding schools were, were starting in the 1830s. So, like prior to Canada's confederation certainly you know, what's interesting is that a lot of things that happen in Canada happened in the US first and Canada adopts them. So, boarding schools were one movement on the rise in the US that Canada was certainly looking at. And there were a range of options for ways that the, the education of, of young Indian people could have gone. But they went with the residential school model, and in some of the debates about it in Parliament and elsewhere, you can see that the assimilatory power of removing children from their parents and from communities was a factor in making that decision, because it would assist the assimilation process. So, talking about what is Indian education and I'm using Indian now because that is certainly the term that is, is being used in this era, in 1800s and, and most of the 1900s. And we're, so we're talking about, about people who are recognized by the state as Indian. So, it kind of, along with the Indian Act, so we could maybe put 1876 here, because the Indian Act is like an amalgamation of previous acts that were on the books in upper and lower Canada and it's a way of kind of putting them together into one kind of forceful piece of legislation which could then be applied across the nation. Again, a very national kind of strategy as they moved across the west. It was interesting, it was like entering into treaties with all the, the communities and the, the, all the nations across the plains and the prairies and on one hand, making these great promises and then having this piece of legislation which reduced their responsibility to fulfill all of those promises. So, in a way they, they kind of make a promise, an obligation, one nation to another about the provision of education. And then, they have the Indian Act which restricts who they really see as Indian people that they're responsible for. Not that in the nation-to-nation agreement, there's any sense that you are responsible in this, you know, in this kind of way. But all that aside it's like the act restricts the financial implications of the treaty relationships. It's, it's a way of kind of saying, okay, but only these people are recognized as Indians because the Indian Act defines who is, is recognized as an Indian by the state. And then, it's also saying and we're responsible for providing education, but since we're providing it, we'll choose what it is. So, there's no input on curriculum or hiring or like, who, who is a teacher on the part of indigenous communities? The state kind of has control over all those things. And, and actually, I guess, in the residential school period, the churches. So, Canada is providing the, the funding, which is inadequate and the churches are running the schools. Yes? >> This is kind of a tangent, but, so, when you're talking about rights like the right to, say, education, right, like that, those rights, they don't stem from the Indian Act, then they stem from the treaties. >> In my view, yes. >> Okay. >> Yeah. But the, the Indian act had some, some sections that required Indians to go to residential school or, or gave the Indian agent power to send students and, and take them out of the family and out of the community and send them to a boarding school or residential school. >> Because they didn't modify the meaning of what those rights initially, what the Indian rights initially promised. >> Yeah, I kind of feel like the Indian Act is, it's interesting because the treaties really, the really large treaties start to be negotiated between 1871 and most of the 1870s are the number treaties were negotiated. So, these huge areas were opened up through, through treaty. And in 1876, the Indian Act is passed. It's almost like, okay, we're promising all this, let's now restrict what we're really going to, you know, actually do. Like to me, it seemed like and some people have studied and looked at that period and there was a recession and there was the, the, of course, that Railroad Project happening. And [laugh] so, so, it's kind of like, alright one place we can save money is by defining who an Indian is and just cut that population down to almost half of what we are really responsible for and, you know, and, and all the other things that, that the Indian Act does to kind of control and, and contain indigenous people. Anyway, there's so much more to be said about the Indian Act. The thing I want to focus on is, is how did Indian education develop in this time period and you know, what, what are some of the major differences that happens when you introduce schooling into the way people are learning? First of all, you have you have that separation from family and community. So, people aren't learning from the community, they are learning from teachers, who are not teaching them their cultural knowledge, but teaching them some other knowledge. And so, in a way, it's kind of bringing some of the early contact themes forward but they're not having control over what they're learning, right? This is a very big important thing, is that, indigenous communities did not have control over what was being learned. Remember, the goals of those institutions. So, it was, again, it was assimilation of Indians into the body politic of Canada. And in that, in that respect, it was also talked about over time, I should perhaps save this point, but talked about over time as an inferior education to what people were receiving in, in the provincial schools. So, they, they were basically being educated as an underclass. The women were being pre, prepared for domestic labor and many of the men for kind of farm labor and, and, and so forth. Up to, up to half of the day can be spent doing chores that maintain like the, the schools and the farms near schools, and half of the day being academic, math, and reading, and so forth. The other thing is you are now introducing scheduling, and routines, and that kind of discipline of the clock to those young ones and this is a, this is a really a big change, of course, an adjustment to that way of, of thinking about time and its division into these units, and so forth. Because it's so alien in the beginning there is, there are punishments for deviation from the rules. So, it's very rule-bound, time-bound, and if you're breaking these rules of breaking these kinds of notions of respecting the, the time units which is, you know, completely something that you're not, you not raised with up to the age that you're snatched away. And then, you're dropped in here and then, you deviate from that. Corporal punishment was the norm. So, children were beat if they you know, if they deviated from these rules. Some of these rules included not speaking to your siblings, so you can imagine, you're put in this school and the only people there that you know, maybe might be your brother, or your sister, or your cousin, but if you're speaking to them, you'll get punished. And if you're speaking your language, you're punished. And so, the punishments could vary. But, you know, so, so, some of them were beaten in front of everyone else. Somewhere locked in closets so there is this confinement that was often used and there is some reported cases of people who were speaking their language when they were told not to speak their language, having pins inserted into their tongues, so this is really some brutal abuse yes? >> I just heard from other sources that children were deliberately separated so siblings will be separated and sent to different schools and so I'm just wondering at the school where children are deliberately brought there from families that spoke different languages so they couldn't communicate within, between students themselves there? >> I'm not sure how strategic it would be where, where, students were gathered from. I , I think it was often a choice of convenient, in terms of geography. So, people from this region will be brought here. And not, not necessarily that mixing and taking place to make it harder for them to speak to each other. I think they were relying more on the use of English, and just completely eradicating the use of any indigenous language. So, it's not about making it difficult to speak to each other, but just to making it difficult to speak it at all. And this, this also went with ceremonial practice, too if, you know, if a child was smudging on, on the school grounds or was seen to be carrying anything that can be construed as that kind of you know, non-Christian witchcraft kind of thing. Then, they would be punished for that, too. So, there's, there was a, an attack really on language and culture. And that I think is the main thing that indigenous communities found so offensive about residential schooling, the loss of language and culture. And as much as the abuse thing, is something that we all find quite horrible and reprehensible about the residential school period. When lawyers and the government and, and others kind of focus on experiences of abuse, it tends to kind of move away the focus from the, the loss of language and culture, which was the systemic and driving reason behind the schools in the first place. So, in a way, they kind of say what, what's regrettable and what happened there were these individual acts of abuse. So, they kind of individualize rather than take ownership for, as a system for the, for the schools. The acts of abuse and they can kind of say, well, that person, that person, that person engaged in this and that's terrible and we're sorry that it happened. But, you know, until that systematic loss of language and culture piece was acknowledged for, so for many years, it was, it was, it was about kind of shifting the focus and shifting the blame from governments and churches running these things to eradicate language and culture, which is form of genocide to individual acts of abuse, which, you know, they're also problematic, but it, they can shift the blame of it and shift the focus when they do that. So, for many years that was kind of what was problematic about, about the way that the schools were talked about to. Yes? >> How long were the schools run for? >> The last school closed in 1996 but they were being phased out after the, the 60s and 70s. You started to see more residential schools closing or being turned into other uses. In terms of one the earliest ones were, they, they kind of predate Canada's formation. So, we're talking about several generations who, who went through these schools. And it's a pretty recent thing, so we still see the effects intergenerational trauma the kinds of things that were learned in the school, and I'm talking about like the, the hidden curriculum which, you know, the, the abuse that went on, the physical punishments, the lack of physical contact between like, so what happens is that there, there becomes a hole, a void in child rearing and parenting skills. Because if you're primarily raised in these schools and, and you're not learning how to be loved, or how to be hugged and you, when you raise a child, you don't know how to do those things. And so, it, it leads to this kind of problem in the community, of child rearing that, that resembles the kind of relations between teacher and student in the schools. So, that, that's another legacy that we're still dealing with today because, that, we, you know, it takes, it took that many generations for us to get to where, where we are, it's going to take that many to get it back, right? And, so the loss is, is a huge thing.
