Now I was talking about loss of language and culture but also just, plain old physical loss of life. There was one audit done, in I think it was the '20s where the, the, the independent supervising physician, who was brought in to, to look at the way the schools were run reported that less, or that less than half survived to graduate. So the numbers of people who died in schools was huge. When we're talking about the physical conditions were terrible. I mentioned earlier about inadequate funding. So malnutrition was something that was quite common. The kids didn't have, enough nutritious food to eat. And so they developed a number of maladies related to malnutrition. Things like tuberculosis were allowed to kind of spread amongst the, the dormitories. There are photos of children who clearly have communicable diseases still being in the classroom, with, with other people. So there was a sense that, I think that, there was an intent to allow these, these diseases to spread. And, and infect the children who were also at the school with them. So it's a place where there was a lot of death and a lot of suffering, and by the standards that Raphael Lemkin used to define what genocide is, residential schools fit a number of the important points to kind of indicate this is a genocide. That, that feeling, that notion of no control over what went on in the schools is what led a lot of the indigenous people fighting the residential schools, resisting the residential schools, to, form a policy, in 1972. So I mean that might be one of the important points to kind of see a change happening here of Indian control over Indian education. So Indian control of Indian education, was a policy document that kind of emerged from Manitoba in the, they had a report called Wabung or Our Tomorrows and it was adapted and kind of revised for the, the National Indian Brotherhood, which is the forerunner to the Assembly of First Nations to be a national policy of Indian control of Indian education. The two pillars of this document were local control of education and parental responsibility. So you can kind of see, given the experiences of residential schooling for many, many years and generations why these two pillars would be the ones that are promoted by the community itself. Because they never had that control over what was going on in the schools and secondly, parents were so excluded from everything. That parental responsibility was a, was a pillar in Indian control. Yes. >> I'm just wondering. What was the urban aboriginal experience with residential schools? 'Because we hear so much about, you know, getting bused in from rural communities in the north, and abducted from those communities from parents. Did the same thing happen for aboriginal communities in urban settings like Toronto? Hm, you know, that's a really good question and I think, I think you know I haven't looked into that a great deal, but I think that the urbanization trend, kind of happened overlapping with the, the changeover of residential schools, kind of, when they started to be phasing out. So past their peak, is I think the primary urbanization's happened also there were certainly Indian people in cities at the same time as residential schools. They were more likely to be non-status Indians. So this a, a kind of a, a, a, a part of the Indian Act they didn't talk about too much, which is the enfranchisement provisions, but there were all these provisions within the Indian Act for removing your Indian status for various reasons. So if you achieved a certain level of education or if you served in the military or if you, if you were an Indian woman and you married a non-Indian man, these were all kind of reasons you could be in franchise that has received the right to vote in Canada which meant losing your Indian status, which from the view of the state was kind of like a positive thing right, hey great you are in franchise. But you know, for a lot of people who want to maintain that connection to their communities and maintain that identity it, it, you know, was certainly, it was a loss, right? So, this applied also to the descendants of people who were in franchise that they, they were not entitled to be Indians for many years until 1985 when there was revisions but that's, that's a whole other story. But that urbanization thing often went with the loss of the status which would have meant you wouldn't have had to go to the residential schools. So it's kind of a complicated connection, they're kind of connected in some ways too, I wonder how many people moved to cities to avoid it. That, because that could be a way of resisting, maybe. But one of the things that's kind of relevant here is that you know Indians unilaterally did not have the right to vote until 1960 in Canada. So once those changes happened and Indians had the franchise as all Canadian citizens did at that time, then they also remove some restrictions on lobbying. Because there were some huge precision in the Indian act in the 1950's that started to appear and make changes in the '60s. And so some. One of these is that Indians could now retain legal council. And, and could assemble in groups larger than 3. So, that means you can start to organize, alright, politically. And that's why you see the National Indian Brotherhood come, Come about. And you see, I mean, there were, there were precursors to that, that kind of happened after and between the wars, world wars. But they really kind of take place in the 1960's. So there's a lot of movement against, the residential schooling, then. More political power for aboriginal people, and in 1969, you know, one year after uh,Trudeau came in on this wave of popularity. And he was promoting the just society and he thought well it's really important that all Canadians be equal. So we have to remove the Indian Act and then I don't think he was expecting the wave of opposition to that move. And it's kind of Confusing to some people because they're like, well aren't you saying the Indian Act is a huge problem. Well, yes. But Canada respects that one right. [laugh] If you took it away, what obligation would they see themselves having to indigenous people. So it's, I think the reason there was this opposition is it's kind of like the Devil you know. And at least we can hold Canada's feet to the fire with this, because it ex, it has a lot of, notions of the kind of responsibilities Canada has to aboriginal people that they're not recognizing through treaty. So Indian Act is a way of maintaining that. It's imperfect, but to just do away with it would have, and with some of the other provisions of the White Paper of 1969, there were other problems too. >> I'm just curious with the 1960 right to vote. >> Yeah. >> Did they, did aboriginal people have to prove literacy in order to vote, or was it. >> No I think that's the point when it became unilateral. Prior to that, some Indians could vote in some elections and it was based on those kinds of things like literacy and mostly the same kind of provisions that were in the enfranchisement provisions of the Indian Act. So [laugh], yeah, but that's when it was finally, everyone, there's, yeah, there's, there's some exceptions, but, it's, it's, not that important for this conversation. So when we see this rise against kind of residential schooling, and one of the solutions that, and this is one of the things people are talking about, is, kind of goes hand in hand with that just society idea, is if they had access to the superior schools that are in the province they can just go to the provincial schools then, you know, they would have equal opportunity and access. Well, what's very interesting about that if you have an equity view of things, is you put Indian people. In a provincial school that has the, the same kind of cultural standards, and starting points of the Canadian society. It's still an assimilatory curriculum. It's still an assimilatory process. I've once said, well the difference is they could go home at night. [laugh] It is better, it's a little bit better then residential schools, but certainly there was still a cultural superiority influencing the teacher's treatment of students. So Indian students who might be struggling with difference in language or exposure to English materials would be characterized as having like learning deficiencies or would be labeled as needing you know, special ed and so forth, but labeled in such a way that their marginalization was assumed to be because of their culture, right? And that, that was, so it kind of created a whole new. Way of assimilation and marginalization and devaluation of indigineus people of knowledge and thought but now done under the term integration. So integration became like the buzzword. We could integrate them into provincial schools and that'll lift them from, from the older cultural trappings. So it was, it was still kind of talked about, like that's what was holding them back. And that's a discourse we still today, right? I mean, unfortunately although it's bad for my health, I do read the comments on, news media [laugh]. And it's, these notions are still out there. If they would just move, or if they just give up. They're clinging to something that's old and past, you know, that kind of thing. So that, that colonialism by saying that we can talk about a contemporary moment is not to say it's over. These kinds of trends continue. The, the attitudes that pervaded the residential school era kind of continue in a lot of discourse about education now.
