History of Residential Schools

“Today’s apology is a step forward in acknowledging the truth of our past. We cannot separate the legacy of the residential school system from the institutions that created, maintained, and operated it, including the Government of Canada and the Catholic Church.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, 2022

The Doctrine of Discovery and the doctrine of Terra Nullius justified a colonial empire’s forced control over Indigenous land across the globe. British, Dutch, French, Portuguese and Spanish empires have colonized 80% of the world’s countries.

The Doctrine of Discovery stems from a series of Papal Bulls (formal statements from the Pope) and extensions, originating in the 1400s during the “Age of Discovery”.

The Doctrine of Discovery gave moral and legal right for Christian governments to invade and seize (claim sovereignty) over Indigenous peoples and land by holding that Indigenous peoples cannot claim ownership of land.

Terra Nullius (empty land) finds its legal root in eighteenth century European law.

This was a theological and legal doctrine that allowed Christian European governments to justify and assume sovereignty over ‘discovered’ lands throughout the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. These lands were deemed devoid of human beings if the original people living there were not ruled by a Christian prince.

European colonization leaves a harmful legacy upon Indigenous peoples across the world, including Canada.

Colonization of Indigenous education in Canada dates back to the 17th century when French missionaries worked in tandem with the French Crown to convert and assimilate First Nations children under the guise of education. The Récollets were the first religious order to operate a boarding school for Indigenous students at their mission Notre-Dame-des-Anges, near the Quebec settlement in 1620. 

New France’s determination to grow their population was rooted in their relationship with various Indigenous nations, including the Wendat, Innu and Algonquin. In fact, there was a calculated effort to merge French and Indigenous allies through marriage and the procreation of children. Samuel de Champlain is quoted as saying, “our young men will marry your daughters, and we shall be one people (alors nos garçons se marieront à vos filles, & nous ne ferons plus qu’un seul peuple).” Whether through marriage or education, France’s colonial strategy to assimilate Indigenous people through culture, religion, and marriage was known as “Frenchification.” 

The French viewed Indigenous people as allies, reliant upon Indigenous teaching and tradition for survival. Therefore, missionaries employed a more relaxed approach in teaching Indigenous children, often accommodating Indigenous families’ seasonal hunts and offering traditional foods within the school. Despite this seemingly amicable, surface level observation of the French relationship with Indigenous people, French missionary boarding schools were the catalyst for the Indian Residential School system in Canada.

Canada is a vast and varied landscape, rich in resources that have long been sought after by European powers. The extraction of resources and the desire to colonize by claiming ownership of land underpinned the racist ideologies and laws that lead to the displacement of Indigenous people in Canada. The establishment of the residential school system in Canada is perhaps the most notorious form of displacement established by the government.

Between 1846 and 1883, many central figures to Canada’s unification agreed that the assimilation of Indigenous people would find success in the formal education of Indigenous children. These central figures include Charles Bagot, Egerton Ryerson, John. A MacDonald, Nicholas Flood Davin and Duncan Campbell Scott, representing the dominant global majority: white, Christian men with allegiance to the British Crown influenced a political agenda which determined to assimilate Indigenous children through education. Both politicians and professionals were commissioned to report on the state of Indigenous affairs, behaviours and governance as early as 1844 (The Bagot Commission). Egerton Ryerson’s report (The Ryerson Report) elaborated on Charles Bagot’s only one year later. The Gradual Civilization Act followed (1857), laying the foundation for the creation of the Indian Act in 1876. (Lavallée, 2010).

Britain knew that establishing colonial permanency would require extreme measures by which to acquire land and resources; and their success would come at an extreme cost to Indigenous traditions and livelihoods. Pre-Confederation colonists therefore used their faith to determine Canada a sovereign nation, charging that Indigenous people were in need of ‘saving’. (Sellers, 2017). This disingenuine excuse was merely an opportunity to build the psyche of colonists and look for ways to assert Britain’s rule, ultimately justifying the removal of Indigenous people from their land onto reserves and into residential schools in order to access space and resources.

At the request of Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, Nicholas Flood Davin visited Indigenous boarding schools in the United States, following up with a report called The Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds in 1879. Impressed by the American funding method of these schools, Davin recommended that Canada’s federal government do the same: while the operation of the schools would be downloaded to various Christian denominations, the federal government would commit to funding per student. 

The first 3 federally funded schools were established on the prairies in 1883. 

In 1884 Sir John A Macdonald amended the Indian Act that allowed Indigenous children to be taken by force. 

Children were removed from their families and communities and placed into residential schools with little to no oversight. They were forced to participate in an educational system that was far from home, unfamiliar, and more often cruel than it was not. 

It is estimated that over 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, between the ages of 4 and 16 years old, attended Indian residential schools in Canada.

The last residential school closed in 1996.