After the country of Canada was created in 1867, the government established a law, the ‘Indian Act’ and a government office for ‘Indian Affairs’ to control the Indigenous peoples.

End of family life

The Canadian government decided that Indigenous children had to be taken away from their mums and dads before they ‘learned to become savages like their parents’. It wasn’t long before there were no children left at all in Indigenous peoples’ communities that they could hug and look after.

From 1920, the schools were compulsory for Indigenous children aged 5–15, and many Indigenous communities were almost completely emptied of children. For over 100 years, 150,000 children were taken to residential schools run by churches on behalf of the government.

The idea was to teach the children the ‘white man’s way of being and thinking’. The children were given English or French names. They weren’t allowed to speak their own language or feel pride in their culture.

Sent to their deaths

As early as 1907, newspapers in Canada wrote that children ‘died like flies’ at residential schools. They died for all kinds of reasons, including lung diseases, malnutrition, workplace accidents and fires. So lots of people were aware of what was happening, but almost no one, neither politicians nor ordinary people, did anything to stop it.

Because the residential schools received far less money than other schools in Canada, there was a shortage of everything from food, to medicines and school books.

Children died

Many children became ill and died. It was a way for Canada to try and wipe out, or eradicate the culture of the Indigenous peoples. But despite all the damage and sorrow they caused, they didn’t succeed. Indigenous peoples are still there, fighting for their rights and a better future.

TEXT: Carmilla Floyd
PHOTO: Library and Archives Canada.