Residential schooling was an aspect of colonisation that had a particularly destructive effect on First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities, families, and individuals. Residential school policies recognised that language and family ties, embodying as they do the foundations of culture, spirituality, and historical bonds, were key in the maintenance of distinct aboriginal nations. Government and church representatives have been very clear until very recently about their intent to eradicate these.

Several generations of native people over the past one hundred and fifty years attended residential schools. Many children were subjected to horrific physical and sexual abuse, sometimes lasting over periods of year, and many of them died. Far more children experienced a standard level of brutality, in an environment characterised by forced labour, poor and inadequate food, harsh discipline, little or no medical attention, the absence of family and community ties, and a complete lack of emotional nurturing. Only a small minority got an education -- academic or vocational -- out of the experience. All students were dependants in a system which expounded an unquestioned belief in the moral and intellectual superiority of white culture, and vilification of all aspects of native life.

Long awaited recognition that this experience produced profound, and profoundly negative, impacts has given rise to this report. This recognition has only come about because survivors of the residential school system themselves, are beginning to come forward, in large numbers, to demand justice.

We do not believe just redress for the impact of residential schools will be found in research that particularises individual wrongs, and attempts to measure out remedies for them. This approach removes an injustice from its context, which in the case of residential schools, is undeniably that of a prolonged onslaught against indigenous ways of life. We've done quite a bit of particularising here, in large part to demonstrate that such research does not and cannot help discover and "answers" to the question of what to do. There are no tidy little packaged answers for massive human and social problems.

We do hope we've presented a clear picture of what the problems are, because a clear picture does provide a foundation for action. The need for significant action to respond to the expectations of former residential school students is undeniable. Our recommendation, none of which incidentally, haven't been made before, point to some of the many actions that would recognise, and perhaps in small measure alleviate, a massive grief and long standing injustice.

In November 1997, the Minister of Justice asked the Law Commission of Canada to prepare a report on processes for dealing with institutional child physical and sexual abuse. Recognising the particular cultural and historical context of residential schools, and the depth of harm they have caused, the Law Commission determined that the experiences of residential school survivors should be examined separately from the experiences of victims of abuse in other types of institutions. Accordingly, this paper focuses solely on the abuse experienced by First Nations, Métis and Inuit children in residential schools, and the ways in which this abuse might be redressed.

We were given a very broad scope for research, including study of the causes of abuse, the types of harm which resulted, possible remedies for these harms, and prevention strategies. The Law Commission noted that abuse may take many forms other than physical and sexual violence, and requested consideration of all forms of harm, including emotional, cultural and psychological damage.

Given that there were over one hundred residential schools operating at various times across Canada, and that there are between 105,000 and 150,000 people still living who attended those schools, a thorough examination of all the attendant issues is neither intended nor possible within this piece. More detailed history of the schools, particularly the circumstances under which children were taken or sent there, which varied according to schools, time periods, cultural groups, nations, families, and individual children, might provide greater understanding of the subsequent and relative impacts and abuses. We have included little discussion of the fact that many individuals did have positive experiences at residential school; not out of a desire to silence or dismiss these facts, only that they are not germane to our immediate topic, which is the widespread abuse that did occur.

We began with the premise that sufficient documentation already exists to provide meaningful insight into survivor needs and expectations, and this has been amply supported. That there is an obligation to put this material to use before doing further primary source research is underscored by a final comment in Breaking the Silence, the Assembly of First Nation's 1994 study on residential school impact and healing, where we are reminded:

Thousands of survivors have given the gift of their own stories, and of those who did not survive to speak for themselves. This presentation and analysis is one more step in the process of doing something to make sense of and develop responses to a traumatic intervention that largely determined and defined the state of indigenous peoples today. Within the four months allotted for research, we have attempted to provide an overview that describes the issues of greatest concern to residential school survivors. We hope the report is a useful contribution in the process of reconciling and resolving the long outstanding and deeply troubling legacy of residential schools in Canada.

This paper is intended to provide a review of the needs of victims of abuse in residential schools, and the outcomes they seek from the process of redress. Our goal is to obtain as complete and accurate a picture as possible of the needs and expectations of residential school survivors.

The following terms are used in this report:

"Abuse" refers to the physical, emotional, spiritual or mental wounding of children, including verbal and sexual maltreatment. It includes any acts of commission or omission which harm or threaten to harm a child,¹ by the person having charge of the child, or by others, where the adult in charge knows or should know of the possibility of harm. It is important to stress here inclusion of the concept of spiritual violence, as it is one that tends to be overlooked by the dominant culture. Spiritual abuse is defined as behaviours and situations which deny or undermine a child's identity, values and beliefs. This form of violence includes denying an individual the expression of their language, their way of praying, for example, as well as ridiculing or shaming their way of life.² A more detailed definition of abuse is found in the Ontario legislation below.³

In an institutional or systemic context, "abuse" means human rights violations, including physical, sexual and mental harm, genocide, torture, disappearance, arbitrary and prolonged detention, slavery and slavery-like practices, civilian repression and systemic discrimination.⁴

The terms "victim" and "survivor" occur throughout this discussion, to describe persons who, individually or collectively, have suffered harm, including physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, economic loss, or substantial impairment of human rights through abuse. According to this definition, "victims" not only means individuals who have suffered abuses themselves, but also relatives, dependants, loved ones, and communities.⁵

"Victim" and "survivor" remain in this work for convenience and brevity, but use of these words is problematic in two ways. Repetitive and prolonged trauma in childhood, particularly sexual abuse, is integrated into a child's life and, in one way or another, conditions that individual's beliefs, feelings, behaviour and sexuality. To describe someone as a "victim" or a "survivor" of abuse can minimise the internalised dysfunction that can occur as a result of the long-term and pervasive nature of the abuse. Secondly, these terms overgeneralise a person's identity as a survivor of childhood trauma, thereby discounting those aspects of the person which currently function in healthy and productive ways.⁶ They perpetuate an association with a history of abuse that many wish to leave behind; this is why for example, the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council's work is titled, "Beyond Survival".⁷

"Inuit" means "people" in Inuktitut, and refers to descendants of people who migrated across the Bering Sea approximately 1,000 -- 4,500 years ago and settled across the Canadian Arctic.

Métis means people who identify themselves as members of that distinct cultural group. Originally descendants of European fathers and Indian mothers, in present day Canada the reverse is also true. Lacking status or treaties and excluded from the Indian Act, the Métis are also unique in a legal sense.⁸

The term "aboriginal people" refers to "those people inhabiting or existing in a land from the earliest times or from before the arrival of colonists,"⁹ and is used interchangeably with "native people: to describe descendants of the indigenous, pre-colonial inhabitants of what is now Canada. "First Nation: describes a community of people who identify themselves as aboriginal, and the individuals who are members of that nation. Not all aboriginal people identify themselves as First Nations; the Inuit, Dene, and Métis, for example, do not.¹⁰

Although some individuals and groups have retained or are reclaiming the term "Indian" as a positive identity, it remains offensive to many. Other than in testimony where native people themselves use it, the word "Indian" is used only in particular contexts, where it accurately reflects historical wording or attitudes.

In mid-June 1998, we set out to gather existing material documenting the experiences and opinions of residential school survivors. Recognising that much of this material would not be widely published or circulated, we wrote to 273 individuals and organisations across Canada. An introductory letter explained that we felt it was inappropriate to conduct first-hand research directly with survivors, when the views of many must already be on record.

Our request for recorded information was sent to,

The material we gathered is listed in the bibliography.

In our efforts to obtain as complete and accurate a picture as possible of the needs and expectations of victims of abuse in residential schools, we studied over 8000 pages of relevant material, including reports from conferences and school reunions, research papers, program descriptions and proposals, newspaper files, the Royal Commission, and contemporary books examining residential school issues from anthropological, sociological and political perspectives. Most existing material about residential schools is based on and draws from the firsthand experience and analysis of survivors of that system.

In searching out these documents, we inevitably found ourselves talking to survivors themselves. We also talked to people whose lives have been spent struggling with the aftermath of residential schools: children and grandchildren of survivors, program directors, counsellors, researchers and writers themselves. In addition to providing or directing us to the recorded material we sought, they shared their stories, perceptions and insights, which we recorded. Many people also pointed out that, quite appropriately, much of the conversation and activity taking place in response to residential school abuse is not being recorded in any form; these firsthand descriptions and explanations are often the only source of information on new and current initiatives.

All of which left us with a bit of a methodological challenge: how to synthesise so many different kinds of data, about so many different by related issues. Unlike theory based analysis, which examines data a priori, according to pre-existing concepts such as those used to formulate a questionnaire, this approach required us to study the information first, to identify the kinds of responses that would emerge. Data based analysis is driven by the data itself -- a postiori- an examination of frequently occurring events, or in this case, issues and themes.

As we read books and listened to testimony, we tagged statements that reflected a "statement of need", or an "expectation" with regard to response or redress of residential school abuse; very broadly, statements that identified "what survivors want". We tagged statements where survivors identified a deficiency or inadequacy in the status quo. We also highlighted recommendations, proposed solutions, strategies and models for change, with respect to the aftermath of residential schools.

Once we established the major themes that described the needs and expectations for redress identified by survivors, we tested several ways of recording and counting these statements in a database. Many speakers address subjects in an holistic manner, touching on several subjects within an overall important context: the pre-set rigid categories necessary to traditional databases were not functional or appropriate. Removing statements from their context is a practical problem; there are also ethical considerations in citing, and especially manipulating for statistical purposes, peoples' life stories and opinion. We struggled to balance and maintain respect for peoples' words and stories, with the understanding that a certain amount of analysis is necessary to effectively summarise needs and facilitate further action.

In order to see how the needs of survivors of residential school abuse may have changed over time, or according to the context in which they were expressed, (and also partly to give substance and academic credibility to narrative assertions), we selected four major sources to "number-crunch" and examine a variety of survivor statements in more detail. We focused on sources which presented the views of the most people, in order to obtain the greatest diversity and range of responses; this eliminated a number of studies and papers included in the literature review, that were based on the experience of three to fifteen participants. Knockwood's book, containing the recollections and views of twenty-six people, was ruled out because of the difficulty of accurately tracking and attributing the stories and experiences described in fragments throughout.

We decided to focus on The Mush Hole¹¹, as it contained lengthy, undirected, verbatim testimony from fifty-five people with apparently diverse experiences. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) also contained whole transcripts of testimony, but in a context clearly recognising and accepting that injustices have been done to aboriginal people. Indian Residential Schools and "Beyond Survival", the book and video produced by the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council (NTC) are extremely powerful, presenting the views of survivors in their own words. The Tribal Council's work was undertaken in a community and healing context where relationships existed between participants, process was important, and a great deal of discussion about residential school issues had already taken place. Finally, we looked at First Nations newspapers where many people have expressed their views, usually with some degree of thought and analysis. As well as offering different environments and contexts for the expression of needs and expectations, these four sources represent views at different time periods over the past ten years.

While this analysis is interesting and points out some useful trends, we remind readers that "personal experience is not somehow more truthful when numbers are attached to them."¹² In addition to the trivialisation of reducing an experience and its significance to numbers,¹³ the endless search for ways to establish, characterise, and quantify damage can be one form of government procrastination; such research also tends to "(legitimate) the resolution of moral issues by empirical means."¹⁴

Because the merit of such a counting exercise is limited -- the numbers themselves have no absolute value -- much of the material presented here remains in its narrative form, where we find it more ethically represented and equally persuasive. Some of the most poignant statements and observations came from individuals in informal conversation, deserving inclusion in spite of anonymity. While narrative form may be experimental in social science, it is normative and well established within many cultures as the primary method of teaching and learning.¹⁵

Our findings and recommendations are based on both the qualitative and quantified information; they also draw from recommendations already made by several groups and individuals. We have included a variety of these earlier recommendations in their entirety as an appendix, in the belief that viewed together, the repetitive similarity and frequency of needs expressed by so many individuals and agencies demonstrates an undeniably sound and representative call for action.

An historical background is essential to understanding the scope and magnitude of residential school impacts, the nature of abuses committed, how they were perpetrated and continued unchecked. Knowledge of the attitudes and policies behind the creation of the schools is key to understanding the grievances of former students, as these philosophies paved the way for what many perceive to be the most serious and damaging abuses committed within the residential school system.

The following chronology is a composite drawn from several sources, including Fournier and Crey, Thompson, Miller, the Assembly of First Nations, The Aboriginal Healing Foundation, The Royal Commission, Haig-Brown and others; their information varies depending upon the sources used. A list of individual schools identified and their dates of operation is included as Appendix 2.

From the mid-1800s to 1970, up to one third of all aboriginal children were confined in residential schools, many for the majority of their childhood.¹⁷ In reviewing the numbers of students attending, it should be noted that many Mtis children were taken into the schools without being named on the school registers. Federal funding was only provided for Treaty Indians, so dependant Mtis children were often accepted covertly by the churches; sometimes they were kept solely as labourers, not allowed meals, but rather dependant on scraps from staff tables.¹⁸

The evolution of Residential Schools had four distinct phases, reflecting government policy shifts in the treatment of aboriginal peoples. These can be characterised as follows:

From first contact, the goal of the European missionaries was clear; they were to convert the aboriginal people to whatever form of Christianity their own particular church espoused. To do this, it was necessary that they educate the `natives' so that not only could they understand what conversion meant, but they could become `civilised' enough to be able to appreciate European values and become assimilated into a European way of life. These attitudes were supported by government, and until recently, by Canadians as a whole.²⁰     

Founder of the Oblates, Eugene de Mazenod wrote, "Every means should therefore be taken to bring the nomad tribes to abandon their wandering life and to build houses, cultivate fields and practice the elementary crafts of civilized life."²¹ Grant, Haig-Brown, and others document that, "the destruction of the children's link to their ancestral culture and their assimilation into the dominant society were the main objectives"²² of federal Indian education policy, and ones with which the missionaries agreed.

Dr. Egerton Ryerson, Chief Superintendent of Education in Upper Canada, largely determined the nature and policies guiding the education provided to Indian children. His 1847 report to the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada stated,

        "Their education must consist not merely of the training of the mind, but of a weaning from the habits and feelings of their ancestors, and the acquirements of the language, arts and customs of civilised life."²³ Author Agnes Grant observes that this document made cultural oppression, long an integral part of the mission schools, government policy.²⁴

In her detailed research into two Ontario residential schools, Elizabeth Graham wrote,

        "Separating children from parents is what boarding-schools do, but at Indian Residential School the goal of eradicating "Indianness" was added to the process. The schools excluded the Native culture by removing the children from their homes, restricting their holidays, and not allowing them to communicate with their parents in their Native language. After 1872 students could not even speak their Native language amongst themselves. Visits and conversations between brothers and sisters were forbidden or severely restricted. Parents were often described as `interfering'. The administrators of the schools saw themselves as protecting the children from their parents; parents were considered a bad influence or immoral, with dirty, unhealthy houses. When there were complaints about the large numbers of children dying at school and not allowed to go home, one principal explained that, "sick and dying children would be more comfortable at the Institute."²⁵

In 1879, the federal government was looking for models for Indian schooling; N.F. Davin was commissioned to report on the American Industrial Schools for Native people in the United States. His positive recommendations resulted in the establishment of many residential schools across Canada. Davin reported that, "the industrial school is the principal feature of the policy known as `aggressive civilization'."²⁶ While endorsing the notion of residential schools for Indians in Canada, Davin noted,

        "... if anything is to be done with the Indian, we must catch him very young."²⁷

Davin's view was supported by the Secretary of State for the Provinces, Hector Langevin, speaking in Parliament in 1883,

        "The fact is, that if you wish to educate the children you must separate them from their parents during the time they are being taught. If you leave them in the family they may know how to read and write, but they will remain savages, whereas by separating them in the way proposed, they acquire the habits and tastes... of civilised people."²⁸

An 1892 editorial in the Calgary Herald supported Indian residential schools, as education in them would prove "the means of wiping out the whole Indian establishment."²⁹ J.R. Miller points out that residential schools are a subset of a complex of legislation and programs designed to control and reshape Aboriginal political behaviour. These efforts ranged from attempts to coerce Native hunters to become sedentary subsistence farmers, to outlawing of traditional Aboriginal customs. While politicians and settlers believed these were legitimate and justified actions, they were based in an assumption that Native people were morally inferior to Caucasians.³⁰

The politics of the 19^th century are relevant to the development of residential schools. The formation of Manitoba in 1870, partly to prevent annexation by the United States, and British Columbia joining Canada in 1871 with the understanding that a railway would be built to link it with the rest of the country, were events reflecting a general feeling that the west must be filled with European settlers as quickly as possible.³¹ Treaties were signed, often unwillingly, by Indians demoralised by their rapid decrease in numbers and threatened by the disappearance of their food sources; many saw the treaties as their only prospect for survival. Examples of resistance, both in the United States and by the Mtis in Manitoba, were not promising. "Once the treaties were signed, Indians were out of sight and largely out of mind, isolated on more than two thousand reserves," created largely for the government's administrative convenience.³²

Canadians in general do not recognise that treaty-making and the creation of reserves were undertaken for the benefit of European settlers. Reserves tended to be established in agriculturally inferior areas; most were intentionally located in areas where they would not interfere with the white economic development. In the treaty process, along with guaranteed small land allocations, gratuities and annuities, each band received the promise of a school. Leader and historian Chief John Tootoosis identified the failure to keep this particular promise as a great blow to the Indians.³³

Amid these political developments, changes to the Indian Act were significant. The Indian Act and the Indian Advancement Act, both of 1884, extended the authority of Chiefs in Council to make rules regarding the education of children on reserves. But the 1894 amendments began a trend away from local control to more centralised departmental control over both the nature of Indian schools and attendance.³⁴ Compulsory attendance for children `of Indian blood' under age sixteen was introduced, along with powers to arrest, convey, and detain children at school. The amendments also provided for fines or imprisonment of parents or guardians who failed to send their children to the schools.³⁵

Deputy Superintendent General Duncan Campbell Scott influenced federal Indian policy for over twenty years, expounding a firm belief in assimilation, "the further development of the race toward its ultimate goal, that is, its absorption into the ordinary civil life of the country." In a 1920 House of Commons discussion of changes to the Indian Act, Scott stated clearly the idea that Indian cultures as such were to be eliminated,

        "I want to get rid of the Indian problem... Our object 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, and no Indian department, that is the whole object of this Bill."³⁶

Periodic protest against such policies and against the schools themselves did occur. A report commissioned in 1927 stated,

        "The philosophy underlying the establishment of boarding schools, that the way to "civilize" the Indian is to take Indian children, even very young children, as completely as possible away from their home and family life, is at variance with modern views of education and social work, which regard the home and family as essential social institutions from which it is generally undesirable to uproot children."³⁷

More recently, an American researcher in 1945 noted Canada's systematic attack on traditional Indian religion and cultural practices and concluded that the dominion's purpose was assimilation. He observed that Canada chose to eliminate Indians by assimilating them, unlike Americans, who had long sought to exterminate them physically. The American official found, "In other words, the extinction of the Indians as Indians is the ultimate end" of Canadian Indian policy.³⁸

In 1947 a paper was submitted to the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons appointed to Examine and Consider the Indian Act. It was titled, "Plan for Liquidating Canada's Indian Problems within 25 Years," recommending the abolition of Indian reserves and the establishment of an integrated education system as the basis for assimilation.³⁹ Haig-Brown notes that while the new Indian Act did not differ much from previous legislation, it did mark the end of many residential schools because it allowed for Indian attendance in the public school system.

By the 1950s, residential schools were being used to serve substantial child welfare and social development purposes as well as educational functions. In an effort to limit operational costs, the federal government articulated a policy that called for:

Between 1947 and 1958 the number of Indian children attending provincial, non-residential schools rose from two hundred to more than seven thousand.⁴¹ But the `social and family reasons' requiring the removal of native children to residential schools continued to be determined by government and church authorities as long as the schools remained.

Regardless of name changes -- boarding schools, industrial schools, or residential schools -- the institutions remained `total institutions', where large numbers of children lived cut off from society, separated from family and community for long periods of time. There seems little doubt that the cultural devastation attributed to the residential schools and the abuses perpetrated with the explicit goal of eradicating Native ways, are a direct result of government policies and the actions of churches contracted to implement them.

This section presents the types of abuse identified and described in some of the sources we examined. A brief background in the lifestyles children were coming from helps to provide a context for their subsequent experiences at school.

Early childhood memories are important partly to illustrate that, for all their diversity in language and culture, First Nations share remarkably similar approaches to child-rearing. Children are placed at the heart of a belief system closely aligned with the natural world. The economic and social survival of indigeneous societies depended on the transmission of a vast amount of spiritual and practical knowledge from elders to the young through an exclusively oral tradition.⁴²

While snapshots of early life help provide insight into the feeling of children abruptly removed from familiar environments, they should not imply that the impact of residential school abuse is somehow relative to earlier circumstances or experience.

Isabelle Knockwood writes about the storytelling circles she was allowed to listen to as a child, where stories based on thousands of years of experience in living off the land emphasized the value of living harmoniously with all things; a vast wealth of history, knowledge, medicine, geography, geneaology, and skills for living well was carried in the minds of the elders.⁴³ Values imparted to children included responsibility for the protection of others, appropriate manners, and participation in family work; the strength of family bonds is clear in a description of sleeping arrangements at camp.

    "Daddy would sit at one side of the lean-to and tend the fire, while Mom sat on the other side with us five kids in between... when we woke up in the morning, they were still there, It seemd to me they were guarding their children all through the night."⁴⁴

Knockwood and others recall knowing they were loved and cared for at home, often despite conditions of poverty. "Even though you were hungry and dirty, you knew that you were being loved because when there was food, you were the first one to be fed."⁴⁵ Throughout her book, Knockwood compares and contrasts traditional ways and early childhood experiences with the foreign, alienating and harsh methods and attitudes of the nuns and priests who ran Shubenacadie school.

Willie Blackwater relates how the best years of his life were the first ten that he spent being raised by his grandparents in the village of Kispiox.⁴⁶ He describes how they taught and corrected him without ever raising a hand or voice; "If I did something wrong, my grandfather would tell me a long story, and I had to figure out for myself its meaning and what it told me about what I had done." While his grandmother had her own traditional spirituality, she also brought him to the United Church. "She was always teaching. She'd cook wonderful things and tell me why it was so important to have respect for everything on earth that feeds us."

Rosalyn Ing's study participants all described being raised in kind and loving environments, where elders provided role modelling and told stories to teach and children learned by imitating, listening, and observing.⁴⁷ Work was required of children but age was taken into account in those expectations; the extended family had an important role in nurturing and raising the young. For all participants, early learning was in their mother tongue; two of the three speakers described how learning and expectations of children were incremental, and one man described his parents as having an intuitive knowledge of the stages of child development. Learning values of kindness, respect for all people, honesty, keeping faith in the Creator, and working, were an important part of early learning for children.⁴⁸

Haig-Brown's informants have many memories of life before school, most of them positive. Their memories similarly focus on methods of teaching and learning, the work expected of children, and for many, a loving home environment.

"Coming from a large family, we all had chores to do as soon as we were able to pick up anything and then there was always a baby. Being the oldest... there I was at the age of seven, six, already babysitting... And then we worked out in the garden, we packed wood, we done all these chores."⁴⁹

James Miller's study of Walpole Island adds another dimension to the picture of life before school; several of his subjects spoke of the terrible poverty at home, widespread unemployment through out the Depression, and a number of parents who sent their children to the residential school just to know that they would be fed.⁵⁰ Several speakers recalled World War II as a traumatic event in their lives when some seventy men were absent from the community; Walpole Islanders are clear that not all children left a secure and happy environment when they went to residential school. The Assembly of First Nations study group included one person who described stealing milk as a child to feed himself and his siblings while his parents were "off drinking" and another who lived in an unpredictable environment of alcohol and violence.⁵¹

The authors of Breaking The Silence point out that regardless of how the family environment is evaluated, at least it was familiar to the children. Whether in retrospect the children's world appears safe or threatening, in either case, children found ways to cultivate and hold on to a sense of well-being.⁵² There are very few circumstances in life where one's world is changed so completely, by immersion in a new world that requires adjustment to new language, foods, customs, and behaviours. The difficulty of this is compounded when contact and support from the old world is severed. It is this removal from the familiar to the completely strange, that many former students identify as the beginning of a profound and lasting trauma.

Isabelle Knockwood's book about Shubenacadie school, Out of the Depths, begins by describing the trauma of separtion from parents, and within the school the strict separation of siblings; initiation with haircuts and issue of prison-like clothing; the constant coldness of dormitories, lack of nighttime care for small children, and censorship of communication. The enforced separation from family members had a life-long effect for many.⁵³ The most vivid memories are of isolation and of being punished for speaking Mi'kmaw; small children who understood no English were effectively silenced until they learned it. By the time they left school, speakers describe knowing very little of their language.

Brutal and arbitrary punishment was a daily feature of school life; public beatings and humiliations, head-shaving, and being kept in locked closets on bread and water for days are described. Constant hunger, poor food, an obsession with attendance at Mass, confiscation of gifts and personal possessions, ill-fitting clothes and shoes, and failure to distribute available clothing to the children were common memories.

A chapter focused on "Work and Play" describes the learning environment in the school; "We were forcibly disconnected from everything our parents and elders had taught us, and everything new was learned in an atmosphere of fear."⁵⁴ The shame of Native ancestry was deeply reinforced. Children were graded not by academic achievement by by size; because the grade five students had to be able to reach and manage heavy machinery, several small students stayed in grade four for three or four years.

A complete farming operation at Shubenacadie was worked by male students aged twelve to sixteen; older boys who tended the boilers never went to classes. Knockwood notes that because so much time was spent in physical labour, few boys developed more than minimal educational skills; several recount their illiteracy on discharge from Residential School. Girls worked only slightly less hours at laundry, kitchen, and institutional cleaning; they also made pottery which the author learned was sold at agricultural fairs. Industrial accidents that maimed some students are also described.

"Rewards and Punishments" is an even more detailed chapter recounting the horrific but apparently unexceptional physical, emotional and sexual abuse perpetrated by the nuns and priests. It contains descriptions of beatings, children thrown across rooms, humiliations, sick children beaten and forced to eat vomit, sexual fondling, and the atmosphere of terror this created. Many punishments had a sexual character or association, or were inflicted for resisting sexual interference; a variety of whips, paddles and tortures are described. One speaker recalled being given a bag of knotted whips to burn in the furnace when the school inspectors were coming.⁵⁵

Knockwood discusses the lack of public knowledge, and later lack of church acknowledgement of the atrocities committed at the school. She analyzes how the school was able to maintain a benevolent façade in spite of parental, individual, and public inquiries including a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the flogging of nineteen boys by the priest in 1934.

Elizabeth Furniss relates that during the first thirty years of operation of the Williams Lake school complaints were made by parents, local white settlers, and Indian Affairs officials about the conditions of deprivation and brutality inflicted on students at St. Joseph's.⁵⁶ Departmental investigations were conducted in 1899, 1902, and 1920, but a variety of explanations and vested interests led to the concerns of children and their families being dismissed. The main focus of the research is on the inquiries conducted into the deaths of two children, and the process by which the Oblates were exonerated and native concerns dismissed.

Such protests and investigations occurred at many schools throughout their history, inevitably resulting in the discrediting of native people, and reinforcement of the institution's total control.

Agnes Grant begins her book with an analysis of hair-cutting as a key part of rituals of cross-cultural domination around the world. Grant's introduction describes the spiritual significance of the braid, symbolizing the unity of mind, body and spirit essential to human life. Addressing the symbolic and very real devastation caused by this routine introduction to residential school she asks, "How can we understand today the feelings of the senior students as they were told to shave the heads of the horrified little children?"⁵⁷ Haircutting was also a common form of punishment, the effects of which have often been unrecognized. Grant cites one woman whose hair was abruptly cut off when she slipped into Mohawk while playing with a friend; after that incident, when she tried to speak her language she couldn't, and has not been able to speak Mohawk since.⁵⁸

Explaining the difficult necessity of examining the past in spite of the pain it causes, Grant speaks of the children who died alone and unloved, away from family, buried by school officials in soil foreign to their ancestors. Although tuberculosis was rampant in all Native communities, "the anguish of parents who did not know whether their children were dying alone cannot be comprehended today."⁵⁹ Uncovering such pain is traumatic; Grant reports that her student researchers were shaken by their experiences and felt overwhelmingly guilty for having revived memories long buried in silence.⁶⁰

Grant reviews the 1973 Federation of Saskatchewan Indians study, "Report on Indian Education in Saskatchewan," which called education a matter of tragic proportions where, "generation after generation of Indian youth was being destroyed, confined to a life of despair, frustration and indignity." That report identified many problems with Indian education, the absence of regulations and orders, breach of treaties, lack of parental participation, and no safeguarding of the essential role of parents in the education of children.

She documents the extent of child labour in residential schools, noting that in many places during the summers, students were boarded out to settler families where they were welcomed as a source of cheap labour;⁶¹ she also discusses the increasingly coercive nature of the system, that the large industrial schools in particular were established well away from home communities in order to decrease contact between students and their families.

Among examples of the many abuses she found, Grant discusses the arranged marriages that were conducted at the Lebret school at File Hills; one survivor whose parents were part of the experiment reported that her parents were matched up and told who they would marry: "These couples didn't even go together or know each other, they weren't even in love with each other." The author notes that principals and Indian agents took liberties which far exceeded their mandates; they took students from far afield and purposely arranged for partners from different language groups, so that Indian languages would not be perpetuated in the homes.⁶²

Grant found that,

    "Not every child experienced sexual and physical abuse, but every child experienced the devaluing of parents and culture. Psychological and spiritual abuse were institutionalized, no child could excape the debilitating consequences of being victimized and brainwashed, ... since the children were taught to abhor how their parents lived, no more diabolical plot could have been conceived to destroy the harmony ...and effectiveness of the culture."⁶³

We mention only briefly the harms described in other books and studes; to a large extent the themes are consistent.

Nuu-chah-nulth researchers used the following framework to describe the types of abuse that took place in residential schools:

Each section of their book contains extensive survivor testimony about the abuse, often with insight into the effects it has had on themselves, their families, communities and culture.⁶⁴

Miller and Danziger, whose conclusion was that the residential school experience did not fundamentally influence the course of community life in Walpole Island, found that the three greatest problems faced by the Walpole children at the schools were a lack of proper foods, a lack of nurturing, and in some cases an excessive use of physical punishment.

Dr. Roland Chrisjohn's study findings included that residential schools were rated as significantly more harsh and overcrowded than non-residential schools; former students report spending less time on academic work and recall their time in school as significantly less happy that non-residential respondents.⁶⁵ They had much less recreation and free time, and spent much more time on manual labour and chores; a much larger proportion of the residential school day was spent receiving religious instruction and participating in religious ceremonies. Many of the residential school's disciplinary practices were "bordering on (and sometimes passing into) the realm of physical torture".⁶⁶ In looking at the extent of sexual abuse, eighty-nine study respondents indicated they had been sexually abused, thirty-eight responded "no', and sixty declined to answer the question. Depending on whether the non-respondents are excluded or counted as a "no", a range of 48% to 70% of respondents had been sexually abused.⁶⁷

In The Mush Hole, the overall school experience of former students at Mount Elgin and Mohawk schools ranged from very positive, people who credit the schools with giving them useful skills and positive attitudes, to those who describe the schools as "concentration camps". Treatment of children described includes severe beatings, and use of electric shocks to `cure' bedwetting. Both the administrative letters and the stories of students, whose dates of attendance range from the early 1900s to the late 1960s, demonstrate huge variation in treatment of children, most significantly according to the attitude of the principal at any given time.

Dr. Jim Miller's research includes extensive documentation of the child labour which supported the schools, and of discipline which "...too easily deteriorated into severity and even abuse."⁶⁸ He describes "favorite punishments", such as forcing children to kneel in a public place with arms outstretched for hours, hair cutting and head shaving, and lengthy confinement in dark closets on bread and water. He cites several indivual cases, such as a runaway girl in the late 1940s who receive one hundred blows from the strap and had her hair cut off with garden shears by the principal ... then her head was shaved; boys burned with cigarette lighters and beaten with a bunch of five (preferably studded) belts; a girl who was informed that her brother had died, and then taken into a room where she was bound and raped.

After twenty-five pages of such atrocities, Miller notes, "Little wonder that Mel H. Buffalo... (in testimony to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People) reported that `every Indian person I have spoken to who attended these schools has a story of mental, physical or sexual abuse to relate.'"⁶⁹

The above summaries are only a fraction of the accounts and reports available, and then only of those that have been recorded. Our experience in merely gathering documents supports Mel Buffalo's statement; with very few exceptions, whether former students are Inuit, Mtis or First Nations people, they have stories of abuse to tell. Before we can discuss redress of these events, there is a need to understand why such widespread phenomena of violence and degradation occurred, and attempt to understand its long term impacts.

Early Canada inherited British legal and moral obligations to Native allies who had helped establish their territory in North America; it adopted the British policies of not killing these allies, and making treaties with them. The problem created, that has never been resolved, was how to occupy and make use of lands that had never been captured in war, ceded by legal agreement, or title otherwise -- in European terms -- legally terminated.⁷¹

Knowledge of the genocidal intent of the colonisers is well entrenched in aboriginal consciousness, but is still unknown and unrecognised by the larger Canadian public. That native people understand it clearly accounts for the unwillingness of many to deal with issues of abuse on a specific instance and case by case basis.

In the conclusion to No End of Grief, Agnes Grant examines residential schools in relation to each of the five points of Article II of the United Nations Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (9 December 1948), which states,

    "In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

We were also interested in the extent to which the testimony we gathered fell within this definition, and found it to be an effective method of analysing activities in and around residential schools.

According to Grant, "Intentional killing, as such, did not take place..."⁷³ Others contend strongly that intentional killing was very much a fact in residential schools, citing the testimony of "...seven different eyewitnesses at the Vancouver Tribunal alone, who told of children observe being beaten to death, thrown from windows and kicked down stairs, to name just a few accounts."⁷⁴ In fact, Grant goes on to concede, "...but children did die in Residential schools in large numbers. Even among survivors today, there is knowledge of children who died as a result of beatings. The perpetrators were never punished; at best, they simply disappeared from the schools."⁷⁵

At Shubenacadie school in Nova Scotia a number of students died, sometimes in ways that suggested to other children that their own lives were at risk; the deaths of two students following severe beatings are described. "Removal to the third floor infirmary after being beaten already threatened her death or permanent disappearance. For us, the infirmary became the place from which children vanished forever."⁷⁶

One of the women interviewed by Fournier and Crey, eighty-six at the time, reported witnessing the secret burial of a baby born at Kuper Island school to a terrified young girl. The archives from Kuper Island school reveal a litany of untimely deaths, most often children drowning in attempts to escape from the school.⁷⁷ Haig-Brown's thirteen participants recount at least two preventable deaths among their peers as children.⁷⁸ Testimony from Alberni school survivors includes reports of uninvestigated deaths and falsified burial certificates; in 1937 four boys froze to death after running away from the Lejac school in only summer clothes.⁷⁹

Investigations into deaths at Thunderchild school began in 1990, and in the Port Alberni school in 1995. Grant records survivor reports of a boy beaten to death at Elkhorn school; a young girl beaten to death at an unidentified school, and another survivor recalling a student beaten to death at his school.⁸⁰ Survivor testimony and research both support claims of suspicious, concealed or culpable deaths of many students at the schools. Fournier states, "At all period of the school' operation, it is certain that students died concealed deaths due to misadventure, abuse and neglect, which might be categorised -- had the schools ever been held culpable -- as criminal negligence, manslaughter and even murder."⁸¹

The death rate among school leavers is even more chilling; among the first twenty people we contacted in search of residential school documents, three had experienced as children the suicide of a parent who attended residential school.⁸² Many survivor groups report the suicide of members; both the First Nations Summit of B.C. and the Royal Commission heard testimony from residential school victims who killed themselves shortly afterwards.⁸³ At least two of the complainants who testified in the criminal prosecutions for abuse at residential school have since taken their own lives.

Grant's research led her to examine enrolment numbers, graduate numbers, and student lists which, in addition to the large numbers in prison, contained, "an inordinately high number of people who have passed away." She notes that few of Isabelle Knockwood's classmates lived to read her book; an Elder interviewed by Linda Bull estimated that ninety per cent of his classmates became alcoholic, dying premature and violent deaths.⁸⁴

In 1990, the RCMP visited a small B.C. community to interview eight "probable" victims of fairly recent sexual abuse at a residential school only to find that seven of the eight had already died, of which at least two were intentional suicides. This is not unusual in their experience. One of the many difficulties the RCMP report in investigating and prosecuting residential school crimes is that so many of the reported victims have died.⁸⁵

Large numbers of children died of diseases, particularly tuberculosis. They were forcibly taken from their homes if parents did not agree to send them. In 1907, Dr. Bryce, Medical Examiner in Ontario, found that buildings were sub-standard and had no ventilation; it was into these facilities that students infected with various diseases, of which tuberculosis was the most lethal, were admitted.⁸⁶

A 1902 report stated that of 1700 pupils discharged from the Industrial schools,

    "506 are known to be dead; 249 lost sight of; 139 in bad health; 86 transferred to other schools; 121 turned out badly and 599 said to be doing well."⁸⁷

RCAP covered in detail the death rates in the schools, largely due to tuberculosis, quoting Saturday Night's conclusion that, "even war seldom shows as large a percentage of fatalities as does the education system we have imposed upon our Indian wards."⁸⁸ It notes the early opinion of S.H. Blake, Q.C., who felt that because the department had done nothing "to obviate the preventable causes of death, (it) brings itself within unpleasant nearness to the charge of manslaughter."⁸⁹ Orders for the implementation of standards and health checks for prospective students were ignored for decades. An "avalanche of reports on the condition of children as hungry, malnourished, ill-clothed, dying of tuberculosis and overworked, failed to move either the churches or successive governments past the point of intention and on to concerted and effective remedial action."⁹⁰

Fournier and Crey report that after the turn of the century,

    "Schools began to report death rates of eleven percent, as in the case of the Alberni principal, to seventeen percent at Saskatchewan's Crowstand school, to an average of twenty-four percent in fifteen prairie schools, a figure which rose to forty-two percent if one included those who died at home within three years of leaving the school."⁹¹ Of students at the Sarcee school outside Calgary between 1894 and 1908, twenty-eight percent died, mostly of tuberculosis. At the File Hills industrial school in Saskatchewan, sixty-nine percent of students died of tuberculosis during one decade at the turn of the century... At Kuper Island...the Indian Affairs department's own files estimate that up to forty percent of the students died before they could return home.⁹² Forty-seven percent of students died at Old Sun school on the Blackfoot reserve.⁹³

At L'cole St. Henri at Thunderchild, Saskatchewan, ten percent of students died in 1908; fifteen percent in 1928; and in 1931, seven percent of students died.⁹⁴ Death rates were up to five times higher than for non-native students attending provincial schools. Deaths were not discussed; most often the child simply disappeared, and other children were forbidden to ask questions. It could be months before parents were notified, often only finding out when a child did not return home at the expected time. The illegal pass system whereby adults could not leave reserves without permission, assisted in keeping parents ignorant of affairs in the schools.⁹⁵

Cruelty, inadequate medical services delivered by incompetent staff, unmarked graves and altered statistics all point to the fact that services were not being delivered responsibly.⁹⁶ Grant concluded, "Had there been an element of choice in sending children to these schools, the term "genocide" might not be justified. But there was no provision for alternate education, and compulsory attendance legislation gave Indian agents and the RCMP all the powers they needed to forcibly remove children from their homes and take them to the schools where they were guarded as closely as any prisoner in a penitentiary."⁹⁷

The list of abuses identified by Dr. Roland Chrisjohn, while admittedly abbreviated (and not included in its entirety here) is fairly comprehensive.⁹⁸

The implements with which children were beaten also bears mention; the following were in common use at various schools and times:

RCAP recorded that "children were frequently beaten severely with whips, rods and fists, chained and shackled, bound hand and foot and locked in closets, basements, and bathrooms, and had their heads shaved or hair closely cropped."¹⁰⁰ The Commission documented numerous cases of severe abuse in which no action was ever taken against the perpetrators in spite of protests by inspectors or Indian agents; they found that hundreds of children ran away from the conditions of neglect, mistreatment and abuse.¹⁰¹

Grant found the most severe punishments were for running away, the most frequent were for use of a Native language; those that tended to get totally out of hand were most frequently associated with language.¹⁰² While most "punishments" described were for infraction of rules, many seemed capricious, and some were intended to be educational.

One man recounts the story of a priest who strapped T-H-O-U S-H-A-L-L N-O-T- S-P-E-A-K C-R-E-E, one stroke for each letter until he reached twenty-one.¹⁰³

Chrisjohn also itemises further violations:

    Enforcing Unsuitable Living Conditions

Dr. Chrisjohn discusses the argument that the U.N. Convention makes no provision for cultural genocide, except in the case of forced transfer of children, and is generally limited to physical and biological genocide. He asks, "How is forcible assimilation supposed to happen without causing serious bodily or mental harm?"¹⁰⁵ The material we reviewed and listened to documents clearly that the assimilation program of residential schooling, and the methods described above used to enforce it, caused immeasurable bodily and mental harm to First Nations people as a group.

See the earlier section on "Assimilation" for theory, and the immediately preceding, for practice. Consider,

    ". . .spirituality is the basis of our culture; if it is stolen, our culture will be dissolved. If our culture is dissolved, Indian people as such will cease to exist. By definition, the causing of any culture to cease to exist is an act of genocide."¹⁰⁶

    "If people suddenly lose their `prime symbol', the basis of their culture, their lives lose meaning. They become disoriented, with no hope. A social disorganisation often follows such a loss, they are often unable to insure their own survival. . . The loss and human suffering of those whose culture has been healthy and is suddenly attacked and disintegrated are incalculable."¹⁰⁷

This aspect of genocide does not apply directly to Residential Schools, though the involuntary sterilisation of Indian and Inuit women continued in southern hospitals until it was exposed in the late 1970s.¹⁰⁸

Residential school policy was to remove children, at times for as long a period as possible, from the influence of their parents. In the development of Indian education policy it was felt that Indian adults were an `impediment' to civilisation; "through them to their children and on through successive generations ran the `influence of the wigwam'."¹⁰⁹ It was widely and explicitly deemed necessary to break the bond between parents and children.¹¹⁰

Compulsory attendance legislation cited earlier was introduced to deal with the increased resistance of Aboriginal parents to send their children to these schools; other efforts to force parents to send their children included threats to cancel rations and other `privileges', and by the suspension of family allowance payments. Per capita funding of schools which put a premium on each student taken from a community led to bizarre recruitment techniques, including "bribing and kidnapping".¹¹¹

Parents did not know that when they signed the application for admission to the schools they were appointing the school's principal as their children's legal guardian, even during the summer vacations. When children were not returned to the school, the Department of Indian Affairs would send out letters to Indian Agents reminding them of this fact, stressing that the principal was, in fact, the children's personal guardian.¹¹²

Children were lured onto boats and planes without parental knowledge, sometimes never to be seen again. Uniformed RCMP pulled children from their mother's arms; many survivors describe the cattle trucks and railroad cars into which they were herded each fall. Night time knocks on the doors and invasions in search of runaway children are reminiscent of war. Some families migrated to the States to protect their children, others managed to hide them in various ways.¹¹³

Grant contends and much survivor testimony supports her, that the greatest harm "consisted of the mental and psychological abuse which destroyed the bond between children and their parents, culture and language. The children suffered the loneliness of being separated from their parents, and the parents were devastated at the loss of their children. Many knew they were sending their children to a place where they would be abused in every way; parents, however, were unable to intervene."¹¹⁴

Her pointed questions reflect back to the "mental harm" inflicted on Nations: "How could Indian parents cope with the pain? What happened to the parents and grandparents in the settlements when the communities were bereft of children? What happens to a child's personality when language and emotions are ruthlessly suppressed? ... how do they eventually function as adults? How can children cope when adults around them teach that their significant others are not good, and how long does it take to brainwash a little child?"¹¹⁵ The answers are evidenced in the social and economic position and condition of First Nations in Canada today.

The ways in which the damage of residential school shows up in the lives of aboriginal people and their cultures have been discussed and analysed in several forums and reported in a number of sources. We present their findings here.

Taken together over multiple generations, these losses constitute a massive amount of grief which up until recently, has been denied in various ways and for various reasons."¹¹⁶

3.    Rosalyn Ing's thesis cites several works that document the intergenerational impacts of residential schooling and its effect on parenting skills, including one of the first pieces of empirical research on this topic.¹¹⁸ That American study concluded boarding schools (Indian Residential Schools),

    "lowered the women's self-esteem... detrimentally affected the way they see themselves as women and as mothers, and negatively influenced their family interaction. Further, the damaging effects... on the mothers are in turn affecting the next generation of Navajo children."¹¹⁹

Ing was concerned with the effects of separation from home and parents; how the experience with language at residential school affected ability to parent; and how respondents' children were affected by the way the respondents themselves were cared for as children. Her contention that native child-rearing patterns have been indelibly marked by residential schools in ways that will last for generations, is supported by several authors.

    "The elders have survived some major psychological losses, losses which are generally understood to be traumatic with long lasting effects; early separation from parents and home, separation from parents during the developmental years of childhood, a boarding school experience, separation of the sexes, ineffective parenting styles in the residential schools -- rigidity, lack of emotional understanding and respect, and high authoritarianism.

These traumatic experiences will influence their world view, their understanding of the Euro-Canadian culture, their interaction with others, their personal relationships, and their parenting style. These traumatic experiences will also be transmitted to the next generation in some form."¹²⁰

Ing reiterates Haig-Brown's observation that,

    "former students who are now parents recognise the deficiencies in their experience with family units... children learn parenting skills by the way they are parented. Those who spent eight, ten or more years at Kamloops Indian Residential School had limited experience as family members. In the same way that their language use is based on the knowledge they gained before going to school, so their parenting skills must draw on that limited experience."¹²¹

A thesis on "Squamish Socialisation" found that those Squamish who are now parents, "belong to the generation which was removed from the influence of the families and raised in residential school This process attacked Indian culture; it did not reinforce it... Because the children were in residence, the attacks could not be withstood by their parents who saw them infrequently if at all... They were not able to maintain the "essential patterns" in the residential school and so they suffered cultural loss... and the loss of contact with adjacent generations."¹²¹

Ing found two other sources that addressed the effects of residential schooling in subsequent generations, through the loss of child-rearing patterns traceable to a lack of parenting and nurturing in institutions.¹²²

Ing's findings in her own interviews were that all respondents identified feeling

The specific processes participants identified as having an intergenerational impact were,

Two processes had a positive impact for these respondents,

4.    While Isabelle Knockwood's work tends to leave the reader to imagine and interpret likely impacts of the Shubenacadie stories, the final few pages do address their effects on the former students; the foremost of these is a lasting bewilderment at what could have motivated the priests and nuns who ran the school to treat children as they did. A range of subsequent social problems are identified; welfare dependency, gambling, drug and alcohol abuse; illiteracy and inadequate education.¹²⁵ Several people identify the fear of touching or being physically close to others as one of the school's most devastating effects; some also recall this inability in their parents who also attended.

Knockwood describes the personal frustration of being unable to confront and hold accountable those who inflicted such enormous damage (because they have died), and feels it made no difference that the government officials and some representatives of the Catholic church apologised to Native people. Out of the Depths does recount how several people "have been able to transform their lives and bring themselves `out of the depths',¹²⁶ many through rediscovering and returning to Native traditions and spirituality, or claiming as adults the education they were denied as children.

5.    Elizabeth Furniss argues that not only does the residential school experience explain many of the difficulties faced by Native people in their personal lives, but it also epitomises the deep-seated historical problems that have permeated Indian-white relations in Canada for centuries.¹²⁷ She cites Ing, Bull, and Sellars regarding the impacts of separation from families, harsh physical punishment, being denied the right to speak their languages, being indoctrinated with messages of personal and cultural inferiority, the psychological and social consequences of the assimilation program, and the recent emergence of Residential School issues. The consequences of residential schools are noted as high rates of alcoholism, suicide, and sexual abuse, the loss of language and culture, low self-esteem and pride, the breakdown of families, the loss of parenting skills, dependency on others, and loss of initiative.

6.    The report from the Nishnawbe-Aski Nation Residential School Meetings contains extensive lists of the losses caused by the residential schools and the damage inflicted on First Nations patterns of thinking, seeing, hearing, feeling and talking. It underscores the assertion of all residential school research, that these effects have been felt within the children, youth, adults and Elders of every First Nation who had children taken to the residential schools. The losses identified by participants included,

The impacts of these losses include, and are identified as having lead to

While participants were able to list eight benefits of attending residential schools, "it is quite apparent that the negative effects outweigh the positive." The anger and pain have led to many suicides and untimely deaths, and the group noted that most youth suicides are those whose parents attended residential schools. The listing of impacts and effects concludes, "This invasion and assault on family, home, community and country was an attempt at cultural and human genocide."¹²⁹

7.    Working extensively from interviews with former students as well as historical documents, Agnes Grant found that residential schools were successful "to a significant degree," in their purpose of alienating children from their parents and tribal customs. "Where children were not openly alienated and ashamed of their heritage, they experienced great difficulty in readjusting to life among their own people."¹³⁰

Grant draws clear links between historical policies and the state of First Nations today, including that, "the Indian Act also ensured that hierarchical system governed the reserves... students were groomed to accept this system..." that `might is right' -- "(these) teaching made an indelible impact on reserve politics that is still evident today."¹³¹ In discussing contemporary leadership, she notes that most First Nations political and educational leadership today comes from those who attended residential school, and that this should not be interpreted as an endorsement of those repressive regimes. Political leadership is limited to a small number of people and almost entirely excludes women; this is consistent with conventional patriarchal practices, another method of breaking up family and devaluing culture."¹³² Grant cites author Doris Young, who also blames the residential schools for the near destruction of First Nations government and the role of women, pointing out that women's words have been ignored and not respected in the decision making process, and that they are not respected as they once were.¹³³

Grant points out that the schools came dangerously close to achieving their objective of obliterating Native languages. A detailed section on language underscores the findings of Ing and others with regard to the intense psychological damage of silencing children, though Grant also notes that those who came to school with their language had a fairly good chance of retaining it, especially those who had summer visits home. Testimony of several students supports the findings of widespread individual and cultural devastation inflicted by the schools, echoing the comment by a former student of St. Joseph's Vocational School, who had kept his rage bottled up inside him for forty-five years; "Who knows what I would have been like if I hadn't gone there?"¹³⁴

8.    James Miller and Edmund Danziger found that the residential school experience of Walpole Island First Nation after World War I was highly individualised and ranged from positive (33%) to negative (25% of respondents).¹³⁵ They concluded that residential school encounters were important, but did not redirect the overall course of community development. Several women who rated their school experience as `mostly positive' still noted the lack of nurturing and emotional support; some of these said that because of their school residency, they found it difficult to show affection towards their own children.¹³⁶

9.    Suzanne Fournier and Ernie Crey's work is a detailed exploration specifically of the outcomes of Canada's previous and current policies towards Aboriginal peoples, including residential schools and child welfare practices. The consequences they explore, alcoholism, sexual and physical abuse, suicide, fetal alcohol syndrome and poverty are well known to Aboriginal people throughout Canada.¹³⁷

10.    Dr. J.R. Miller's meticulous historical approach examine the agendas of church and government in establishing and running the schools; he also address the experiences of, and impacts on the students themselves through first-hand interviews and documents. Like Furniss, Crey and others, Miller views the residential schools as a significant component in the destruction of native identity and culture. He illustrates the complexity of interwoven issues however, and that neither for example, treaty-making nor residential schools can be pointed to a solely causative of the variety of outcomes. His historical analysis includes accounts of nations who themselves identified and demanded treaty on their own terms, as well as those who built and funded their own residential schools, bringing in missions of their choice for particular reasons.¹³⁸ He goes on to show how autonomy and control in these initiatives was increasingly eroded and subverted to the will of government. Miller points out that before 1950, less that one third of Inuit and status children, and a much smaller proportion of non-status and Mtis, actually attended residential schools.¹³⁹

The dramatic, largely negative impact of residential schools on First Nations families and communities is examined, as well as the accompanying history of government inaction and denial. Miller illustrates that the "malignant legacy" of residential schools continues into the present day; how at Oka and Davis Inlet, to give only two examples, the "we-know-best-what's-good-for-you attitude is still alive and kicking."¹⁴⁰

11.    With a broad anthropological focus, Lindy-Lou Flynn also documents the cultural damage inflicted by colonialism, particularly the hundred years of "legalised kidnap" in the residential schools and the resulting dysfunction and disorientation of First Nations individuals and communities. Flynn's work emphasises the silencing of native people, that ""...into the 1970s, Native people were kept isolated and silent on reserves and in residential schools, skid rows and other places of "suspended animation".¹⁴¹ While many knew the social disintegration they were witnessing was a result of the violence learned and passed on in boarding schools, fear, shame, embarrassment, anger and confusion prevented people from speaking out.

Flynn describes the code of silence that permeated reserves and native communities, and in some places still does, and asks, "How do you speak out against your own people when you understand how they got that way? And how can you begin a healing process when you know that... whitepeople, once you have exposed your problems, will use what you have revealed to control you even more?"¹⁴²

In examining the many ways in which the silence has been broken, Flynn explains that residential school stories are being told in part so that, "whitepeople will understand that (Native people) were not somehow biologically or culturally predisposed to alcoholism or family violence, but that these are aberrations,"¹⁴³ the result of the imposition of cruel policies over all aspects of life over generations. An unanticipated impact of the residential schools to which Flynn draws attention is that the forced sharing of language, and the friendships and alliances forged in residential schools created a network of loyalties and political activists throughout Indian country. The mutually shared stories became the basis of a new discourse and a common issue on the contemporary political agenda.¹⁴⁴

12.    The most significant empirical study of residential school impacts is found in "Faith Misplaced", a joint effort of the Cariboo Tribal Council and the University of Guelph. This study found that the long term effects of residential schooling were a negative impact on relationships with people and a surprisingly positive impact on feelings about native identity. Respondents whose fathers had attended residential school were more likely to report that their mother had been beaten by their father. Other effects on fathers included more personal problems, more severe forms of punishment, less attention to children and less affectionate attention to children.¹⁴⁵

Using the Briere and Runtz (1989) Trauma Symptom Checklist, this study mirrored others in the differences found between abused and non-abused respondents, including sleep problems, depression, depressive behaviours, anger, and sexual problems. Among other differences, abused respondents were generally less loving, used more physical and verbal punishments, and felt less close to their parents. The researchers concluded, "we do not believe that there can be any serious doubt of the fact that the various experiences examined here have significant long-term effects. It is no longer possible to stall for time."¹⁴⁶

13.    Dr. Roland Chrisjohn's later work on residential schools acknowledges the effects of the horrific abuses he catalogues, but focuses on the huge leap of illogic typically made in the study of residential school abuse, its impacts, and most significantly in issues surrounding their redress. He is highly critical of a methodology that views oppression as the individual emotional experience of being mistreated, rather than the institutionalised mistreatment of marginalized populations, and finds in this view a continuation of the same ideological basis of the oppression.

The Circle Game posits that the deliberately misleading view of residential schools as a well-intentioned mistake has created, equally deliberately, a response which "focuses all our attention on putative personal, individual, and internal explanations and away from conspicuous moral, legal, political, and economic explanations."¹⁴⁷

A variety of process have been used to create a discussion in which good intentions are weighed against bad results, measured in terms of "nature and extent" of individual pathologies. This focus on individualism, on specific persona, community and social impacts, ignores the immorality and illegality of governmental, bureaucratic, church and societal principle and practice, and transforms it into the personal and psychiatric problems of grown-up indigenous people. Chrisjohn argues that in searching to identify particular impacts and their redress, we continue to miss the most important point, which is

    The immorality of believing it proper to impose upon sovereign peoples another religion, language, and form of life, while destroying their existing ones, is place into the background. The genocidal illegality of legislating children away from the care of their parents and families and placing them in the charge of organisations dedicated to destroying who they are is put aside.

         The political expediency of interpreting an obligation to educate as a license to indoctrinate doesn't come up. The economic imperative of reducing production costs by expropriating the property of imprisoned and defenceless Aboriginal Nations never arises. And the social relation of unbridled racism, which provided an unspoken justification for the most extreme of measures, is conveniently avoided."¹⁴⁸

There are survivors of abuse who demonstrate, "We have proven that people can heal from this experience;"¹⁴⁹ there are others speaking and writing loud and clear about the needs and expectations they've identified. These people still appear however, to be a minority of those who lived through the residential schools.

Table 1 and Figure 1 show the numbers and proportion of individuals identifying particular needs or redress expectations in their statements about residential school experiences. These are shown for each of four sources examined in detail, as well as a total for all sources. Table 2 lists the particular needs and redress actions identified by survivors, in the various sources. Needs expressed by survivors do appear to be changing over time, and also according to the forum in which they are expressed. The findings presented here, based on analysis of four sets of survivor statements, seem consistent with other literature and studies reviewed.

Graham's research is significant because it was one of the first projects that recorded statements from a fairly large group of former residential school students. The memoirs of fifty-five people were recorded in informal interviews based on broad and open-ended questions; the interviews took place between 1988 and 1993. In correspondence, Ms. Graham noted that research for this book was done "before people were thinking about compensation or even healing." The suggestion of negative impacts or the need for redress was not introduced by the researcher, but some needs and recommendations do emerge.

Almost half the participants described a generally positive experience at residential school, in spite of recollections of hunger, poor food, not being allowed to speak their language, and witnessing or receiving strappings. Often the experience was relative to conditions of extreme poverty at home. Many people expressed anger or regret in two areas: twelve that they did not get a better education, or an education that allowed them to go on to high school; fourteen that they lost, or missed out on learning their language or cultural skills. Experiences and feelings are described, but not necessarily connected to a subsequent "need" later in life.

Of the fifty-five, eleven people volunteered an analysis of the negative consequences of residential school treatment as it emerged later in life, either for themselves or others. Of those perceiving related consequences, one woman described her own experience as positive; three people described a neutral or `good and bad' experience, and seven had felt their treatment was abusive. The impacts perceived were:

Even fewer said they had "done something" or recognised that something could be done; that is, perceive redress options as a response to the impact of residential school experience. Of those who did,

The bar chart (Fig.1) shows the proportion of people whose testimony was purely descriptive; Figure 2 shows the distribution of the six needs that were identified.

The Royal Commission (RCAP) was the first documented forum where large numbers of people had the opportunity to volunteer information about their residential school experience.¹⁵⁰ Testimony was not directed to particular issues, so presumably people were speaking about the issues they felt important. The Commission may have created an expectation that action should be taken to address and begin to remedy historic damage done to First Nations, so we might expect to find a larger proportion of people identifying the impacts of their experience and beginning to articulate needs for redress.

RCAP heard testimony from 1623 aboriginal speakers, 591 individuals and the representatives of 1032 organisations between April 1992 and April 1994. Within the testimony, there are 913 references to residential schools. We examined 308 of these, representing 95 individuals speaking about residential schools. Most of the testimony (71% of speakers) is descriptive, of the terrible trauma experienced by children in residential schools, its lasting and devastating impact on peoples' lives.

Of these ninety-five people, twenty-eight former students identified thirty-six needs, naming actions that could and/or should be taken to respond to their concerns. There were also five general statements about urgency or a need for action unrelated to any specific redress. Appendix 3 shows the testimony we reviewed listing the speaker, the theme or impact they spoke about, and any needs or redress options they identified.

The breakdown of need statements follows:

A)    Seven comments related to public knowledge and understanding:

B)    Five comments related to disclosure:

C)    Seven comments about personal healing and recovery:

   ·    Counselling.Table 1. Number of Survivors Identifying Needs, by Source

Table 2. Survivor Needs Identified by Source

D)    Six comments related to individual compensation:

E)     Five comments about community and cultural compensation/development:

Figure 3 shows these needs in chart form.

A greater variety of needs are identified by former students in "Beyond Survival",¹⁵¹ and Indian Residential Schools,¹⁵² likely indicating a heightened level of awareness and expectation. The healing conference video and Tribal Council study were both self-help efforts undertaken with the express purposes of "bringing about healing," and beginning to bring these issues into the public eye. We examined the testimony of eighteen people who between them identified thirty-six needs; while the NTC study involved ninety-six participants, we only included those whose first person accounts were reproduced in the book or video. We noted some crossover in the presentations to RCAP where Nuu-chah-nulth speakers were among the people clearly articulating needs and expectations.

Figure 1 shows that the proportion of people offering narrative testimony with no analysis of subsequent needs arising is much lower (33%). Figure 4 shows that 28% of Nuu-chah-nulth speakers who identified needs spoke about personal counselling/healing resources and initiatives; several of these statements were related to healing circles conducted that participants found beneficial. Demands for individual compensation, and compensation or measures to address loss of culture and community rebuilding each made up 17% of the needs mentioned. Also emerging are statements about the need for legal action and criminal justice, intergenerational healing, and the importance of Nuu-chah-nulth control of programs and processes. The need for a public inquiry is mentioned twice; needs for parenting skills, an apology, and urgent action were also raised.

The picture changes again when we look at newspaper clippings about residential schools. Seventy-six articles, letters and editorials, mostly in First Nations newspapers and northern papers with largely aboriginal circulation revealed one hundred and nine identifiable need statements.¹⁵³ Only ten pieces were purely descriptive of residential school experience (see Table 1); many were written for the purpose of making a "need statement". The variety of needs and expectations expressed is not much greater than the Nuu-chah-nulth experience, but there are some differences.

The demand for public recognition and awareness, usually in the form of an inquiry, is expressed in 23% of the material reviewed; the expectations of compensation for individuals occurs in 17% of statements. The need for healing and counselling services to repair damage is slightly lower than in the Nuu-chah-nulth statements (20%), possibly explained by the more therapeutic and personal orientation of the latter setting. The need for church and state apologies, including dissatisfaction with the Statement of Reconciliation¹⁵⁴ comprised 14% of needs expressed; compensation to revitalise and rebuild culture and communities, and a desire for criminal and civil legal action each made up 10% of statements. More political analysis of causes and impacts occurs in print; four individuals wrote about the need for restoration of land and/or nationhood as an intrinsic part of resolving residential school issues. The need for First Nations control of programs and processes for redress was also mentioned. Figure 5 illustrates these findings.

Figure 6 shows the distribution of need statements across all four sources, with the greatest proportion of speakers addressing the needs for individual counselling and healing, a public inquiry, compensation for individual victims, and broad redress for cultural and community destruction.

We suggest however, that the nature and frequency of demands associated with residential school abuse is changing rapidly. People who may not have analysed their experience in terms of personal and community impacts ten years ago almost certainly do so now. As the history and political motives behind residential schools are more widely recognised, the pressure for redress in political terms, affecting the nature of relations and balance of power for native people in Canada is undoubtedly rising. We did not count the number of people who mention Oka and Gustafsen Lake in the course of residential school discussions; the number would have been significant. For many, the parallels are clear and the expectations for meaningful action are high.

As an issue intimately affecting all aboriginal people across Canada, as it has done for several generations, the issue of residential schooling unites hundreds of diverse nations and cultures in recognition of shared injustice and oppression.

Our final observation on the testimony examined is that the context in which people discuss and gain insight into the impact of abusive experiences affects their perceptions of the needs arising, and the most appropriate form of redress. Groups focused on grief, personal traumas and their impacts, and how these have affected lives and communities tend to make recommendations focused on healing as a solution to community problems. Others may see residential schools as a symbol, one of the ways Europeans gained power over Native people and made them second-class citizens. Their recommendations tend to be more political, seeking redress that will change the balance of power between Native and non-Native Canadians.¹⁵⁵

Apparent bad faith, inaction or obstruction (see for example, the article in Appendix 4) on the part of those deemed responsible for the abuse that occurred will inevitably increase support for those with a political rather than a personal analysis of the impact of residential schools.

This section incorporates a variety of concerns and opinions expressed with respect to redress options identified. We have grouped comments into five broad subject areas that appear to be the main avenues through which a range of needs can be met. These are,

For each subject, a format has been used that briefly summarises, as faithfully as possible to original speaker's statements or intent,

The demand for a public inquiry has been steadily mounting as residential school experiences are brought to light. Aside from therapeutic needs, it was the issue raised most frequently during the Royal Commission hearings and dominates the needs expressed most frequently in the media over the past two years.

Our own experience of the need for people to tell their stories in a receptive forum has been overwhelming; dozens of people have shared their experiences with us, sometimes in the hope that this research represented a place where something might be done about the horrors they experienced, others simply wanting to talk. Several people disclosed their experience of abuse for the first time, including a group of women from a remote community who met with a researcher on two occasions, to break their silence and discuss the residential school they all attended but had never talked about together as adults. Many people have asked us, "Are you going to include my story?" or requested that we go to particular communities to hear survivor testimony firsthand. Allan Longjohn, study panel member and survivor of Duck Lake school, commented that a few phone calls to neighbouring communities would result in hundreds of people coming forward to share their experiences. Former students who may not have organised and met before seem, in the current climate, ready and anxious to tell their stories.

At least one survivor group alleges they were victims of medical experiments as children. In addition to routine electroshock, they report the administration of unexplained chest injections and mind-altering drugs by non-English speaking medical personnel. In the absence of support or response from government and churches, this group is pursuing their enquiries with the Wiesenthal Centre and the United Nations. Given Canada's history and involvement with the CIA in experiments on prisoners and psychiatric patients, and the fact that First Nations children weren't regarded as individuals possessing any rights, the temptation to do studies on such isolated and vulnerable subjects must have existed; the questions raised are well within reason. A Public Inquiry is probably the only method of either confirming or laying to rest such potent allegations with their major implications for the nature of damage and the scope of redress.

Many victims of abuse feel strongly that they are owed compensation for the wrongs they suffered personally, the impacts it has had on their children, and on their children's children.

As part of our research, we hoped to gain a national picture of the number and status of criminal cases involving residential school abuse. In August 1998, we received permission from Commissioner Cooper to request information from the R.C.M.P. on a national level through the Aboriginal Policing Division. We agreed we would be most likely to get responses if questions were brief and simple with the assistance of Sgts. Aimoe and Courtois, the following questions were distributed to all Divisions:

With regard to sexual, physical, mental or emotional abuse of children at Residential Schools:

Unfortunately, all responses will not be returned in time for inclusion in this research. At mid-October 1998, only G-Division (NWT) had responded with the following information:

1.    Number of Complaints:    2 schools

2.    Number of Investigations:    2

*

This will be a useful body of information if it is collected and updated on a national basis.

It is interesting that there have been no complaints registered yet about any of the other ten Northwest Territories schools and hostels, although there are survivor support groups associated with at least two of them.

Civil suits in progress include Alberni, Grolier Hall, Spanish, Lower Post, Kuper Island, Chesterfield Inlet, Shubenacadie, and reportedly several other schools; there are none that we have learned of in Quebec. The Shingwauk Project in Ontario has also recommended seeking compensation through the courts. Some former students have decided as a group that legal action is not their current priority; given the time and energy required to pursue litigation, they have chosen instead to focus on personal healing and community issues.

The growing number of residential school lawsuits is forcing the Justice Department to consider negotiated solutions with survivors rather that fight them on a case by case basis. Aboriginal organizations generally support measures that may make it easier for victims to go through the compensation process. With the exception of the O'Conner case, we found no residential school cases resolved to anyone's satisfaction outside the formal justice system, though groups of former students have been trying.¹⁶⁴

3.3.1     Expectations:

While it is not possible to tell how much influence the Statement of Reconciliation had in highlighting this particular need, it is clear that meaningful acknowledgement of wrongdoing is seen as an essential step in the process of restoring balance and harmony between people.

An admission of wrongdoing is seen as necessary,

Many people are not satisfied with the acknowledgement and apologies issued to date; particularly with regard to church apologies many people are unaware of their existence. Dissatisfaction centers around wording, meaning, and intent, and also around the nature of delivery. People who have received personal acknowledgement and apology mention it as an important event in their lives more often than those to whom a public apology was broadcast.

1.1    Expectations

1.2    Other views expressed include

1.3    Frustrations with the current situation include,

An outline of the Four Worlds Residential School Healing Program is included in Appendix 5 as one example of a holistic, community-centered healing program.

2.1    Expectations:

2.2    Opinions expressed include:

2.3    Frustrations with the current situation include,

3.1    Expectations:

3.2    Different viewpoints include:

3.3    Frustrations with the current situation include,

4.1    Expectations:

4.2    Different viewpoints include,

4.3    Frustrations expressed included,

5.1     Expectations

5.2    Opinions expressed include,

5.3    Frustrations with the current situation include,

6.1    Expectations:

6.2    Opinions expressed include,

6.3    Frustrations with the current situation include,

The move towards community wellness and the rebuilding of healthy aboriginal communities requires a sustained and comprehensive approach over a long period of time. Piecemeal program funding for one, two, or even five years, does not create the lasting changes that people are seeking as they attempt to address the impacts of residential schooling, and rebuild nations. International development agencies and some North American foundations increasingly recognize that funding for community-based health initiatives requires a minimum seven to ten year commitment to create a sustainable change.

A comprehensive, long term vision for community development among First Nations, Inuit, and Mtis groups is required in order to bring about effective rebuilding on a national scale.¹⁸¹ A holistic approach to achieving health, where health is the outcome of living well, in harmony, with control over the forces affecting everyday life, and with hope for one's children and one's land, is key to this vision. When a holistic approach to determinants of health is adopted, any single initiative, whether it is focused on residential school healing, child sexual abuse, parenting, addictions, or restorative justice for example, becomes a door through which all of the interconnected factors in determining community wellness can be addressed.

The current lack of such a comprehensive vision will impact on the effectiveness of any single program developed in response to residential schooling, likely to render it a bandaid, stuck on in a panic attempt to do "something... anything", before the money runs out. A single program focus ignores the need for overall capacity building at the community level. A focus on capacity building, engaging members of the community to articulate and develop their own needs, guiding principles, and measurement tools, creates the ability within communities to determine and address specific health needs including, but not limited to, residential school issues.

A major barrier to holistic community healing and development is that knowledge of healing methods and processes, techniques to strengthen existing resources and capability within communities, is scattered and not well understood. Many communities, urban and rural, don't yet know that such expertise exists, or if they do, it remains inaccessible.

The urban environment presents some challenges for wellness and capacity building within aboriginal communities, but the same principles apply for effective community development. If there is a generic map of the process, common understanding of principles and goals, the range of agencies and individuals working together in cities are a tremendous asset in creating an urban framework for wellness. The critical first step for all communities is the national articulation of a vision of healthy native communities; the second step is long-term provision for establishing the process and means to achieve it.

One estimate of the cost of long term capacity building and development in communities, shown to have a lasting impact, is ~$100,000 a year, for a minimum of five years.¹⁸² This represents all costs of meetings between facilitators and a core group within the community, to develop goals, processes, and plans as well as a detailed curriculum for creating change in the community. It includes individual and group healing and counselling as a foundation for change, and to strengthen skills and capacity within the community. Inevitably, it is a process that spills over and has influence beyond the core group.

Models for sustainable community development do exist. Four Worlds International Institute, who have been involved in community development work internationally for twenty-five years, suggest the setting up and training of mobile, regional technical assistance groups to assist communities in healing. A regional model allows for training and development of expertise within communities, and creates a pool of resources for many communities, over and over again. To be practical, such groups need to be established and coordinated on a province-by-province basis. But before this can happen, a coordinated national vision needs to be articulated.

As many people have pointed out, there is an overwhelming need for "community healing", to address a whole range of residential school impacts that are being felt within communities. All aboriginal approaches to healing we encountered begin with the premise that entire Nations were injured, wounded, and almost entirely destroyed by colonialism. This injury involves the emotional, spiritual, mental and physical parts of themselves and their Nations, and consequently, all of these areas must be addressed in the rebuilding process.¹⁸³

We suggest that single issue program or project funding is less likely to create widespread social and economic renewal, than a coordinated, holistic, national approach to cultural, social, and economic development.

The nature of recommendations made in different forums, like the needs identified in survivor statements, vary according to the particular focus of the group or author. We survey these recommendations briefly here. Rather than footnote extensively throughout, we refer you to the complete texts of recommendations drawn from fifteen sources, included as Appendix 1.

A public inquiry has been called for specifically by the Royal Commission, the Nishnawbe-Aski Nation Report, the Chesterfield Inlet Inquiry, the AFN's 1996 National Report, in The Circle Game, and the Grolier Hall Report. While not specifying a method, the Nuu-chah-nulth conference called for investigations of unexplained deaths and publicization of residential school abuses, both issues that would be well served by an inquiry.

Broader recommendations regarding "raising public consciousness" and "public education" were made by all of the above, as well as in Rosalyn Ing's study, Elizabeth Furniss' book, the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council's 1996 recommendations, and a recent statement by Survivors Tasiuqtit.

The report of the National Residential School Review Project (AFN, 1996) called for the creation of memorials for children who died in residential schools.

Dr. Roland Chrisjohn's recommendation to public recognition is blunt, as he reluctantly repeats variations on recommendations that have gone unheeded before, and concludes,

2.    Recommendations Regarding Individual Compensation

The issue of compensation for individuals is addressed in different ways. The 1991 Residential Schools Conference, Furniss, and Chrisjohn clearly recommend compensation for individual victims of abuse. Peterson and the Nishnawbe-Aski Nation recommend individuals receive compensation to access the healing services of their choice. The Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council (1994 and 1996) makes more general recommendations regarding the right of individuals to receive compensation.

The 1994 NTC conference recommended support for legal action both for individual survivors of abuse and for the cultural damage caused by residential schools. Their 1996 recommendations recommended various ways to aid in the criminal investigation process; they also recommended consideration of possible negotiated solutions provided they were not prejudicial to other settlements.

Recommendations regarding access to legal information and advice for former students were made by the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council (1996) and Survivors Tasiuqtit); Katherine Peterson's report went further to recommend provision of funding to allow former students to explore legal options. She also recommended information sharing on the progress of investigations and court cases.

"The Report of the Victim/Witness Program" in the Grolier Hall criminal trial was the only document that specifically recommended the exploration of an alternative disclosure process to reduce the trauma of survivors; it also recommended an increased territorial Victim Services budget to adequately fund support in such trials.

Recommendations regarding church and government apologies and the need for full admission of responsibility for residential schools and their ensuing damage were made at the National Conference in 1991; the 1994 Nuu-chah-nulth Conference; in Breaking the Silence, the Nishnawbe-Aski Nation Report, Victims of Benevolence, and in The Circle Game.

The need for large scale cultural healing and rebuilding, community development and revitalisation are the primary focus of recommendations in several works. Recommendations in Breaking the Silence focus almost entirely on the principles and processes required to bring this about. The Vancouver Conference ('91), the AFN's 1996 report, and Roland Chrisjohn include recommendations specific to the need for culturally appropriate development, First Nations control, and the need for community wellness and planning anchored in a clear vision.

Recommendations for culturally based healing, particularly the need for language and educational development, and programs and services for victims of cultural destruction have been made by Ing, the Cariboo and Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Councils, the AFN, and Survivors Tasiuqtit. To seek or provide funding for these aims is recommended by Peterson, RCAP, the Nishnawbe-Aski Nation, the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, the 1991 National conference; the AFN (1996) recommendations specifically address the need for new (and not redirected) funds.

The demand that cultural damage, particularly the loss of languages, be compensated is found in recommendations by Chrisjohn, the AFN, the Nishnawbe-Aski nation, the Vancouver Conference, the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council.

Five reports make recommendations to address the role and importance of family in rebuilding culture: Ing, the Report of the 1991 National Conference, the Nuu-chah-nulth (1994 and 1996), and the Assembly of First Nations (1994). Breaking the Silence also recommends the development of culturally appropriate justice programs as an essential part of restoring culture.

Several reports make recommendations about the need for aboriginal research, primarily the need for records gathering, identification of students, abusers, and the creation of archives; some speak to identification of successful, appropriate programs and services. Sources include RCAP, AFN (1996), Nuu-chah-nulth and Cariboo Tribal Councils, Survivors Tasiuqtit, and Chrisjohn.

Recommendations regarding the need for communication and networking among residential school groups occur in three sources, including the Nuu-chah-nulth's recommendation that survivors in prison need to be included in the process.

With regard to the personal healing needs of individuals, the need for provision, funding and access to treatment programs and resources was addressed in recommendations in Breaking the Silence, Peterson's report, the Nuu-chah-nulth (NTC) study, RCAP, The Circle Game, and the AFN's 1996 report.

Recommendations addressing the need for survivor meetings or conferences have been made by AFN ('96) and NTC ('96); the need for staffing and or training to cope with counselling needs was also recommended by NTC ('94), in Laurence Norbert's report, and in Ing's study. Recommendations regarding the high priority for personal healing are found in Ing and the 1996 NTC study; NTC's 1994 recommendations also include recognition of the importance of personal healing work for leaders.

Some sources address the relationship between First Nations and Canada that gave rise to residential schools in the first place. The Vancouver Conference, Furniss, Miller, and Chrisjohn identify the continued paternalism and interference of government in native affairs; Chrisjohn in particular recommends the resolution of land claims as fundamental to establishing an equitable relationship. Breaking the Silence recommends that First Nations poverty must be dealt with as part of the resolution process; the 1996 AFN report recommends more balanced funding as opposed to current piecemeal program funding with its difficult and changing requirements. The Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council recommends adopting restorative justice processes to meet and reflect aboriginal needs. Peterson recommends coordination and communication in government and community initiatives aimed at resolving residential school issues.

Finally, the need for expeditious action, particularly recognising the number of elders affected, is addressed in recommendations by the Nuu-chah-nulth (`94 and `96), the Cariboo Tribal Council, Peterson, and the Assembly of First Nations (96).

Immediate action is required to recognise and redress the damage of residential school policy for people age fifty and over. We recommend,

1.    Financial compensation for those who attended residential schools or hostels in the form of a lump sum payment or a lifetime survivor's pension according to beneficiary wishes.¹⁸⁵

2.    A disclosure process be established with provincial panels empowered to,

A majority of panel members should be former residential school students. Survivors must be able to be heard and responded to in the language of their choice. Unless accepted, compensation decisions of the panel should not be binding; individuals must retain the option to pursue civil court claims.

3.    This disclosure process must not be time limited.

4.    A national coordinating body made up of respected community members unaffiliated with aboriginal political organisations should define and oversee this process. Including international human rights expertise and supported by native and non-native legal and judicial advice, this body should be key in stetting up guidelines for financial compensation.

5.    Administrative and financial mechanisms be set up to ensure prompt processing of financial redress.

6.    Formal recognition of the injustice perpetrated on individuals and their nations including comprehensive apologies and acknowledgement of direct responsibility for residential schools by government and churches is still required. But in the present climate, more words simply add insult to injury; concrete action must come first.

and any other work deemed necessary in rebuilding Aboriginal societies.

These recommendations only restate what has been said before by so many affected groups and individuals. We hope their repetition here has provided persuasive evidence and direction for redress of childhood abuse at residential schools.

Bibliography

Howard Adams, A Tortured People: The Politics of Colonization. Penticton: Theytus Books, 1995

Assembly of First Nations, Breaking the Silence: An Interpretive Study of Residential School Impact and Healing. Ottawa: Assembly of First Nations, 1994

Roland D. Chrisjohn, Sherri L. Young and Others, The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada Penticton: Theytus Books, 1997

R. Chrisjohn, C. Belleau and others, "Faith Misplaced: Lasting Effects of Abuse in a First Nations Community." Canadian Journal of Native Education, Vol. 18, No.2, 1991, p. 161-197. Also published as Cariboo Tribal Council, "The Effects of Residential Schooling." Williams Lake: Cariboo Tribal Council, 1992

E.R. Daniels, "How Similar? How Different? The Patterns of Education for Indian and non-Indian Students in Canada," prepared for R.C.A.P., December 1992

Claude Denis, We Are Not You: First Nations and Canadian Modernity, Broadview Press, 1997

Lindy-Lou Flynn, To Break the Conspiracy of Silence: The Healing and Empowerment of Native Peoples Across Canada, University of Western Ontario, 1993

Suzanne Fournier and Ernie Crey, Stolen From Our Embrace: The Abduction of First Nations Children and Restoration of Aboriginal Communities. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre Ltd., 1997.

Elizabeth Furniss, Victims of Benevolence: The Dark Legacy of the Williams Lake Residential School. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1995

Elizabeth Graham, The Mush Hole. Waterloo: Heffle Publishing, 1997

Agnes Grant, No End of Grief: Indian Residential Schools In Canada. Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications Inc., 1996

Celia Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School. Vancouver: Tillacum Library, 1988

Barbara Helen Hill, Shaking the Rattle: Healing the Trauma of Colonization, Theytus Books, 1995

Rosalyn Ing, "The Effects of Residential Schooling on Native Child-Rearing Practices." University of British Columbia: Master's Thesis; also publ. In "Canadian Journal of Native Education," Vol.18: 1991

Alooktook Ipellie, Arctic Dreams and Nightmares, Penticton: Theytus Books, 1993

Isabelle Knockwood, Out of the Depths: The Experiences of Mi'kmaw Children at the Indian Residential School at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia. Lockeport, NS: Roseway Publishing, 1992

George Manuel and Michael Possluns, The Fourth World. Don Mills, Ont: Collier-MacMillan, 1970

Tony Martin, Brenda Daily & Maggie Hodgson, The Spirit Weeps: Characteristics and Dynamics of Child Sexual Abuse from a First Nations Perspective. Nechi Institute, 1988

Maureen McEvoy, Let the Healing Begin: Breaking the Cycle of Child Sexual Abuse in Our Communities. Nicola Valley Training Institute, 1990

J.R. Miller, Shingwauk's Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996

Boyce Richardson, People of Terra Nullius: Betrayal and Rebirth in Aboriginal Canada. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1993

Rupert Ross, Return to the Teachings -- Exploring Aboriginal Justice. Toronto: Penguin Books, 1996

Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, For Seven Generations: An Information Legacy of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Ottawa: Libraxus Inc, 1977, CD-ROM

E. Brian Titley, A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1988

Survivors Tasiuqtit, "Statement by Survivors Tasiuqtit on Historical Abuse, Assimilation Policies & Honoring All Peoples," September 1998

Laurence Norbert, "A Report on the Victim/Witness Support Service of a Multiple Child Sexual Abuse Court Trial in Inuvik, Northwest Territories: The Grollier Hall Experience," August 1998

Aboriginal Healing Foundation, Background Document, prepared for national meeting July 14-16, 1998

The Provincial Residential School Project (B.C.), Information Package & PRSP News, May 1998

Assembly of First Nations Health Secretariat, "Residential School Update," March 1998

Four Worlds International Institute, documents and summaries, 1998:

Assembly of First Nations, "Bulletin," March 1998

National Indian Brotherhood, Assembly of First Nations, "Healing Fund Update," March 1998

Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada, "Proposal to Develop an Aboriginal Community Healing Strategy to Address the Residential School Effects Among Aboriginal Peoples," February 1998

"Way of Life: A Native Specific Treatment and Reintegration Program;" Planning, program & evaluation reports, Correctional Service of Canada, 1995, 1997, 1998

Nin.da.waab.jig News, Vol.3 Issue 2, March 1998

Peter R. Grant, "Settling residential schools claims: Litigation or mediation?" in Aboriginal Writes, Canadian Bar Association National Aboriginal Law Section, January 1998

James Miller and Edmund Danziger, "In the Care of Strangers: Walpole Island First Nation's Experiences with Canadian Residential Schools Since World War I," October 1997

Assembly of First Nations, "Social Security Reform Newsletter," Special Edition on Research, October 1997

Appendix 1 Recommendations Already Made

1. Rosalyn Ing (1990)
2. First Canadian Conference on Residential schooling (1991)
3. Cariboo Tribal Council Study (1991)
4. Assembly of First Nations (Breaking the Silence) (1994)
5. Katherine Peterson (1994)
6. Nuu-chah-nulth Residential School Conference (1994)
7. Elizabeth Furniss (1995)
8. Nishnawbe-Aski Nation Report (1995)
9. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996)
10. Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council (Indian Residential Schools) (1996)
11. Assembly of First Nations (Residential School Review Project) (1996)
12. Roland Chrisjohn & others (The Circle Game) (1997)
13. Laurence Norbert (Grollier Hall Report) (1998)
14. Survivors Tasiuqtit (Statement on Historical Abuse) (1998)
15. Four Worlds International Institute, "Executive Summary of the Self-Sufficiency and Social Security Reform" (1998). This document and its recommendations follow in their original form, included with permission.

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1. N. Rosalyn Ing, The Effects of Residential Schools on Native Child-Rearing Patterns, 1990, recommended:
   

1. Healing workshops are necessary to help people make the connection between present functioning and past experience;
2. Survivors are needlessly burdened with guilt, resentment, anger, revenge and frustrations; health care professionals must encourage clients to talk out these hurts and involve spiritual leaders in providing support;
3. Native parenting programs stressing cultural and traditional child-rearing patterns must be implemented.
4. Native parents must return to the elders who will help them recapture the vision of the family;
5. The chaotic conditions of the Native family is traced to the residential school education which caused this disintegration. Society does not adequately recognize this...
6. Parental involvement and local control of education;
7. Provide cultural/traditional parenting programs connected with schools, as parents who attended residential institutions still fear schools.¹⁸⁶

---

2. "Summary of Proceedings of the First Canadian Conference on Residential Schooling" (1991)¹⁸⁷ contained key messages:
   

1. The need for planning anchored in a clear vision. (Phil Fontaine)
2. Wellness is a precondition for self-government. (Chief Christopher)
3. The family is the first teacher. Transformation will come through communication. (Lorna Williams)
4. We live in critical times as people. Our fundamental problem is the nature of our relationship with Canada. Structural change in laws and policies is essential. We need to ensure that our recovery is founded on structural change. (Ovide Mercredi)
5. Church and government must acknowledge creation of the problem, apologize, and allocate resources for services and programs necessary for healing, recovery, and development, as well as to compensate individuals handicapped or crippled by treatment in residential school. (O. Mercredi)
6. We need to be responsible and credible to receive and utilize these resources. (O. Mercredi)
7. We must diminish adversarial relations and confrontation, and build mutual respect. "Heal the child, the family, community, and nation." (O. Mercredi)
   

---

3. The Cariboo Tribal Council study (1991), identified needs for:
   

• Collaboration between "mental health professionals" and community members to identify what their situations require;
• Individual treatment is not the entirety of what should constitute remediation;
• A long-term strategy for integrating professional and community approaches, possibly including further training of community members;
• Evaluation of community-based programs to sort out what helps from what doesn't;
• A thorough understanding of the political and social forces that shaped the assault;
• Whatever help can be mustered must be made available with all speed.¹⁸⁸

---

4. Assembly of First Nations, Breaking the Silence, (1994) recommended:
   

• A commitment to the principles of respect, responsibility and cooperation are necessary to healing and training.
• Effective effort towards healing begins with the involvement of all community members and follows a process which demonstrates respect for the needs of each individual and family within the community, and must be community-driven to ensure ownership and responsibility of the initiative.
• The discussion of a model unique to First Nations perspectives has been suggested as a possible framework for healing. This model draws on traditional understandings of interconnectedness and wholeness. From this point of view, healing must address the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of individual, family and community life.
• Attempting to understand history from a First Nations' perspective by turning to elders and participating in ceremonies and drawing on traditional knowledge and practices of healing and living are ways of healing spiritually.
• The provision of opportunities for the revival and maintenance of First Nations languages are a further way of rebuilding spirit.
• The ongoing effort towards the treatment of addictions remains fundamental to healing. A scarcity of treatment options and opportunities is evident, particularly for youth and young adults.
• Suggestions for healing also include the development of policing and judicial systems culturally appropriate to First Nations. The development of family programs which focus on ongoing treatment and counselling for both victims and offenders are much needed. In addition, the opportunity to learn a wide variety of skills necessary for family life, including communication and parenting skills, the opportunity to learn job skills and learning to remain gainfully employed are also of paramount importance to the positive development of a productive family life.
• The well being of First Nations, individually and communally, must include the acknowledgement and grieving of multi-generational losses First Nations people have experienced. Addressing issues of grief and loss is included in the process of resolving issues such as poverty, which continue to oppress First Nations people.
• Addressing family violence and grief presupposes the development of individual and communal healing alternatives and programs which are developed according to community needs and available resources.¹⁸⁹
  

• The collection of detailed information of First Nations healing initiatives already under way across Canada;
• The development of appropriate criteria for and the evaluation of the strengths and limits of these initiatives; and
• The development of an effective networking system which allows for both descriptive and evaluative information to reach First Nations individuals and communities across Canada.

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5. Katherine Peterson, Q.C., ("Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School (Turquetil Hall) Investigation Report," 1994) recommended:
   

1. That individuals be supported with financial assistance in exploring the extent to which, in particular cases, civil legal relief is available in the form of an action in tort or negligence.
   
2. (superceded)
   
3. The RCMP and the federal Department of Justice should be requested to keep the Government of the Northwest Territories informed respecting decisions made regarding criminal prosecutions, and the progress of any such prosecutions.
   
4. Negotiations be immediately undertaken with the Roman Catholic Church and the federal government to identify financial and human resources to be committed to healing, therapy and counselling services for former students and their families.
   
5. That counselling and support services be provided to the former students in the form of:

6. That the Government of the Northwest Territories liaise with the Royal Commission Aboriginal Peoples to obtain the benefit of its experience and resources in this field and with a view to coordinating responses as between different levels of government and aboriginal organizations.
   
7. That in the event that negotiations with the Church and federal government do not proceed satisfactorily, a Public Inquiry be convened to examine the experience of students of residential school facilities across the Northwest Territories. The terms of reference of any such public inquiry should include a mandate to investigate circumstances of alleged physical, sexual and emotional abuse at residential schools, the quality of education received by students of these facilities, the availability of treatment and healing models for survivors of abuse.
   
8. That a working group be convened, made up of representatives of former students of residential schools in the Northwest Territories, managing organizations such as the Roman Catholic Church and the two levels of government and experts in the field of treatment of adult survivors to consult with former students and communities with a view to recommending treatment models and methods of delivery of support services to former students or to survivors of abuse generally.
   
9. That the government of the Northwest Territories undertake a campaign of public awareness and education directed to survivors of abuse, including the production of handbook materials which include the experiences of survivors, common symptoms of abuse, trauma and approaches to healing, with such material to be made widely available across the Northwest Territories.
   
10. That the Government of the Northwest Territories keep former students apprised of any and all initiatives undertaken in addressing these issues.
    

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6. The Nuu-chah-nulth Residential School Conference (1994) recommended:
   

1. As leaders, recognize how important it is to carry on with a program of healing. Treat this like an `EMERGENCY CASE'.
2. In all regions, encourage and facilitate follow-up work to the Nuu-chah-nulth Residential School working conference
3. Re-hire unemployed Kuu-as Nuu-chah-nulth A&D; counsellors
4. Seek public apologies from the churches which ran, and the governments which funded, residential schools
5. Litigate, proceed with legal action, seeking monetary compensation, against the governments, churches, and individuals responsible for the damage done to all Nuu-chah-nulth individuals and to Nuu-chah-nulth culture as a whole
6. Communicate all important information on residential school issues, and opportunities for healing, to those interested
7. Help make possible production of a video tape account of the Nuu-chah-nulth Residential School Working Conference. Circulate it.
8. Lend political support to residential school court cases brought by victim/survivors
9. Help enable Nuu-chah-nulth people in prison to attend residential school workshops and conferences
10. Coordinate coast-wide efforts to deal with our lasting pain
11. Honour Nuu-chah-nulth heroes who struggled against the churches and residential schools that were destroying our culture
12. Practice and strengthen Nuu-chah-nulth language, songs and culture on a regular and continuous basis, to benefit our youth
13. Train Nuu-chah-nulth workers in the health field to be culturally sensitive, and locate them in our communities
14. Investigate the circumstances surrounding the deaths of those Nuu-chah-nulth children who died in residential schools, or who died immediately after leaving residential schools
15. Publicize the fact that some of our people died, while in residential schools, as a result of beating received there
16. Coordinate a program of Nuu-chah-nulth language education aimed at helping both children and adults
17. Encourage the use of Nuu-chah-nulth names at all Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council functions
18. As leaders, deal with your own residential school issues before treaty making with the Mahmalthnii governments
19. Convene special meetings to address residential school issues in Nuu-chah-nulth country
20. Help procure $$$ to fund much needed healing work
21. Make mental health and social issues high priorities
22. Help Nuu-chah-nulth people find and diagram their family roots, and keep a central repository of Nuu-chah-nulth genealogies
23. Make and maintain a complete list of Nuu-chah-nulth residential school victims and survivors
24. Make and maintain lists of residential school staff members that were abusive to Nuu-chah-nulth students
25. Develop a plan to provide help for children of residential school victims and survivors
26. As Nuu-chah-nulth leaders, practice humility.¹⁹¹
    

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7. Elizabeth Furniss, Victims of Benevolence: The Dark Legacy of the Williams Lake Residential School, (1995) identified needs for:
   

• Public statements from church and government acknowledging responsibility for the abuses that occurred;
• Financial compensation to the victims of residential school abuse;
• Financial and other support for native efforts to raise the historical consciousness of the non-Native Canadian public.
• (A need to address) the continued existence of the Indian Act, and the role of the Dept. of Indian Affairs, (and other manifestations of the) ongoing belief that Native people cannot make responsible decisions for themselves.¹⁹²
• Telling the stories of the devastating impact these attitudes, their reflection in legislation and policy, has had on individual lives is critical in preventing these tragedies from being repeated.¹⁹³
  

"This larger problem is not that the Indian residential school system existed, or that its effects may have been good or bad, but that certain groups in society have presumed to know what is in Native peoples' best interests, and that these groups have held, and continue to hold, the power and authority to interfere in Native people's lives and to enforce conditions that Native people oppose."194

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8. The Nishnawbe-Aski Nation "Report on Residential School Meetings" (1995) recognized and recommended:
   

• The need for residential school issues to be brought to the forefront of consciousness of all Canadian people;
• The need for widespread education, a national campaign informing the general population about the effects of the schools;
• The need for an investigative process to explain many things that happened, and bring peace of mind to those who children disappeared;
• The need for government and churches to acknowledge acculturation policies, and their responsibility for the ensuing damage;
• Provision of financial compensation, for individuals to obtain healing services of their choice;
• Funding commitments from church and government for ongoing programming, reunions, survivor conferences and seminars, language centres, curriculum for history within schools, and curriculum for training to meet the needs of survivors, families and communities.¹⁹⁵
  

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9. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, (1996) recommended:
   

1. investigate and document the origins and effects of residential school policies and practices respecting all Aboriginal peoples, with particular attention to the nature and extent of effects on subsequent generations of individuals and families, and on communities and Aboriginal societies;
2. conduct public hearing across the country with sufficient funding to enable the testimony of affected persons to be heard;
3. commission research and analysis of the breadth of the effects of these policies and practices;
4. investigate the record of residential schools with a view to the identification of abuse and what action, if any, is considered appropriate; and
5. recommend remedial action by governments and the responsible churches deemed necessary by the inquiry to relieve conditions created by the residential school experience, including as appropriate,

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10. The Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, Indian Residential Schools: The Nuu-chah-nulth Experience, (1996) recommended:
    

1. Increase Public Awareness

2. Support R.C.M.P. investigation of Residential Schools

3. Provide short term support to victims of Residential Schools

4. Plan for Negotiated or Litigated Resolution of Issues

1. Because the schools were an institution designed to destroy culture, it is appropriate to create a Nuu-chah-nulth institution to rebuild and promote culture. Such and institution would combine elements of healing, research, teaching and education.
2. Elimination of language was a key element in the destruction of Nuu-chah-nulth systems, so a broad program to document and teach language is a logical way to offset the impact.
3. Healing will involve restoring spiritual connections to the environment, so outdoor healing programs will be required, in places where the spiritual forces have not been disrupted.

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XI.     The Assembly of First Nations "Final Report of the National Residential Schools Review Project," (1996) identified required objectives and activities.

Activities:

• Regional and national one day remembrance for residential school survivors.
• Memorials, put up for children who died while attending residential schools.
• Provide referrals for emotional (support) for survivors.
• (Public support for) proposed community based family healing centers.
• A screening process developed at community level for frontline workers.
• A wellness conference for our Elders.
• Aftercare and follow up meetings for the survivors of the residential schools.
• Lobby for the need of healing services/healing centers for residential schools.
  

Activities:

• Ensure funding for support services as identified and required by the residential school coordinators. The funding to be provided through new funding and not through current funding initiatives.
• To advocate for funding of culturally appropriate treatment services/programs and separate from existing funding initiatives.

Activities:

• Research culturally appropriate training areas identified as necessary for working with the residential school issue. (...including) suicide intervention methods, parenting, grieving process, handling sexual abuse disclosures, traditional teachings, critical incidents stress debriefing training and spirituality.
  

Activities:

• The Government should apologize and take full responsibility for helping churches.
• The (government should provide) financial resources to develop the required human resources and physical structures (healing lodges/healing centers). First nations require a more balanced system of funding... various initiatives have too many conditions and are too sporadic.

Activities:

• Advocate to churches with funding projects designed to address residential schools issues need to work in conjunction with the First Nation communities.
• All church officials and staff must recognize they have created an injustice and committed acts of cultural genocide through residential school system.
• Lobby the governments and churches to identify and allocate compensatory funding for the implementation of the recommendations outlined in "Breaking the Silence".
• To work with the church groups to seek redress in support of First Nations.
  

Activities:

• Provide support to the First Nations negotiations with the churches and federal government.
• Regional projects to carry out provincial strategy and coordinate efforts with other agencies, health, and utilize existing resources. Each region to coordinate their services with other provinces, RCMP, funding, territory and jurisdiction.

• Political efforts to resolve portability of rights to health; complete evaluation of Therapy services.

Activities:

• Support for First Nations to obtain funds from the federal government to fund total immersion schools as requested.
  

Activities:

• AFN to research archives to confirm government policy of residential schools.
• Investigate First Nations people sent to other residential schools (St.John's Mennonites).
• Each community to research tribal areas to assist with developing response.
  

Activities:

• Document experiences of elders who are residential school survivors immediately.
• Hold a national gathering on residential schools.
• Begin the process of a national inquiry.
  

Activities:

• Develop and implement an education program.
• Develop an awareness program for use by regions and First Nations.
• Establish a national newsletter to communicate progress of national strategy.
  

Activities:

• The clearinghouse will develop and maintain an inventory of:
• Resource list of legal strategy utilized by other First Nations.
• Regional and national criminal cases that are active.
• Regional and national contacts for First Nations community members to access regarding legal, healing and support aspects.
• Regional and national lists of elders with expertise of working with survivors of residential schools.¹⁹⁹
  

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11. Roland D. Chrisjohn, Sherri L. Young and Others, The Circle Game (1997) recommended:
    

13. Laurence Norbert, "Report on the Victim/Witness Support Service: The Grollier Hall Experience" (1998) recommended:
    

1. That an alternative disclosure and validation process be seriously considered instead of the present adversarial court process. This would enable people who have not disclosed under current or pending police investigations, to come forward and to begin their healing.
2. (Detailed recommendations specific to the process of survivor support within existing trial procedures)
3. Prior training of community caregivers on the aftermath of the residential school experience: e.g. the history and global impact of the residential school system; crisis intervention, supporting residential school survivors, ongoing support (networking), and groups and community facilitation, to name a few. This will raise community and regional awareness of the issue and create an additional community resource.
4. That a public inquiry be convened to examine the experience of students of residential school facilities across the western NWT. This inquiry should be able to investigate situations of alleged physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual violations at residential schools, the calibre of education received by students of these facilities, and the types of treatment and healing available for residential school survivors.
   

• A public inquiry can cause secondary victim trauma.
• A support services and processes must allow for the least harm to occur to inquiry witnesses.
• Each witness should be consulted and dealt with concerning his/her support needs.
• The healing process of witnesses does not end with the conclusion of an inquiry.
• Educational and awareness workshops on the residential school issue be conducted for government senior managers, professionals, front-line community caregivers and community justice committees to increase awareness, cross-cultural understanding and up-to--date knowledge; and
• Community and regional support and referral process protocols be established for abuse victims to contact existing services, front-line workers and survivors groups.
  

5. That a training and healing program be developed to integrate northern residential school survivors as community assistants in sexual abuse counselling.
6. That the Nats'ejee K'eh Treatment Centre and the Tl'oondih Healing Society, in a joint effort with the Government of the Northwest Territories and residential school survivor groups, design and develop a long-term residential school aftermath treatment program for former residential school students and their families.
7. That the Government of the Northwest Territories increase its victim services budget for existing or future victim service programs to effectively assist with any multiple-victim sexual abuse trial.²⁰¹

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1. a sustainable economic base (which provided food, clothing, shelter, medicines and other material needs, and
   
2. healthy human relationships (which provided opportunities for self-development, sustained family and community life, preserved the social and economic well-being of the people, and provided a dependable safety net for those who fell upon hard times for whatever reasons).
   

• Helping families become free of addictions and abuse, filled with spirit, love, caring and mutual responsibility, and able to function as a strong economic unit is a critical development challenge.
  
• The political and administrative, economic and environmental, spiritual and cultural , and social relationships of community life need to be transformed in such a way that they lead to well-being and prosperity.
  
• The political, economic, environmental, social and cultural factors in the regional, national or international context within which First Nations communities live need to be taken into account if viable development processes are to occur.
  

1. Development comes from within -- Well-being and prosperity cannot be delivered to communities. It has to be grown from within people, from the very spiritual core of their beings: from within families and from within processes of civic engagement. This principle implies that to achieve social security, a massive effort of engaging ordinary Aboriginal people in collective process of healing, learning, consultations and action is required. Facilitating this process will be a key challenge facing Aboriginal leadership everywhere.
   
2. No Vision; no development -- A vision of who we can become and what a sustainable world would be like works as a powerful magnet, drawing us to our potential. Where there is no vision, there is no development. This principle implies that the work of imagining what prosperity and well-being would actually look like, and what the path to achieve it would be in any particular community, is of paramount importance.
   
3. Personal and Community Development must go Hand-in-Hand -- Social security reform must focus both on personal growth, healing and learning, and on the transformation of community structures, power arrangements, institutions, organizations, policies and patterns. These two dimensions are inter-related and inseparable.
   
4. Learning is the key that unlocks the door of change -- Individuals, families, organizations, and whole communities and nations of people can learn. We have learned to live as we do now, and we can learn to do, think and live differently. This principle urges a major focus on capacity building at all levels as a primary line of action for Aboriginal social security reform.
   

1. Aboriginal prosperity can never be achieved on transfer payments from government. A fundamental focus for reform needs to be on the development of a true economy that is capable of producing wealth; is sustainable in its methods and outcomes; and ensures equitable distribution to all within Aboriginal communities.
2. To achieve this, a concentrated focus on the following strategies is recommended:

1. Increase each Nation's lands and resource base.
2. Increase equitable access to capital and credit for micro-enterprises as well as for larger projects.
3. Considerable investment in human development and training.
4. Institutional development and capacity building related to managing economic processes.
5. Emphasis on developing secondary manufacturing capacity (such as moving from harvesting trees to making furniture).
6. Focus on multiplying the circulation of money within communities.
7. A shift from large to small and medium size enterprises as a primary strategy with diligent attention to community economic development (CED) principles.
8. Establish democratically operated community economic development corporations or cooperatives
9. Develop regional strategies for integrating local economic efforts into larger networks and markets.
   

3. Beyond the development of local and regional economies, a particular emphasis on strengthening international indigenous people's economic networks to facilitate trade, economic cooperation and collaboration on projects of mutual benefit is recommended.
   

2. Control and Jurisdiction
   

1. A five-year moratorium on ASA and FTA transfer agreements because these arrangements severely limit the sovereignty of Aboriginal nations to exercise control in reforming social development programs.
2. The formation of a national Aboriginal Social Development Commission to control and manage all Aboriginal social development and social security reform related funds. The intention here is to replace Indian Affairs' control of funding with an Aboriginal-controlled oversight commission empowered to administer funds in ways that allow for the flexibility and creativity that is needed for social security reform to be successful.
   

3. Key Program Features for Reform
   

1. A shift from individual entitlement to community well-being, which views social assistance as just one part of a community healing and development effort. This would entail re-focusing programs toward strengthening community capacity and transforming community conditions.
2. A shift toward emphasizing community responsibility for the welfare of its members (and away from government as the provider and caretaker). This would require developing the will, the capacity and the mechanisms within communities for citizen involvement, partnership building with government, program ownership, and accountability.
3. Redefining "work" in Aboriginal terms to include all useful service to the community. The use of social assistance and other transfer dollars to build up this type of "social economy" develops the social capital of the community (i.e. the trust, empowerment levels, networks, leadership capacity, confidence, work ethic, mutual support mechanisms, etc.).
4. Focus programs on the root causes of poverty and dependency rather than on the symptoms.
5. A major investment in "capacity building" is required, which includes appropriate healing, education and training for individuals, as well as organizational learning and institutional development.
   

4. Fostering People's Empowerment and Participation
   

1. The establishment of local human and community development societies as a mechanism for healing and change within the community that operates at arm's length from government. These societies would be non-partisan promoters of the community healing and development process empowered to receive funds and to mount programs for that purpose. They would provide vehicles through which individuals could learn, heal and practice democratic skills and processes in pursuit of development goals.
2. A specific focus on developing community capacity for consultation processes, making and keeping collective commitment, conflict resolution, as well as community development vision, planning and action.
3. Leadership development to train Aboriginal Political and program leaders in participatory development approaches.
4. The development and promotion of an Aboriginal Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities which incorporates the right to basic human well-being (and the healing needed to get there), as well as the responsibilities of both individuals and communities in developing and maintaining well-being. The Charter would serve as a standard against which communities could measure their progress, as well as a consciousness-raising tool.
   

1. Establish and develop healing centers that expand the role now played by treatment centers to include a community outreach and wellness focus, mobile treatment programs, and specialized programs for youth, women, elders, victims of abuse, and leaders.
2. The development and promotion of an Aboriginal Healing Accord -- a kind of pact or treaty that sets goals, strategies and a code of conduct relative to the realities and needs of community healing. All who sign the Accord would thereby commit themselves to working for its provisions in their own lives and communities.
3. The establishment of an Aboriginal Community Healing Fund (contributed to by government, the private sector, or any group wishing to make reparations related to Aboriginal healing) to be operated as a foundation at arms length from government and controlled by Aboriginal people. Access to the fund should be restricted to those communities and groups that have agreed to the terms and conditions of the Aboriginal Healing Accord. Special programs under this fund would focus on the needs of women and prison inmates.
   

5. Strategies for Facilitating and Supporting the Reform Process
   

1. Local or regional Human and Community Development Technical Assistance and Capacity Building Teams to serve as coaches and mentors to community programs and voluntary groups struggling to shift community patterns toward wellness. 2. Regional Aboriginal Leadership Academies for strengthening the capacity of community leaders (political, program and voluntary leaders) relative to healing and community development.
2. A "Virtual College" of Human and Community Development (a post-secondary learning program without walls to tailor-make learning programs to community capacity-building needs.)
   

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LOCATION	SCHOOL NAME	DENOMINATION	OPENED	CLOSED	# /Nations of STUDENTS
British Columbia
Ahousat	Ahousat IRS	Presbyterian	1904	1939
Alert Bay	St. Michael's	Anglican	1929	1975
Alert Bay	Alert Bay Girls Home	Anglican	1888	1905
Cache Creek			Bef. 1870
Chilliwack/ Sardis	Coqualeetza Institute	Methodist	1890	1941
Cranbrook	St. Eugene's	Catholic	1890	1970
Fraser Lake	Lejac	Catholic	1910	1976
Kamloops	Kamloops IRS	Catholic	1893	1978	Secwepemc, Neskonlith, Chilcotin bands, Nicola Valley, Lillooett, Bonaparte, Skeetchestn, Kamloops, Adams Lake, Chase, Chu Chua
Kitamaat	Elizabeth Long Memorial	Methodist	1922
Kuper Is. (Chemainus)	Kuper Island	Catholic	1890	1970
Lower Post	Lower Post	Catholic	1951	1975
Lytton	St. George's	Anglican	1901	1979
Metakatla	Industrial School (from 1885)	Anglican/Methodist	~1857	1908
Mission	St. Mary's	Catholic	1868	1984	42 in 1890
Nass River	Greenville Mission (Boys)	Methodist	~1890
North Vancouver	St. Francis/ Squamish	Catholic	1989	1959
Port Alberni	Alberni IRS	Presbyterian/United	1920	1973	~300
Port Simpson	Home for Indian Girls	Methodist	Bef. 1879
Port Simpson	Boys Home	Methodist	1890	1920s
Sechelt	Sechelt	Catholic	1922	1975
Tofino	Christie Industrial /Kakawis	Catholic	1900	1973
Tofino	New Christie		1974	1983
William's Lake	St. Joseph's Industrial	Catholic	Bef. 1876	1981	Secwepemc, Cariboo communities; Nicola Valley
Yale	All Hallows	Anglican	1889	1918
Alberta
Assumption (?)
Blood Reserve		Catholic	Bef. 1900
Blood Reserve	St. Paul's School	Anglican	Bef. 1916
Brocket	Peigan School	Catholic	Bef. 1929
Calgary area	Sarcee School	Catholic	~1890	~1920	(closed due to TB; reopened as a TB sanatorium in 1930)
Cardston	St. Mary's	Anglican/Catholic	Bef. 1959
Cluny		Catholic
Crowfoot		Catholic	Bef. 1931
Desmarais
Dunbow (High River)	St. Joseph's	Catholic	1889	1966	~6 in 1980, Blackfoot, Blood, Peigan, Cree; became High River Industrial School
Edmonton	Edmonton Industrial School	Methodist	Bef. 1931	Aft. 1960
Hobbema	Ermineskin IRS	Catholic	Bef. 1930
Fort Chipewyan		Catholic
Fort Vermillion		Catholic	Bef. 1931
	Grouard	Catholic
	Holy Angels	Catholic	Bef. 1931
	Joussard	Catholic	Bef. 1941
Lac La Biche		Catholic	Bef. 1884
Lake Athabasca		Catholic	Bef. 1884
Lesser Slave Lake		Anglican	Bef. 1931
Lesser Slave Lake		Catholic
	Notre Dame
Old Suns Reserve	Old Suns	Anglican	1890s
Red Deer	Red Deer Industrial School	Methodist	1893
Red Deer	Sacred Heart	Catholic	Bef. 1931
St. Albert		Catholic	~1884
	St. Bernard	Catholic	Bef. 1931
	St. Bruno	Catholic	Bef. 1931
	St. Cyprian	Anglican	Bef. 1931
St. Paul	Blue Quills	Catholic	1931	1970
Stoney Reserve	Morley	Methodist	Bef. 1931
Sturgeon Lake		Catholic	Bef. 1931
Wabasca		Catholic	Bef. 1931
Whitefish Lake		Anglican	Bef. 1927
Saskatchewan
Battleford	Industrial School	Anglican	1883	1914	30 in 1883; 80 in 1891; Boys only til 1885. Poundmaker, Ahtankakoop, Mistawasis, John Smith, Eagle Hills, Battleford, James Smith, Starblanket,
Beauval	Beauval	Catholic	Bef. 1931		Transf.erred to Meadow Lake Tribal Council, 1983
Cote Reserve	Crowstand	Presbyterian	1880s
	Cowesses	Catholic	Bef. 1931
Delmas	Thunderchild	Catholic	Bef. 1931	1948	(burned down)
Duck Lake	St. Michael's	Catholic	1894		Cree, Ojibway, Dakota, Chipewyan
Gordon's Reserve	Gordon's IRS	Anglican	Bef. 1931	Aft. 1984	Temp. closed in 1949 (water shortage), sent to P.A.IRS
Ile a la Cross		Catholic	Bef. 1884
Kamsack	St. Philip's	Catholic	1903
Lac La Ronge	Lac La Ronge School	Catholic	1907	1947	<100. Burned down 1947; students moved to P.A. army barracks
Lestock	Lestock School	Catholic	~1883	Aft. 1965
Marieval		Catholic
Muscowequan Reserve, Poorman Res.		Catholic	Bef. 1931
Onion Lake	I.R.S.	Catholic	1907	1943	116 in 1943. Burned down 1943, children moved to St. Alban's, Prince Albert
Prince Albert	Mission School	Presbyterian	1867	1881	5 -- 40
Prince Albert	Emmanual College	Anglican	1879	1908	~11-30, became residential in 1890
(from Lac La Ronge)	All Saints	Catholic	1948	1951	120-314
(from Onion Lake)	St. Alban's	Anglican (CofE)	1944	1951	155 in 1944; James Smith, Battleford, Onion Lake, Carlton, Saddle Lake, Duck Lake
Prince Albert	I.R.S.	Anglican	1951	1969	300-500 Amalgamation of St.Alban's & All Saints, legal cap. 300
Prince Albert	Prince Albert Student Residence	Government	1970	1974	Transf. To Wahpeton Band in 1974. Nations: Whitebear, ThePas, Mistawasis, mosquito-Grizzly Bear Head, Red Pheasant, Gordon's, Shoal Lake, Cote, Aklavik, Peepeekisis, James Smith, Moosomin, Little Pie, Sweet Grass, Key, Lac La Ronge, Sturgeon Lake, Churchill, John Smith, Peter Ballantyne, Ochapowace, Red Earth, White Capsm Sandy Lake
Qu'Appelle	Industrial School/ Lebret	Catholic	1884	Present	Now under F.N. control
Regina	Industrial School	Presbyterian	1895	Aft. 1930
Regina	File Hills Academy	Presbyterian	~1889	Aft. 1949
Round Lake	Round Lake School	Presbyterian	1918	Aft. 1929
Round Lake		Catholic	1840
Manitoba
Birtle		Presbyterian	Bef. 1890
Birtle		Methodist/United
Birtle		Catholic
Brandon	Brandon Industrial	Methodist	Bef. 1903		~170
Camperville		Catholic			Students transf. To Assiniboia (Winnipeg) on closing
Churchill	Vocational Centre				North & South Baffin, Keewatin
Cross Lake	St. Joseph's	Catholic		1930	(Burned down)
Dog Creek Elkhorn	Elkhorn Institute	Anglican	Bef. 1888
Fort Alex (Sandy Bay?)		Catholic	Bef. 1931
Fort Pelly
	Guy Hill
MacKay		Anglican	Bef. 1914
Middlechurch		Anglican	Bef. 1893
Montreal Lake
Norway House	Norway House School	Methodist/United	Bef. 1931	Aft. 1950
Norway House		Catholic
	Notre Dame
Pine Creek		Catholic Bef. 1930
Portage La Prairie		Presbyterian	1886	1958	21 in 1895
	Red River Mission	Anglican	1820	1833	10 in 1820; Plains Cree, Swampy Cree, Assiniboine, Chipewyan
Selkirk	Rupert's Land Industrial	Anglican	Bef. 1891
The Pas		Catholic
The Pas	The Pas Anglican School	Anglican	Bef. 1922
Waterhen
Winnipeg	Assiniboia Hostel	Catholic	Bef. 1931		Pine Falls, Fort Alexander, The Pas, Camperville
Ontario
Alderville	Boarding School	Methodist	1838
Alnwick	Industrial School		1842
Brantford	Mohawk Institute	Anglican	1834	1970	New Credit, Nawash, Oneida, Mistassini, Scugog, Chippewa, Tuscarora, Moraviatown, Parry Island, Mud Lake, Walpole Island, Upper Mohawk, Lower Mohawk, Muncey, Waswanipi, Ft.William, Long Lake, St.Regis, Kettle Point, Christian Island, North Seneca, Deer Lake, Bay of Quinte, Upper Cayuga, Lower Cayuga, Trout Lake, Gibson
Chapleau	St. John's I.R.S.	Anglican	Bef. 1926		Cree, Ojibway, James Bay
Fort Albany	St. Ann's	Catholic	Bef. 1908
Fort Frances		Catholic	Bef. 1925		Couchiching
Grape Island (Quinte)	Boarding School for Girls	Methodist	1828		4 in 1828
Kenora	St. Mary's School	Catholic	Bef. 1931
(Anishnabek)	McIntosh	Catholic	Bef. 1931
Mimico	Victoria School for Boys		1887
Moose Factory		Anglican	Bef. 1930		35 in 1944
Moosoonee
Muncey	Mount Elgin	United	1850	1946	Walpole Island, Oneida, Chippewa, Gibson, Saugeen, Caughnawaga, Kettle Point, Stony Point, Christian Island, Newash, Caldwell, Six Nations, Sarnia, Moraviatown, Cape Croker, Rama, Muncey, New Credit
Rice Lake			~1830
Sault Ste. Marie	Shingwauk Institute	Anglican	1873	1971
Shoal Lake	Shoal Lake/ Cecelia Jeffrey	Presbyterian	Bef. 1923		(Became Cecelia Jeffrey in Kenora)
Sioux Lookout	Pelican Lake	Anglican	Bef. 1931	Aft. 1960	Garden River, Walpole Island
Spanish	St. Peter Claver's Industrial School		1929	1958
Spanish	St. Joseph's Girls School	Catholic		1958	Akwesasne, Kahnawake, Kanesatake, Kettle Point
	St. Margaret's
Thunder Bay (Fort William)		Catholic	Bef. 1931
Wikwemikong	Industrial	Catholic	1850	1911	Ojibway, Akwesasne, Kahnawake; became industrial in 1887.
Quebec
Amos		Catholic
Chisasipi (Fort George)	Fort George	Catholic	Bef. 1939	Aft. 1956
Chisasipi		Anglican
Great Whale	Federal Day (hostel)	Anglican
La Tuque	Hostel	Catholic	1956
Montreal	Kateri Tecakwitha
	Kahnawake residence(?)
Pointe Bleue	Pensionate Indienne du PB	Catholic	17thC?
Sept Iles		Catholic		Aft. 1959
Atlantic
Shubenacadie, N.S.	Shubenacadie IRS	Catholic	1929	1967	~200, 1930-40; Mi'kmaw, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Cambridge, Pictou Landing, Antigonish, Indian Brook, P.E.I.
Yukon, NWT, Nunavut
Carcross, YK	Chooutla School	Anglican	1900	Aft. 1960	Max. 40
Dawson City, YK	St. Paul's Hostel	Anglican	1920's
Forty Mile	Boarding School	Anglican	1921		(moved to Carcross)
Rampart Landing, YK	Rampart House	Anglican	Bef. 1925
Whitehorse, YK	Baptist Mission Hostel	Baptist	~1945
Whitehorse, YK	Courdet Hall	Catholic
Aklavik, NWT		Anglican	Bef. 1930
Aklavik, NWT		Catholic	Bef. 1931		(moved to Inuvik)
Chesterfield Inlet, NT	Joseph Bernier/ Turquetil Hall	Catholic	1950		463; Baffin, Keewatin
Coppermine, NT
Fort McPherson, NT		Anglican	Bef. 1920
Fort Providence, NWT	Providence Mission	Catholic	1867
Fort Resolution, NWT		Catholic	1867
Fort Simpson, NWT		Anglican	Bef. 1920
Fort Smith, NWT
Hay River, NWT		Anglican	Bef. 1920
Inuvik	Grollier Hall		1959	1996	Inuvik, Aklavik, Tsiigehtchic, Colville Lake, Ft. Good Hope, Norman Wells, Ft. Norman
	Stringer Hall
Yellowknife	Akaitcho Hall

---

PLACE	DATE	SPEAKER	MAIN THEMES/IMPACTS	NEEDS IDENTIFIED
Winnipeg	920421	George Erasmus	Residential schools should never have happened
		Mary Sillett	Loss of language. We are survivors, have learned to accept life's difficulties and celebrate abuse. Social effects: violence, domestic violence, jails, acting out oppression, intergenerational	Apology; need to talk, for disclosure, a public record
	920422	Eileen Courchesne	Role of women destroyed, learned subservience
		Iris Lauzon	Loss of language
Charlottetown	920505	John Joe Sark	Abuse
Eskasoni	920506	Blair Paul	Punished for practicing language, culture and beliefs
		Will Basque	Strength of survivors
		Alex Christmas	Abuse	Compensation
		Alex Denny	Loss of culture, generations of knowledge
		Charles J. Bernard Jr	Human rights issues, treatment and cruelty
		Viola Robinson	Responses can't wait too long; high priority
Inuvik	920505	Bonita Chlow	Loss of the generations; loss of skills in the young
Ft. McPherson	920507	Eileen Koe	Loss of language
The Pas	920520	Kathy Martin	Family violence and sexual abuse continues today	Comp. For problems and devastating experience
Port Alberni	920520	Nelson Keitlah	Poor education
		Charlie Cootes	2/3 of last generation to attend have not survived: violence, addictions, suicide, accidents. Lasting effects can only be put behind when damage to people and families is repaired. Lost culture.	Apology is not enough. Compensation: $2M/yr for Nuu-chah-nulth. Funds and resources for teaching, schools, language; inform the larger society
		Violet Mundy		Need mental health services
		Tim Paul	Problems still affect us
		Charlie Thompson	Physical, sexual, emotional abuse; lack of parents
		Jackie Adams	We are survivors
		Bunt Cranmer		Compensation
Big Cove, NB	920520	Clifton Simon	Loss of language
Esquimault	920521	Andrew Thomas	A lot of damage	Need to talk and go through long healing process
Victoria	920522	John Elliot	Loss of language, shame and loss of pride
		Barbara Becker	Generational impact through extended families continues; silence of the elders, some can't talk about it.
		Norman Evans		Cdn public needs to know about disastrous effects
		Wally Samuels		More funds to regain and retain culture
		Mavis Gillie	Strength in survival	Needs to be dealt with and soon. Needs to come out and be expressed.
Wahpeton, SK	920526	Calvin McArthur	Loss of language, culture, values in life
		George Erasmus	Every community has talked about the impacts
Teslin, YK	920526	Eric Morris	Breaking of family ties, loss of culture and traditions, oral history, stories and legends. Intergenerational effects, especially violence.	Lack of resources to cope with the effects, esp as villages become alcohol and drug free.
		Viola Robinson	There isn't a community where residential school hasn't been brought up as a contributor to the hurt, pain and dysfunction in families today.	Need to do something immediately; need a public inquiry
Prince Albert	920527	Jessie Teasley	People are in prison because they lost their culture and traditions
		Ken Noskiye	Abusive dysfunctional families are related to residential schools. Lack of family ties.
		Hugh Bolton	Product of residential school system, reform school system, provincial system, ending up in federal system.
LaRonge, SK	920528	Lillian Sanderson	Social issues from family violence, child abuse, drugs, alcohol, suicide, sexual abuse, are a result of the boarding schools and the churches.
		Winston McKay	We are survivors. Not saying social problems never existed before, but they can be linked to the residential schools and colonization of Aboriginal people.
Pangnirtung, NT	920528	Saqiasi Sauluapik	Had to learn english; Inuktitut only taught with religion
Fort Simpson	920526	Ethel Lamothe	Taken to school a 4-1/2, spoke no english; could not talk to family when she went home. Years of being told our ways were evil, frightened of own spirituality, ways of the devil and satan; still hard to practice Dene ways today.
		Kerry Hardisty	Children taken away; couldn't speak our language; lost culture
Moose Factory	920609	George Erasmus	Traditionally women had important roles as life givers; res school destroyed this role, taught that men should be the boss and women inferior.
Lac La Biche	920609	Joe Blyan	It's better now, families get involved in schools and family programs.
Waswanipi	920609	Peter Gull	By 1960's most of the schoolage pop was attending res. School somewhere. Have been some changes; in education, economic devel., health, trapping, native people now have larger say.
		Lily Sutherland	No parenting models. Learned anger.	Need parenting skills.
		Alain Vachon	Lack of education for employment
Hobbema	920610	Carol Wildcat	Survivors of physical, sexual and mental abuse
		Wilson Okeymaw	Abuse: children beaten every day. Alcoholism stems from residential school.
Moosoonee	920610	Wilbert Wesley	Loss of language
Edmonton	920611	Edward Morin	Didn't see parents for 10 months. Trucked to St. Albert
		Maggie Hodgson	State of hopelessness that evolved from residential schools and the impact of outlawing of ceremony.
Sault Ste. Marie	920611	Carole Gauthier	Sexual abuse and intergenerational effects	Has to be healing, for offenders as well.
		Marvin Assinewai	Loss of your children for 10 months while they are supposed to be receiving a valuable gift of education
Fort Chipewan	920618	Emile Trip-de-Roche	Loss of language, cruelty	Should be some type of assistance provided.
Happy Valley	920616	Mrs. Millicent Loder	Was picked up and taken away by boat as a little girl
		Mrs. Beatrice Watts	One positive thing was the written form of the Inuktitut language and translation work done by the churches
Fort McMurray	920616	Nancy Scanie	Loss of language, forced to speak english. Poverty for those on reserve and even worse for those off.	Nobody ever apologized.
Kispiox, BC	920616	Matt Vickers	Personal, family and community dysfunction with its roots in residential schools. Forced to use english. Violent abuse of students, degrading of lang. And culture. Shameless abusive behavior by teachers, priests, politicians. Self-destructive behavior patterns as a consequence of res. School experience in families, extended families; intergenerational effects. Unresolved, unreconciled social issues
		Marvin Sampson	Sexual abuse, dysfunctional families, family breakdowns.	Fly-in service, 15 min. with a psychologist is inadequate.
		Brian Williams	Goals of assimilation and genocide through laws, creation of reserves, res. Schools. Inadequate education for employment.
		Lorraine Dennis	We are all survivors. Widespread impact, dysfunctional families, intergenerational impact; parents, grandparents & great grandparents all ashamed of being Indians.	Healing is a really big factor
		Alice Kruta	Schools created a lot of shame; survivors understand this and it is not an excuse any more.
Stoney Creek	920618	George Erasmus	Recognize tremendous damage to culture, language, and all the structures that have been imposed and impacted on Aboriginal culture; wanting to know what's going to be done about it.
		Bertha Wilson	Recognize terrible aftermath and consequences of res. Schools; need to focus ahead on what can be done.
		Peter Quaw	Children were taught ways of non-Aboriginals; denied their own language; illegality of culture; conspiracy to eliminate our spirituality and turn us into europeans.
		Leonard Thomas	School was built on land they occupied, but never did get access to that land.
		Bob Gill	Perpetual denial of right to practice and maintain First Nations culture; unrelenting weight of govt on First Nations to assimilate; residential schools the most glaring example. Children callously severed from family and cultural values.
Toronto	920625	John Kim Bell	Language outlawed; reclaiming of culture often happens through art which has survived the imposition of new ways
		Ron George	Res. Schools as an example of all the ways that Aboriginal people were treated to remove their status of being who they were.
	920625	Catherine Brooks	The range of oppression of our people -- Ind. Act, res. Schools, injudicious zealousness of child welfare. Children were moved sometimes 500-1000 miles from home at age 5; police assisted, parents who resisted sometimes jailed. Not allowed to speak their language or talk to siblings. Abuse, violence, and western ideas on the roles of men and women, how equality was changed. Anduhyaun's program for women survivors of child sexual abuse.
Saskatoon	921027	Cindy Sparvier	Mtis suffered just as much as Indian people. Lots of Mtis have parents who attended.
		Emile Bell	Breach of treaties, didn't provide education; assault on language, identity, values, the family unit; intergenerational damage. Close to 1M have gone through res. Schools. All sorts of atrocities, human rights violations committed, we are now suffering because of this, but are now beginning to talk. So many problems in so many areas; terrible abuse. Social problems as a result. People are beginning to come forward.	Churches have to compensate individual people for what they've done. Need resources, land, buildings, where people can go to address the problems that came as a result. Parenting skills; trying to teach children Indian values, languages, create pride in children. Hold healing circles for people to begin to talk. Govt should put in a lot of money as they're responsible. RCMP also have to be accountable (for) enforcing, apprehend/ abducting.
		Joan Lavallee	Agrees with above
		Vicky Wilson	Dysfunctional families created. Have healing circles in some communities. Women and children flocking to cities because these things are not happening at home.
	921028	Clem Chartier	Lack of mention of Mtis concerns in loss of language, culture, identity through residential schools.
Thunder Bay	921027	Paul Nadjiwan		Need to educate people to understand what happened when they went to residential school.
		Moffat Makuto	Break up of families, removal from parental care, basic skills like parenting are non-existent; young people suffer the effects
		Bert Sellick	Numbers of young parents from residential schools are concerned about parenting
		Eli Mandamin	Damages inflicted on First Nations culture by everything from epidemics to res. Schools has brought Aboriginal people to a point where it is difficult to survive. But cultural resurgence is coming back, spiritual ceremonies are being reborn; we will have much to give to the non-aboriginal society as a result.
Kenora	921028	Mary Sillett	What action is necessary to set the record straight with respect to residential schools?
		Richard Kelly	Alienation of generations who went to res.schools
Ft Alexander MB	921029	Phil Fontaine		Need for open dialogue, particularly those who attended and churches who ran the schools.
		Gilbert Abraham	Taken to school at 3; abuse, despair and suffering
		Jerry Fontaine	How do we break the cycle?	Possibly a healing centre; has heard of compensation
		Patrick Bruyere	Product of the boarding school
		Elmer Courchene	Pain of the angry bitter experiences
		Eva Courchene	Cycle that started in late 1800s still exists today; not many children can hug their parents and say I love you; it's generational. Most damaging, we were told we were worth less, not equal to white people, pounded into grandparents as little children
		Jerry Fontaine		Need to get on with the task, deal with immediately
		Mary Sillett		Different reserves, communities, may be different solutions.
North Battleford	921029	George Erasmus	Impossible to go to res. School and feel good about your language or culture.
Cranbrook	921103	Denise Birdstone	Parents don't support children's education because they didn't have any control over their education, didn't have any ownership over their children & this continues today.
		Sophie Pierre	Cultural rape suffered by thousands is a source of pain today. Horrendous experience; absence of treatment and counselling.
Ft. Alexander MB	921020	Jill Henderson	Stories of mother and grandparents not allowed to speak their language; stripped of language and dignity, but language never forgot so it's slowly coming back, giving pride and dignity again.
		Elmer Courchene	Break up of families, community and self
		Connie Eyolfson	Native spirituality fills the spiritual vacuum of people traumatized by residential schools; place for learning culture and spirituality (Strong Earth Woman Lodge)
		Kenneth Emberley		Need to examine and complete records on the kidnapping of children, how far they were removed, cost of kidnapping and destroying them, lack of love & kindness, resulting drunkenness, violence and suicide.
Merritt	921105	Mandy Na'Zinek Jimmy	Effects of institutional experience on language and culture, those losses.
Toronto	921102	Ken Richard	Dealing with 3rd generation beyond the residential schools in Family & Children's services; devel. Sexual abuse recovery program using traditional healers and teachers to work with women in F&CS; (Mook'am Project)
		Susan Eng		Need to discuss residential schools and understand why they happened.
	921103	Colleen Wassegijig	Intergenerational effects, internalization of impacts, effects, emotions and attitudes in those who experienced the res. Schools. Many in denial	Need people in the communities to start dealing with it.
Timmins	921105	Andrew Wesley	Ran healing programs in Fort Albany for people who went through residential schools.
		Lindberg Louttit	Abuse, molestation and suicide.
		Ed Metatawabin	Assimilation, parenting skills, intergenerational problems.	Parenting skills and counselling.
		Peter Sackeney	Forced to learn French.

Government paper warns of risks of apologizing for residential schools

Wendy Cox, July 27, 1998, from Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA (CP) -- government officials were urged two years ago to provide a compensation package to aboriginal people who suffered in residential schools as an attempt to control the potentially explosive costs of lawsuits, an internal document shows. The report, stamped Secret and obtained by The Canadian Press, compares the pros and cons of forcing claimants to go to court with offering financial redress to victims. It concludes that in the long run, compensation would be cheaper.

"The number of individual claims as well as any negative implications for the federal government in defending such actions (lawsuits) would likely be minimized if a government policy, including some form of redress package, were adopted," says the 20-page report. The document also warns against using the word "apology," preferring instead "an acknowledgement or expression of regret." "It could be worded in such a fashion so as to not lay blame on anyone."

Government officials confirmed the report, which is titled simply Residential Schools Discussion Paper, was written in late 1995 or early 1996 for Ron Irwin, then the minister of Indian Affairs. It may also have been prepared for the Justice Department. The report never reached current Indian Affairs Minister Jane Stewart and the advice in it never formed the basis for actions she later took, officials say. Earlier this year, Stewart issued a Statement of Reconciliation, saying the government was "deeply sorry" for those who suffered the "tragedy" of physical and sexual abuse at the schools.

The statement also included a $350-million healing fund. "It was critical that the apology meant something to us," said Shawn Tupper, spokesman for the minister on the residential schools file. "We can point to (the $350-million healing fund) and say we're actually doing something substantive to back it up." The statement has been accepted by national Chief Phil Fontaine, however other native leaders said at the time that it wasn't good enough. But critics who have read the 1996 document say the federal government has followed the advice to the letter. They say it's evidence the statement is not an apology at all be merely an attempt to control costs. Ovide Mercredi, a former national chief, said the document shows "the minister didn't follow her heart or her sense of justice." "She followed legal advice and the advice was to reduce legal liability at all costs and the government measure is designed to do that." Fontaine was unavailable for comment.

The document advises that forcing former students to take the government to court would ensure they would have to prove their claims. As and added advantage, it would also limit lawsuits, the report states.

"There is a general disinclination by persons who have suffered abuse to testify on such a personal and painful matter in a public and adversarial forum," the report says.

"A litigation approach may well keep the number of claimants down to a minimum."

However, going to court would cost the government dearly in money and in bad press, the report concludes. The author, who is unnamed, recommends a compensation package instead. Since the report was written, thousands of former students have joined class action suits or have filed individual lawsuits against the federal government. A landmark B.C. court ruling last month declared for the first time that both the federal government and the United Church are legally liable for widespread sexual and physical abuse at a Port Alberni, B.C., school and ordered them to compensate about 30 former students. A figure for the compensation has not yet been decided. The mounting lawsuits are anticipated in the 1996 report, but the document also cautions that apologizing is dangerous territory.

"Whatever it is called, the department will want to ensure that the statement cannot subsequently be used to establish a cause of action against the Crown in any particular individual cause," it states. "It would appear that this government is committed to looking ahead and in these tough economic times, it would not want to be involved in anything that is too expensive or linked to the past." Tupper said the department's thinking has evolved since the report. When asked at a news conference last January if the statement of reconciliation was an apology, Stewart responded yes. "In our view, the statement of reconciliation is not an acknowledgement of guilt in a court of law," Tupper said. "It is an acknowledgement of a historic policy and the negative impacts of that policy and it is a commitment to do something about it."

However, John McKiggan, a lawyer for about 800 former students at the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Nova Scotia, said the internal document reveals the federal government's strategy. "There is an amazing similarity between the present and suggestions made in the paper," he said. "The statement of reconciliation does not apologize for government actions. It recognizes the pain. It does not admit responsibility for that pain."

The Canadian Press, 1998

---

·    Loss of language and destruction of culture	·    Mistrust of leadership and authority
·    Inter-generational sexual abuse	·    Political infighting and undermining
·    Chronic addictions	·    Dependency thinking
·    Old grudges and long-standing feuds	·    Weak or broken bonds of love, trust and caring
·    Interpersonal violence	·    Lack of initiative and entrepreneurial spirit
·    Broken families	·    The physical abuse of children and other vulnerable people
·    Personal rage, shame and dysfunction	·    Spiritual and cultural shame

---

__________________

¹ Lee Ann Hoff, People in Crisis: Understanding and Helping. 2^nd ed., Don Mills: Addison Wesley, 1984, p.230

² Assembly of First Nations, Breaking the Silence: An Interpretive Study of Residential School Impact and Healing as Illustrated by the Stories of First Nations Individuals. Ottawa: Assembly of First Nations, 1994, p.189

³ Ontario Child and Family Services Act: II. Definition of Abuse    Subsection 72(1) of the Child and Family Services Act defines "to suffer abuse" as meaning to be "in need of protection" within the meaning of clause 37(2)(a),(c),(e),(f) or (h);the child has suffered physical harm, inflicted by the person having charge of the child or caused by that person's failure to care and provide for or supervise and protect the child adequately;the child has been sexually molested or sexually exploited, by the person having charge of the child or by another person where the person having charge of the child knows or should know of the possibility of sexual molestation or sexual exploitation and fails to protect the child;the child requires medical treatment to cure, prevent or alleviate physical harm or suffering and the child's parent or the person having charge of the child does not provide, or refuses or is unavailable or unable to consent to, the treatment;the child has suffered emotional harm, demonstrated by severe, (I) anxiety, (ii) depression, (iii) withdrawal, or (iv) self-destructive or aggressive behaviour, and the... person having charge of the child does not provide, or refuses or is unavailable or unable to consent to, services or treatment to remedy or alleviate the harm; or(h) the child suffers from a mental, emotional or developmental condition that, if not remedied, could seriously impair the child's development and the ..person having charge of the child does not provide...treatment to remedy or alleviate the condition. (p.6)

⁴ Mark Gannage, "An International Perspective: A Review and Analysis of Approaches to Addressing Past Institutional or Systemic Abuse in Selected Countries", Draft Report to Law Commission of Canada, 1998, p.3

⁵ Gannage, 1998

⁶ Adrienne Crowder & Rob Hawkings, Opening The Door: A Treatment Model for Therapy with Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse, Ottawa: Health & Welfare Canada (National Clearinghouse on Family Violence), 1993

⁷ Ron Hamilton, Nuu-chah-nulth Health Board researcher, in conversation, June 1998

⁸ Saskatchewan Education, "Indian and Métis Staff Development", Regina: Saskatchewan Education, 1994

⁹ The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 9^th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995

¹⁰ AFN, 1994, p.189

¹¹ Elizabeth Graham, The Mush Hole: Life at Two Indian Residential Schools (Waterloo: Heffle Publishing) 1997

¹² Roland Chrisjohn, in presentation to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People

¹³ AFN (1994) p.5

¹⁴ Roland D. Chrisjohn, Sherri L. Young and others, The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada, Penticton: Theytus Books Ltd., 1997, p.244

¹⁵ For discussion of the authority of narrative ethnography, see for example Robin Ridington, Trail to Heaven: Knowledge and Narrative in a Northern Native Community, Iowa: Univ. of Iowa Press, 1988.

¹⁶ Nicholas F. Davin, "Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Halfbreeds," Ottawa: 1879

¹⁷ Suzanne Fournier and Ernie Crey, Stolen From Our Embrace: The Abduction of First Nations Children and Restoration of Aboriginal Communities. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre Ltd., 1997, p.50

¹⁸ Gene Rheaume, Board of Directors, Aboriginal Healing Foundation, correspondence, Sept. 1998

¹⁹ AFN (1994) pp.13-19

²⁰ E.R. Daniels, "How Similar? How Different? The Patterns of Education for Indian and non-Indian Students in Canada"" prepared for R.C.A.P., December 1992, p.5

²¹ Margaret Whitehead, The Cariboo Mission: A History of the Oblates. Victoria: Sono Nis Press, 1981. P.118, quoted in Haig-Brown, p.29

²² E.Brian Titley, A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1988. P.75

²³ Celia Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School. Vancouver: Tillacum Library, 1988 p.25; also in Grant, p.59

²⁴ Agnes Grant, No End of Grief: Indian Residential Schools In Canada. Winnipeg: Pemmican Publ.Inc., 1996, p.59

²⁵ Graham, p.40

²⁶ Davin, p.1; in Haig-Brown, p.26

²⁷ Davin, p.12, in Haig-Brown, p.26

²⁸ In Indian Tribes of Manitoba, Wahbung: Our Tomorrows. Manitoba: Manitoba Indian Brotherhood, 1971, p.113; in Grant, p.64

²⁹ Calgary Herald, editorial, "Our Indian Schools" (10 Feb 1892) in Miller, p.183

³⁰ J.R. Miller, Shingwauk's Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996, p.186

³¹ Grant, p.61

³² Grant, p.62

³³ Grant, p.63

³⁴ Daniels, p.10

³⁵ Canada, 57-58 Victoria, c.32, s.11, cited in Daniels, p.11

³⁶ Haig-Brown, p.27, citing Miller, Kahn-tineta and George Lerchs, the Historical Development of the Indian Act (Ottawa: Treaties and Historical Research Branch, P.R.E. Group, I&NA;) 1978, p.114

³⁷ Jon Reyhner and Jeane Eded, "A History of Indian Education," in Teaching American Indian Students, ed. Jon Reyhner, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988, pp.35-40, in Grant, p.56

³⁸ Allan G. Harper, "Canada's Indian Administration: Basic Concepts and Objectives". Americana Indigena 5,2 (April 1945) p.127. Quoted in Miller, pp.184-5

³⁹ "Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence No.1" (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1947) in Haig-Brown, p.28

⁴⁰ Noel Dyck, Differing Visions: Administering Indian Residential Schooling in Prince Albert 1867-1995. Prince Albert Grand Council, 1997, p.61

⁴¹ Dyck, p.71

⁴² Fournier & Crey, p.52

⁴³ Isabelle Knockwood, Out of the Depths: The Experiences of Mi'kmaw Children at the Indian Residential School at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia. Lockeport, NS: Roseway Publishing, 1992

⁴⁴ Knockwood, p.17

⁴⁵ Bernie Knockwood, in Knockwood, p.20

⁴⁶ Fournier & Crey, p.64

⁴⁷ Rosalyn Ing, "The Effects of Residential schooling on Native Child-Rearing Practices." University of British Columbia: Master's Thesis, also published in Canadian Journal of Native Education, Vol. 18: 1991

⁴⁸ Ing, pp.53-54

⁴⁹ Ing, p.49

⁵⁰ James Miller and Edmund Danziger, "In the Care of Strangers: Walpole Island First Nation's Experiences with Canadian Residential Schools Since World War I", (unpublished) October 1997

⁵¹ AFN (1994) p.22

⁵² AFN, p.22

⁵³ Knockwood, p.41

⁵⁴ Knockwood, p.50

⁵⁵ Knockwood, pp.93-95

⁵⁶ Elizabeth Furniss, Victims of Benevolence: The Dark Legacy of the Williams Lake Residential School. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1995

⁵⁷ Grant, p.19

⁵⁸ Grant, p.20

⁵⁹ Grant, p.21

⁶⁰ Grant, p.25

⁶¹ Grant, p.65

⁶² Grant, pp.156-157

⁶³ Grant, pp.224-225

⁶⁴ Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, Indian Residential Schools: The Nuu-chah-nulth Experience. Port Alberni: NTC, 1996

⁶⁵ R.Chrisjohn, C. Belleau and Others, "Faith Misplaced: Lasting Effects of Abuse in a First Nations Community." Canadian Journal of Native Education, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1991, p.161-197

⁶⁶ Chrisjohn et al, (1991), p.169

⁶⁷ Chrisjohn et al, (1991), p.173

⁶⁸ J.R. Miller, p.322

⁶⁹ J.R. Miller, pp.318-333

⁷⁰ Australian Human Rights Commission Report on Aboriginal Injustices, in Grant

⁷¹ Chrisjohn, (1997), pp.46-52

⁷² Grant, p.270

⁷³ Grant, p.270

⁷⁴ Rev. K.D. Annett, correspondence, Sept. 1998

⁷⁵ Grant, p.270

⁷⁶ Knockwood, pp.107-108

⁷⁷ Fournier & Crey, pp.58-59

⁷⁸ Haig-Brown, p.104

⁷⁹ Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples" Vol. 1, Part II, Chapter 10: `Residential Schools' Ottawa: Canada Communications Group, 1996, p.368

⁸⁰ Grant, p.134

⁸¹ Fournier & Crey, p.58

⁸² Contacts at Friendship Centres and aboriginal media across the country.

⁸³ Fournier & Crey, p.75

⁸⁴ Grant, p. 26

⁸⁵ conversation with investigating officer, Sgt. Robert Grinstead, July 1998

⁸⁶ Grant, pp.270-271

⁸⁷ Titley, p.90

⁸⁸ RCAP, p.357

⁸⁹ RCAP, p. 357-58

⁹⁰ RCAP, p.365

⁹¹ Fournier & Crey, p.49

⁹² Fournier & Crey, p.58

⁹³ RCAP, p.357

⁹⁴ David Roberts, "Death Casts Shadow at Boarding School for Indian Children" (Globe & Mail, 15 November 1990, A6)

⁹⁵ Grant, p.133

⁹⁶ Grant, p.138

⁹⁷ Grant, p.271

⁹⁸ Chrisjohn (1997), pp.31-33

⁹⁹ from testimony in sources cited here and in bibliography

¹⁰⁰ RCAP, p.369

¹⁰¹ RCAP, p.368-373

¹⁰² Grant, p.193

¹⁰³ Grant, p.194

¹⁰⁴ Chrisjohn (1997), p.33

¹⁰⁵ Chrisjohn (1997), pp.43-44

¹⁰⁶ Russell Means (Lakota Sioux Nation), in Ward Churchill, "Colonialism, Genocide and the Expropriation of Indigenous Spiritual Tradition in Contemporary Academia" in Border/Lines, eds. Randy Kapashesit and Winona LaDuke (Toronto: York University) winter 1991/92, p.41

¹⁰⁷ Churchill, quoting researchers Mark Davis and Robert Zannis, p.41

¹⁰⁸ Grant, p.273

¹⁰⁹ RCAP, p.334

¹¹⁰ RCAP cites a variety of sources, including departmental correspondence, and the Davin report.

¹¹¹ RCAP, p.357

¹¹² Knockwood, p.112

¹¹³ contact conversations; also Chief Bev Sellars, "Opening Address to the First National Conference on Residential Schools":, June 18, 1991, reprinted in Furniss, p.127. Also Haig-Brown, p.87

¹¹⁴ Grant, p.272

¹¹⁵ Grant, p.28

¹¹⁶ AFN (1994), pp.167-168

¹¹⁷ Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, (1996) pp.6-7

¹¹⁸ Ing, p.65-118

¹¹⁹ Ann Metcalf, "From Schoolgirl to Mother: The Effects of Education on Navajo Women", Social Problems, 23(5): p.544, at Ing, p.44

¹²⁰ Janet More, "Cultural Foundations of Personal Meaning: Their Loss and Recovery," University of British Columbia, (unpublished Master's thesis) 1985, at Ing, p.45

⁶⁹ Haig-Brown, at Ing p.45

¹²¹ Joan Ryan, "Squamish Socialization". University of British Columbia (unpublished doctoral thesis), 1973

¹²² Four Worlds Development Project, How History Has Affected Native Life Today, 1982; and Jim Atkinson, "The Mission School Syndrome", Yukon: Northern Native Broadcasting, (video) 1988

¹²³ Ing, p.59

¹²⁴ Ing, pp.71-72

¹²⁵ Knockwood, 1992, p.156

¹²⁶ Knockwood, p.158

¹²⁷ Furniss, p.31

¹²⁸ Nishnawbe-Aski Nation, "Report on Residential School Meetings", May 1995, p.3

¹²⁹ Nishnawbe-Aski Nation, p.7

¹³⁰ Grant, p.84

¹³¹ Grant, p.106

¹³² Grant, p.182

¹³³ Doris Young, "Walking in our Mothers Footsteps: Aboriginal Women and Traditional Self-Government: in Herizons 6.1, Spring 1992, p.25

¹³⁴ quoted in Winnipeg Free Press, "Nun's students learned hatred", (2 Nov. 1990)

¹³⁵ Miller and Danziger, p.11

¹³⁶ Miller and Danziger, p.12

¹³⁷ Fournier and Crey, Stolen From Our Embrace: The Abduction of First Nations Children and Restoration of Aboriginal Communities. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre Ltd., 1997

¹³⁸ J.R. Miller, pp.93-97

¹³⁹ J.R. Miller, pp.411

¹⁴⁰ J.R. Miller, p.436

¹⁴¹ Lindy-Lou Flynn, To Break the Conspiracy of Silence: The Healing and Empowerment of Native Peoples Across Canada, University of Western Ontario, 1993, p.96

¹⁴² Flynn, p.98

¹⁴³ Flynn, p.106

¹⁴⁴ Flynn, pp.105-106

¹⁴⁵ Chrisjohn et al (1991), p.172

¹⁴⁶ Chrisjohn et al (1991), p.186

¹⁴⁷ Chrisjohn (1997), p.255

¹⁴⁸ Chrisjohn (1997), p.256

¹⁴⁹ Rosanna Fergusson, quoting Dan Highway, in Weetamah, Feb. 1998

¹⁵⁰ The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, For Seven Generations: An Information Legacy of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, CD-ROM, Ottawa: Libraxus Inc., 1997

¹⁵¹ Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, "Beyond Survival" (video), Port Alberni: Edward L.J. Lee Video Prod. 1996

¹⁵² Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, Indian Residential Schools: The Nuu-chah-nulth Experience, NTC, 1996

¹⁵³ Back issues for two years or maximum available were reviewed for: First Perspective, Windspeaker, Weetamah News, Raven's Eye, NewsNorth, Nunatsiaq News, Micmac Maliseet Nations News, as well as subject clipping files from Kivalliq News and Ha-Shilth-Sa. Clippings from Halifax Chronicle Herald, National News Journal, The Globe & Mail, Ottawa Citizen and Edmonton Journal were also sent to us.

¹⁵⁴ Federal government public expression of regret to Native peoples, issued by Minister of Indian Affairs, Jan. 7, 1998

¹⁵⁵ There is an excellent discussion of how these different approaches affect community development in the Four Worlds document prepared for AFN, Community Healing and Aboriginal Social Security Reform (March 1998)

¹⁵⁶Australian Human Rights Commission Report on Aboriginal Injustices, May 1997, quoted in Alkali Residential School Inquiry Report, June 1997

¹⁵⁷ RCAP, p.37

¹⁵⁸ RCAP, p.37

¹⁵⁹ See for example, Ottawa Citizen article, July 1998, in Appendix 4; also Isabelle Knockwood's account of the disappearance of all copies of the Audette Report, a 1934 Royal Commission inquiring into the flogging of nineteen boys at Shubenacadie school, along with several years of records (pp.151-2); Vancouver's Truth and Justice Commission (and formerly Circle of Justice) also describes missing records in their archival searches.

¹⁶⁰ Lawyer Peter Grant

¹⁶¹ American judge Rudy James, International Human Rights of American Minorities, conversation June 1998

¹⁶² United Church Moderator Bill Phipps, in First Perspective, June 1998

¹⁶³ Information submitted to Sgt. Laurence Aimoe by Cpl. Charlotte Evans, G-Division

¹⁶⁴ e.g. Northern Manitoba and Fort Albany groups.

¹⁶⁵ Shaun Kocis, Manitoba lawyer, conversation, Sept. 98

¹⁶⁶ Maggie Hodgson, conversation, Sept. 98

¹⁶⁷ The Federation of Saskatchewan Indians is moving ahead in this area prompted by survivors' negative experiences within the justice system, and a number of ethical concerns about current management of residential school cases by some lawyers.

¹⁶⁸ FSI, for one, has such a draft in final approval stages.

¹⁶⁹ Ed Metatawabin, spokesperson, Peetatek Keway Keekaywin (St. Ann's Residential School Survivors Association)

¹⁷⁰ Katherine Peterson, lawyer, Chesterfield Inlet Inquiry

¹⁷¹ Karim Ramji, lawyer for a number of BC claimants, Sept. 98

¹⁷² Diane Corbire, Indigenous Bar Association, Sept. 98

¹⁷³ Ed Metatawabin, noting the Catholic Church is represented and waiting to begin negotiations, but the two levels of government have not been cooperative. He notes that they still have legal options to pursue. Sept. 98

¹⁷⁴ Shaun Kocis, Manitoba FN lawyer representing 150 survivors, involved in network of 3-400 more; Sept. 98

¹⁷⁵ Lawyers D.Carlson, S.Williams, representing former students in BC civil claims; Sept. 98

¹⁷⁶ G.Angecomb, "Presentation to Nishnawbe-Aski Nation Conference", 1996; Mr. Angecomb planned and developed his own meditation process with support from the church to confront and attempt a resolution with an offender. Offender denial resulted in conviction through criminal court.

¹⁷⁷ Roland Chrisjohn, at the First National Conference, Vancouver 1991

¹⁷⁸ Four Worlds International, (March 1998), p.172

¹⁷⁹ Gilbert Oskaboose, August 1998

¹⁸⁰ Fournier, p.177

¹⁸¹ We are much indebted to Michael Bopp and Phil Lane (Four Worlds International) for discussing and clarifying issues around community healing, the values and principles underlying effective, holistic community development. Their work, "Community Healing and Aboriginal Social Security Reform: A study prepared for the Assembly of First Nations", is an outstanding reference in this area.

¹⁸² Michael Bopp and Phil Lane, conversation, Sept. 98

¹⁸³ Flynn, p.19

¹⁸⁴ Chrisjohn (1997). P.112

¹⁸⁵ Attendance is defined as those children who lived at school during the school year and were locked in at night.

¹⁸⁶ Ing, 1990, pp.80-82

¹⁸⁷ W.J. (Bill) Mussell, "Institutionalization and Cultural Devaluation: The Effects of Residential Schooling" (Conference Proceedings, Vancouver, 1991) pp.8-9

¹⁸⁸ CTC (1991) pp.3-6

¹⁸⁹ AFN, 1994, pp.185-186

¹⁹⁰ Peterson, 1994, pp.29-31

¹⁹¹ in Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council (1996) at pp.209-210

¹⁹² Furniss, 1995, pp.114-118

¹⁹³ ibid, pp.119-120

¹⁹⁴ ibid. p.35

¹⁹⁵ Nishnawbe-Aski Nation, 2995, pp.10-15

¹⁹⁶ RCAP, vol.1, ch.10, at http:www.gcc.ca/socialissues/resident.htm. pp.37-38

¹⁹⁷ "(literally boat people)", NTC 1996, p.ix

¹⁹⁸ ibid, pp.207-209

¹⁹⁹ AFN, 1996, pp.11-15

²⁰⁰ Chrishjohn (1997), pp.109-112

²⁰¹ Norbert, 1998, pp.16-18

²⁰² Richard Immaroitok and Simeonie Kunnuk, "Statement by Survivors Tasiuqtit on Historical Abuse, Assimilation Policies and Honourings All Peoples," September 1998