Resource Tag: RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS

For over 100 years, thousands of Aboriginal children passed through the Canadian residential school system. Begun in the 1870s, it was intended, in the words of government officials, to bring these children into the “circle of civilization,” the results, however, were far different. More often, the schools provided an inferior education in an atmosphere of […]

My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell is a simple and outspoken account of the sexual and psychological abuse that Arthur Bear Chief suffered during his time at Old Sun Residential school in Gleichen on the Siksika Nation. In a series of chronological vignettes, Bear Chief depicts the punishment, cruelty, abuse, and injustice […]

Book includes photographs of Indian, Inuit and Metis children at residential schools. Photographs are accompanied by written text: the historical background of residential schools; interviews and profiles of contemporary role models who shared the residential school experience; and accounts of healing from these experiences.

On June 11, 2008, Canada’s Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, publicly apologized to Canada’s Indigenous Peoples for the IRS system, admitting that residential schools were part of a Canadian policy on forced Indigenous assimilation.

The Indian residential school (IRS) system in Canada ran for over a century until the last school closed in 1996. Conditions in the IRSs resulted in generations of Indigenous children being exposed to chronic childhood adversity. The current investigation used data from the 2008–2010 First Nations Regional Health Survey to explore whether parental IRS attendance […]

In 1966, twelve-year-old Chanie Wenjack froze to death on the railway tracks after running away from residential school. An inquest was called and four recommendations were made to prevent another tragedy. None of those recommendations were applied. More than a quarter of a century later, from 2000 to 2011, seven Indigenous high school students died […]

Was the residential school era a misguided feature of Canada’s generous humanitarian inclinations toward Aboriginal peoples? Were the notorious brutal acts of the operators of these schools the sporadic and isolated deeds of a few malign individuals? The authors of The Circle Game shout a resounding “No!” to these and related questions, arguing that existing […]

OBJECTIVE: Suicide rates among Indigenous peoples in Canada are at least twice that of their non-Indigenous counterparts. Although contemporary stressors contribute to this increased risk, historical experiences such as the Indian Residential School (IRS) system may also have continuing links with the risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The current investigation examined the intergenerational and […]

Chanie, misnamed Charlie by his teachers, was a young boy who died on October 22, 1966, walking the railroad tracks, trying to escape from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School to return home. Chanie’s home was 400 miles away. He didn’t know that. He didn’t know where it was, nor how to find it, but, […]

Learn about the tragic history of Canada’s residential schools, boarding schools for Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) children and youth, financed by the federal government but staffed and run by several Christian religious institutions.

Secret Path is a ten song digital download album by Gord Downie with a graphic novel by illustrator Jeff Lemire that tells the story of Chanie “Charlie” Wenjack, a twelve-year-old boy who died in flight from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School fifty years ago. Chanie, misnamed Charlie by his teachers, was a young boy […]

Before internationally acclaimed author Joseph Boyden penned his bestselling novel Three Day Road and his Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning novel, Through Black Spruce, he published a powerful collection of thirteen stories about modern Aboriginal life that made readers and reviewers take notice. These stories of love, loss, rage and resilience match virtuosic style with clever wit […]

Indigenous Writes, Chelsea Vowel initiates myriad conversations about the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada. An advocate for Indigenous worldviews, the author discusses the fundamental issues—the terminology of relationships; culture and identity; myth-busting; state violence; and land, learning, law and treaties—along with wider social beliefs about these issues. She answers the questions that many people […]

A fictional story (but based on documented real life experiences of survivors) of a brother and sister’s residential school experience in the 1930’s.

The current paper reviews research that has explored the intergenerational effects of the Indian Residential School (IRS) system in Canada, in which Aboriginal children were forced to live at schools where various forms of neglect and abuse were common. Intergenerational IRS trauma continues to undermine the well-being of todayÕs Aboriginal population, and having a familial […]

As part of a government policy of assimilation beginning in the mid-1800s, a large proportion of Aboriginal children in Canada were forcibly removed from their homes to attend Indian Residential Schools (IRSs), a practice which continued into the 1990s. This traumatic experience had lasting negative effects not only on those who attended but also on […]

A fictional account of five children sent to aboriginal boarding school, based on the recollections of a number of Tsartlip First Nations people.

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Many authors, historians and researchers concur with the idea that residential schools have impacted generation after generation of Aboriginal Peoples in this country. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the federal government wanted Aboriginal peoples to abandon their traditional beliefs and adopt western-based values and religions. The investigation of the role and impacts […]

This book is a documentary and commentary on what is known about the Residential school era. The aftermath of this era has exacted a tremendous toll, both in the human suffering of First Nations and on Canadian society in general.

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An Indian woman’s visions and a geologist’s investigation of an earthquake come together to reveal secrets about the atrocities that took place at a Native American boarding school.