'Thinking must change'. Competing Narratives and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Settling the past, decolonizing the present?

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‘Thinking must change’

Competing Narratives and the Truth and Reconciliation

Commission of Canada:

Settling the past, decolonizing the present?

Name: M.W. (Marieke) Verweij Student ID: 10005730

Degree: MA History, University of Amsterdam Specialization: Holocaust & Genocide Studies Date: 10-6-2016

E-mail: marieke.verweij@student.uva.nl Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Nanci Adler

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‘If you don’t understand, ask questions. If you’re uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway.’

- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

‘Truth is not born nor is to be found inside the head of an individual person. It is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction.’

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Terminology

Aboriginal

The term Aboriginal refers to the first inhabitants of Canada. The Canadian Constitution recognizes three groups of Aboriginal people: Indians, Métis and Inuit. All three groups have their own distinct culture including unique heritages, language, and religion. In this thesis, I will refer to these people as Indigenous people, unless directly referring or quoting legislation or other official documents of the Canadian government.

First Nation

First Nations is a term that refers to one of the three cultural groups of Indigenous groups that were referred to as Indian. This relatively new term ‘First Nations came into common usage in the 1970s to replace ‘Indian’, which was considered to be offensive. The term First Nations refers to both Status and non-Status Indians as defined by the Indian Act.

Indian

Indian people are one of the three cultural groups recognized by the Canadian Constitution as Aboriginal people. Due to legislation the usage of the term ‘Indian’ continues. The terminology is recognized in the Indian Act and is used by the Government of Canada referring to this particular group of Aboriginal people.

Indian Act

The Indian Act is part of the Canadian federal legislation. The Act was first past in 1876, and amended many times. It contains certain federal government obligations and regulates the management of Indian reserve lands, allocated Indian money and other resources. The Indian Act codifies the definition of Status and non-Status Indians. The different amendments restricted Indigenous cultural practices, and made education at Indian Residential Schools mandatory.

Indigenous

Indigenous is a term that refers to the native people of the land, and is frequently used in an

international, or global context. The term gained prominence as it describes Aboriginal peoples in an international context through the increasing visibility of international Indigenous rights movements. The term Indigenous is not uncontested, as it defines people primarily in relation to colonizers. The term is nevertheless preferable as its definition is more inclusive than Aboriginal or First Nations. It refers to peoples in similar situations, and goes beyond notions of national boundaries or local

conventions. For this reason I choose to use Indigenous to refer to the native people of Canada, and do not use Aboriginal and Indigenous interchangeably.

Inuit

Indigenous peoples who live in Northern Canada in Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Northern Quebec and Northern Labrador. The word Inuit (plural – singular is Inuk) means ‘people’ in the Inuit language Inuktitut.

Métis

Peoples of mixed First Nation an European descent who identify themselves as Métis, distinguishing themselves explicitly from First Nations people, Inuit or non-Indigenous people.

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Abbreviations

ADR Alternative Dispute Resolution AFN Assembly of First Nations AHF Aboriginal Healing Foundation

AVS Audio Video Database of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission CBC Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

CEP Common Experience Payment IAP Independent Assessment Process

ICTJ International Center for Transitional Justice IRS Indian Residential Schools

IRSSA Indian Residential Schools System PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

RCAP Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

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Introduction

‘For more than a century, Indian Residential Schools separated over 150,000 Aboriginal children from their families and communities. In the 1870's, the federal government, partly in order to meet its obligation to educate Aboriginal children, began to play a role in the

development and administration of these schools. Two primary objectives of the Residential Schools system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. These objectives were based on the assumption Aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal. Indeed, some sought, as it was infamously said, "to kill the Indian in the

child". Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country.’1

With these words, Prime Minister Stephen Harper started his apology for the Indian Residential Schools system in 2008. It was the first full recognition of the harms and damage caused by the federal government. Until then, there was no space in the national history and collective memory that shaped Canada as peaceful and tolerant nation for the history of oppression and colonialism. Shortly after the apology of Prime Minister Harper, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was established. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was assigned to seek the historical truth about the Indian Residential Schools System, to heal survivors, and to engender reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. Or in other words: To settle the past, and to decolonize the present.

One hundred-forty years prior to the establishment of the TRC, the federal government got involved in what is now perceived and acknowledged by the survivors, the Canadian government, and researchers, as a cultural genocide when the first Indian Residential School opened its doors. From the 1870s until 1996, the Indian Residential Schools (IRS) in Canada were ‘home’ to more than 150,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children. At the age of four, children could be placed in the institutions, physically and emotionally separated from their families. The schools were jointly run by the

government and several churches – most prominently were the Roman Catholic, Anglican, United, Methodist and Presbyterian churches. The Indian Residential Schools system was part of the broader settler-colonial structure in Canada. Settler colonialism is primarily a territorial project, whose priority is replacing natives on their land rather than extracting an economic surplus by mixing their labor with it. The expropriation of the territory and the following elimination is an organizational principle of the settler-colonial society, rather than a one-off occurrence: The colonizers come to stay and make the ‘invasion’ structural.2

To understand the impact and scale of the Indian Residential Schools System on

1

Canada, ‘Statement of Apology to former Students of Indian Residential Schools’, Indigenous and Northern

Affairs Canada < https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1100100015649> [Accessed 27-5-2016]. 2_{P. Wolfe, ‘Structure and Event. Settler Colonialism, Time and the Question of Genocide’, in: A.D. Moses}

(ed.), Empire, Colony, Genocide. Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History (New York 2008), 102-132, 103.

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the Indigenous population of Canada, it is important to note that the Truth and Reconciliation

Commission labelled the system as a cultural genocide. In that recognition, the Commission relied on George Tinker’s definition of cultural genocide:

[It] is the destruction of cultural structures of existence that give Indigenous people a sense of holistic, communal integrity. It limits freedom to practice cultural traditions and to live out their lives in culturally appropriate patterns, and it effectively destroys a people by eroding both their self-esteem and the relationships that bind them together as a community.3 Genocide does not merely have to consist of physical killing, as Tinker’s idea of cultural genocide corresponds with Raphaël Lemkin’s notion of genocide. Lemkin, who coined the definition of

‘genocide’, believed that the destruction of a groups identity has two phases, and is always succeeded by colonization:

‘One, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor. This imposition, in turn, may be made upon the

oppressed population which is allowed to remain, or upon the territory alone, after removal of the population and the colonization of the area by the oppressor’s own nationals.4

However, the link between cultural genocide and colonialism was not recognized by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. One year after the apology, during his speech at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, he stated that Canada has ‘no history of colonialism.’5

The start of the Truth and Reconciliation

Commission – with its mission to tell the truth – could not have been more opportune. The mandate of the TRC had a twofold focus:

- Reveal to Canadians the complex truth about the history and the ongoing legacy of the church-run residential school, in a manner that fully documents the individual and collective harms perpetrated against aboriginal peoples, and honors the resilience and courage of former students, their families, and communities; and

- Guide and inspire a process of truth and healing, leading toward reconciliation within Aboriginal families, and between Aboriginal peoples and non-Aboriginal communities, churches, governments, and Canadians generally. The process was to work to renew relationships on a basis of inclusion, mutual understanding, and respect.6

The first aim of the TRC’s mandate indicates that there was a need to reveal the truth about Canadian history, and presumes that a ‘memory gap’ exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in

3_{G. Tinker, Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide (Minneapolis 1993), 6.} 4_{R. Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (Washington 1944), 79.}

5_{Although the Prime Minister seems to be referring to Canada’s lack of outward colonialism, the statement}

reveals how little the history of internal colonialism appeared on his radar. For the speech see: Canuck Politics,

The G20 saved the Global Economy: Canadian PM Harper (6-10-2009)

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqTMbSrAnxQ> [Accessed: 27-5-2016].

6_{Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future. Summary} of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015), 23.

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Canada. This thesis theorizes that this presumption corresponds with the arguments of sociologist Ron Eyerman, who linked collective memory and its frames to collective identity and the idea of counter-stories to overcome these gaps. In his research on slavery and racism against African-Americans in the United States, Eyerman introduces an useful theory regarding counter-stories that challenge the national history and memory. Eyerman assumes that memory is a very important identity marker:

‘Memory provides individuals and collectives with a cognitive map, helping orient who they are, why they are here and where they are going. Memory in other words is central to

individual and collective identity. […] Collective memory unifies the group through time and over space by providing a narrative frame, a collective story.’7

From this point of view, Eyerman argues that the past is collectively shaped and its means are recounted, understood, interpreted and transmitted through language and dialogue: Such narratives form ‘master frames’ and are passed on through traditions, in rituals and ceremonies, public performances which reconnect a group, and where membership is confirmed. The Canadian settler narrative formed the ‘master frame’ of Canada’s history and identity. Within this process, ‘we – white settlers’ are remembered and ‘they – Indigenous peoples’ are excluded.8

To bridge the memory-gap, it is necessary to reveal the truth about the history and legacy of the Indian Residential Schools system to non-Indigenous Canadians.

This memory-gap regarding colonialism and the Indian Residential Schools System is also influenced by the character of the injustices: society was widely complicit in the committed injustices, while the injustices occurred over a long period of time, and because Indigenous peoples were targeted primarily on the basis of their group membership instead of ideology. Political scientist Matt James explains: ‘The Residential Schools were a policy of choice of successive elected governments acting in the interest of Canada’s settler majority.’9

The fact that the Indian Residential Schools System was in operation for more than a century, and did not comprise a short period of ‘madness’, raises

questions about the nature of Canada’s peaceful and tolerant identity and political character.10 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, investigating the Indian Residential Schools System could shake Canada’s identity to its foundations.

The second aim of the TRC was to renew relationships, both on national and communal level, on a basis of inclusion, mutual understanding and respect. The renewal of relationships on a national level is a form of nation building. By revealing the truth, the TRC aimed to rewrite history. In the process of nation building, a national history is one of the elements that binds people and communities together. The history of unity implies a certain amount of collective amnesia, while truth commissions

7_{R. Eyerman, ‘The Past in the Present. Culture and the Transmission of Memory’, Acta Sociologica 47:2 (2004),}

159-169, 161.

8_{Ibid., 162.}

9_{M. James, ‘Uncomfortable Comparisons: The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission in International}

Context’, The Ethics Forum/Les ateliers de l’éthique 5:2 (2010), 23-35, 29.

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revisit violence in the history of the nation, forcing a collective acknowledgement of the past.11 The national Canadian narrative was framed to count as largely peaceful and tolerant. Histories – like the history of colonialism and the Indian Residential Schools System – that would challenge this frame were excised from the narrative.12 This is illustrated by the outcomes of the 2008 National Benchmark Survey regarding the Indian Residential Schools System: only 51% of the Canadian population was found to be aware of the schools system’s existence.13

In his article ‘The Past in the Present: Culture and the Transmission of Memory’, Eyerman assumes that the past is collectively shaped, and becomes present through narrative and discourse. The meaning of the past is recounted through language and dialogue. All nations and collectives have narratives or founding myths that serve as identity markers. These narratives are passed through cultural traditions and public performances. Contrary to the narratives, a discourse, according to Foucault in his work The Archeology of Knowledge14, is more institutionalized, less open and malleable for discussion, and more of a top-down approach from the political establishment when it comes to identity and memory shaping. The discourse of national history offers society a body of preferred texts and interpretations through academic and educational knowledge.15 Both narrative and discourse are framing structures which include and exclude memory of the past in national history. But where discourse support the current structures of power, collective narratives leave more space for individual agency, and a counter-story for an oppressed group or societal minority. Counter-stories can break the frames of the ‘master narrative’, reshaping the master narrative by including the memory of the oppressive and colonial history and legacy of Indigenous peoples. By telling the stories of the Indigenous people the TRC presents counter-stories that challenge the master narratives and discourse of Canada.

A truth and reconciliation commission is a transitional justice mechanism, and is generally supposed to ‘inquire into relevant patterns of abuses and produce official reports addressing the responsibility of the state and its various institutions.’16 Transitional justice is a relatively new phenomenon that occurred as a reaction to the massive human rights violations in the twentieth century:

11

N. Angel, ‘Before Truth: The Labors of Testimony and the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’,

Culture, Theory and Critique 53:2 (2012), 199-214, 203. 12_{Ibid., 200.}

13_{Environics Research Group, ‘Awareness and Perceptions Regarding the Indian Residential Schools Issue’,} 2008 National Benchmark Survey (Ottawa 2008), 13.

<http://www.nrsss.ca/IRSRC%20TRC%20National%20Survey%20Final%20Report.pdf>[Accessed: 27-5-2016].

14_{M. Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge, ed. trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (London 1974).} 15

Eyerman, ‘The Past in the Present’, 160-162.

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‘[J]udicial, quasi-judicial or inquiry bodies [are] used at the end of a conflict or in cases where serious and systematic human rights violations have taken place. These bodies do not only influence the first phase following the exiting regime and the transition, but they also have impact on the historical record that is made during the phase of transitional justice.17

As a response to those crimes against humanity, transitional justice is seen as the invention of new and distinctive legal forms of response.18 The framework of transitional justice was originally devised to support reconciliation in nations undergoing transitions from authoritarianism to democracy, but is used with increasing frequency to respond to human rights violations against Indigenous peoples and is used to reinscribe ‘the responsibility of states toward their Indigenous populations, empowering Indigenous communities, responding to Indigenous demands to be heard, and rewriting history.’19 The situation in Canada is even more unique, as there was no change of regime.20 Courtney Jung has therefore argued that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada is not an instance of transitional justice, but is it an appliance of the transitional justice framework in the context of a more politically stable nation-state.21

The mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had the potential to decolonize the relationship of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. Decolonization is commonly defined as the process of ‘revealing and dismantling colonialist power in all its forms.’22

Or, as described by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada:

‘The way we govern must change. Laws must change.

Policies and programs must change.

The way we educate our children and ourselves must change. The way we do business must change.

Thinking must change.

The way we talk to, and about, each other must change.’23

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was not established in a social vacuum, but was formed and affected through its social context, where the narratives about the colonial history and the legacy of the Indian Residential Schools System competed. During the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission the socio-political context – is the government in place during the Commission’s mandate the same as that is associated with the period of injustice? And does the

17

Hayner, Unspeakable Truths, 11.

18_{M. Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness. Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence (Boston}

1998), 1.

19_{C. Jung, ‘Canada and the Legacy of the Indian Residential Schools: Transitional Justice for Indigenous People}

in a non-transitional Society’, in: P. Arthur, Identities in Transition. Challenges for Transitional Justice in

divided Societies (New York 2011), 217-250, 217. 20_Ibid.

21_Ibid. 22

B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, H. Tiffin, Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts (London 2000), 63.

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political and societal power balance tend to favor the perpetrators or victims?24 – is important as it affects the capacity of the commission. Because, after a systemic change, new authorities would likely have little to hide or fear from an inquiry into the crimes of their predecessors, of which they may even be critics.25 A power balance in favor of victims pressing for accountability and justice, could press for a strong inquiry into past suffering and oppression.26

Although the Residential Schools policy ended, the governmental system under which the crimes were committed remained in place. In particular, the basis (the Indian Act and the reservation system) on which the Indian Residential Schools System developed is still in place.27 The balance of power in Canada is not in favor of the Indigenous peoples. The fact that they count as 4% of the Canadian population marks a supposed ethno-cultural distance between Indigenous survivors and non-Indigenous Canadians, which would impede societal interest and support for a fact-finding

commission.28 The fact that Canada was not engaged in a process of political, judicial or societal transition makes that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was conceptualized by the Canadian government as an instrument that ‘draws a line through history, in effect finalizing or perfecting the colonial project rather than being part of a transformation and decolonization.’29

History of Colonialism and the Oppression of Indigenous peoples in Canada

The Indian Residential Schools System, as part of the overall colonial policy of the federal government, was intended to destroy the ‘Indian’ and resulted in a cultural genocide. As Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs Duncan Campbell Scott in 1920 stated: ‘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 politics and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department.’30

The Indian Residential Schools System did not appear out of the blue. Its roots lies in the history of colonialism, which began long before the first residential school opened its doors in the 1870s. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, Europeans – mostly the French and the British – started to explore North America. Initially searching for a sea route to the far east, they actually discovered this ‘new’ continent with its own store of wealth: pelts and furs that were desired in

24_{James, ‘Uncomfortable Comparisons’, 25.}

25_{J. Elster, Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective (Cambridge 2004), 188-197.} 26_{Hayner, Unspeakable Truths, 22-23.}

27_{James, ‘Uncomfortable Comparisons’, 28.} 28

Ibid.

29_{J. Huges, ‘Instructive Past: Lessons from the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples for the Canadian Truth}

and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools’, Canadian journal of law and society 27:1 (2012), 101-127, 102.

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Europe. For the hunt and treat of the furs, the European traders depended on Indigenous peoples. This cooperation continued until the eighteenth century.31

The French were the first to bring evangelism to their Indigenous trading and military partners in the seventeenth century. The first who tried to save the souls of Indigenous people were the

religious orders of the Récollets and Jesuits. The orders used different methods to do so; the Récollets attempted not just a spiritual but also a cultural conversion, whereas the Jesuits believed that only tending to the souls of the Indigenous peoples was enough.32 Historian Andrew Woolford argues that the measurements those orders took while trying to convert the Indigenous peoples inspired the policy of the Canadian government in the nineteenth and twentieth century. They attempted to assimilate the Indigenous peoples into the white mainstream; not only by the presence of the orders and their beliefs, but also through the schools and churches they established.33

The arguments of missionaries and their churches used to justify the colonization by the Europeans were broadly based on two concepts: Firstly, the Christian God had given the Christian nations the right to colonize the lands they ‘discovered’ as long as they converted the Indigenous populations. Secondly, the Europeans civilizing the ‘heathen’. The assumption was that Indigenous peoples were colonized for their own good.34 One could argue that this civilizing mission rested on a belief of racial and cultural superiority, and a misrecognition of the Indigenous people. Perceived as the diametrically ‘other’, the colonizers and missionaries felt ‘obliged’ to morally uplift the ‘savages’.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth century the general assumption was that the Indigenous population in North America stood in the way of the colonial enterprise. One of the ‘solutions’ to ‘get rid of the Indian problem’ was the conversion of Indigenous peoples to Christianity.35 Whereas the

Royal Proclamation of 1763 defined the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people

in North America as one of coexistence, where Indigenous people were not to be ‘molested or disturbed’ on their lands, the British North America Act of 1867 determined that Indigenous people were to remain under the legislation of the federal government. This act, Canada’s new constitution, made ‘Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians’ a subject for government regulation.36

In 1876, the

Indian Act was adopted. One of the major elements of this bill was the empowerment of the

government to force parents to send their children to residential schools. Before the implementation of this bill, the attendance at residential schools was voluntarily.37 The bill also outlawed the potlatch

31_{A. Woolford, ‘Ontological Destruction: Genocide and Canadian Aboriginal Peoples’, Genocide Studies and} Prevention 4:1 (2009), 81-97, 82.

32_{Woolford, ‘Ontological Destruction’, 82.} 33_{Ibid., 83.}

34

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, 46.

35_{Miller, Lethal Legacy, 35.}

36_{Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, ‘Looking Forward Looking Back’, Indigenous and Northern Affairs} Canada. <http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100014597/1100100014637> [Accessed: 27-5-2016]. 37_{Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, 54.}

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ceremony (traditional gift-giving feast between two tribes)38 and the sun dance (a four-days

midsummer ceremony to honor the sun and kinship between tribes)39, and introduced a pass system that required permission from an Indian Agent to enter an reserve.40

Research Methodology

This thesis examines the contribution of the TRC to the process of settling the past and decolonizing the present. The Commission finished its mandate in the summer of 2015 and the Final Report was presented in December 2015. This report guides us to the answer of the question of if and how the Commission did fulfill its mandate. How was truth established, what is healing? And what about reconciliation?

As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission only recently completed its mandate, just a handful of comprehensive materials on the history and methodology of the commission exist. This thesis primarily relies on the final report, since it’s the only source that describes the truth-seeking, healing and reconciliation journey of the mandate’s full period. During the mandate, studies were presented that analyzed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when still in operation. The raised arguments, theories and questions were nevertheless extremely useful in conceptualizing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada as ‘the answer’ to the history and legacy of the Indian

Residential Schools System. Through an analysis of the materials available, survivor testimonies, and the Final Report of the TRC, it becomes possible to determine the nature of the Indian Residential Schools System, colonialism in Canada, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Using the evaluation of this material, coupled with an analysis of the history of the TRC, it is possible to analyze the contribution of the TRC to the process of settling the past and decolonizing the present, and to examine the efforts the TRC took to bridge the memory gap, to rewrite history, and to challenge colonialism.

The first chapter of this thesis deals with the history and legacy of the Indian Residential Schools system, using statements from survivors and intergenerational survivors gathered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. This chapter researches the genocidal nature of the

Schools System and its continuing legacy. It was this argument that formed the basis for the demand of acknowledgement and recognition by Indigenous peoples, which led to the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.41

38_{The Canadian Encyclopedia, ‘Potlach’ < http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/potlatch/>}

[Accessed 29-5-2016].

39

The Canadian Encyclopedia, ‘Sun Dance’. <http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sun-dance/> [Accessed: 29-5-2016].

40_{Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, ‘Looking Forward Looking Back’.}

41_{To research the public opinion at that time, and the reaction to the proposed plan to open Residential Schools}

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Chapter Two discusses the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and analysis of its predecessors from the early 1990s until 2008. The TRC was not established without a fight and was one of the outcomes of almost two decades of negotiations between all parties. The history of the establishment reveals the methodology and victim-centered approach of the

Commission.

The third chapter examines the Mandate and Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with regard to its ‘decolonizing potential’. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission aimed to offer the Indigenous population the opportunity to empower themselves, to force the state to renew their responsibility towards Indigenous people, and to stimulate the rewriting of history. This was nevertheless a complex process, since the goals of the government and Indigenous people in a non-transitional society varied widely, as will be discussed in the chapter two of this thesis.

This research contributes to a wider understanding of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and to an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the field of transitional justice regarding settler colonialism and Indigenous peoples. Truth may be found, and victims may be healed, though reconciliation remains an ongoing process, and its journey has only just begun. For this reason, this research is not a complete examination of the accomplishments of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It offers conclusions on the current achievements and limitations.

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1. Indian Residential School Experiences and their

Legacy

In 2009, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission started to gather testimonies from survivors, 80,000 survivors were still alive. Through the statements and testimonies gathered by the Truth and Reconciliation commission of Canada, this chapter describes the school experiences and legacy of the Indian Residential School in order to understand the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and to prove, as is recognized by many people but denied by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, that Canada surely had a history of colonialism.

This chapter discusses the history of the Indian Residential School System. It is the history that led to the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. To understand the magnitude of the schools and the trauma they caused, Gregory Stanton’s theoretical framework of ‘The Ten Stages of Genocide’ is used. Stanton, the former president of Genocide Watch, wrote his theory shortly after the genocide of Rwanda and refers mainly to the physical extermination of people. The history of the Indian Residential School System will be discussed using the ten stages of genocide as ‘The Ten Stages of Genocide’ are not only applicable to physical genocides, but also for cultural genocides. Stanton suggested that genocide develops in ten stages that are predicable but not inexorable. The process is not linear and stages may occur simultaneously, but later stages must be preceded by earlier stages. What’s more, they all continue to operate throughout the process.42

The stages are: Classification, Symbolization, Discrimination, Dehumanization, Organization, Polarization, Preparation, Persecution, Extermination, and Denial.

The first paragraph provides a brief history of the Indian Residential Schools System, discussing the stages of classification to preparation. The second paragraph discusses the school experiences, including the stages of dehumanization (as it continued), persecution, and extermination. The last paragraph addresses the legacy of the System and includes the final stage of genocide: denial. The history of the school experiences comprises four themes, all extracted from the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. These are: child welfare, education, culture, and health. To discuss the legacy, a fifth theme of justice is added. Studying the Final Report and the Survivor Testimonies gathered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission will also unearth some

survivors with warm memories about their time at residential schools. Since the history of the school experiences would not be complete without these more positive accounts, these memories are included too, and form the last paragraph of the section about school experiences.

42

G. H. Stanton, ‘The Ten Stages of Genocide’, Genocide Watch.

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History of the Cultural Genocide: the Indian Residential Schools System

The first Residential Schools were established in Canada during the mid-1880s, modeled after the first residential school that was opened in 1879 in the United States in Pennsylvania. Although the first schools were intended to educate Indigenous people to prepare them for a better life, to benefit Indigenous people, and to improve mutual understanding between the Western and Indigenous worldviews, it soon developed into a more coercive system that finally ended up as a cultural genocidal system of forced assimilation and mass violation.43

The IRS system was part of the governmental policy to eliminate Indigenous people as a distinct people and to assimilate them into the white settler society, mostly against their will.44 The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself from its legal and financial obligations towards Indigenous people and to gain control over their land and resources.45 The IRS system quickly became a central element in this policy with the aim to ‘solve the Indian problem’ by civilizing First Nations, Métis and Inuit children and assimilating them into white settler society.46 The end goal was assimilation, either through enfranchisement and loss of Indian status (in the 1880s) or through the progressive decay and final disappearance of reserve

communities.47 It is true that education provisions were sometimes inserted into treaties requested by Indigenous leaders who acknowledged the need to fit into the new settler economy. Canadian legal scholar Rosemary Nagy, however, argues that ‘the government based on the racist assumption that it knew what was best for Indigenous children, instituted a system that was never mentioned in the treaties or negotiation processes.’48

Genocide does not occur suddenly, but is always a cumulative process. This was also the case in Canada. Colonization started long before the opening of the first Residential School, with the genocidal stages of classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization, organization, polarization and preparation. They will be briefly discussed below.

The process of colonization with the stages of classification and symbolization. Classification distinguished the settlers from the Indigenous people by race and religion, and symbolization ensured that the Indigenous population was suddenly called Indian, Aboriginal, or even savage. The process continued with the third stage of discrimination, that is characterized by the dominant group denying the (political) rights of the oppressed group. The oppressed group may not be accorded full civil rights, or even citizenship.49 The British North America Act (1867) is an example of legal discrimination.

43_{D. MacDonald and G. Hudson, ‘The Genocide Question and Indian Residential Schools in Canada’, Canadian} Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique 45:2 (2012), 427-449, 431.

44_{Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future. 3.} 45_Ibid.

46

R. L. Nagy, ‘The Scope of Bounds of Transitional Justice and the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, The International Journal of Transitional Justice, 7 (2013), 52-73, 56.

47_Ibid. 48

Ibid.

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The fourth stage of genocide comprises the process of dehumanization, where the humanity of the other group is denied. Members are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. The process of dehumanization continued over the course of the Indian Residential Schools System. The Indian Residential Schools in Canada were closely linked to the civilization missions of the religious

missionaries, which rested on a belief of racial and cultural superiority. Perceived as the diametrically ‘other’, the colonizers and missionaries felt the ‘obligation’ to morally uplift the ‘savages’. The education methods in Indigenous communities were unlike the European educational system, and was therefore quickly deemed as primitive by the settlers. This lack of understanding, or misrecognition, made the settlers believe that they had to save the ‘Indian’ from a life of (moral) poverty.

The fifth stage of organization marked the beginning of the Schools System. In this phase, genocidal plans were made. In search for adequate methods to fulfill the civilization mission, the government started a brief study on residential schooling that the government of the United States had established for Native Americans. It was advised that the Canadian government should establish comparable schools, with a focus on the elimination of the Indigenous spirituality, and replacement with Christian faith. The Indian Residential School System is based upon a model that was used in Europe and North America for the urban poor, and not on the model of private boarding schools that were for the economic elite in Great-Britain and Canada.50 Because of their wish to assimilate

Indigenous people, to eliminate the government-to-government relationships with the Indigenous First Nations, and inspired by the Indian Act, the federal government started to increase their involvement in residential schooling in the 1880s. Before the 1880s, there were several attempts to start and operate residential schools for Indigenous people, but they were all short-lived due to a lack of interest from, and cooperation by, Indigenous people.51

The implementation of the Indian Act in 1876 marked stages six and seven of polarization and preparation. According to Stanton, these stages include the implementation of laws that forbid

intermarriage or social interaction and plans for a ‘Final Solution’. The Indian Act codified the definition and status of ‘Indian and non-Indian, and contained regulations for reserves and bands. It also defined a process through which a person could lose status as an Indian. Women could lose status simply by marrying a man who did not have status, whereas men could lose status in many more ways, by, for example, graduating from university.52 In 1884, the Indian Act was amended to force the attendance of Indigenous youth in schools. Leading up to the amendment, Sir John A. Macdonald – Canada’s first Prime Minister – told the House of Commons in 1883:

‘When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write his habits, and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write. It has been

50_{Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, 57.} 51_{J. S. Milloy, A National Crime. The Canadian Government and the Residential School System (Winnipeg}

2006).

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strongly pressed on myself, as the head of the Department, that Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.’53

In 1920, the Indian Act was amended to make it mandatory for Indigenous parents to send their children to Indian Residential School. In that same year, the Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs Duncan Campbell Scott outlined the goals of the policy: ‘our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic.’54

The Indian Residential Schools System started to operate in the 1870s and had a threefold aim: first, the uplift from poverty. The schools were aimed to provide Indigenous children with the skills that would allow them to participate in the envisioned market-based society. Second, it would stimulate political assimilation, whereby students would give up their Indigenous status and never return to the reserves and their families again. Third, after the assimilation and elimination of spirituality, the students could be converted to Christianity; the final stage of turning the savage into white men.55 The federal government funded the schools in the beginning, but the system was envisioned to be self-supporting. It was calculated that the costs would be high in the beginning, but the schools should become almost cost-free as soon as they were running, through forced labor by the students and the low wages of the teaching staff.56

Between the 1870s and 1939, the schools were staffed mostly with Canadian or European missionaries, all part of religious organizations. Historian John S. Milloy argues that the officials and missionaries that formed the staff of the schools must be framed within a wider context. Together with other Canadians, they shared a discourse about Indigenous peoples that formed their policy and education plans. As the basis of that discourse was the idea of the ‘noble savage’, the comparison between ‘the savage and the civilized remained uncomplimentary.’57

Each school often had more than twenty employees. Among them were teachers, cooks, seamstresses, housekeepers, matrons, disciplinarians, farmers, carpenters, blacksmiths, engineers (for the heating and electrical generators), shoemakers, and even bandmasters.58 The churches only sought to employ members of their own faith. As a result of this, many staff members believed they were part

53

Canada, House of Commons Debates (9 May 1883), 1107-1108, as quoted in: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, What We Have Learned. Principles of Truth and Reconciliation (2015), 6. <http://nctr.ca/assets/reports/Final%20Reports/Principles_English_Web.pdf> [Accessed: 27-5-2016].

54_{Miller, Lethal Legacy, 35.} 55

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, 58.

56_{Ibid., 59.}

57_{Milloy, ‘The Founding Vision of Residential School Education, 1879,1920’, in: J.S. Milloy, A National Crime.} The Canadian Government and the Residential School System (Winnipeg 2009) ,

https://books.google.nl/books?id=15dWAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT87&hl=nl&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage &q&f=false> [Accessed 28-5-2016].

58_{Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 1 Origins} to 1939. The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Volume I (2015), 675.

<http://nctr.ca/assets/reports/Final%20Reports/Volume_1_History_Part_1_English_Web.pdf>. [Accessed: 28-5-2016].

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of a moral crusade, not only to save souls, but mostly to save the Indigenous peoples from disease and poverty.59 Although one could argue that these intentions were good, the intentions were implemented without consultation with Indigenous people and the result of a feeling of cultural and racial

superiority. Starting in the 1940s, the churches were displaced from their central role in the operation of the schools. Indian Affairs decided to take over the ‘responsibility for the employment of teaching staff at all government-owned residential schools’ in 1954. Nevertheless, the quality of education remained abominable after the governmental take-over. A significant percentage of the staff still lacked qualifications, while the curriculum was irrelevant or offensive (racist) towards Indigenous peoples. Language and culture were still suppressed, and parents were (literally) held at a distance.60

The peak years of the schools lay between the 1940s and the 1970s, with almost 11,000 students enrolled in 1952. From the 1940s onwards, it seemed to the Indian Affairs officials that the Indigenous children were ‘outgrowing Indian residential schools.’61 There was a large class room shortage for over 12,000 students: of the 28,429 school-aged First Nations children, 16,438 students went to either residential schools (8,865 students) or day schools (7,573 students).62 Indian Affairs officials may have lost faith in the Indian Residential School system in the early 1940s, as the Indian Affairs officials became committed to the closure of the residential school system. The superintendent of Welfare and Training for Indian Affairs advised:

‘we are rapidly approaching a time when a definite decision will have to be reached with respect to residential schools throughout the Dominion. If they are not serving the purpose for which they were established, then in my judgment they should be either closed or remodeled or the program now inforce [sic] modified to meet the more urgent needs of the Indian population.’63

However, it seems that the lack of on-reserve classroom space for First Nation students, the continuing support of the churches involved, the growing number of First Nation Students, and the First Nations opposition to transfer their children to provincial schools were the reasons that the schools were in operation until the late 1990s.

In 1969 the federal government took over the full administration of the remaining 56 residential schools in southern Canada. By then, 8,206 students were still enrolled at residential schools. This formed just 13% of the 62,834 First Nation students enrolled at schools in Canada. The Indigenous children that did not attend residential schools, had transferred to public school systems. This was not necessarily an improvement, since the curricula of the public schools paid little attention

59_{Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, The History, Part 1 Origins to 1939, 677.}

60_{Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, 1939-2000. The} Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Volume I (2015), 146.

<http://nctr.ca/assets/reports/Final%20Reports/Volume_1_History_Part_2_English_Web.pdf> [Accessed: 27-05-2016]. 61_{Ibid., 9.} 62 Ibid. 63_Ibid.

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to the Indigenous cultures, languages or other specific needs. In the years after the government takeover, the number of residential schools in the south declined rapidly. In the 1980s only sixteen schools were still in operation.64

The schools that were in operation until the 1990s owed their existence to a new political factor: Indigenous assertion of the right to control the education of Indigenous children. In 1969, the

Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy (more commonly referred to as the ‘White

Paper’) by Indian Affairs Minister Jean Chrétien, was aimed to stimulate the assimilation of First Nations people.65 The White Paper proposed to abolish the Indian Act, in return for ‘equality’.66 First Nations interpreted this as the end of the existence of distinct Indigenous identities, as that ‘equality’ and the White Paper considered First Nations, Inuit and Métis as one and the same identity.67 Because of the protests and following effective proclamation of Indigenous rights by Indigenous political organizations, the government abandoned the paper while accepting the principle of ‘Indian Control of Indian Education’ that gave First Nations the right to control their own education.68

The opposition of Indigenous peoples to the White Paper got national attention, and the question of who Indigenous people are and what their place in society is became central to national debate.69

From 1970 onwards, the schools under auspices of the First Nations administration were encouraged to hire Indigenous staff. By that time, the First Nations educational organizations gained control over at least one residential school in Alberta. Other schools, especially in Saskatchewan, were about to follow soon. In the last decade that the last seven schools were open, 220 of the 360 staff members were First Nations people.70 The decision to keep the residential schools open, was made due to the dissatisfaction with the proposed alternative of further assimilation into provincial education systems, which Indigenous people considered to be ‘unreceptive, inappropriate, and racist.’71 In the 1990s, a growing number of former students were speaking out about their experiences and the abuses they suffered at residential schools. Because of the survivor testimonies, the convictions and possible civil cases, the government began to question the future liability of the last seven schools.

64_{Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, The History, 1939-2000, 146.}

65_{Canada, ‘Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian policy (The White Paper 1969)’ Indigenous and} Northern Affairs Canada < http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100010189/1100100010191#chp1>

[Accessed: 27-5-2016].

66_{Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, ‘Looking Forward, Looking Back’.} 67_Ibid.

68_{National Indian Brotherhood/Assembly of First Nations, ‘Indian Control of Indian Education: Policy Paper’}

(1972) Ontario Native Education Counseling Association.

<http://www.oneca.com/IndianControlofIndianEducation.pdf> [Accessed: 28-5-2016].

69_{P. D. Elias, Development of Aboriginal People’s Communities (North York 1991), 8-9.} 70

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, The History, Part 1 Origins to 1939, 678.

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Students speak: School Experiences of the Indian Residential Schools

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada gathered over 6,750 statements from survivors and witnesses during private, national, regional and community events over the course of five years (2009-2014). Chapter three elaborates on the exact process of statement gathering by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Right now, the full database of testimonies is unfortunately not publicly accessible for researchers, as the database is not finished yet. Therefore this research depends on the available audio and video testimonies of the Audio/Video Database of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and testimonies of the report Survivors Speak that was written shortly after the end of the commissions mandate.72 The approximately fifty statements in the summary are representative for the other 6,700 testimonies. Due to the long history of residential schooling in Canada, many survivors that attended the early schools have died already. The survivors that were physically able and willing to testify are aged between 25 and 80. The testimonies cover school experiences from the 1940s to the 1990s. Although this might seem as a long time span that covers different periods, making the

statements difficult to compare, the experiences are generally comparable. This is especially the case for the period following the biggest policy shift – the churches being expelled from their teaching duty as the government took over – in 1954 when the majority of the living survivors attended the schools. The Survivor Testimonies relate to different periods in time, but the comparable histories of the survivors and the statistics illustrate that the Indian Residential Schools System was an exercise in cultural genocide.

This paragraph also continues with the genocide stages eight and nine: persecution and extermination. The stage of dehumanization is also discussed as this continued when the children entered the schools. The school experiences will be thematically discussed according to four themes deprived from the historical research of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The themes are: Child Welfare, Education, Culture and Health. The school experiences are not chronologically described, as this research is primarily based on survivor testimonies gathered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They are used to illustrate the general history of the Indian Residential Schools System.

Child Welfare

During the stage of persecution, victims are identified and singled out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Lists are drawn up, their property is expropriated and sometimes victims are even segregated, deported, or starved.73 In Canada, Indigenous children were certainly segregated and forcibly transferred because of their Indigenous culture and religion. The general assumption was that Indigenous parents were not able to educate their children decently. At the age of four, children could

72_{National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, ‘Audio/Video Database’ < http://nctr.ca/map.php> [Accessed:}

29-5-2016].

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be removed from their parents and sent to residential schooling to ‘civilize’ and ‘Christianize’ them. Starting in the 1940s, residential schools were increasingly used as orphanage and child welfare facilities. The government began phasing out compulsory residential school education as awareness arose about the devastating impacts. The general belief of the government was that Indigenous children could receive better education if they were transitioned into the public school system, as described in the previous paragraph. Residential Schools remained, however, as boarding schools for children whose families were deemed unsuitable to care for them. In the 1950s and 1960s a survey estimated that 40% to 50% of the 11,000 children that attended Residential Schools because of putative parental neglect.74 One of the causes of the increasing presence of ‘neglected’ children was the introduction of Section 88 to the Indian Act in 1951, that read: ‘all laws of general application from time to time in force in any province applicable to and in respect of Indians in the province.’75 This was interpreted as meaning that, for the first time, provincial and territorial child welfare

legislation applied on reserves. Whereas provinces and territories initially provided on-reserve services only in emergencies, they expanded their efforts of on-reserve services in the 1950s.76 Through these pretenses, the placement of children at the Residential Schools was justified and increased. The schools were no official child welfare institutions, as their primary task remained to educate its students. Although almost all students were victimized by emotional neglect at the schools, it was especially harsh for the students who attended residential schools as social-welfare placement; they would be in school all year, lacking a safe home to which they could return.77

For many students, the residential school experience started with an official letter, or the visit of an official. The parents were told that their children had to go to residential school, and if they opposed, the father would be arrested. This threat gave the parents no choice but to send their children to residential school, as was the case for Donna Antoine:

‘It must have been in the summer, the, the Indian agent came to, to see my father. I imagine it must have been the Indian agent because it looked pretty serious. He was talking to him for some time, and because we couldn’t understand, we, we couldn’t even eavesdrop what they were talking about. So after some time spent there, Father sat, sat us down, and told us that this Indian agent came to tell us, tell him that we had to go to school, to a boarding school, one that is not close to our home, but far away. […] We were sort of caught in, in wanting to stay home, and seeing our parents go to jail, and we thought, we must have thought who’s gonna look after us if our parents go to jail?’78

74

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: The Legacy. The Final

Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Volume V (2015), 4

<http://nctr.ca/assets/reports/Final%20Reports/Volume_5_Legacy_English_Web.pdf> [Accessed: 28-5-2016].

75_{Government of Canada, ‘Indian Act section 88’ (1985), Justice Laws Website <}

http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/i-5/page-12.html#h-36> [Accessed: 28-5-2016].

76

V. Sinha and A., Kozlowski, ‘The Structure of Aboriginal Child Welfare in Canada’, The International

Indigenous Policy Journal, 4:2 (2013), 1-21, 3-4.

77_{Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, 69.} 78

TRC, AVS, Donna Antoine, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Enderby, British Columbia, 13 October 2011, Statement Number: 2011-3287.

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Many parents were reluctant to send them away. One of the reasons for their reluctance was the ‘trauma’ of their own experience at residential schools. For many, the schools presented the only option to get education, as was the case for Ellen Smith, whose grandfather convinced his son to send her to school: ‘in the future she will help our people; she needs to go there.’79

The stage of dehumanization continued when the schools were already in operation. The term refers to the denial of the victim’s humanity, through which the usual human revulsion against murder or maltreatment disappears. Members of the victim group are considered to be dirty, and their own names are replaced with numbers or new names.80 At their arrival, the children were ‘welcomed’ by the staff following a routine: Clothes and personal belongings of the students were taken away, and they were given a school uniform. The braids – which had a spiritual function in many Indigenous religions– of the girls were cut off, and the mandatory shower and delousing process followed. Subsequently, the children were given a number – their number – that was stitched into all their clothes. The numbers existed for administrative reasons, and in many schools, these numbers were used instead of names.81 Nellie Ningewance went to the Sioux Lookout school in Ontario in the 1950s and 1960s and remembers her arrival as violating:

‘When we arrived we had to register that we had arrived then they took us to cut our hair. The next thing was to get our clothes. They gave us two pairs of jeans, two pairs of tee-shirts, two church dresses, they were beautiful dresses; two pairs of shoes, two pairs of socks, two pairs of everything. And we had a number; they gave us a number and that number was tied in our, in all our clothes; our garments, our jackets, everything was numbered. After that we were told to be in the, go in the shower; at least fifteen of u girls all in one shower. We were told to strip down and, with all the other girls; ant that was not a comfortable feeling. And for me I guess it was violating my privacy. I did not even want to look at anybody else. It was hard.’82

As soon as the children arrived at the schools, they were not only separated from their parents, but also from their siblings. The survivors give no explanation for this in their statements, but it seems that the siblings were not allowed to have contact for the same reason as they were separated from their parents: only with such a rigorous disconnection, could the children be saved and turned into white Canadians. The separation was not only a applied to gender – most schools had separated areas for boys and girls – but siblings of the same sex and/or different age were also not allowed to have contact with each other. The separation of siblings made the children feel lonely and helpless, as was the case for Madeleine Dion Stout who went to the Blue Quills school:

79_{TRC, AVS, Ellen Smith, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Fort McPherson,}

Northwest Territories, 14 September 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0346.

80_{Stanton, ‘Ten Stages of Genocide’.} 81

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Survivors Speak. A Report of the Truth and Reconciliation

Commission of Canada (2015), 66.

<http://nctr.ca/assets/reports/Final%20Reports/Survivors_Speak_English_Web.pdf [Accessed: 28-5-2016].

82

TRC, AVS, Nellie Ningewance, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, 1 July 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0305.

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‘There was a sense of separation and the sense of, of not connecting to your own, you know, the people who would mean the most to you, your family members, and your community members, a complete separation. And if it wasn’t that we were taught by my mother to always love on another no matter how big the transgressions we committed against each other, that we would always, always love one another, and I think that’s, that’s what we carry today, not what residential school taught us, but there’s still a deep conflict there, you know, that separation, but be together, separate but be together. So, there’s this, there’s this, these conflicting messages I think that I still carry.’83

Education & Culture

The education and living conditions at the residential schools can be seen as the extermination of the culture of Indigenous children. The ninth stage of extermination in a physical genocide means that the killers believe their victims are not fully human; mass killing becomes a legally-backed genocide.84 Although the children were not physically exterminated, their culture certainly was. Many children came to the schools with little or no understanding of English or French, but were surely fluent in their own Indigenous language. At the schools they encountered the staff, who had no or little

understanding of the languages of the children. The children were actively and sometimes aggressively denied the use of their own language.85 Until they could speak either English or French, most of the children were disoriented and frightened, as was the case for Arthur Ron McKay, who went to Sandy Bay school in Manitoba in the early 1940s:

‘I didn’t know where to go, not even to the washroom sometimes. I just wet myself because I didn’t know where to go and I couldn’t speak to the teacher, and I know that the nuns was the teacher and I couldn’t speak English. They told me not to speak my language and everything, so I always pretended to be asleep at my desk so they wouldn’t ask me anything. The nun, first time she was nice but later on as she began to know me when I done that to lay my head on the desk pretending that I was sleeping not to be asked anything. She come and grab my hair, my ears and told me to listen and to sit up straight.’86

Some students continued to speak their language in secret, like Ronalee Lavallee who went to Grayson school in Saskatchewan in the 1970s: There were a number of students there who could speak Cree, and at night they would teach the language to the other students. ‘We wanted to learn this language and how we used to take turns watching for the nuns so that we wouldn’t get into trouble.’87

Despite the efforts some took, most students lost their language, like Russel Bone at the Pine Creek school:

83_{TRC, AVS, Madeleine Dion Stout, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,}

Winnipeg, Manitoba, 18 June 2010, Statement Number: 02-MB-18JU10-059.

84_{Stanton, ‘Ten Stages of Genocide’.} 85

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Survivors Speak, 47.

86_{TRC, AVS, Arthur Ron McKay, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Winnipeg,}

Manitoba, 18 June 2010, Statement Number: 02-MB-18JU10-044.

87

TRC, AVS, Ronalee Lavallee, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 24 June 2012, Statement Number: 2011-1776.

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‘I realized that nobody was, never used to talk their language. Some would, some would speak their language as long as the nuns weren’t around, eh. And then, I started losing it. Forgetting how, what to say, about the words; what they meant; and when somebody, let’s say, there’d be two people talking, eh, two young guys talking their language, and I wouldn’t understand. I’d lost it.’88

At some schools, students were not only punished for speaking their language, but were also subjected to the religious training to convert them to Christianity. The children had to pray many times during the day. A daily routine could look like the day of Roger Cromarty at Sioux Lookout school: ‘Daily we had the morning services in the chapel, grace at every meal, prayers at every class, evening services in the chapel, and the prayers at bedtime. On Sundays this was different. Again, we had morning, morning church services at the chapel, afternoon church services, Sunday school, and evening services.’89

Some schools also discouraged their students from participating in traditional, religious activities like the Sun Dance. Marlyn Buffalo was told by the Hobbema school staff that the Sun Dance was devil worship: ‘We were told by untrained, unprofessional teacher who took great joy in beating the heck out of the boys and the girls, that we were never going to amount to anything. And called savage.’90

The same goes for Evelyn Kelman at the Brocket school in Alberta. Their principal told the students that if they would participate in the Sun Dance during the summer break, they would be strapped when they returned to school.91

Some survivors felt that the education they received was very poor and mainly focused on religion, as was the case for Clara Munroe who attended the Roman Catholic school at Kamsack in Saskatchewan: ‘It was always prayer, praying, singing hymns in Latin, something we didn’t even understand. That’s how that school was operated.’92

Some students enrolled in public schools after finishing residential school. There, the limits of the education they received at residential school became apparent. Students were not encouraged to seek further education, as was the case for the friend of Walter Jones at Alberni school, who asked if he would be able to go to Grade Twelve:

‘That supervisor said: “You don’t need to go that far”, he says. He says, “Your people are never going to get education to be a professional worker, and it doesn’t matter what lawyer, or doctor, or electrician, or anything, that a person has to go to school for.” He says, “You’re

88_{TRC, AVS, Russell Bone, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,}

Keeseekoowenin First Nation, Manitoba, 28 May 2010, Statement Number: S-KFN-MB-01-001.

89_{TRC, AVS, Roger Cromarty, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Winnipeg,}

Manitoba, 17 June 2010, Statement Number: 02-MB-16JU10-132.

90_{TRC, AVS, Marilyn Buffalo, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Hobbema,}

Alberta, 25 July 2013, Statement Number: SP125. National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation <http://nctr.ca/scripts/mwimain.dll/844/2/1/14?RECORD&UNION=Y> [Accessed 28-5-2016].

91_{TRC, AVS, Evelyn Kelman, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Lethbridge,}

Alberta, 10 October 2013, Statement Number: SP128. National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation <http://nctr.ca/scripts/mwimain.dll/856/2/2/177?RECORD&UNION=Y> [Accessed 28-5-2016].

92_{TRC, AVS, Clara Munroe, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Key First}

Nation, Saskatchewan, 21 January 2012, Statement Number: SP039. National Centre for Truth and

'Thinking must change'. Competing Narratives and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Settling the past, decolonizing the present?