Racism :: Canadian History, Politics, The Indian Law

The two earlier existing schools, industrial schools and boarding schools, were united into residential schools by the Canadian Government in 1864 (Reimer, 201036). Miller (1996) has explained the governing of the schools had the form of joint venture between state and church (Roman , Anglican, Methodist or coupled Church) where the state was responsible for the financing (Miller, 199625). The Canadian Government was responsible directly when it came to establishing residential schools for Aboriginal children.In order to attend residential schools, Aboriginal children were interpreted away from their families and communities. The proper definition of Aboriginal plurality or Aboriginal includes Mtis, Inuit, and First Nations regardless of where they live in Canada and regardless of whether they are registered down the stairs the Indian Act of Canada (Stout and Kiping, 20035). Throughout history First Nations, Inuit, and Mtis people have faced centuries of colonial suppression whi ch has disrupted the process of Aboriginal heathen identity formation. One of the tools of suppression is through the formation of residential schools. At the schools, the children suffered from emotional, physical, sexual and psychological abuse (Stout and Kipling, 20038). The trauma to which Aboriginal people were exposed in the past by residential schools continues to have major negative effect to the generations to follow. By the 1840s, the attempts by the churches to civilize Aboriginal people became a matter of official state policy (Claes and Clifton, 1998). This was an era of westward expansion and the government was anxious to prevent any Aboriginal interference with its colonization plans. Subscribing to an ideology that constructed Aboriginal people as backward and savage, government officials believed assimilation was in the populations best interests (1998 Culture and Mental Health Research Unit, 2000). For example, in 1847, the chief super of education in Upper Canad a indicated in a report to the Legislative Assembly that education must consist not merely of the training of the mind, barely of a weaning from the habits and feelings of their ancestors, and the acquirements of the language, arts and customs of civilized life (cited in Claes and Clifton, 199815).The 1884 amendments to the Indian Act served as a particularly important impetus for growth. On the one hand, they made boarding school attendance mandatory for Native children less than 16 years of age. On the other hand, the revised Act gave administration the power to arrest, transport and detain children at school, while parents who refused to cooperate faced fines and imprisonment (Claes and Clifton, 1998).