Sociology 1020 Chapter Notes - Chapter 34: Cultural Assimilation, Indian Act, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
18 Oct 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Chapter 34-> Aboriginal People, Resilience and the Residential School Legacy
Madeline Dion Stout and Gregory Kipling
• Physical, psychological, spiritual, and cultural harm
• History of the schools
o Attempted to “Christianize” and “civilize” Aboriginal people
o First school was built in the 19th century
o Government was anxious to prevent any Aboriginal interference with its
colonization plans
▪ Believed assimilation was in the population’s best interest
o A system of church-operated residential schooling in which Aboriginal children
were given an education while being protected from their parents “backward”
influence
o 11 schools in 1880 -> 45 schools in 1896
o the Indian Act of 1884 made boarding school attendance mandatory for Native
children under 16 years of age and gave authorities the power to arrest, transport
and detain children at school, while parents who refused to cooperated faced fines
and imprisonment
o only half days of schooling
▪ other half was used for religious instruction and development of
vocational skills
o schools were characterized by a disciplinary regime that restricted interaction with
family members, prohibited the use of Aboriginal languages and denigrated all
aspects of Aboriginal life and customs
o in the 1940s, the schools expanded to Inuit people too
o there was little effective education given
o last federally-run school closed in 1996 in Saskatchewan
• impact on individuals
o first trauma was the separation from their parents
▪ deliberate policy of establishing industrial schools far from the home
communities of students only severed to reinforce their isolation, as did
the discouragement of contact between children and parents by school
officials
o students were made to feel ashamed of their ancestry
o teachers and other authority figures constantly worked to reinforce the innate
superiority of “white” society and values
o a variety of punishments were reserved for those who failed to follow the rules
(not speaking Aboriginal languages)
▪ verbal, physical, and sexual abuse
o the unpredictable nature of the discipline administered in the schools contributed
to a generalized climate of fear within the student body
o there was an extremely high number of tuberculosis-related deaths among the
children
o after-affects:
▪ PTSD (nightmares, sleep problems, blackouts, apathy, depression)
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