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 give in and church (Roman , Anglican, Methodist or United Church) where the state was responsible for the funding (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 taken away from their families and communities. The decorous definition of Aboriginal people or Aboriginal includes Mtis, Inuit, and prototypal Nations regard little of where they live in Canada and regardless of whether they are registered under the Indian stand for of Canada (Stout and Kiping, 20035). Throughout history First Nations, Inuit, and Mtis people hold up face centuries of colonial suppression w hich has disrupted the process of Aboriginal ethnic 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 opened in the past by residential schools continues to have major detrimental 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 enlargement and the government was anxious to prevent any Aboriginal interference with its colony plans. Subscribing to an ideology that constructed Aboriginal people as backward and savage, government officials believed absorption was in the populations best interests (1998 Culture and Mental health Research Unit, 2000). For example, in 1847, the chief superintendent of education in upper Canada indicated in a report to the Legislative Assembly that education mustiness consist not merely of the training of the mind, but of a wean 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 authorities the power to arrest, transport and detain children at school, while parents who refused to cooperate faced fines and imprisonment (Claes and Clifton, 1998).