Wenjack

Content Warning: This section references cultural genocide and child abuse, including sexual assault, and replicates (in reference to legislation) a term for Indigenous peoples that many First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people consider outdated and offensive.

In addition, this section explores the contested and probably fraudulent nature of Joseph Boyden’s supposed Indigenous identity.

Residential schools were created to assimilate First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children into Euro-Canadian culture by teaching them the French or English language and forcibly converting them to Christianity.

During the 19th century, Indigenous peoples lived self-sufficiently throughout much of Canada. In fact, colonial governments were often economically and militarily dependent on these groups. Even so, certain Indigenous groups had become increasingly reliant on public aid. This was particularly the case for the Plains Nations, whose Indigenous ways of life were totally disrupted by colonial farming practices. Colonizer governments and churches recognized that Indigenous peoples were living on the fringes of an unfamiliar society, without the requisite knowledge or skills to take part in it. Residential schools were founded in the hopes of integrating Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture by providing them the knowledge and skills needed to gain economic self-sufficiency (as the colonizers defined it). Some First Nations leaders hoped that the residential educational system could help their youth to navigate an alien culture, whose values were both antithetical to and hostile toward their traditional practices. However, many more strongly condemned the mass intrusion of Euro-Canadian education into First Nations life. Despite the presence of significant Indigenous opposition, the Indian Act in 1876 legally enshrined residential education for Indigenous children throughout all of Canada (Miller, J. R. “Residential Schools in Canada.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2023).

While residential schools in some cases originated from a place of compassion and were conceived of as a means of integrating and supporting First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, all of them were built on the premise that Euro-Canadian cultures, languages, spiritual practices, and worldviews were superior to those of Indigenous peoples. The extent of forced residential schooling was massive: Between 1831 and 1998, over 150,000 children were enrolled in 140 federally supported Canadian residential schools (Treisman, Rachel. “This New Canadian Holiday Reflects on the Legacy of Indigenous Residential Schools.” NPR, 30 Sep. 2021).

Over a period of eight years (2007-2015), the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada interviewed 6,500 witnesses regarding their experience of the residential school system. Its findings revealed that these schools systematically forced students onto militant schedules, compelled them to perform involuntary labor, administered punitive and cruel punishments for even minor infractions, inflicted widespread sexual, emotional, and physical abuse on children of all ages, and intentionally covered up the deaths of countless youths. The commission concluded the residential schools had carried out an intentional, government-mandated program of cultural genocide. The Abuse in the Residential School System and its relationship to the Loss of Indigenous Language and Culture are core concerns of Wenjack.

The process of attending a residential school was intensely traumatic even for children who managed to escape horrors like molestation. Many young people were forcibly separated from their families and communities (often for years), given new Anglo names, and punished for speaking Indigenous languages or referring to Indigenous practices or even community members. It was also common for children’s hair to be forcibly shorn in open degradation of the fact that long and/or braided hair carries cultural significance for many First Nations, Inuit, and Métis groups. Approximately 6,000 children died in residential schools from disease, neglect, accidents, abuse, or exposure suffered during attempts to escape. The true fatality count may in fact be much higher than this, as school records of students’ deaths were deliberately kept vague, were intentionally destroyed, or were never created at all.

Residential schooling’s legacy of disruption, devastation, and despair continues to unfold. Indigenous groups still grieve the family members and friends lost to these institutions. Moreover, they struggle with intergenerational cycles of trauma caused by the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse inflicted on survivors, as well as the irretrievable loss of cultural, linguistic, and spiritual knowledge within their community. Although the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada ended in 2015, new facts regarding residential education’s sophisticated, multilayered execution of Indigenous genocide continuously come to light. In 2021, an unmarked mass grave holding the bodies of 215 children was uncovered next to a decommissioned school in Kamloops, British Columbia. Self-proclaimed “residential school denialists” entered this site without permission during the night, confident that by doing so they could disprove local First Nations’ claims about the existence of this mass grave. Instead, they uncovered tragic proof of it. Since then, the remains of more than 2,300 children have been found in mass graves across Canada, usually next to old residential schools or so-called “Indian Hospitals” (“Childhood Denied.” Canadian Museum for Human Rights, 2018).