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Residential Schools in Canada Research Paper
Residential Schools in Canada Research Paper
Residential Schools in Canada Research Paper
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Residential schools were institutions funded by the government for young indigenous peoples. The idea was to kill the Indian in the children, and to create Westernized youth. Many children revolted the idea, while others accepted it. Crucial development occurs in a child's mind between the ages of five and eight. In the novel Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden, a story is told of three Cree people who have experienced Residential Schools and who have been forever changed because of it. Xavier, Elijah and Niska are ripped from the comfort of their naturalistic and self sufficient communities and thrown into materialistic environments where they are shamed and defaced. Each of these characters experienced the Residential schools in extremely different …show more content…
Niska is rebellious, wild, strong, a character easy to love. She is born as the daughter of a Windigo killer and has seen much before she has grown. When a priest notices a young wild girl still wander Moose Factory, he comes to take Niska, she runs wild and even bites the priest. “I fought like a lynx then...” (Boyden, 92). Niska is resilient and gutsy throughout her time at the Residential School. When her hair is being cut, the nun cuts hers shorter than the other girls for a simple fact of disliking the young free child. Niska sneaks in the night and cuts the rest of her hair off and is thrown into a sort of solitary confinement for weeks and is fed only once a day. Niska states she never regrets her actions and when her mother comes to break her out is it clear that she has learned from a family of brave and courageous people. They take off into the forest and Niska is once again at ease,“Slowly becoming wild like the animals around us” (Boyden, …show more content…
I fear many things in this place. But I do not want to fear my friend.” (Boyden 246) This is a quote from Xavier, explaining his growing fear of his dear friend. Elijahs soul is tarnished and lost, and as the drugs take over his mind and body he loses any love he had left in him. Elijah grows to love to kill and no longer sees these dead bodies as people, rather as a score he must keep. Elijah’s mind has always been pulled in different directions and he never had a chance to create a sense of self. His only friend was reserved and incapable of saving Elijah, but perhaps no one could. In the end of the novel, when Xavier has decided to kill Elijah. I feel as though Niska’s strength is now within Xavier. He has an epiphany and knows what he must do and that it is the only way Elijah can be stopped. Throughout the novel it appears at times that maybe Elijah is the more self assured and Xavier, with his depression and falling in love is the more lost one. I believe this to be wrong, as confused as Xavier might be with his sadness and emotions, he is aware that this is not how life ought to be. He sees the wrong and he feels deeply. Elijah's mind is overtaken with anger and darkness and he knows not how to escape the demons. So much so, he becomes the thing he fears. In this novel we are made to believe that these three people are separate entities. I believe these three people make a
Though the film mentioned the impact that residential schools had and still has on the aboriginal people, I felt that this issue needed to be stressed further because the legacy of the schools is still extremely prominent in aboriginal communities today. The film refers to the fact that residential schools harmed the aboriginal people because they were not able to learn their culture, which has resulted in the formation of internalized oppression within in the group. “The...
Emotionally, the journey is a whirlwind for Xavier, it starts off with him, the usually optimistic one getting very scared for the first time, and doubting his decision made to fight in the war, when almost shot for the first time: “It is real. All of this is suddenly very real. The other side wants to kill me, and I’ve never even seen their faces” (33). Xavier and Elijah both portray these various roles based on their childhood upbringing. Xavier was brought up more spiritually, while Elijah was brought up scarred, to hide his emotions by pretending to be someone else. The key to Xavier’s sanity is to forget about the bad things in his life, and think of something more pleasant, this keeps him from dwelling on bad feelings, but keeps him from dealing with them. Earlier on in TDR, it talks about the first time they are allowed out of their trenches, Xavier tries to forget the things that have happened to him. His ways of coping were at least a little successful as he demonstrates, “Maybe Elijah is still over there, Auntie. Maybe the army has kept him there longer” (110). This is a quote from Xavier that is said after he has come back from the war. He was there with Elijah almost the whole time, so it would make sense that he would know what happened to him. However, Xavier has pushed these thoughts out of his mind
The three main characters, Elijah, Xavier and Niska are losing their culture gradually throughout the novel. The Europeans tries to obliterate the Cree culture by setting up residential schools, which are schools that First Nations attend to learn the European culture and forget their own. All of the three main characters, Elijah, Xavier and Niska go through the residential school. At the school, children are not allowed to speak in their own tongue or they will be punished. As Niska describes, “When I was caught speaking my tongue, they'd for...
It can be argued that this is the greatest factor to Elijah’s breakdown because it leads to Elijah’s addiction to killing and is a more intense desire than proving his greatness to others. Throughout the novel, Elijah take unnecessarily dangerous risks so that he can add more kills to his already ridiculously high count. Sometimes, Elijah leaves the camp for days without Xavier to go sniping by himself. Xavier rebukes Elijah when his incessant risk-taking nearly gets them both killed: “Put yourself in danger if you like, but not me!” (285). What makes this factor of Elijah’s insanity so interesting is that it is the only one that Elijah cannot satisfy. He can satisfy his addiction to morphine and killing by taking morphine and killing. And it is not hard for him to prove to other that he is extremely skilled at sniping, but he cannot seem to prove to himself that he is the best. Although no one else seems to take notice of Xavier, Elijah knows that he will never be better than Xavier: “You always were the better shot” (368). Throughout the story, Xavier is always subtly proving his dominance over Elijah, for example, in the shooting competition in the training camp and when Xavier is able to kill the German sniper in no man’s land. The Mauser rifle that Xavier takes from the German is a symbol for Elijah’s jealousy of Xavier—hence Elijah’s jealousy is what finally kills him. Elijah is highly competitive and understands that Xavier will always be better than him. His inability to prove to himself that he is the best sniper is the biggest contributor to Elijah going
In the 1950s and 1960s, the government began abolishing the compulsory residential school education among Aboriginal people. The government believed that Aboriginal children could receive a better education if they were integrated into the public school system (Hanson). However, residential schools were later deemed inappropriate because not only were the children taken away from their culture, their families and their people, but the majority of students were abus...
Explanation: Xavier notices the growing change in Elijah. Other than getting along with the white men, he also notices that Elijah is slowly abandoning the roots of his culture. Xavier wonders why Elijah tries to impersonate a white man, rather than be proud of their culture, and language. A sense of jealousy sparks within Xavier, as the soldiers around him compare him with Elijah. Slowly, problems start to brew between the acquitted friendship of Xavier and Elijah.
Similarly, Xavier and Elijah from Three Day Road go through a path of losing love and friends, eventually turning into enemies. To begin, Xavier and Elijah were quickly noticed by other comrades because of their hunting skills. Xavier and Elijah grew up with a native background where Xavier doesn’t see killing as an ordinary thing to do. This is seen when Xavier is being shot for the first time. He witnessed how close it was for him to be killed, responding, “The other side wants to kill me, and I’ve never even seen their faces” (Boyden, 33).
The most harmful to the Indigenous society was the residential schools because the young Aboriginal children were taken from their homes, told their language and customs were not allowed, unacceptable and there would be consequences if they did. The Indigenous were separated from their families to assimilate the Indigenous into the so called “white culture.” There was a residential school called the Mohawk Institute Residential School in the area of Branford run by the government. It started as a day school for boys on the Six Nations reserve, then accepted female children later. Former students of the schools described suffering sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. There was low quality food, and they cut some Indigenous peoples hair off. This subject always changed the way I saw these schools because they were the most harmful the Indigenous underwent and I could never understand what it felt like or what happened
Living in Canada, there is a long past with the Indigenous people. The relationship between the white and First Nations community is one that is damaged because of our shameful actions in the 1800’s. Unnecessary measures were taken when the Canadian government planned to assimilate the Aboriginal people. Through the Indian Act and Residential schools the government attempted to take away their culture and “kill the Indian in the child.” The Indian Act allowed the government to take control over the people, the residential schools took away their culture and tore apart their families, and now we are left with not only a broken relationship between the First Nations people but they are trying to put back together their lives while still living with a harsh reality of their past.
During the 19th century the Canadian government established residential schools under the claim that Aboriginal culture is hindering them from becoming functional members of society. It was stated that the children will have a better chance of success once they have been Christianised and assimilated into the mainstream Canadian culture. (CBC, 2014) In the film Education as We See It, some Aboriginals were interviewed about their own experiences in residential schools. When examining the general topic of the film, conflict theory is the best paradigm that will assist in understanding the social implications of residential schools. The film can also be illustrated by many sociological concepts such as agents of socialization, class inequality, and language as a cultural realm.
For decades First Nations people1 faced abuse in Canada's residential school system. Native children had their culture and families torn away from them in the name of solving the perceived “Indian Problem” in Canada. These children faced emotional, physical, and sexual abuse at the hands of residential school supervisors and teachers. Since the fazing out of residential schools in the 1960's the survivors of residential schools and their communities have faced ongoing issues of substance addiction, suicide, and sexual abuse.2 These problems are brought on by the abuse that survivors faced in residential schools. The government of Canada has established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to address these issues but it has been largely ineffective. Though the Government of Canada has made adequate efforts towards monetary reparations for the survivors of residential schools, it has failed to provide a means to remedy the ongoing problems of alcohol and drug addiction, sexual abuse, and suicide in the communities of residential school survivors.3
Schools are where we spend half of our lives at, our kids are spending time and energy in these places to become better people in the future. There is absolutely no reason why budget cuts should ever happen in a school. If the country is taking taxes from all of the citizens than they should be conscious to spend that money on things that matter like our children. Making budget cuts takes away programs for kids to excel in and makes a child harder to express himself. Arts are usually the first programs to be cut.
Residential schools undoubtedly created detrimental inter-generational consequences. The dark legacy of residential schools has had enduring impact, reaching into each new generation, and has led to countless problems within Aboriginal families including: chemical dependence, a cycle of abuse in families, dysfunctional families, crime and incarceration, depression, grief, suicide, and cultural identity issues (McFarlan, 2000, p. 13). Therefore, the inter-generational consequence...
The creation of the Residential Schools is now looked upon to be a regretful part of Canada’s past. The objective: to assimilate and to isolate First Nations and Aboriginal children so that they could be educated and integrated into Canadian society. However, under the image of morality, present day society views this assimilation as a deliberate form of cultural genocide. From the first school built in 1830 to the last one closed in 1996, Residential Schools were mandatory for First Nations or Aboriginal children and it was illegal for such children to attend any other educational institution. If there was any disobedience on the part of the parents, there would be monetary fines or in the worst case scenario, trouble with Indian Affairs.