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Humans are fascinated by gore and violence, but even more so, the mysterious and unsolved. Interest in these disturbing and unpleasant subjects is called morbid curiosity, and it has gripped millions of people throughout the ages. I am one of those people. My name is Halley, and this is the Morbid Curiosity Podcast.
Before we answer these questions, I want to say that much of the information in this podcast about daily life in residential schools comes from a collection of interviews with people who survived a specific school, Kamloops Residential School in British Columbia. These accounts are contained in the book Resistance and Renewal by Celia Haug-Brown. I did my best to include as many additional articles and documents from survivors of these schools as possible. Still, every experience is unique, so I apologize for any generalizations.
My goal is to raise awareness, but I'm limited by my own cultural bias, time, and availability of materials. I have several recommendations for books by survivors for a better picture of what occurred in these institutions at the end of the podcast. Let's begin with what a residential school is. A residential school is a government-funded church-run educational institution where the students reside in dormitories at the school.
They are fed and usually clothed by the school. The teachers and staff also usually reside at the school and are usually part of a religious order. This sounds like the definition of a modern boarding school, except for several large and glaring differences. First, the students at the Canadian residential schools were not there by choice.
Attendance became mandatory in 1894. Often, officials from the schools and police drove out to communities and forcibly removed their children, threatening the parents with jail time and huge fines if they resisted. Children as young as three were taken away from their parents and placed in these residential schools. The children were given new names, sometimes numbered designations, identical uniforms, and identical haircuts.
Second, while modern boarding schools, especially those in the UK, are privately funded and provide a decent living environment for their students, residential schools were government funded, and that funding was often lacking. The buildings were cold, betting and blankets were in short supply, the food was meager and tasteless, and the buildings had to be maintained and cleaned by the students themselves. The schools were often overcrowded as well, which caused disease to run rampant through the student population. There wasn't much in the way of medical treatment either.
Third, while the goal of most boarding schools is to educate the students through quality teaching, at the residential schools, the teachers were often not qualified to teach, let alone be around children. Multitudes of abuse, physical, sexual, and mental occurred at the hands of teachers and staff. When reported, most claims went unheard, or were sometimes intentionally covered up. That's not to say abuse doesn't occur at regular boarding schools, but the consistency and magnitude of the abuse reported in the Canadian residential school system is far higher.
As for education, only a few hours a day were dedicated to academic education, while the rest was spent maintaining the school buildings, doing chores like laundry, and sitting through sermons. As religious orders ran the schools, most commonly Roman Catholic and Anglican orders, an emphasis was placed on religion. Many of the sermons proclaimed that the students came from evil families, and must change to escape the fires of hell. Finally, all the students in the Canadian residential school system were from First Nation, Inuit, or Matisse communities, meaning people of mixed European and Indigenous descent.
These communities were collectively referred to as Indians by the federal government. The main goal of the Indian residential school system in Canada was to remove as much Indigenous culture from Indigenous children as possible in order to assimilate them into non-Indigenous, European-based Canadian society. They were not allowed to speak their own language, practice their own spirituality, or see their families for any great length of time while at school. This type of school existed in other countries as well, but were most prevalent in Canada, the US, and Australia.
Residential schools and other forms of assimilation schemes are rooted in colonialism. The goal was to spread European worldviews and concepts. At the time, Western civilization and Western Christianity were not separate, so Indigenous culture was approached similarly as one thing that needed to change, to be quote, civilized, unquote. Assimilation attempts began in Canada as early as the 17th century by French missionaries, but the efforts were abandoned in the 1690s due to resistance from First Nation peoples.
The next attempt was in the early 1800s by Catholic and Protestant missionaries. These early religious funded and operated schools became feeder schools for later government run institutions, or converted to government financed schools. In 1867, Canada consolidated into one nation. One of the first acts of the Canadian Parliament was to give itself authority over, quote, Indians and lands reserved for Indians, unquote.
No Indigenous peoples were consulted. The first Prime Minister of Canada, Sir John A. MacDonald, declared that Canada would, quote, do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the inhabitants of the Dominion, unquote. In 1869, the gradual enfranchisement act was passed, which made it so that only those persons designated by the Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs were entitled to land ownership in Indian reserves.
Also, if Indigenous persons became enfranchised, that is, citizens of Canada, they had to adopt English names, and then they were eligible for land grants. Persons of, quote, less than one fourth Indian blood, unquote, were no longer classified as Indian, and therefore could no longer share in the monies paid to the band or body on the reserves. In 1871, education was made mandatory for all non-Indigenous children in Ontario. In treaties with the Indigenous peoples, the Canadian government had promised education for Indigenous children, so the next legislation relating to the Indigenous peoples of Canada included Indigenous children in that mandate.
The Indian Act of 1876, passed by the Canadian federal government without input from any Indigenous peoples, made Indians wards of the state. They were unable to vote, unable to enter certain professions without surrendering their status as Indians, and were limited in their cultural and religious freedoms. The Indian Act also created a system of government-funded church-run residential schools for Indigenous children. The residential school system was based on an American system.
Captain Richard H. Pratt established the first American residential school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1878, using an abandoned military barracks as the main building. Pratt is quoted as saying, quote, kill the Indian in him and save the man, unquote. His system was used for subsequent federal off-reservation residential schools across the US, Canada, and Australia.
The Pratt model favored military discipline, a focus on farming, Christianity, and reading. It also included segregation from whites and Indian communities and attendance from a young age. In the US, over the centuries, more than 100,000 Indian children attended 500 residential schools. Australia also imitated this model between 1907 and 1967, focusing on children of mixed European and Aboriginal Tories straight islander heritage.
These 25 to 100,000 children later called the Stolen Generation suffered similar abuse and neglect sometimes from birth. In Canada, over the 100 years the schools operated, from about 1894 to the closure of the last school in 1996, around 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend. Pratt's model failed spectacularly in all areas. It scarred generations of Indigenous peoples and failed in its original purpose of assimilation.
Its deficiencies were realized early on, food shortages were common, there were inadequate teachers and supplies, harsh discipline, overcrowding, and disease. In Canada, between 30 to 50 percent of new student populations died in some schools, mostly due to malnutrition and disease. The mortality rate was obscured from their families and the public by the missionaries and the Canadian government. Students were buried in secret graves and many deaths went unrequarded.
By 1900, 61 residential schools were operating in Canada. As Indigenous adults were quite resistant to the assimilation techniques, the focus would be on young children. The first thing that must be done was to get them away from their parents and community to limit their influence on the children's education. Once residential schools were set up, parents sometimes came to near the schools to be closer to their children.
More legislation moved to the schools further and further away from the Indian reserves, and a past system was created, which was designed to confine Indigenous peoples, including the parents, to the reserves. Usually the schools ran 10 months out of the year with no family contact. Sometimes children weren't allowed to see their families for years. Family is the core of most cultures, with children being taught about life by their parents and other elders, usually by example in the earliest years.
In many Canadian Indigenous cultures, children were expected to help at home in whatever way they could, dependent on age and ability. They often had a loose routine of daily activities, with time to play, time for chores, and time for learning in a more structured way. They were contributing members of the family and had some independence. When Indigenous children were removed from their homes and placed in residential schools, they lost that independence.
In general, European educational techniques meant for students to feel powerless, to be objects, trainable, and treated as their elders and better saw fit. Residential school schedules were rigid, the children constantly supervised, and punished severely for any deviation, or supposed deviation. Most Indigenous children had never faced corporal punishment at home, and the threat of being beaten with a strap kept many in constant fear. They were rendered powerless.
Some children were excited to go to school for the first time. Their parents had told them it was important to learn to read and write. Siblings who had already attended were often unable to prepare their younger family members for the intensity of what they would face. Also, once at school, there was limited interaction between siblings as different age groups and the sexes were kept separate.
Corporal punishment and loss of privilege characterized the residential school system. Staff often considered the children as scared animals in need of taming. Militaristic discipline with heavy consequences for stepping out of line was prevalent. Public humiliation, head shaving, bread and water diets, and strappings were common punishments.
Speaking one's native language was one of the most heavily punished offenses, with abuses akin to torture. One student reported that needles were driven through his tongue on one occasion. Other survivors mentioned things like having to lay face down on the floor for days, or kneel on broom handles for hours. The staff weren't the only ones who were abusive.
In order to survive, an every person for themselves attitude formed among the students. Similar to prison culture, gangs of students formed and competed over the limited resources and privileges. New kids were often physically tested on their first day to see how tough they were. This was more common among the boys, but it also occurred amongst the girls.
Also like prison culture, sexual favors were sometimes traded for protection or food. These favors were traded to both staff and other students, regardless of personal sexual preference. Normal, healthy sexuality was an unheard of concept at most residential schools. Teaching students about sexuality was thought to lead to sin, so it's unlikely the children ever learned about sex, menstruation, pregnancy, or anything about the changes in their own bodies when they went through puberty.
Boys and girls were kept separate except for rare dances. There was no opportunity to experience any sort of romantic relationship. One survivor recalled trading alcohol to the night guard to be let into the girl's dormitory to have sex. Another survivor recalled her eight-year-old sister being taken into bed by a staff member one night, and that was not the first instance it had happened to one of the girls in her dormitory.
European societal roles based on sex were also enforced. Female students were only taught domestic tasks like sewing and cooking, while males were taught industrial skills like carpentry, farming, and home repair. The schools were meant to be self-sustaining thanks to the agriculture and industrial production undertaken by the students, but this often never occurred as anything that was produced was sold outside the school. In terms of academic education, the children were not well educated at all.
Compared to non-Indigenous children at regular schools, Indigenous students at residential schools received half to less than half the academic education of non-Indigenous students. Scientific experimentation was also undertaken on students without their knowledge or consent. These highly unethical nutrition experiments were performed on children at six Indian residential schools between 1942 and 1952 by Dr. Percy Moore and Dr.
Frederick Tisdale, both leaders in the Department of Indian Affairs of Canada. In the experiments, control and treatment groups of malnourished children were denied adequate nutrition. Medical historian Maureen Lux of Brock University stated that Indigenous children were also used as subjects of a tuberculosis vaccine trial in the province of Saskatchewan in the 1930s. Between October 1933 and 1945, a total of 609 infants were involved in the tests.
Half were given the vaccine and half were not. One survivor recalled that older healthy children were forcibly exposed to the sick to infect them for these trials. Despite the harsh and highly regulated atmosphere of the schools, resistance was always present in some form. Some resistance was subtle, like children sneaking into a sibling's dormitory to sleep together, like they used to at home.
Theft was another common way of resisting, the targeted items usually being food. Students often worked in the kitchens, preparing food for the whole school, including the staff who often had more varied and tastier meals. Student kitchen workers were able to take rarities like fruit and sweets for themselves and other children. These could then be traded for other things, like protection or in some cases alcohol.
Another common resistance method was the control of emotion and pain response. By refusing to cry out or become angry or scared during corporal punishment, the children refused to give their punishers satisfaction. In several of the interviews I read, survivors spoke with pride about how angry and frustrated it made the nuns when they didn't respond to beatings. However, this type of emotional blocking had detrimental effects later in life, which I'll get to in a moment.
Visits with parents were highly limited, but could either be at the school or back at home on the reserve. Visits at the school were supervised by school staff, and often only English was allowed. This made it difficult for parents and children to communicate. Presents given to children were often confiscated once the visit was over.
When visits home were granted, they were often fraught with complicated emotions. Most younger students were glad to be away from school, but also felt resentful of parents for sending them away, as they didn't understand the repercussions for their parents if they didn't go. For older students who had been attending residential schools for several years, it was even harder to go back to their communities as they were no longer as fluent in their native language and customs. Years of being made to feel ashamed of being indigenous, interrupted relationships, and the passage of knowledge from elders to youth.
The brutal brainwashing going on at the schools made many young people believe their elder's knowledge was shameful or sinful. The parents had also suffered while their children were away, being confined to the reserve in most cases. Some parents developed unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with the powerlessness they felt. Feelings of abandonment and loss of connection with culture were present in both children and parents.
For many, things were never the same again. When residential schools began to decline and more day schools became available, many students switched to day schools. Over 700 federally funded church-run day schools were attended by an estimated 200,000 indigenous peoples between 1870 and a year 2000. The students lived at home with their families and went to school during the day.
Day schools, however, were not much better than residential schools in terms of the abuse suffered by the students. Temporary child care workers working at St. Michael's residential school in British Columbia in the 1970s reported little to no documentation of the children, no records on parents, siblings, health, anything. They also stated that the school was very insular, with the principal having a lot of authority and no obvious oversight from any higher organization.
There was no emphasis on education or care, just control and discipline. New students were still having their heads shaved and their traditional clothing burned on arrival. The true number of deaths is unknown due to inconsistent reporting like this and destruction of records either accidental or purposeful. Most deaths that were recorded were linked to malnutrition, poor sanitation and disease.
Most deaths occurred before 1950 and were often not communicated to parents. The bodies were not returned either as it was considered too expensive. Residential schools had a lasting adverse effect on those who attended, as well as their children and grandchildren. Through modern studies in epigenetics, it's been shown that trauma in a parent or grandparent, even when they were young children, can biologically alter gene expression.
These changes are then passed on to their children and grandchildren. This alteration can lead to lifelong changes in the stress response in both the trauma survivors and their descendants. Biological and behavioral coping mechanisms to subsequent trauma events therefore become exaggerated. It's also been shown that children of trauma survivors who then suffer trauma themselves are more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, even in early childhood.
This passing down of trauma is called intergenerational trauma. The schools caused biological and social trauma to generations of Indigenous peoples. Survivors experienced cultural breakdown, mental illness and developed detrimental coping mechanisms like substance abuse, angry outbursts and other emotional problems. Because native languages were banned, children lost the ability to speak to their parents and their community.
They couldn't voice their trauma. Survivors built up such strong emotional walls while at school that they couldn't emote once they left, which led to problems in all social aspects, especially when they became parents themselves. Speaking their native language had earned survivors' beatings, so they didn't teach it to their children, causing further cultural breakdown. Many survivors had learned not to trust anyone while at school, a trait that was often passed on to their children.
On top of all of this, survivors also found it hard to get jobs in the non-Indigenous world, as the schools had not actually provided them with the knowledge to do so. This led to poverty, which led to further depression, anxiety and trauma. Many survivors sought escape in substances, and many took their own lives. Not all teachers were horrible, not all students were abused, but the prevalence was so high that most students at least witnessed abuse, and for some people that's enough to cause trauma.
Some people argue today that the missionaries had good intentions, that they were sharing their knowledge which was essential for survival in 19th and 20th century Canada. It's true that in treaties, it was stipulated that the government educated the Indigenous peoples, but making it compulsory, then kidnapping children, holding them hostage from their families, beating them into submission, and then hiding these facts from the public is not education. Details of mistreatment and neglect were published numerous times during the 20th century by government officials who were sent to inspect the facilities. Starting as early as 1907, reports of the harrowing conditions were made public, but quickly covered up by those in power.
Some acknowledgment of wrongdoing began in the 1980s, but no apology or reparation occurred. In 1990, Phil Fontaine, leader of the Association of Manitoba Chiefs, revealed he was sexually abused by the Oblates at the Manitoba Residential School he'd attended. His highly publicized report joined hundreds of others about sexual abuse at both residential and day schools. The Catholic Church-run institutions especially came under fire, as 60% of residential schools were run by Catholic denominations.
In 1991, after over 100 years of residential schools operating in Canada, a conference was held in Williams Lake Vancouver for survivors to share their experiences, support each other, and bring awareness to the public. Soon after, major legal allegations began against the government and the churches who ran the schools, sexual abuse being the major focus, as this was unfortunately what caught the public's attention the most. A Royal Commission of Aboriginal Peoples, or RCAP, began an investigation into the schools. In 1996, the last residential school closed, the same year that the RCAP released its report, detailing the horrors suffered by the survivors.
However, the report was buried within a larger report on various topics, and the public couldn't grasp the extent of the abuse. Having received no reparation and no apology, individual survivors took to the courts. Multitudes of civil and criminal cases seeking to establish the liability of the church and the federal government for their rules in the abuses brought greater public awareness to the schools. There were many guilty verdicts, but few punishments given, as many of the perpetrators were already dead by this point.
The biggest case was that of Hubert Patrick O'Connor, a Catholic bishop that served as principal of St. Joseph's Mission Residential School in Williams Lake, British Columbia. In 1991, he was accused and charged with multiple sex crimes against multiple women, who were children during his time as principal in the 1960s. While the trial was unsuccessful in attaining a guilty result, it was highly publicized and brought some closure to the victims through an apology.
The now-deceased O'Connor is currently being sued again for sexual assault against several boys during his time as principal. This case is ongoing. By March of 2001, there were over 7,000 individually filed suits against the church and the government. In 2004, around 12,000 individual litigants were involved in pursuing a class action suit against a Canadian government and the churches called Cloud vs Canada, after the original plaintiff, Marlene C.
Cloud. In 2005, Canada appointed a former Supreme Court justice to negotiate a lasting resolution to the legacy of residential schools. In May 2006, the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement was signed by the governor of Canada, the Assembly of First Nations, or AFN, regional Inuit representatives, three Protestant churches, and 44 Roman Catholic Diocese and religious orders who had administered the schools. The Settlement Agreement was intended to encompass all certified and proposed class action and individual lawsuits.
Critics of the Settlement Agreement felt the compensation was far below what it should be and didn't reflect the magnitude of the suffering. In 2007, the Canadian Courts approved the revised Settlement Agreement. Financial compensation between 5,000 and 275,000 Canadian dollars, depending on experience at the schools, was pledged to individual survivors. 269 million Canadian dollars was pledged for healing programs, such as documenting survivor experiences and national and community commemorative projects, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, TRC, was founded to preserve the history and expose the lasting impacts of the residential schools through public and private meetings with survivors by commemorating those who died and raising awareness.
In 2008, an apology was finally issued by the Canadian government. All major Canadian political parties also apologized. In 2012, 1.6 billion was paid out to former students. 94,230 survivors applied for the offered common experience payment of $10,000 for their first year of school and 3,000 for every subsequent year of attendance.
However, 17,732 applications were rejected for lack of proof of attendance, the records of which had been lost by the schools. A second compensation scheme was set up, the independent assessment process for those who had suffered sexual and physical abuse or other trauma that resulted in serious psychological impairment. Survivors were eligible for between 5,000 and 275,000, depending on their experience. Their experiences were quantified using a points system for various abuses and resulting harm, the assessment also required proof.
Critics of both schemes were angered by the need for witnesses and documentation when their trust wasn't any. In 2009, Gary McLean began a National Class Action lawsuit to achieve justice and compensation for Canadian Indian Day School survivors. Day schools weren't included in the TRC, nor were they included in the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement of 2006. In August of 2019, the Canadian Federal Court approved a settlement agreement for survivors of the day schools.
The claims process is still ongoing. In 2015, the TRC stated in its final report that the residential school system amounted to cultural genocide. Evidence for the abuses had been found in abundance. The same year the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation, NCTR, opened at the University of Manitoba as an archive of the research, documents and testimonies collected during the TRC's investigations.
It continues that research to this day. And then in 2021, ground penetrating radar was used around Kamloops Indian Residential School and around 215 anomalies were detected. University of Fraser Valley anthropologist Sarah Boulou, who surveyed the site, reported the anomalies, were likely the graves of young children. While there have long been rumors of unmarked graves at residential schools, if the findings in this preliminary report are confirmed, it will be the first time a major burial site has been discovered.
Exumations have yet to be undertaken. While the victims and survivors of Canada's residential schools are finally being heard, and justice is slowly being delivered, for those children who suffered through residential schools, this is just the first step in a long process of healing and reconciliation. Some people might argue it was a different time when the school started, but many were still running into the 90s, with allegations of abuse reflective of those documented in the early 1900s being reported in the 1970s. That is modern history.
The fact that it was buried for so long is telling that those who ran the schools knew what they were doing was wrong, but they continued anyway. So why did the schools persist? Why, when they were hurting children and also failing at education and the more sinister goal of assimilation, did the schools not close? Sociologist Dr.
Eric T. Woods of the University of Plymouth suggests that early on, at least for the churches, it was a sacred enterprise. Colonialism was thought to be guided by God, as it held the belief of European superiority. So these ventures, which blurred evangelical and quote civilizing, unquote, were a sacred mission of aid.
As time went on, it's possible this mindset was so institutionalized, so ingrained through brutality that it continued. There are four books I would recommend reading, if you want to know more. Indian School Days by Basil Johnson, Resistance and Renewal, Surviving the Indian Residential School by Celia Heg Brown, A National Crime, the Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879-1986 by John S. Nelloy, and Separate Beds, a history of Indian hospitals in Canada, 1920s-1980s by Maureen Catherine Lux.
Awareness has been raised through the persistence of the survivors, as reparations continue to be made and unmarked graves continue to be detected, it has become apparent that there is no quick or easy resolution. All that can be done is acknowledge that it happened, memorialize those who do not survive, listen to those that did, and do all in our power to make sure it doesn't happen again. Thank you so much for being here today, and thank you so much for being here today. Because of you the listeners, our creepy community is growing, especially on Facebook, so head over there to engage with other listeners, discuss episodes, suggest topics, and share your own morbid curiosities.
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