How did Native American residential schools affect indigenous communities?
How did Native American residential schools affect indigenous communities?
This webpage is a brief rundown on residential schools in Canada and the United States from the early 1800s to the mid-1900s, and how the forced removal of their children into residential schools run by the government and the Catholic Church irreversibly changed native culture.
Native residential schools (formerly referred to as boarding schools) were operated in the US and Canada from the early 1800s until the mid-1900s, 125 schools in Canada and over 400 in the United States across 37 states (25 off-reservation boarding schools, 157 on-reservation, and 307 day schools. (MacDonald and Husdon 2012, Carrillo 2024, Smith 2004) These schools were government-sanctioned and typically run by the government, the Catholic church, or some combination of both. Native children were required by government mandate to attend these schools, sometimes as early as four years old. (MacDonald and Hudson 2012, Dawson 2012) By 1920, in Canada, federal law stated that all native children were required to attend either a residential or day school. The goal of the schools was to “civilize” the native peoples and assimilate them into white, Anglo-American, Christian culture. (Davis 2001) In many instances, children were forcibly taken from their families, not to be reunited again for years or months, if ever (some schools would send students to work during the summer break)(MacDonald and Hudson 2012, Whalen 2016).
Many of the schools started on the reservations before they were moved off the reservation to keep the children away from the culture and influence of their parents/tribes. (Dawson 2012, Feir 2016, Smith 2004) Many children attempted to run away from these schools back to their families. Parents who refused to give up their children were fined or jailed. (Minnesota Historical Society 2012)
Education standards across these institutions varied greatly; many focus less on education and more on teaching the children skills to become workers and servants for the well-off white populace. Boys and girls were typically separated in school, reinforcing white Anglo-Christian gender roles. The girls were taught domestic roles such as cooking, cleaning, and, in doing so, they introduced the girls to white patriarchal norms, permanently altering the way native communities view gender and gender roles. The boys’ schools were forced to cut their hair and sent out to work in the fields (National Museum of the American Indian 2020, Smith 2004). Both groups were given uniforms and English names (biblical names if the church ran the school) upon arrival at the school and instructed to only speak English; speaking in their native language would result in physical punishment. (MacDonald and Hudson 2012, Feir 2016)
An unfortunate feature of many of these schools was physical and/or sexual abuse. A report in Canada made by the Truth Commission on Genocide found a network of pedophile rings using residential school students maintained by the police, local business and government officials, the clergy, and other church and school staff. The close quarters also fostered diseases that often went untreated, leading to many deaths. Bodies in unmarked graves have been found at numerous schools across the US and Canada. Reports indicate that 973 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children died in US residential schools (confirmed deaths; the number is expected to be higher). (Carrillo 2024)
Some of the biggest challenges faced by modern native communities are a direct result of the trauma suffered in these schools. The intergenerational trauma and cultural disintegration inflicted upon students at these schools often produced genocidal outcomes. (MacDonald and Hudson 2012) While many were forced to give up their children to schools, some parents believed their children would be more successful in dealing with white people if the children were educated on their religious practices, language, and culture. Children were taken or voluntarily put into these residential schools. Left to be raised by strangers who believed them to be barbarians in need of saving. Children would come home, sometimes after many years, sometimes for the summer, unable to speak their native tongue because they had forgotten it after speaking English for so long. The goal of these schools was "assimilation," but because of racism, the natives would never be able to truly assimilate into "proper" society. (Smith 2004)
These schools were "places of both victimization and agency for Native people, and they served as sites of both cultural loss and cultural persistence." (Davis 2001) But most were "resistant to the residential schooling system." (Feir 2016) Sexual, physical, and emotional abuse ran rampant through these schools, and reported abuse was largely ignored or swept under the rug. (Smith 2004) Reports in Canada claim over 50,000 children were murdered by the residential school system by way of strangulation, starvation, poisoning, hanging, beating, and medical experimentation. (Smith 2004) All of this abuse created generational trauma within native communities. These boarding schools introduced extreme rates of sexual and emotional violence into these families. Children who grew up in these schools went on to perpetuate that abuse within their native communities upon their return (Smith 2004)
More action has been taken in Canada to acknowledge these crimes and find a way to help the victims of these schools heal than there has been in the United States, largely due to how human rights and genocide laws are written in each country. Steps that were being taken have been halted by the government's instability.
In many ways, these schools "facilitated cultural persistence in a number of unintended ways," forcing students to adapt to maintain what they could of their culture. (Smith 2004)
- The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition: Created to develop and implement a national strategy that increases public awareness and cultivates healing for the profound trauma experienced by individuals, families, communities, American Indian and Alaska Native Nations resulting from the U.S. adoption and implementation of the Boarding School Policy of 1869.
- Native American Rights Fund: Fights to protect Native American rights, resources, and lifeways through litigation, legal advocacy, and legal expertise.
- Unspoken: America's Native American Boarding Schools: PBS Special from 2016 examining the history, operation, and legacy of the federal Indian Boarding School system.
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