Residential Schools

Residential Schools are Boarding Schools for acculturation and assimilation of Aboriginal students, run by religious groups or government from the 1830’s to the 1950’s. These schools are trying to change the culture of aboriginal students to make them follow the culture and religion of the white people.

These schools made the aboriginal students to stay away from their parents for long periods of a time. The reason being is that the government didn’t want the aboriginal children to follow the traditions and the history of their people. The Europe owned Canada during this time so they wanted their ways to be expressed through the world.

In 1884, the Indian ct was amended to make attendance in Indian Schools Compulsory for status Indians under the age 16 until they reached 18 years of age. This Legislation created a system of Government-funded, church-run residential schools. The schools were located in every province, including Alberta, but not Newfoundland Labrador, or New Brunswick, or P.E.I.

In these Schools they had social Consequences. Some believe that many of the social problems that communities of the Aboriginal face today are problems and consequences. Directly or indirectly the residential schools under laid the social environments of the Aboriginal people. They had a physical and emotional abuse in these schools, which caused hardships and sadness.            

The schools, I think were hell to the Aboriginal people, because they didn’t get to lead their lives in their own way. They didn’t get to experience their culture and how to follow the traditions from what their ancestors after ancestors did.