Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Education and Psychology
Doctoral Programme in Education
Tibor Németh
Cultural Colonization and Education Indian Residential Schools in Canada
PhD Dissertation Summary Booklet
Supervisor:
M. Nádasi Mária CSc, professor emerita
Budapest 2011
Cultural Colonization and Education
Indian Residential Schools in Canada
The topic of dissertation
This dissertation examines the theme of Cultural colonization and education through the system of Indian Residential Schools set up for aboriginal peoples in Canada. It is divided into seven chapters which discuss the topic of residential schools and move along a path of concentric circles while respecting and invoking the epistemology of native Canadian peoples.
Chapter 1 introduces the conceptual framework for subsequent themes and presents successive education policies imposed on Canadian aboriginals by non-Aboriginals from first contact to 2011 in what is Canada's territory today.
Chapter 2 maps out the principles of education policy which were applied in two former British colonies (Australia and the USA) for handling aboriginal people, and which were apparently very similar to those employed in Canada. In this chapter, the theme of residential schools for native people is put into perspective, allowing us to explore and interpret similarities and differences between the various applications.
Chapter 3 shows what kind of treatment aboriginal children were subjected to in the Canadian Indian Residential Schools, which were set up and run at the behest of public authorities, but to whose operation the Church significantly contributed. Life inside these schools is described based on personal reminiscences.
Chapter 4 argues that the establishment and operation of these schools was not, as it is often presented, the result of a policy which was, no matter how mistaken, guided by humanitarian intentions. Rather, the Indian Residential Schools were a terrain for genocide committed against Canada's native peoples; a genocidal intent was the reason both for their introduction and their continued existence.
Based on personal accounts, I follow the later life of residential school graduates in
Chapter 5. It has been shown that as a stone thrown into water creates ever expanding ripples on the surface of the lake, so the suffering of the individual infects the life of the community in which one belongs. The system of residential schools affected not only the lives of inmates, but also those of all their descendants and ascendants.
Chapter 6 is about the quest for healing. The economic and health indicators of the 150,000 children who attended the residential schools, and those of their descendants, testify to the miserable situation of the aboriginals. By the new millennium, a new form of colonization, a health industry informed by Euro-Canadian values and managed by the "white man" emerged in Canada to restore the health of indigenous people. According to the aboriginal peoples, healing should aim to restore wholeness; therefore, the use of ancient wisdom from Elders is a preferred approach.
In Chapter 7 I discuss the process of recovery from the wounds inflicted by the residential schools, embedding this problem into the wider horizon of the de-construction of colonization. Financial compensation schemes, redrafting the laws on aboriginal peoples, restitution in the form of the return of Indian land, as well as the government-driven process of social reconciliation now all attempt to dismantle the constituents of the colonization of aboriginal peoples and to remedy its dismal heritage.
The aim of this research
The flood of immigrants arriving in ever growing numbers on the North American continent from the 1840 onwards proclaiming the superiority of their lifestyle – and relying on improved fighting techniques – swept away, forced into reservations and almost erased the aboriginal population from the face of the earth. A peculiar arena to the uneven fight for life was the ideological warfare fought between political power and state machinery on the one hand and Aboriginal children on the other in residential schools. These became "forcing houses" used as forced assimilation for more than one hundred years all around the United States and Canada.
In analyzing the different types of genocidal policy put into use to the detriment of the Aboriginal population, as well as their legal consequences, my dissertation wants to call attention – in the horizon of the challenges and opportunities of present day Canadian society – to the dangers of using schooling as a weapon.
The aim of my research was to answer the following questions:
1. Why and how were the Indian Residential Schools established and maintained in Canada?
2. Are there similarities and differences between residential institutions aimed at aboriginal minorities in Australia, the United States and Canada?
3. What was life for pupils like in the Canadian schools, operated by churches and financed by the state?
4. Did the educational policy put into practice in Indian Residential Schools lead to genocide?
5. What happened to the former schoolchildren after leaving the schools?
6. Is there any difference between the Aboriginal and the Euro-Canadian concepts of health?
7. What might the appropriate direction to healing be for aboriginal people as they seek to recover as individuals and as communities from the wounds inflicted onto them by colonization?
Findings
1. Since the early 16th century, settlers and governments provided continuous support to the establishment of schools by Christian groups coming from Europe to the New World.
Education provided a unique opportunity to convert "pagans" into Christians, or obedient subjects.
2. Policies towards the aboriginals in the USA, Australia and Canada were all derived from a common source, the Aboriginese Report of 1837, but were all adapted to local conditions, and thus led to somewhat different results. The declared goals of education were the same everywhere: to save the children from the horrendous life of their ascendants, to prepare them for the social role to which they were destined and to bring to them the boons of Christianity and civilization.
3. Life inside the residential schools, as described on the basis of eyewitness accounts, testifies to the bottomless suffering school staff inflicted on the children through various forms of abuse of power, but demonstrates just as well the will to survive, the desire to be loved, the human (child-like) fragility and strength lying behind complicity and broken enthusiasm.
4. Point (b) (causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group) and (c) (deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part) of Article 2 of the United Nation’s 1948 Genocide Convention describes cases which actually happened in Canadian residential schools to aboriginal children, and for which the government of Canada is fully responsible.
5. All descendants of former pupils, every parent and relative, and the communities as a whole are also all affected by the impact of Indian residential schooling. Due to the spontaneous repetition in adulthood of behavioral patterns learned in childhood, the children of former pupils have been typically brought up in unstable, dysfunctional family settings exposed to an increased risk of sexual and physical abuse, hampered by poor communication skills, low self-esteem, underdeveloped sociability and insecure relations to the community. The heritage of Canadian Indian Residential Schools is never ending misery.
6. Canadian Indigenous Peoples paid a very high price for the government's enforcement of Western attitude toward life. The Canadian government now has the responsibility and the obligation to give a chance to the aboriginals to exercise the rights granted to indigenous peoples in the 21st century. Native Peoples have the responsibility not to let a rage rooted in misery govern their actions, but rather let their response be guided by the search for wholeness according to the teachings of their Elders.
7. Financial compensation, redrafting the laws on indigenous peoples, restitution in the form of the return of Indian land, as well as the government-driven process of social reconciliation now all attempt to dismantle the constituents of the colonization of aboriginal peoples and to remedy its dismal heritage. Bringing to light the Indian Residential School experience not only transcends the phase of the denial of the past, but it is also a strong catalyst of people's commitment to healing.
Related publications
Németh T. (2009.): Indiánnak iskolát, Iskolakultúra, 2009/11. pp. 140-146.
Németh T. (2010): Vae victis, Iskolakultúra, 2010/3. pp. 3-14.
Németh T. (2010.): Mikor az öregek szava nem jut át, Taní-tani, 2010/3. pp. 16-21.
Németh T. (2011.): Kört a kör köré, Taní-tani, manuscript submitted for publication
