The Church, Residential Schools, and The Blanket Exercise

Bethlehem High School

Carlos E. Del Castillo Ortega

December 19th, 2019

Indigenous Sudies 30

Ms. T. Merasty.

The Church, Residential Schools, and The Blanket Exercise.

It is call upon church parties to the Settlement Agreement to continue developing education strategies. This call to action is already complete.

This strategies were to guarantee that their group of communities learn about the church's role during the colonization, what were and what did residential schools left, and why apologies to the founders students of residential schools, to their families, and communities were necessary. KAIROS Canada is an organization that works for human rights that took the initiative to make all churches that were involved with residential schools to teach about the history of them.

The Church Role and Residential Schools:

Residential schools were academic and religious institutions for held by the Canadian government and also by some churches. The main purpose for these schools were to re-educate and to introduce the aboriginal children to their new type of Euro-Canadian lifestyle.

The first residential school in Canada was opened in Ontario in 1831, and it was called The Mohawk Institute in Brantford. This school started as a normal day of school for Six Nations boys.

This re-educating method was carried out in a cruel and inhuman way. It is said to be cruel and inhuman way since the contact of aboriginal children with their families was taken away, also they had prohibited to speak their native language and to practice their cultural and religious beliefs.  If the parents of the children did not agree to send their children to residential schools, they were taken out and taken by force.

The government manipulated the aboriginals for many reasons, but what the parents of the aboriginal children did not know is that once they agreed and signed the requests for their children to go to the residential school, automatically the school principal had the custody of the child, even during summer vacations.

The way to transport the aboriginal children to residential schools were without the knowledge of their parents, they boarded them by boats or airplanes, but on other occasions they were placed into cattle waggons and transported at night.

One of the darkest things about residential schools is everything that aboriginal children had to go through, from psychological abuse to physical abuse. There is a very long list of all kinds of abuse or punishment that they made to aboriginal children. The buildings and facilities of the residential schools were of poor quality and had no ventilation, and this was one of the biggest causes of why the aboriginal children died in these buildings, since they were infected with many diseases.  

There is an estimate that 6,000 of indigenous children died at residential schools, but this record is incomplete, because some children died as fugitives and froze in the snow, trying to escape their aggressors. Others, who also tried, died drowned and by freezing in rivers. But something even more sad is that some aboriginal children were not strong enough to withstand the school abuse and chose to commit suicide.

The last residential school closed it doors in 1996, in Punnichy, Saskatchewan and it was called The Gordon Residential School.

No apologize to the founder’s students.

It was hoped that after the residential schools closed their doors, the Catholic church would apologize to all those aboriginal people who had to go through it. But it was not like that, despite everything the church did, they refuse to apologize.

The Catholic community in Canada says that they are not responsible for all the acts that the bishops performed on aboriginal students in residential schools. It also highlights that each religious community is legally responsible for its own acts, and states that the Catholic Church was not associated with residential schools.

These are the reasons why the catholic church refuses to apologize to aboriginal students for residential schools.

Although the Catholic church refuses to apologize, there are four religious communities in Canada who apologized to the indigenous people. Here are the 4 religious communities with a piece of their apology:

Angelican Church of Canada: “Together here with you we have listened as you have told your stories of the residential schools. we have heard the voices that have spoken of pain and hurt experienced in the schools, and of the scars which endure to this day. We have felt shame and humiliation, as well we have heard of suffering inflicted by my people, and as we think of the part our church played in that suffering.” (Angelican Church, August 1996, Pg. 1)

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