After almost six years of testimonies, research, and information gathering, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission finally released a 400-page summary of an upcoming report that evaluates the impact of residential schools on First Nations people. The report also details 94 recommendations that call for reform to make reparations for the damage done.
The residential schools forcefully removed Aboriginal children from their families and communities, removed their names and identities, and subjected them to years of emotional, physical, and oftentimes sexual abuse. It was an attempted excuse to forcefully assimilate them and though people are reacting with anger and patriotic shame, it’s still happening, albeit in a subtler manner.
The basis of current assimilation stems from legislation and policy that has bred decades of narrow-sighted and ignorant attitudes. These stereotypes have resulted in the belief that First Nations people are undeserving of separate status and should just become “citizens like the rest of us.” However, such attitudes show ignorance as to the root cause and the injustice that has been heaped on First Nations people for generations. In order to maintain their culture, they’ve been forced to live in poverty on reserves; subjected to abuse in residential schools that offered no foundational education, and been stripped of all rights to be self-governing even as far provincial powers extend. Since none of these elements were ever corrected in legislation, it became an assimilate-or-suffer scenario.
In the early years of Canada’s history, most of us remember how First Nations people were cheated out of rich farmable land and forced onto too small and often unviable reserves. This compulsory relocation left no room for traditional ways of living, lack of infrastructure, and poor planning which very soon resulted in poverty. And that hasn’t changed much. By 1995, an average of 55.6 per cent of Aboriginal people living in Canadian cities were poor. There is very little financial support for people on the reserves, but there are grants and scholarships for Aboriginals who want to go to post-secondary school off the reserve. Summarily, the government will only financially support you if you want to get off the reserve and integrate with Canadians.
This leads straight into my second point about education. The residential schools didn’t actually teach Aboriginal children anything more than religious dogma and manual labour. Many could barely even read by their teenage years and by the time they returned to their families, they were isolated from their own cultures as well as the Canadian culture. If you take generations and apply this kind of destruction, it’s no surprise that there isn’t a well-developed education system on any reserve. Most young people either fall into the same self-destructive patterns as their forebears or try to escape and do voluntarily what the residential schools tried to force: assimilate. Since the last few generations are the refugees of residential schools, much of their culture was destroyed as well - so subsequent generations are inheriting less and less of a cultural education.
To reinforce this and further assist integration, there is very little Aboriginal content in current school curricula and there remains a lack of cultural sensitivity. In fact, the only thing that touches on Aboriginals is the brief mention of the role they played in Canada’s history. This means that many Canadians are actually ignorant about the full reality of the First Nations’ past and current situation, which has led to the existing insensitive stereotypes and desire for them to assimilate, a.k.a. “become Canadian.”
Finally, we come to self-determination. The First Nations people already had well-developed democratic systems in line with their values with governing bodies such as the League of Six Nations. With the imposition of the Indian Act, arbitrary laws that were ignorant of their beliefs and flawed in its construction attempted to limit any form of self-governance. It created the band council system, which required chiefs to report to the federal government regarding any social, cultural, economic, housing, health or educational services decisions.
At the end of the day, there are a lot of legal problems the federal government and First Nations people would have to untangle to resolve things. However, the very fact that the Aboriginals have managed to hang onto their identities despite the government’s cultural assaults means that assimilation is not the answer. It might be too late to give them their own province like they did for the French people with Quebec, but there are some things they can do.
First, they can start by giving Aboriginals the right to govern themselves, subject only to the applicable federal laws like every other province (granted, this will require some compromise on their part). Second, they can be given back control over their own services and replace duty to consult with shared jurisdiction. Finally, there has to be enough investment over time for First Nations to rebuild their own infrastructure until such time when it’s no longer needed.
Obviously, these are all monumental proposals in comparison to the government’s current capacity to accomplish them, but they have to start somewhere. What’s happening now is still assimilation and it’s neither working nor is it going away.
