Residential Schools still exist in Canada and around the world. in Vancouver,for instance, there is a residential school located quite close to UBC; St. George’s is a private residential and day school for boys, a preparatory school .There are also a number of well-known and well-established residential schools in Great Britain. Princes William and Harry attended Eton College and their father Prince Charles, Gordonstoun. Stories have been written about the extreme unhappiness experienced by well-known literary figures in residential schools, but the weight of their suffering is dwarfed by the suffering of so many of the First Nations children in the 80 or so residential schools established by the Canadian government. Scott Watson in “Witnesses” quotes Geoffrey Carr as saying the Indian residential school was a “total institution” (page 6). The total institution, the Indian Residential School, not only sought to control every aspect of a child’s life, but to do it in such a way that the child would forsake his Aboriginal culture in favor of European culture. The children were not allowed to use their own language and were often isolated from their home communities. And- no surprise- if the schools had been generously funded and properly staffed and supervised- the program might very well have succeeded, because the children were coming into the schools from stable communities. With good treatment they might have received a beneficial education. The modern residential schools certainly have a good reputation for producing well-educated alumni. In contrast to children in the modern schools, however, the Aboriginal children were often malnourished, lived in crowded conditions, died from contagious diseases, and were severely punished. Their punishments sometimes went beyond the regular caning and strapping done in all schools at that time. This is documented at the “Speaking to Memory” display of survivors’ writings on the walls of the O’Brian Gallery Moa at the Museum of Anthropology. There have always been a few who have expressed appreciation for the residential school experience, though. Perhaps it is significant that the index for Thomas King’s informal history of aboriginals in North America, “The Inconvenient Indian,” does not contain a listing for “school” or “residential school.” What we do in the future should be the focus.
I wonder what Bill Reid’s Haida mother would have written? At the age of ten, she was sent from Skidegate Mission village in the southern part of the Haida Gwaii archipelago “as a year-round student at an Anglican residential school on the mainland where she was forbidden to speak her Haida mother tongue, and where she learned to speak English and sew. She was an English teacher before her marriage, and spoke excellent English,” as is mentioned in The Raven’s Call. She lived in Victoria for the most part and raised her son in the English-speaking culture of the city. As an adult he frequently returned to Haida Gwaii for inspiration in his development as an artist. Some measure of his artistic success is displayed at the Museum. Perhaps something was gained from both cultures.