Common Misconceptions of the Indian Residential School System

A Response to Terry Glavin

Photo by Andrew George on Unsplash

By Brian Giesbrecht

Terry Glavin has moved the discussion of residential schools one step forward with his analysis of the burials and graves issue in the National Post.  It is reprehensible that in today’s Canada, courageous journalists such as Mr. Glavin are facing severe reprimand, or worse, for merely presenting facts that go against the prevailing narrative on any subject concerning residential schools.                                                                                                                  

The Canadian public is being barraged with misinformation that brands the residential schools as purveyors of unrelenting deprivation, negligence and abuse.  While I largely agree with Mr. Glavin’s observations on the matter of the student graves, I find it unfortunate that his general views of the schools follow this point of view.  

I take issue, in particular, with Mr. Glavin’s assertions that the residential schools wantonly neglected the health and wellbeing of the students, and that they committed “cultural genocide”.   In so doing, he simply reinforces many of the common misconceptions.  

Below, I highlight (in bold) and discuss a number of assertions Mr. Glavin made in an article he wrote in The Tyee in 2008 (“Truth and Native Abuse”); and recently, in 2022 in the National Post (“The year of the graves: How the world’s media got it wrong on residential school graves”).  

I want to make clear from the outset that my intent is not to either blanketly justify the residential schools or be dismissive of harms that were done.  My aim is merely to add more balance to the telling of the story.  

“Cultural genocide, churning out obedient regiments of brown-skinned white people.”   

Although they were normative and considered acceptable in the early period of the residential schools, many of the views of Indigenous people held by the government and the general Canadian population were crude and paternalistic.   Within Indian Affairs and the residential school system, however, opinions on Indigenous ways and culture evolved and came to be viewed more sympathetically and respectfully.                                                          

The following excerpt from the 1937 Department of Indian Affairs Annual Report is illustrative: “An encouraging feature of educational effort [in the residential and day schools] during the year was discovered in…the tendency and willingness of the Indians to recognize the value and distinctiveness of their arts and crafts.  Consideration has been given to ways and means whereby the Indian population can be encouraged to conserve still further their ancient values and skills and thus contribute to the cultural life of the nation.”                                                                                                                              

The residential schools in many respects aided the survival of Indigenous culture by incorporating traditional music, dance and art into classes and school activities. The Indian Affairs annual reports and other sources are replete with examples of the residential schools’ encouragement of Indigenous cultural expression.  At the Cluny, Alberta school in 1938, students dressed in beaded costumes danced to the rhythm of Indian drums and war songs to an audience of over 300.[1]  In 1963, the school at Cardston hosted a troop of Blackfoot actors who showed a film on Blackfoot life in the early days, followed by a pageant depicting Blackfoot traditions and featuring a Sundance.[2]  A choir from the Portage La Prairie school sang in English and Cree at Expo ‘67 in Montreal.[3]  In the 1950s, the Gordon’s School in Saskatchewan established a powwow dance troupe that travelled extensively in Canada, the United States and several European countries.[4]  The Alberni school in British Columbia hired Victoria artist George Sinclair to teach classes.  One of his students, Judith Morgan, became renowned throughout North America for her work depicting Indigenous themes.[5]  In 1958, students at the Sir John Franklin School in Yellowknife were encouraged and helped to achieve a high standard in Inuit handicrafts.  Some of the students did commissioned work on their own time.[6]

The Oblate Sisters who served at residential schools in Alberta and Saskatchewan over a period of many decades kept chronicles of daily life at the schools.  An independent researcher has written an essay in which she surveys the chronicle entries.                                                                                                           

In a 1938 chronicle entry, the Sisters at the Crowfoot Residential School in Cluny, Alberta describe a family reunion hosted by the school:  “This same afternoon at four o’clock an Indian celebration was held in the boys’ hall. Over three hundred Indians were present. Five boys dressed in beaded costumes danced to the rhythm of the drums and Indian war songs. Lunch and tea were served to all the Indians.”    

In April, 1963, the Sisters wrote, “A troop of Blackfoot actors from Cardston came here this evening to give us a film on Blackfoot Tribe life of early days. This was followed by a pageant, prepared by themselves, depicting traditions and tribal rituals. They show a Sundance, a group of Indians on the warpath followed by a war dance and victory celebrations…These older Indians deplore the fact that their traditions and tribal customs are dying out.  For them, as for any ethnic group, cultural heritage is precious.”

It is alleged that residential schools were responsible for the loss of traditional languages.  In fact, residential school students were far more likely to retain their traditional languages than Indigenous children who attended other types of schools.[7]  This pattern continued into the next generation. Youths whose parents attended a residential school were much more likely to be fluent in an Indigenous language than youths who had no family history of attendance.  

Many schools actively encouraged the preservation of traditional languages.  The Sisters at the Cluny school recorded in their archives a letter a student wrote to a local newspaper:  “Father Principal comes to teach us the Cree Syllabics. We are very glad to learn this writing because it is our own language and we will be able to write to our parents and grandparents. Then they will be able to understand the writing and to write letters to us when they wish. Our sincere thanks to Father for teaching us this writing.”

Indian Affairs provided at least a rudimentary level of cultural sensitivity training for school employees:  “An in-service training program for teachers is essential because of…cultural and environmental differences…[Teachers conventions were held] to provide teachers going into outlying areas with background information concerning the people with whom they work.” 

All of these examples show that the residential schools were not engaged in anything resembling cultural genocide; in fact, they actively defended the traditional Indigenous culture against forces in Canadian society that wished it to be extinguished.

It has been purported that the residential schools aimed to permanently separate children from their families and home communities. If that were so, the strategies employed were monumentally flawed.                                                                                    

Students attending the many residential schools that were located near or on their home reserve generally went home to their families at the end of the school day.  Most of the others spent holidays and long summer breaks with their families.  A 1920 amendment to the Indian Act  (Indian Affairs 1920 Annual Report), stipulated that, “a regular summer vacation is provided for, and the transportation expenses of the children are paid by the department.”   When the students’ residential school years were complete, they either returned to their home communities or other places of their, or their parents’, choice.                                                                                          

(It should be noted that even today, many small, remote reserves do not have high schools.  The children are thus “forced” to move to far away cities to complete their secondary education.)

Any attempt to show the residential schools in a positive light is now being dismissed as residential school “denialism”.  This charge shamefully suggests a false equivalency with holocaust denial.   Can anyone imagine a Third Reich cultural minister, or a  concentration camp commandant, expressing views about the Jewish people that are in any way similar to the views and attitudes towards Indigenous people that I have illustrated above?  

“Murray Sinclair is right to suggest that 3,200 deaths is an undercount.”  

Mr. Sinclair went much, much further.  In a June, 2021 interview on CBC’s The Current, he speculated that the number of students who died at residential schools may be “more than 25,000”.  It appears that in arriving at this spurious number, he began with the 215 students that were initially claimed to have died and been buried at the Kamloops school (we now know that this contention is incorrect), and then extrapolated the “215” number to the 139 residential schools that operated in Canada.  Research has shown that Mr. Sinclair’s speculations on this subject are gross exaggerations.      

“The death rate for residential school students was higher than for the general Canadian school population.”                                                                                                    

That mortality in the residential schools was higher than the death rate among Canadian children generally, was true before mid-20th century.  Graph 4 in the “Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission”, however, shows that remarkably, the mortality rate in the residential schools by 1950 had fallen to essentially zero, roughly the same level attained for the general school-age population in Canada.                                                                                   

Tuberculosis was by far the leading cause of death in residential schools in the first half of the 20th century.  The disease in most cases originated in the students’ home communities.  In a 1909 report on residential schools in Alberta, Dr. Peter Bryce, Indian Affairs Chief Medical Inspector, stated, “In no instance was a child awaiting admission to school found free from tuberculosis; hence it was plain that infection was got in the home primarily.”[8] 

The TB death rate in the schools was consistently much lower than in the reserves.  In 1906, Bryce calculated that the TB death rate for Canada’s “native” population was 3,470 per 100,000.[9]  In the same year, the death rate in the residential schools from not only TB, but from all causes, was about 1,500 per 100,000.[10]  In the 1940s, the average annual TB death rate in the schools was about 100 deaths per 100,000.[11]   This was less than one-fifth the overall First Nations rate of over 500 per 100,000.[12]  The gap was even larger in the 1930s and remained pronounced well into the 1950s.  The residential schools widely administered the new, highly effective TB drugs when they became available at mid-20th century, and the disease was essentially eradicated in the schools by the early 1950s.[13]  The disease continued to ravage First Nations communities well into the 1950s.  First Nations deaths from TB remained in the hundreds per 100,000 until 1953 (TRC History, Part 2, Table 36.1), and were still in the 40s per 100,000 as late as 1957 (Table 36.3).

                                                                                                                                                        The residential schools began serious preventive and ameliorative measures against TB from very early on.  In 1907, Indian Affairs’ Peter Bryce recommended that the residential schools should be renovated or built with enhanced ventilation and floor space standards.  Work to this end commenced soon after.   The 1911 Indian Affairs Annual Report states:  “A book [on hygiene] has been welcomed by many of our teachers and principals, and there is no doubt that the greater attention now paid to physical culture and sanitation in the schools and the knowledge therein acquired of the nature of tuberculosis and the ordinary means employed to prevent contagion, will before long have its beneficial effect on the general health of the Indians. The character of the buildings now being erected for day and residential schools will also have its due effect. The former are being properly ventilated and sufficient air space is being allowed for the number of pupils to be accommodated, and the latter have the best modern sanitary appliances and outdoor sleeping apartments where children of tubercular tendencies may have the advantage of the fresh air cure.”    

Part 2 of the TRC History (page 197), states that in the 1930s, the schools began a program, the “key elements [of which] were proper medical examinations of new students to screen out those with active tuberculosis, regular screening of the student body to detect cases of active tuberculosis, and bcg vaccinations to protect non-infected students.”                                                                          

Many residential schools served as medical centres for isolated reserves.  One example of this is cited in the 1937 Department of Indian Affairs Annual Report:  “A simple plan of preventive treatment [of trachoma], designed to protect the unaffected, is in use, and is considered to be effective. The affected pupils are under treatment, carried out by the nurse or other person in immediate charge, under the direction of the local doctor, and supervised by the Departmental specialist at his periodical visits. The school is utilized as a centre for examination of the surrounding Indian population, and encouraging reports have been received of the interest of the Indians at home having been awakened by letters from their children at school.”                                           

Our country has never had the will, or resources, or both, to meet all of the health needs of its population.  This was especially true during periods of economic depression or war.  Sadly, today the neglect of health needs is particularly acute for the Indigenous population.  It is well known that many reserves do not have access to clean water.  TB is rampant among the Innuit and in some First Nation communities.

“Spanish Influenza: an unconscionable death toll.”                                                     

During the 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic, the residential schools suffered far lower mortality from the disease than the reserves. The First Nations death rate from the flu over the course of the pandemic was 3,770 per 100,000.[14]  One-third of the population of Stoney Creek Reserve in B.C. died from the flu; half of the deceased were under the age of 20 (Mary-Ellen Kelm, “British Columbia First Nations and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919, BC Studies, no. 122, 1999).  In the residential schools, the death rate from not only the Spanish flu, but from all causes, was under 1,000 per 100,000 in the 1918/1919.[15]  An estimated 55,000 Canadians – or nearly 700 per 100,000 population – died from the disease.                                                                                                                                        

“One in Four Never Made it Out”.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Terry Glavin wrote in The Tyee in 2008, “Back then [in 1907], P.H. Bryce, the Indian department’s chief medical officer, conducted a study of 1,500 children interned in 15 different Indian residential schools across Canada.  He found that one in four of the children never made it out.”  

There are a couple of errors in this statement.  Firstly, the “15 schools” that Bryce studied were not located “across Canada”.  All were situated in the Prairie provinces.  Bryce was particularly concerned about the rate of TB in the Prairies because that region was the most severely impacted.                                                                                              

Bryce did indeed report that, “The responses from fifteen schools revealed that of a total of 1,537 pupils reported upon nearly 25 per cent are dead, of one school with an absolutely accurate statement, 69 per cent of ex-pupils are dead, and that everywhere the almost invariable cause of death given is tuberculosis.”  But Mr. Glavin incorrectly draws the conclusion from this statement that Bryce suggested that one quarter of the students died while in the residential school.                                                                                                                                                                                            

The 24 percent figure Bryce gave is widely interpreted as a death rate.  The TRC, in History, Part 1 (page 404), explains that it is not:  “It should be noted that the 24% figure that Bryce produced was not a death rate (otherwise known as “mortality rate”).  Such rates (whether expressed as a percentage or as a figure of so many deaths per 100,000 of population) record the number of deaths under specific circumstances in a specific time period (often, but not always, a single year).  Bryce’s figures were drawn from a period that, in the case of five schools, dated back to the late 1880s. It is uncertain whether the 24% included both students who had died while attending school and those who had died after their discharge. The total 1907 enrolment for the schools he was surveying was, according to the Indian Affairs annual reports, 536 students.  In his report and subsequent writings on the 1907 study, Bryce never stated that all the students had died while at school.  In one  article, he wrote that ‘24 per cent of all the pupils, which had been in the schools were known to be dead’.”                                                                                                                        

So, it is not known how many of the students died while residing at a residential school and how many died after discharge, including those who may have died many years after leaving.  It is also not known how many of the students who died contracted the disease before attending residential school, while in attendance, or after discharge.                                                                                                                                  

The evidence shows that the death rate in Canada’s residential schools during the period of Bryce’s study was far, far lower than 24 percent.  The approximate average annual death rate in all of the over 60 residential schools operating in Canada from the late 1880s to 1907, was around 15 per 1,000; i.e., 1.5 percent  (Graph 16.1, TRC History, Part 1.)   Because TB was most prevalent in the Prairies, the schools Bryce reported on may have had somewhat higher rates.

“Shoddily built incubation vectors for contagious disease”.                                                                 

Mr. Glavin writes in his 2008 Tyee article, “In 1897, senior Indian Affairs officials started blowing the whistle on the cavernous, shoddily-built, creaking institutions, pointing out that you couldn’t have built more efficient incubation vectors for contagious disease, and for mass death, if you tried.”                                                                                                      

The very early residential schools may have been shoddy, and they certainly would not  have been constructed to today’s standards for health and safety.  But it is important here to consider the historical context.                                                                                        

Well into the 20th century, the transmission of diseases in Canadian schools was speeded by the lack of ventilation and open air spaces.  In 1898, the aforementioned Dr. Peter Bryce, while head of the Ontario Board of Health, decried these deficiencies as a main cause of the spread of tuberculosis in the Toronto Public Schools.[16]  It was not until  16 years later, in 1914, that Toronto built what was touted as Canada’s “first of its kind” open-air school.[17]                                           

The residential schools had several years earlier begun renovating and constructing buildings with proper ventilation and air space and “the best modern sanitary appliances and outdoor sleeping apartments where children of tubercular tendencies may have the advantage of the fresh air cure.”[18]

“Not fit to raise swine in.”  

This was not a Truth and Reconciliation Commission indictment of the residential schools, but an assessment of rural Canadian schools rendered by the Dominion Council of Health in 1919.[19]  The Council found that, “As far as heating was concerned, it would be nearly noon before the temperature was fit to live in. There were no playing areas.”          

Many residential schools from early on built recreational facilities that were exceptional for the day.  One example is the Kuper Island School in British Columbia.  The 1898 Indian Affairs Annual Report states of the school, “Our new gymnasium…proves to be a very useful addition to the school, for besides giving opportunity for athletic and calisthenic sport, it is supplied with a permanent stage which makes it of great value for receptions and entertainments.”                                                                                                                      

Certainly, the early residential schools were not built to our modern-day health and safety standards.  But the depiction of the schools as inferior, shoddily built fire traps, lacking in recreational space, and designed without regard for preventing the transmission of disease, does not hold up to scrutiny.  

The charge that the residential schools wantonly neglected the health of students is absurd on its face, given that the staff lived in close proximity to the students and were well aware that diseases were spread through person-to-person contact.                                                                                                                                                         

“Inadequate Nutrition.”  

Nutritional Improvements in the residential schools (which happened concurrently with those in Canada generally) led to vastly improved physical health by mid-20th century. University of Victoria researchers Donna Feir and Christopher Auld found that,  “In line with historical accounts of student selection [residential school enrollment gave priority to orphans and children from severely disadvantaged backgrounds]] we find that Status Indian children who would have otherwise been shorter and heavier as adults were more likely to be selected to attend residential schools.  Once this selection is accounted for, we find some evidence that residential schooling increased adult height by a half an inch to an inch and stronger evidence that it decreased mean BMI by about 0.8 units. These effects do not appear to be substantially mediated by education, income, and cultural attachment, suggesting that the increase in height and reduction in BMI resulted directly from conditions in residential schools affecting health.”                                                                                                                            

Given the close association known to exist between nutrition and the incidence of disease and mortality, one would expect that severe and chronic malnutrition in the residential schools would have been accompanied by persistently high death rates, particularly before drugs effective against  tuberculosis had been  developed.  But, as I indicated earlier, there was a precipitous decline in residential school death rates beginning in the very early 1900s, and culminating with virtually no deaths by mid-century.

Here again, context matters.  For much of the first half of the 20th century, Canada was either undergoing economic depression or embroiled in world wars.   The residential schools struggled to provide adequate nutrition during these periods, but they were not alone.  Malnutrition was rampant in Newfoundland and Labrador during the Great Depression and was considered to be a major contributor to the viral spread of beriberi and tuberculosis.[20]  Nearly half of Canadians enlisting for service in WWII were malnourished, and health researchers found that 60 percent of all Canadians were undernourished.[21]  A 1920 study found that 26 percent of students in the Toronto public schools lacked sufficient nutrition and were in a “serious state of health” as a result.[22]

 “Students as ‘inmates’.”    

The reference to the residential schools students as “inmates” suggests that the children were forced into the schools and imprisoned there.  But this is a myth, and unfortunately it is one that has ingrained in most Canadians images of Indigenous children being torn enmasse from their mothers’ arms, and forced into concentration camp-like institutions.  The myth has been thoroughly debunked.

The notion of the forced institutionalization of Indigenous children was given impetus and wide currency by the former head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Murray Sinclair, when he declared at the United Nations in 2010 that, “For roughly seven generations nearly every Indigenous child in Canada was sent to a residential school. They were taken from their families, tribes and communities, and forced to live in those institutions of assimilation.”[23]

None of the Canadian education laws and regulations made attendance of Indigenous children at a residential school mandatory.   TRC History, Part 1, states (page 237), “It should be noted that the 1920 amendment did not make residential schooling compulsory for all First Nations children. The provision stipulated that students ‘shall attend such day, industrial or boarding school’ [emphasis added].”   

Canada’s compulsory schooling policy, instituted in the 1800s in some provinces, was infrequently enforced in the case of residential schools.   It was only under exceptional circumstances, primarily when children were removed from negligent, abusive or severely impoverished homes, that Indigenous children were forcibly placed in residential schools.[24]   

Although tensions between the residential schools and the parents and bands occasionally surfaced, in most periods the schools enjoyed strong support. Several residential schools were established under Indigenous leadership.  The Chief of the Kamloops band, Louis Clexlixqen, was a strong champion of education, and in 1890 he founded the Kamloops Residential School.[25] John Brant, son of the famous Mohawk Chief, Joseph Brant, established a school at Six Nations that was the predecessor of the Mohawk Industrial School.    

At a Catholic Indian League convention held in Hobbema, Alberta in 1959, the 100 Indian leaders in attendance urged the creation of a central residential vocational school that would serve Indian children from throughout the province.[26]  They, further, unanimously agreed that because the Indian population was increasing rapidly, Alberta’s residential schools needed to be expanded to accommodate more students.   

After the government began its policy of closing residential schools in the late 1950s, the schools struggled with long waiting lists for children whose parents wished to avoid placing them in integrated schools, where it was feared they would experience discrimination.  A Saskatchewan Indian Agency Superintendent reported in the early 1960’s that, “We were inundated with applications...That was one of the times of the year I dreaded the most...when we had to go through these applications and turn down any number of people.”[27]                                                                   

An Indian Affairs plan to close the Marieval Residential School in Saskatchewan in 1971 met with vehement opposition from band members.  Three reasons were cited for wanting the school to remain open:  1) the children would face certain discrimination in the provincial schools as had occurred elsewhere, 2) the residential schools met an essential need by providing a home and education for orphans and children from broken homes or from impoverished families who could not afford to properly care for them; 3) the children sent to foster homes were not receiving proper discipline or religious instruction as they (the elders) had received in the residential schools.  One band spokesperson stated, “the Indian people passed a resolution asking that the school remain open and it should not be up to the department to say whether the school should be closed.”                                                                                                                           

The TRC acknowledges that parents often preferred that their children attend residential schools over alternatives such as day schools and provincial public schools.  Among the most common objections to day and provincial schools were the fear that the children would be exposed to racism in ethnically mixed schools; the abysmal attendance rates in the day schools; the inability of impoverished parents to provide healthy, supportive living conditions for their children; and the fact that homes on the reserves were typically overcrowded and did not have private space where the children could study.[28]

Finally, it must be stated that Murray Sinclair was very wrong in his assertion at the United Nations that, “For roughly seven generations nearly every Indigenous child in Canada was sent to a residential school.”  The truth is that no more than one-third of school-age status First Nation children, and even a smaller proportion of the general population of Indigenous children, were ever enrolled in residential schools.[29]  In many periods, particularly after the 1950s, the percentage of enrolment was far lower.   And before the mid 20th century, as many as one-third of Indigenous children did not attend any school at all.                                                                                                     

“Substandard Education”                                                                                         

It has been asserted that the residential schools provided a substandard education and failed to prepare students for careers or continuing education.  The evidence shows otherwise. Residential school students were much more likely to go on to earn a post secondary certificate or undergraduate degree than those who did not attend.[30]  The First Nations Regional Health Survey, conducted in over 200 reserves in 2015-2017, states that 38 percent of adults who had attended a residential school had less than a high school education, versus 40.5 percent of adults who had not attended a residential school; 22.2 percent had a diploma from a trade school, community college, or university, versus 17.9 percent of those who had not attended; and 4.1 percent of the residential school group had an undergraduate degree, versus 3.6 percent of the non-residential school group.  A First Nations Health Survey conducted in 2002-03, found that adults who attended a residential school, and adults who had not attended but had a parent or grandparent who attended, were significantly more likely  to have completed high school or above, than adults who had no personal or familial history of residential school attendance.  

These results are especially impressive because, as mentioned earlier, children from severely disadvantaged backgrounds were given priority for enrolment in residential schools.  In addition, the residential school respondents in the surveys skewed much older than the nonresidential school group, and therefore would have disproportionately reached postsecondary school age at a time when there were fewer opportunities for First Nations people to access higher education.                                                                                                           

The residential schools had an explicit goal of preparing students for careers in the reserves and in the general Canadian economy.  The 1925 Indian Affairs Annual Report states, “In addition to the regular academic courses, special vocational courses have been successfully organized…for boys, boat-building, auto mechanics, Indian arts and crafts, and elementary agriculture. These courses…are based on the needs of the Indians on the adjoining reserves.”                                                                                                                      

The 1961 annual report states, “Indian students are encouraged to participate with non-Indians in such extra-curricular activities as…meetings of Guides, Scouts, Cadets, and 4-H clubs…To enrich their experience, tours are sometimes arranged to local historic or scientific points of interest in connection with their school studies, or to nearby industries or places of employment, to introduce older students to the "world of work" outside the reserve.”  

The encouragement and assistance residential school students received in preparation for employment in the Canadian economy had life-long benefits.  Research has found that residential schooling was associated with less future reliance on welfare income and increased probability of being employed in the labour market.[31]

“There have been stories about the chronic sexual abuse in the schools.”  

Much of today’s discussion of the residential schools focusses on sexual abuse as a signature feature of school life.  There is no doubt that sexual abuse occurred.  But as horrific as any instance of child sexual abuse is, it is incorrect to suggest that such abuse was exceptionally widespread in the residential schools.  In fact, there is  evidence that the schools may have served as a refuge from sexual assault and other abuse.  

One study examining residential school enrolment statistics and data from the Indian Residential School Adjudication Secretariat showed that the “vast majority” of schools had five or fewer cases of physical and sexual abuse over each of a number of ten year periods reviewed.[32]  According to the study, the median percentage of students abused at the schools was roughly 3%.[33] 

This figure stands in stark contrast to data from research on the abuse of children and youth in the general First Nations population.  A 2018 survey of First Nations women showed that 42 percent experienced physical or sexual assault perpetrated by an adult before age fifteen, and that 22 percent experienced sexual abuse specifically.[34]  A 2009 survey of dozens of studies on Indigenous child abuse conducted over the previous 20 years concluded that between 25 and 50 percent of Indigenous adults had been sexually abused before reaching the age of 18.[35] 

Given that only a small minority of Indigenous children ever attended a residential school and that the incidence of abuse at the residential schools was much lower than in the Indigenous population generally, it cannot be credibly asserted that the general prevalence of abuse was in any way an intergenerational effect of sexual abuse in the residential schools.  

It has been asserted that thousands of residential school employees committed abuse against students.  During the 113 years of the residential schools’ operations and since, roughly fifty employees or former employees have been convicted of abuse, about 25 of them for sexual abuse.  A handful of the perpetrators were priests and teachers; the rest were dormitory workers and maintenance staff.  While acknowledging that abuse is, and has historically been, underreported, any claim of “thousands” of abusers is clearly preposterous. It is also important to note also that much of the alleged abuse was student-on-student.   

The Independent Assessment Process that was used to establish claims of abuse was a claimant-centered, non-adversarial, out-of-court procedure.  The outcome of the process is open to question.  In order to receive compensation, claimants were merely required to verify that they were in attendance at a residential school when the abuse was alleged to have taken place, describe the abuse (they did not need to recall the name or position of the alleged perpetrator), have a fellow student or person close to them corroborate their account, and have their claim signed by a band notary, elected band official, or medical practitioner.  No cross examination was required.  Lawyers lined up to represent the claimants.  The lawyers could receive up to thirty percent of the amount of the claimant’s compensation (the lawyer’s fee was added to the claimant’s compensation amount, not a part of it).

                                                                                                                                                         Aside from all of Terry Glavin’s incorrect assertions that I have cited above, I believe that his single biggest error is the unwarranted excuse he too generously gives to every indigenous leader for the hyper-exaggerated claims of murder and secret burial now at least half-believed by most Canadians. He correctly blames his journalist and editor colleagues for grossly exaggerating Indigenous claims. But he then lets all indigenous leaders off the hook, by claiming that their claims were entirely sensible.

But that is simply not true. It is hard to imagine anything more extreme than the original claim made by Chief Casimir and her associates: “Children as young as six” forced to dig graves for their comrades, who had presumably somehow been done in by the priests or nuns at KIRS. 215 of them.  Who, but the priests, nuns and teachers at KIRS would have forced the six year olds from their beds?  Why - except to cover up the deaths - would those priests and nuns consider it necessary to bury 215 dead children in the middle of the night, with the forced help of their comrades?  How could Chief Casimir and her colleagues have made these completely unsupported claims any more sensational and extreme - or any more scurrilous?  In fact, if these allegations could be proven, they would have constituted the biggest crime in the history of Canada. How is what Chief Casimir and her colleagues alleged reasonable and moderate?

But other indigenous leaders even managed to outdo these fantastical claims. Remember Chief Louis, claiming almost immediately after the May 27th announcement that there was “mass murder”, “genocide” on the scale of the Holocaust. This was soon followed by the horrific claims of Williams Lake Chief Willie Sellars (Williams Lake Tribune - 93 Is Our Number).  Sellars recited a devil’s shopping list of gruesome crimes - from organized sexual abuse, murder, secret burial, throwing bodies in rivers, lakes and streams. He ended with a claim that for decades, the federal government, the Catholic Chirch and the RCMP had conspired to hide all of this murder and secret burial horror from the world.

So, while some chiefs, like Chief Sophie Pierre, were indeed the voices of reason, chiefs like Casimir, Sellars, Louis and others were promoting the most extreme claims imaginable.

I agree with Terry Glavin that his colleagues in journalism let down the Canadian public, with their failure to ask even the most elementary of questions when these claims first surfaced last May.  But surely he will acknowledge that Chiefs, like Casimir and Sellars must share some responsibility, as well, in Canada’s year of missing children hysteria?

CONCLUSION                  

Over 10,000 teachers, clergy, caregivers, and custodians served in Canada’s 139 residential schools over the 113 years of their existence.  Many were Indigenous.  Although their work is being denigrated, the vast majority had noble aims and were dedicated to giving the students the best possible education and care.  The residential schools were not perfect, of course. As is the case with all human institutions, mistakes, misjudgements and malpractices occurred.  But that they contributed much to the survival of Indigenous culture and to the future well-being of the students who were taught and cared for in them, is undeniable.                                                                                            

The residential schools are being blamed for all the ills Canada’s Indigenous people face today, despite the fact that only a small minority of Indigenous children attended.  It is rare to find a story in the mainstream media on the Indigenous people’s social and economic malaise that does not feature the residential schools as the primary culprit.  This kind of simplistic analysis disregards the complex and multifaceted factors that contribute to the problems confronting Indigenous communities today.  It only serves to distract from serious efforts to find effective responses.   

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Thanks for reading. For more from on this topic checkout - The Unknown Truth Of Canada's Residential School System

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[1] Nina Green, “Our Dear Children”:  Sisters’ Chronicles of Indian Residential School, The Dorchester Review, (April 01, 2022)

[2] “Our Dear Children”

[3] Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 2 1939 to 2000, The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 1, p. 479

[4] History Part 2, p. 479

[5] History Part 2, p. 482

[6] History Part 2, p. 483

[7] First Nations Information Governance Centre, National Report of the First Nations Regional Health Survey Phase 3: Volume One, (Ottawa: March 2018) pp. 164-165

[8] P. H. Bryce, The Story of A National Crime, (Ottawa, Canada, 1922), p. 5

[9] Megan Sproule-Jones, CBMH/BCHM, Volume 13, (1996), p. 206

[10] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015), Graph 3, p. 91

[11] Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, Graph 5, p. 92

[12] Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 2 1939 to 2000, The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 1, Table 36.1, p. 193

[13] Dr. Scott Hamilton, Where are the Children buried?, Dept. of Anthropology, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, p. 11

[14] Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 1 Origins to 1939, The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Volume 1, p. 436

[15] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015), Graph 3, p. 91

[16] Greg Piasetzki, Everybody’s Favourite Dead White Male:  The Resurrection and Celebration of Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce, C2C Journal, (November 12, 2021)

[17] Melanie Zettler, How Toronto’s first open-air school responded to the tuberculosis crisis more than 100 years ago, Global News, (September 30, 2020)

[18] Dominion of Canada Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended March 31, 1911, (Ottawa), p. 41

[19] Christopher Rutty, PhD, and Sue C. Sullivan, This is Public Health: A Canadian History, p. 2.8

[20] Jenny Higgins, Great Depression – Impacts on the Working Class, Heritage Newfoundland & Labrador, (2007)

[21] Transcript: Ian Mosby: Food in Canada During WWII, TVOToday, (May 13, 2015)

[22] Aleck Samuel Ostry, Nutrition Policy in Canada, 1870-1939, UBC Press, (2006), p. 23

[23] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, For the child taken, for the parent left behind, 9th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues Speech by Chairperson, The Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair, (April 27, 2010), p. 3

[24] Nina Green, Brian Giesbrecht, Tom Flanagan, They Were Not Forced, The Dorchester Review, (April 21, 2022)

[25] Duane Thomson, Clexlixqen, Louis, Dictionary of Canadian biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Universite Laval, 1998

[26] Indian League Urges Vocational Schools, Indian Record, Vol. XXII, No. 9, November 1959

[27] Vic Satzewich and Linda Mahood, Indian Agents and the Residential School System in Canada, 1946-1970, Historical Studies in Education, (1995), pp. 61-62

[28] Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 2 1939 to 2000, The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 1, p. 93

[29] Nina Green, Two-Thirds Did Not Attend Residential School, The Dorchester Review, (July 13, 2022)

[30] First Nations Information Governance Centre, First Nations Regional Health Survey (RHS) 2008/10: National report on adults, youth and children living in First Nations communities, (Ottawa), p. 205  

[31] Donna L. Feir, The Long Term Effects of Forcible Assimilation Policy: The Case of Indian Boarding Schools, University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C., Department of Economics, (November, 2013), p. 435

[32] Donna Feir, The Long Term Effects of Forcible Assimilation Policy: The Case of Indian Boarding Schools Department of Economics, University of Victoria, (November 2013), pp. 45-46

[33] The Long Term Effects of Forcible Assimilation Policy, p. 62

[34] Statistics Canada, Violent victimization and perceptions of safety:  Experiences of First Nations, Metis and Inuit women in Canada, (April 26, 2022) 

[35] Delphine Collin-Veziue, Jacinthe Dion, Nico Trocme, Sexual Abuse in Canadian Aboriginal Communities, Pimatisiwin: A Journal of Aboriginal and Indigenous Community Health, 7(1) 2009, p. 27