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A Case of Cultural Genocide: Enforced Language

Assimilation in the Indian Residential School System

Christiana Wong

The Indian Residential System (IRS) in Canada enforced language assimilation in First Nation children during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There is a close interconnectivity between language and culture, and thus the IRS has resulted in the isolation of survivors and their descendants from their community, and can be classified as cultural genocide. The words Aboriginal and Indigenous can be used interchangeably in the context of the indigenous peoples of Canada. In this paper, the term Indigenous peoples will be used in reference to the descendants of the First Peoples of what is now North America, including Inuit, Metis, Status and non-Status First Nations.

In the midst of World War II, Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent, sought to define the act of genocide. In his original definition, he incorporated the cultural destruction of groups by including acts which aimed to annihilate “culture, language, national feelings, religion.”^[1] However, when Lemkin’s definition was classified as an international crime by the United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the cultural aspect of the definition did not receive enough popular support to be included in the final version of the United Nations definition.^[2] Cultural genocide seeks to repress networks and relationships, and results in the the inability of groups of reproduce and flourish. Genocide is not merely an isolated act of violence. Rather, it is a process that is a result of normal social processes with genocidal potential. Therefore, many methods, actions, and circumstances contribute to the attempted obliterations of group foundations. In the context of the IRS, the slow process of moving Indigenous children away from their homes and linguistically assimilating them into Eurocentric society took two centuries to complete, and it aimed to suppress the cultural vitality of Indigenous communities.

Efforts to westernize and assimilate Indigenous children in Canada have a long history, and most was undertaken by missionaries who believed they had the divine duty to Christianize. In 1620 Quebec, Recollect missionaries established the first known missionary institution primarily for Indigenous children.^[3] The missionaries aimed to convert the children to Christianity but they believed the children must first be assimilated into French culture for the conversion to be successful. In 1842, the Bagot commission was founded by the government to report on the affairs of Indigenous education.^[4] This commission recommended farm-based boarding schools for Indigenous children to separate students from the influence of their parents and community. Following the commission’s report in 1876, the Indian Act was passed which framed Indigenous people as not full citizens and as in need of guardianship.^[5] Therefore, Indigenous children were classified as wards of the state, and the states were given the power to intervene and “manage” Indigenous peoples. As a result, Indigenous peoples became dependent on the government system, and were denied their heritage through the banning of traditional ceremonies, and relocation.

The residential school system was established in 1883 with the expressed purpose of assimilating Indigenous children into Eurocentric culture.^[6] A consistently uttered phrase was “kill the Indian and save the man”, which demonstrates the aim of the system to annihilate the Indigenous culture as well as the condescending attitudes of the European settlers. In 1879, the Davin Report recommended the residential school system to be operated by various Christian denominations as many already had missionaries established in Canada.^[7] When the system first began, many Indigenous parents encouraged their children to attend the schools because they feared their children not meeting the standards needed to thrive in the quickly rising Anglo-European society. However, in 1920, the Indian Act was revised which made attendance for all Indigenous children over the age of seven mandatory as well as requiring students to stay at these schools for the entire school year. ^[8] Many First Nations parents were not pleased by these changes, but the provisions were enforced by officials withholding food rations or chiefs being threatened of losing their positions. As a whole, approximately 150,000 First Nations, Metis, and Inuit children attended 150 schools funded by the Canadian federal government but operated by Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian churches.^[9]

Indigenous children were denied inherent dignity in the residential school system. In 1938, the Manitoba School for Boys, a government-funded, non-Aboriginal school, received 642 Canadian dollars per student while the average residential school received 180 Canadian dollars per student.^[10] Because of lack of funding compared to non-Aboriginal schools, the Indigenous students suffered from overwork, starvation, lack of proper housing and medical care, and poor hygiene. Because of these “slow death measures”, in 1913, the Department of Indian Affairs concluded that fifty percent of the students passed away before adulthood^[11]. Furthermore, in the residential school system, students were required to adhere to authoritarian and regimented schooling. Students were expected to “live by the bell”; waking up, eating meals, changing classes all determined by ringing bells.^[12] This harsh institutionalization resulted in the students becoming dependent upon the regimentation and losing the ability to function independently.

Additionally, the Indigenous children were drilled repeatedly on the inferiority of their people, brainwashed into believing their parents and community were dirty, savage, and subhuman. The missionaries viewed Indigenous cultures as being barriers to spiritual salvation and enlightenment, and thus sought to impose Europe’s agriculture-based work discipline and universalize Euro-Christian values in an effort to “save the heathens”. Furthermore, the textbooks used in the residential schools were demeaning and perpetrated racial stereotypes. For example, in 1968, some textbooks still used the word squaw to describe Indigenous women, and redskins for Indigenous peoples^[13]. As a result, the students’ identities were belittled, and they were alienated from their families and culture.

The language ban instituted in the residential school system further estranged Indigenous children from their identity and community. The Indigenous children were forced to speak the French and English taught in classes, and were forbidden to speak their indigenous languages. In 1909, official government policy banned the use of indigenous languages in residential schools.^[14] These measures were enforced by brutal punishments and the denial of food. George Blacksmith, a Cree from James Bay North Quebec, recounts his experience of vicious punishments when attending central Quebec’s La Tuque Indian Residential School. After being caught speaking to a friend in the Cree language, the two young boys were forced to clean the entire gymnasium floor with a mere toothbrush and small face towel. This corporal punishment caused the young students’ “fingers and knuckles [to be] practically raw” as well as painful blisters on their knees.^[15] From fear of abuse, the Indigenous children were caught between the hammer and the anvil. Many rebelled against traditional teachings and values in order to get their basic needs met through lying and stealing. In addition, because the students were young and had malleable brain processes, many forget their mother tongues and adopted either English or French as their first language. School principals and school inspectors both perceived the eradication of Indigenous languages at the residential schools as success stories. In 1898, a principal from Mission, British Columbia boasted of “the Indian language [being] seldom heard in the institution.”^[16] In addition, federal inspectors regarded the usage of both English and Indigenous languages as an institutional failure. For example, in 1903, the principal of the Red Deer Industrial School in Red Deer, Alberta was reprimanded by an inspector because the use of both the Cree language and English was deemed a “serious drawback to school work, as well as an evidence of bad discipline.”^[17] A survivor of the All Saints residential school in Saskatchewan, Agnes Mills, spoke with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about the relationship between her and her mother following her attendance at a residential school.

“And one of the things that residential school did for me, I really regret, is that it made me ashamed of who I was…. And I wanted to be white so bad, and the worst thing I ever did was I was ashamed of my mother, that honourable woman, because she couldn’t speak English. She never went to school, and they told us that, we used to go home to her on Saturdays, and they told us that we couldn’t talk Gwich’in to her and, and she couldn’t, like couldn’t communicate. And my sister was the one that had the nerve to tell her, “We can’t talk Loucheux to you, they told us not to.”^[18]

This widely expressed viewpoint favoring Western languages, and Western languages only, resulted in the residential students feeling resentful of their mother tongues, adopting European languages, and isolating them from their conventional support systems.

Language is deeply intertwined with identity and culture. In the context of this paper, identity is multi-faceted and thus plural, and is a dynamic process. Unlike the rigid, traditional understanding of identity that stemmed from religious and social traditions, the social-constructivist view of identity defines it as a “fluctuating, contingent and sometimes quite unstable phenomenon.”^[19]

In this paper, the function of language is symbolic rather than instrumental, and thus has the purpose of being a marker of culture and identity. In addition, language is not merely used when individuals within a network communicate, but rather as Lakota scholar Robert Bunge notes in James Crawford’s book Language loyalties: A source book on the Official English controversy, language “is the thing we do. It is a total environment: we live in language as a fish lives in water.”^[20] Language shapes how communities view the world around them. For example, northeastern Australia’s speakers of the Guugu Timithirr language use absolute directions rather than relative ones. Therefore, when speaking of objects in their surrounding environment, they use compass directions instead of left, right, front, or back. If Guugu Timithirr speakers do not learn English during the critical period for language learning in early childhood, they will favor absolute orientation over relative.^[21] As a parallel, indigenous languages in Canada place value on traditional forms of knowledge, and the language Indigenous peoples speak influences their way of thinking and perception of their environment. In the 1996 census, twenty-six percent of the Indigenous population reported an Indigenous language as their first language learned^[22]. In the 2011 census, the figure dropped drastically to 14.5 percent.^[23] Because of the aforementioned importance of ancestral language, linguistic extinction has grave consequences for a community’s cultural vitality.

Moreover, the right to language and thus culture is an international law. In article fourteen, section one of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the United Nations recognizes the right of Indigenous peoples to “establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages.” ^[24]

Many Indigenous peoples in Canada continue to be impacted by the residential school system today because there are still approximately 80,000 living survivors, and ninety percent of the current Indigenous population have been affected on varying degrees by this system.^[25] A lingering impact of colonization is the communication gap between the “forgotten” generation who survived the residential school system and their forefathers. Cheryl Partridge writes of the experiences of her father, a student at a residential school from a young child until the age of thirteen, and his relationship with his indigenous language, Ojibwe. When Partridge’s father returned home at thirteen years old and eagerly spoke to his friends in Anishinaabe, he was mocked because he had lost his dialect. He “never spoke another word of Ojibwe for the rest of his life,”^[26] even though he understood it fluently. Furthermore, an extension of the impact of survivors who have completely or partially lost their mother tongues is the next generations also being cut off from their rightful indigenous languages. Partridge and her two siblings were raised only speaking English even though her mother was fluent in Ojibwe.^[27] The indoctrination that occured in the residential schools instilled a belief in survivors that their native tongue was inferior to Western languages, and their traditional values were undesirable. Because of the imposed stigma, many Indigenous peoples today are unable to speak their heritage language fluently because some survivors chose not teach their offspring their Indigenous language and culture.

In addition, because survivors were isolated from such an early tender age, many have lost the capacity to confidently be caretakers who fosters secure attachment. Because language learning is a crucial aspect of child development, some residential school survivors were or are unable to naturally “engage in spontaneous, nurturing language-mediated interchanges with their children.” ^[28] The negative impact on parenting confidence and ability illustrates the continual influence of residential school system on Indigenous communities today.

Reparations from the Canadian federal government, and reconciliation between the government and indigenous peoples are still underway. In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued the first formal, public apology to residential school survivors in the House of Commons, recognizing the “lasting and damaging impact on Aboriginal culture, heritage, and language.” ^[29] By using a procedure called Committee of the Whole to lessen the constraints of party rotation and time limits, Indigenous leaders and residential school survivors were able to respond to the apology, rather than the expected shooing away to the reception room.^[30] However, Harper’s apology was met with criticism because he did not include the five residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador, which were schools not created as a result of the Indian Act as the province was not a part of the Confederation at the time. In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized on behalf of the Canadian government to the survivors of the aforementioned five residential schools. He spoke of the unjust experiences of the residential school students of being “uprooted from their communities, and stripped of their identity,” ^[31] as well as acknowledging the tardiness of the apology itself.

In 2008, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was formed as a mandate of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. It had the expressed purpose of uncovering the full truth about the history and lasting impacts of the residential school system on survivors in order to lay a foundation for reconciliation and healing. In this context, reconciliation is not re-establishing a conciliatory state, but rather coming to terms with the past to overcome the conflict and move on towards a future of Canadian sovereignty and self-determinism for Indigenous peoples. In Article eight, Section one of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, it is recognized that “Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories languages, oral tradition, philosophies, writing systems and literatures.” As a result, the Calls to Action published by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 include “call[ing] upon the federal government to acknowledge that Aboriginal rights include Aboriginal language rights” and “call[ing] upon the federal government to enact an Aboriginal Languages Act.” ^[32]

Because of the close relationships between language, culture, and identity, the practice of enforced language assimilation in the Canadian residential school system can be classified as linguistic and thus cultural genocide. Learning ones indigenous language is a right for the Indigenous peoples of Canada, and as Lakota Sioux philosopher Robert Bunge wrote, “Do not let propagandists of any stripe tell you the native languages are archaic relics of a bygone age, best forgotten. […] We must continue to use the tongue of the grandfathers and imbibe the wisdom contained therein, for they are the only fixed point in a changing and confusing age, the anchor of identity and meaning.” ^[33] Although mass amounts of damage to Indigenous language and culture has already been committed because of the residential school system, efforts towards reconciliation and healing are underway. It is the responsibility of citizens, of both Canada and the world, to remember this cultural genocide, and bring an end to this stain on society in the present and future. It is a benchmark for the collective morality to honor the survivors and remember the victims, so those who passed may be in peace.

 

^[1] Genocide Watch, “Raphael Lemkin Defines Genocide”

^[2] Julia Peristerakis, “We Must Separate Them From Their Families” (Master’s thesis, University of Manitoba, 2014)

^[3] Peristerakis, “We Must Separate Them From Their Families”

^[4] Peristerakis, “We Must Separate Them From Their Families”

^[5] Peristerakis, “We Must Separate Them From Their Families”

^[6] Michael Gauthier, “The Impact of the Residential School, Child Welfare System and Intergenerational Trauma Upon the Incarceration of Aboriginals” (Masters Thesis, Queen’s University, 2010)

^[7] Cheryle Patridge, “Residential Schools: The Intergenerational Impacts on Aboriginal Peoples” Native Social Work Journal, no.7 (November 2010):34-62

^[8] Peristerakis, “We Must Separate Them From Their Families”

^[9] Peristerakis, “We Must Separate Them From Their Families”

Partridge, “Residential Schools: The Intergenerational Impacts on Aboriginal Peoples”

^[10] Peristerakis, “We Must Separate Them From Their Families”

^[11] Peristerakis, “We Must Separate Them From Their Families”

^[12] Partridge, “Residential Schools: The Intergenerational Impacts on Aboriginal Peoples”

^[13] Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Vancouver, British Columbia: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015), 75.

^[14] Peristerakis, “We Must Separate Them From Their Families”

^[15] George Blacksmith, “The Intergenerational Legacy of the Indian Residential School System on the Cree Communities of Mistissini, Oujebougamau and Waswanipi: An Investigative Research on the Experiences of Three Generations of the James Bay Cree of Northern Quebec” (PhD Diss., McGill University, 2010)

^[16] Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 81.

^[17] Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 81.

^[18] Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 154

^[19] Claire Owen, “Language and Cultural Identity: Perceptions of the Role of Language in the Construction of Aboriginal Identities” (Masters Thesis, Carleton University, 2011)

^[20] Owen, “Language and Cultural Identity: Perceptions of the Role of Language in the Construction of Aboriginal Identities”

^[21] Dennis O’Neil, “Language and Thought Processes.” (Language and Culture:  Language and Thought Processes, 2006)

^[22] Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 154.

^[23] Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 154.

^[24] United Nations, “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples For Indigenous Peoples.”

^[25] Gauthier, “The Impact of the Residential School, Child Welfare System and Intergenerational Trauma Upon the Incarceration of Aboriginals”

^[26] Partridge, “Residential Schools: The Intergenerational Impacts on Aboriginal Peoples”

^[27] Partridge, “Residential Schools: The Intergenerational Impacts on Aboriginal Peoples”

^[28] Jessica Ball, “Supporting Young Indigenous Children’s Language Development in Canada: A Review of Research on Needs and Promising Practices” Canadian Modern Language Review (September 2010): 19-47

^[29] Northern Affairs Canada, “Statement of apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools”, (Government of Canada; Indian and Northern Affairs Canada; Communications Branch, 2010)

^[30] CTV.ca News Staff “Harper Apologizes for Residential School Abuse”

^[31] “Remarks by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Apologize on Behalf of the Government of Canada to Former Students of the Newfoundland and Labrador Residential Schools.” Prime Minister of Canada

^[32] Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 155, 156.

^[33] Peristerakis, “We Must Separate Them From Their Families”