As I have said earlier, the entire system of residential schools had a rotten foundation. That foundation was the unjustified assumption that Europeans were superior to the savages of the North American continent. Nothing built on such a foundation could stand. And it didn’t. In a nutshell that is white supremacy.

The Christian religion was an important part of this system and when it came to the residential schools of Canada it got pretty ugly. As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (‘TRC’) reported,

“Christian teachings were a fundamental aspect of residential schools. Aboriginal children were taught to reject the spiritual ways of their parents and ancestors in favour of the religions that predominated among settler societies. As their traditional ways of worshipping the Creator were disparaged and rejected, so too were the children devalued. They were not respected as human beings who were equally loved by the Creator just as they were, as First Nations, Inuit, or Métis peoples. Rather their Christian teachers saw them as inferior human beings in need of being ‘raised up’ through Christianity and tried to mould them into models of Christianity according to the racist ideals that prevailed at the time. The impact of such treatment was amplified by the federal laws and policies that banned traditional Indigenous spiritual practices in the children’s home communities for much of the residential school era.”

In this way religion was weaponized by Canada against the Indigenous people of Canada. The TRC went so far as to call this “spiritual violence.” The TRC defined spiritual violence as follows:

“Spiritual violence occurs when

• a person is not permitted to follow her or his preferred spiritual or religious tradition;
• a different spiritual or religious path or practice is forced on a person;
• a person’s spiritual or religious tradition, beliefs, or practices are demeaned or belittled; or
• a person is made to feel shame for practicing his or her traditional or family beliefs.

There is plenty of evidence to support our conclusion that spiritual violence was common in residential schools.”

 

It is also interesting to note how often that violence was effective. Many Indigenous children became good Christians for life. Many of them “lost” their own spirituality. I think that was a profound harm inflicted on Indigenous peoples by Canada. The effects of this violence were deep. Often it did not end in schools. For example, residential school survivor Theodore (Ted) Fontaine from Manitoba told the TRC, “I went through sexual abuse. I went through physical abuse, mental, spiritual. And I’ll tell you…the one thing we suffered [from] the most is the mental and spiritual abuse that we carried for the rest of our lives.”

All of this in turn has led to intergenerational impacts on Indigenous people that continues to have profound effect on them. The conclusion is clear, as the TRC said, “That Christians in Canada, in the name of their religion, inflicted serious harms on Aboriginal children, their families, and communities was in fundamental contradiction to their core beliefs.”

That is a mighty sad conclusion.

As I have already said, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (‘TRC’) found that the entire residential school systems that Canada imposed on indigenous people without their consent, was based on the clear assumption, entirely belied by the facts, that European civilization and culture, and the Christian religion were superior to indigenous culture. The Canadians inherited from the Europeans they succeeded, an attitude in which they assumed that the indigenous culture and religion was savage and brutal. European countries, like France, England, and Spain, were the original colonizers and with the advent of settler colonialism that position was taken over by Canadians of European descent.  This was the ideology of  white supremacy.

As a result, the TRC reached a devastating conclusion:

“Colonization was undertaken to meet the perceived needs of the imperial powers. The justification offered for colonialism—the need to bring Christianity and civilization to the Indigenous peoples of the world—may have been a sincerely and firmly held belief, but as justification for intervening in the lives of other peoples, it does not stand up to legal, moral, or even logical scrutiny.  The papacy had no authority to give away lands that belonged to Indigenous people. The Doctrine of Discovery cannot serve as the basis for a legitimate to the lands that were colonized, if for no other reason that the so-called discovered lands were already well known  to the Indigenous peoples who had inhabited them for thousands of years. The wars of conquest that took place to strip Indigenous peoples were not morally just wars; Indigenous peoples were not, as colonists often claimed subhuman, and neither were they living in violation of any agreed-upon set of values. There was no moral imperative to impose Christianity on the Indigenous peoples of the world. They did not need to be ‘civilized’; indeed, there is no hierarchy of societies. Indigenous peoples had systems that were complete unto themselves and met their needs. Those systems were dynamic; they changed over time and were capable of continued change. Taken as a whole, the colonial process relied on for its justification on the sheer presumption of taking a specific set of European beliefs and values and proclaiming them to be universal values that could be imposed upon the peoples of the world. This universalizing of European values—so central to the colonial project—that was extended to North America served as the prime justification and rationale for the imposition of the residential peoples of Canada.”

White supremacy in other words, including a belief, in most cases sincerely held, that white Europeans were superior to Indigenous people and their religion, had the same element of superiority, was the justification for European dominance over Indigenous people, and that included imposing their religion on Indigenous people no matter the costs. That fundamental belief was the fundamental problem, and the legacy of that belief continues into present times. It was and is, toxic. It is the basis for much that went wrong with residential schools, and the imperial project of doing as we please with Indigenous people.

Nothing that comes from eating that poisonous fruit is worth saving.

Residential schools were not established in a vacuum or what the Europeans referred to as terra nullius.  At least since the 15^th century, though probably much earlier, the Roman Catholic Church, which was then the “universal” Christian Church saw itself as the vanguard of white Christian hegemony. As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (‘TRC’) concluded,

“In the fifteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church, building on the traditions of the Roman Empire, conceived of itself as the guardian of a universal world order. The adoption of Christianity within the Roman Empire (which defined itself as ‘civilized’) reinforced the view that to be civilized was to be Christian.”

Everyone else of course was a barbarian. The papacy led the charge here. In 1493 Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull (I love that expression in this case because it is so appropriate) in which he granted most of North and South America to Spain, without, of course, consulting the people that lived there.  That Bull helped to establish what was later referred to as the “Doctrine of Discovery” which gave the intellectual foundation for western colonialism. According to this doctrine, Catholics were allowed to own what they “discovered” in the New World, notwithstanding that it had been discovered thousands of years  before that. North and South America were far from empty of people. Of course, in return for granting these rights first to Spain and later to other European kingdoms, those kings were expected to assist in the conversion of indigenous peoples to Christianity.

The Doctrine of Discovery was based on a second false doctrine, namely, terra nullius—no man’s land—which falsely asserted that such land belonged to no one so could be claimed by Europeans. As a result, Europeans could take what they pleased in the New World and they had theological justification to do exactly that.

White supremacy was the justification of these dubious doctrines. As the TRC said,

“Underlying these arguments was the belief that the colonizers were bringing civilization to savage people who could never civilize themselves. The ‘civilizing mission’ rested on a belief of racial and cultural superiority.”

In the Canadian Parliament in 1883 the federal Minister of Public Works Hector Langevin stated the government position on residential schools:

“If you wish to educate these children you must separate them from their parents during the time that they are being educated. If you leave them in the family they may know how to read and write, but they remain savages, whereas by separating them in the way proposed they acquire the habits and tastes—it is to be hoped only the good tastes—of civilized people.”

The federal government of Canada was engaged in colonizing western Canada at the time that it began the residential schooling system. It did so in order to secure claims to the land that could not be assailed successfully. It saw that in the United States engaging in attempts to conquer the indigenous people was extremely expensive. In some years the American federal government spent as much as 25% of its budget fighting these wars and it was questionable how legitimate the claims to the indigenous land would be even after such huge expense.  Canada tried a different route—treaties. The federal government in Canada also recognized that on account of the treaties it was making and the dispossession of indigenous people from their traditional territories the indigenous people might need help to prevent starvation.  This problem was only exacerbated when the government forced some First Nations, such as the Peguis people of Manitoba from prime farmland they occupied and were very successfully farming in favour of European settlers. The government wanted to give the indigenous people the skills they would need to support themselves, but they also had the important goal of furthering their assimilation. As the TRC pointed out, “the schools were seen as engines of cultural and spiritual change: ‘savages were to emerge as Christian ‘white men.’”

Acknowledging this desire, Duncan Campbell Scott Canada’s highest civil servant with jurisdiction over “Indians” as they were called at the time, summarize Canadian government goals as follows:

“It includes not only a scholastic education, but instruction in the means of gaining a livelihood from the soil as a member of an industrial or mercantile community, and the substitution of Christian ideals of conduct and morals for aboriginal concepts of both.”

Residential schools were not just about education. In fact, they were much more important for the government’s goal of assimilation. And the churches were the instruments it chose to embark on this process.  And the rest is history. Ugly history at that.

Retired Manitoba Provincial Court Judge recently wrote an article in the Winnipeg Sun recently in which he advised as follows

“The dead should be appropriately honoured, but we should be mindful that some opportunists will exploit these dead children for financial and political gain. The residential school story has now been exhaustively told. Canadians have heard it — and we get it. We have sympathized, and billions of dollars have been paid by people, most of whom weren’t alive then, to people who mostly weren’t either.  It is time to move on.”

This is wrong in so many ways it is difficult to count them. First, he is wrong. Canadians don’t “get it.” That is the problem. If they did get it, then we would not be in a situation where so many of the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (‘TRC’) would have gone unheeded.

It depends on how you count. According to the National Post:

“In June 2015, members of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) presented 94 Calls to Action that would help “redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation” with Indigenous peoples. Months later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed his government’s commitment to implement every single one. Six years later, how many of those Calls to Action have been fully implemented? Based on information in government documents, CBC’s Beyond 94 and research done by the Yellowhead Institute of Ryerson University, the National Post’s Christopher Nardi compiled a list of all the recommendations that have been completely enacted (13), those for which the government has taken some steps (60) and those where no real steps have been made.”

In the opinion of others, the total is much lower. How many people have you talked to about how Canada is doing? Or me? I suspect not many. Why? Let’s be honest. Few care. Contrary to what Judge Giesbrecht says, few have sympathized. If they did, the government would have acted.

What is most egregious about these remarks from Judge Giesbrecht is the statement, “It is time to move on.”  That is the one I have heard over and over again. That is because it such an easy comment for those insulated from the harms to make. It costs them or us nothing. Judges from their lofty benches or comfortable pews far from the pain and suffering don’t see the hurt. It is not real to them.

It is time for white male privilege to move on.  White male privilege blinds even people like Judge Giesbrecht. As a result of undeniable residential school trauma indigenous people have suffered effects that have cascaded through the generations. For privileged white men to suggest they should “get over it” or “move on”, is either incredibly wooden-headed, or wooden-hearted. Or both!