Nearly a century ago, Canada committed an atrocity against the Indigenous people by forcing their children to attend residential schools.
This was nothing less than a deliberate attempt to destroy their culture, and it left thousands of children dead and tens of thousands traumatized from the physical and sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of supposedly Christian instructors.
It was an act of pure malice masked with good intentions, as we told ourselves that we were “civilizing” the Indians. We were not. We were trying to eradicate the First Nations people, and the legacy of our actions has left wounds that will never heal.
An ugly reminder of the lies we told ourselves to justify this system of oppression and assimilation surfaced last week when an Indigenous woman (or rather, her sister) came across an offensive question contained in a Social Studies module developed by the Alberta Distance Learning Centre (ADLC).
The multiple-choice question asked the reader to identify a “positive effect” of the residential schools from the following options: the children were away from home; the children learned to read; the children were taught manners; and the children were “civilized.”
Needless to say, a massive controversy erupted online, and within a day, the provincial Minister of Education was issuing an apology and ordering a full review of ADLC’s course materials.
As noted in the Town & Country article I wrote on this subject, it is likely that this offensive text was part of material developed prior to 2010. It was also apparently contained within teacher resources that students wouldn’t normally see unless an instructor pulled them out.
So how did this hateful trash ever see the light of day? I suspect laziness is the culprit here. Someone lacking common sense probably pulled this dated material from the trash bin and used it to pad out a course, while giving no consideration to the possibility it may have contained something offensive.
Of course, this material should never have been available to access in the first place, and so the full review of ADLC’s online offerings is entirely warranted.
We likely will never know who authored that question or the other course material that it accompanied, but they were probably guided — or rather, misguided — by the same “good intentions” that once spurred the creation of residential schools.
Surely, the author must have thought, residential schools could not have been THAT bad. Surely they accomplished some good amidst all the supposed suffering.
But they were that bad. They never accomplished any good. There never was and never will be a “positive effect” of the residential school system, which will forever remain a black mark on Canadian history.
