What were the horrors of Indian residential schools?

Students were forced to cut their hair, change their names, stop speaking their Native languages, convert to Christianity, and endure abusive disciplinary measures like solitary confinement. While many children returned to their families, more than 180 children died while attending the school.

What are the horrors of Indian boarding school?

Educators frequently renamed children with English names, cut off hair, prohibited the use of Native languages and religions, and demanded extensive manual labor. The report also found 53 burial sites at boarding school locations, with more expected to be found as investigations continue.

What was the trauma of the Indian boarding schools?

Boarding schools physically separated children in the formative years of their lives from the influence of family and tribe. Many states also disproportionately removed children from homes and put them into non-Native foster homes. In 1978 The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was passed.

What was the most brutal residential school?

Fort Albany Residential School, also known as St. Anne's, was home to some of the most harrowing examples of abuse against Indigenous children in Canada.

What were the atrocities at Indian schools?

Many of these children experienced abuse, sexual assault, and punishment at the hands of the residential staff and were converted to various Christian religions. Hundreds of Indigenous children were killed at these schools, and those that survived were never the same.

The Horrors of Residential Schools

What 3 things were the Indian children in boarding schools not allowed to do?

The children were forced to cut their hair and give up their traditional clothing. They had to give up their meaningful Native names and take English ones. They were not only taught to speak English but were punished for speaking their own languages.

What happened to Indian children in boarding schools?

There were more than 523 government-funded, and often church-run, Indian Boarding schools across the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries. Indian children were forcibly abducted by government agents, sent to schools hundreds of miles away, and beaten, starved, or otherwise abused when they spoke their Native languages.

Did anyone survive residential schools?

Approximately 150,000 children attended the schools. About 90,000 of them received the Common Experience Payment that was part of the federal government's Indian Residential School Survivor Agreement in 2007. But only about half of those 90,000 are alive today. If only the suffering ended there.

What was the trauma of residential school survivors?

Studies indicate that children of survivors of residential schools were observed to have greater rates of depression, substance abuse, and suicide attempts than non-survivors' children.

Where was the biggest residential school?

The Catholic-run Kamloops School was one of the largest schools in the residential school system, with more than 500 students enrolled in the early 1950s. To browse residential school records and resources, visit the IRSHDC Collections website.

What did they eat in Indian boarding schools?

The diet ingrained through Indian Boarding Schools effectively assimilated certain taste preferences for generations, including the consumption of lard, fried meats and bread, starchy root vegetables, and beans.

What is one reason why so many native students died at boarding schools like Carlisle?

Disease was one reason why many Indian Boarding Schools closed. Though not the reason Carlisle shut down, at least 168 children who attended Carlisle died from tuberculosis, pneumonia, and the flu at the school.

Why were Indian boarding schools shut down?

In the mid-20th century, many of these schools shut down due to reports of neglect and abuse, while those that remained made enormous changes. Four are still open today.

Why did Indian children go to boarding schools?

Native American Boarding Schools (also known as Indian Boarding Schools) were established by the U.S. government in the late 19th century as an effort to assimilate Indigenous youth into mainstream American culture through education.

How many Indian boarding schools still exist?

From 1879 to the present day, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Native Americans attended Indian boarding schools as children. As of 2023, four federally run off-reservation boarding schools still exist. Native American tribes developed one of the first women's colleges.

What was the goal of sending children to Indian boarding schools?

The purpose of federal Indian boarding schools was to culturally assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children by forcibly removing them from their families and Indian Tribes, Alaska Native Villages, and Native Hawaiian Community.

What types of trauma occurred in residential schools?

In addition to the significant number of mortalities and children who went “missing” from these schools, many were also victims of chronic mental, physical, and sexual abuses and neglect (RCAP, 1996).

Is boarding school psychologically damaging?

Boarding School Syndrome is not a medical category, but a proposal that there is an identifiable cluster of learned behaviours and emotional states that may follow growing up in boarding school, which can lead to serious psychological distress.

Who created Orange Shirt Day and why?

About Phyllis Webstad

She is the Founder and Ambassador of the Orange Shirt Society, and tours the country telling her story and raising awareness about the impacts of the residential school system. She has now published two books, the “Orange Shirt Story” and “Phyllis's Orange Shirt” for younger children.

How many residential school survivors are still alive today?

The last Indian Residential School, located in Saskatchewan, closed in 1996. To date, more than 1,800 confirmed or suspected unmarked graves have been identified. Approximately 80,000 residential school student survivors are still alive today.

Is it illegal to not send your child to school in Canada?

Students must stay in school or an equivalent learning program approved by the Ministry of Education until they are 18. Parents who neglect to send, or refuses to let, their children go to school can be charged for their child's truancy.

What was the purpose of the residential schools in the 19th century?

The purpose of these institutions was to assimilate Native American children by Christianizing them and immersing them in white American culture. This was done by cutting their hair, giving them new names, cutting them off from relatives, and punishing them for speaking their Indigenous languages.

What happened to the Native American families who refused to send their children to a boarding school?

Parents who refused to send their children to the schools could be legally imprisoned and deprived of resources such as food and clothing which were scarce on reservations. Three of the 25 Indian boarding schools run by the U.S. government were in California.

Do Indian boarding schools exist today?

NABS's most current research has identified 523 known Indian boarding schools in the U.S. NABS believes this number will continue to grow as more information and resources become available. This research has been ongoing, so technically it started when NABS was established in 2012.

What is Indian Ghost Dance?

A late-nineteenth-century American Indian spiritual movement, the ghost dance began in Nevada in 1889 when a Paiute named Wovoka (also known as Jack Wilson) prophesied the extinction of white people and the return of the old-time life and superiority of the Indians.