Why our kids need to learn about residential schools
How would you feel, if this happened in your kid?s class" Last fall, a grade 6 social studies class outside of Edmonton was learning about residential schools. A student put up her hand and said, ?I don?t have anything against Indigenous people, but my grandpa told me we had to put the Indians in residential schools because they were killing each other and we had to civilize them.?
Her words hung in the air for a moment. And then her teacher responded, ?Well, I don?t have anything against your grandpa, but people who are your grandpa?s age and your parents? age and even my age didn?t have the opportunity to learn the truth. So, we have a responsibility, because we?re learning the truth now.?
For generations, the full history of Canada?s residential schools, which existed for more than a century and housed 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit kids with the flat-out mission of assimilation into white society, was suppressed and ignored. If you?re non-Indigenous, you may have had some hazy idea of ?Indian schools,? but the kind of nightmarish abuse, bullying, deprivation and death that went on" It was rarely acknowledged and never discussed. I can remember first hearing about the schools only about 10 years ago in one of those free-ranging discussions that go on at noisy book club meetings, and thinking, ?I have a history degree?how is it even possible I?ve never heard of residential schools"? Today, however, Canadians?kids, adults, everybody?have that opport...
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