Effects Of The Intergenerational Trauma Of Residential Schools

Name: Instructor: Course: Date: Residential Schools Residential schools represents Canada’s biggest shameful secret to this day. This was a project that was directed at helping the indigenous community get assimilated into the Euro-Canadian culture (Miller). Ideally, the Canadian government had the idea that assimilating the indigenous people into the Canadian life would greatly improve their lives. This meant adopting Christianity, Canadian customs and learning English or French. These were first established in New France and at the time they were referred to as custodian schools. They were established in the year 1880 in a quest to civilize the indigenous community (Miller). Before the last school was closed in the 1996, they had already done enough damage, with a majority of the children resulting to drug abuse, alcoholism and some sowed the signs of post-traumatic stress (Miller). Instead of getting the children to be assimilated into the Canadian culture in a smooth and organized manner. The children were forced to attend school which in most of the cases were far from their families (Paquin). This was not an accident, rather most of the schools were strategically build in the urban areas. As if that was not enough, the parents were required to have a pass to visit their children. This reduced the influence that the parents had on their children relative to culture and practices of the indigenous ways. In the schools the students were exposed to trauma, loneliness, sexual assault, emotional deprivation and abuse (Miller). This was a forcible transition for the indigenous community and it took its toll on the children. There were rampant cases of children taking their lives, relative to the trauma that they experienced. Instead integrating the cultures the schools in the reserves produced emotionally broken children that were worse-off that they were in their homes with their families (Paquin). The facilities were linked to the Catholic missionaries who provided care and schooling starting in New France. Some of the earlier attempts of the same in New Brunswick had failed as the European depended on the indigenous people economically and militarily who were autonomous in this region. After the 1830s, when the A...