History: Canada's Dark Secret

BCFAS  -- In 1996, the last residential school in Canada was closed down, bringing to light horrifying stories about the methods used to sever indigenous children from the influence of their families and to assimilate them into the dominant "Canadian" culture. Over more than a century, tens of thousands of families were torn apart as children were kidnapped or forcibly removed from their homes

Residential schools were part of an extensive education system set up by the Canadian government and administered by churches with the objective of indoctrinating Aboriginal children into the Euro-Canadian and Christian way of life.


Bud Whiteye, a survivor of the Mohawk Institute Residential School, was "picked up" and taken to the school along with four other children as they walked along a public road to visit his grandmother.

"They didn't put us in a room and indoctrinate us all day long or anything like that," he explains. "It was in the routine of the place.


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