Life at the residential schools

End of family life

The Canadian government decided that Indigenous children had to be taken away from their mums and dads before they ‘learned to become savages like their parents’. It wasn’t long before there were hardly any children left in Indigenous communities that parents could hug and care for.

Sent to their deaths

As early as 1907, newspapers in Canada were reporting that children ‘died like flies’ at residential schools. They died for all kinds of reasons, including lung diseases, malnutrition, workplace accidents and fires. So lots of people were aware of what was happening, but almost no one, neither politicians nor ordinary people, did anything to stop it.

Many of the teachers were priests, monks and nuns who were told to force the Christian faith on the children and make them forget their spiritual beliefs. In recent years the Pope, the head of the Catholic Church, and many other church leaders have asked for forgiveness for all the pain they caused. Not everyone has accepted those apologies.

Many children were forced to work hard because the schools had no money.