Conclusions
There can be no movement toward reconciliation without an understanding of the rationale, operation, and overall impact of the schools. Through its work, the Commission has reached certain conclusions about the residential school system. The truth about the residential school system will cause many Canadians to see their country differently. These are hard truths, but only by coming to grips with these truths can we lay the foundation for reconciliation.
The Commission has concluded that:
- Residential schools constituted an assault on Aboriginal children.
- Residential schools constituted an assault on Aboriginal families.
- Residential schools constituted an assault on Aboriginal culture.
- Residential schools constituted an assault on self-governing and self-sustaining Aboriginal nations.
- The impacts of the residential school system were immediate, and have been ongoing since the earliest years of the schools.
- Canadians have been denied a full and proper education as to the nature of Aboriginal societies, and the history of the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples.
1) Residential schools constituted an assault on Aboriginal children.
- The residential school system separated children from their parents without providing them with adequate physical or emotional care or supervision.
- Due to this lack of care and supervision, the schools often were sites of institutionalized child neglect, excessive physical punishment, and physical, sexual, and emotional abuse.
- Persistent underfunding left the schools dependent on student labour.
- Several generations of children were traumatized by their residential school experience: by having been abused, by having witnessed abuse, or by having been coerced to participate in abuse.
- All these factors contributed to high mortality rates, poor health, and low academic achievement.
2) Residential schools constituted an assault on Aboriginal families.
- The residential school system was established with the specific intent of preventing parents from exercising influence over the educational, spiritual, and cultural development of their children.
- The schools not only separated children from their parents and grandparents, but because of the strict separation of girls from boys, they also separated sisters from brothers. Older siblings were also separated from younger siblings.
- As each succeeding generation passed through the system, the family bond weakened, and, eventually, the strength and structure of Aboriginal family bonds were virtually destroyed.
- Given the high mortality rates that prevailed for much of the system's history, many parents spent their lives grieving, never having been given a proper description of how their child died or where they were buried, and not being able to hold an appropriate ceremony of mourning.
