A quick Internet search for stories about Canada’s Indian Residential Schools would only yield negative ones.
Accounts from self-proclaimed “survivors”—an inflammatory label deliberately selected to make former students seem like Holocaust survivors—include reports that “The physical abuse was every day. And being assaulted verbally—if I didn’t do things the way that they wanted me to do, I was called a dirty, stupid Indian that would be good for nothing.”
Another “survivor” of a different school claims to be “Poked with fingernails, pencils, pointers—they threw books, keys, broke wooden rulers over us, leaving scars. They slapped our heads, faces or ears, pulled our ears, nose, tongue. Red-hot hands puffed, cut by stiff straps. Cringe or move your hand, you get more.”
Following the example of the IRS Settlement Agreement and the testimonies it allowed as part of the Independent Assessment Process (IRSSA) for claims of abuse at the boarding schools along with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings where an unrepresentative sample of some 6,500 former students spoke about the abuse and other adversities they suffered, such stories allowed neither cross examination nor witness corroboration to prove “survivor” declarations were truthful.
Also ignored in the unquestioned acceptance of testimonies made since 1996, the year the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was released, also the year the last of the residential schools were closed, is that before that date, accusations that these schools were houses of horror were almost unheard of.
This discontinuity between present and past stories of school life suggests something is amiss.
Download the backgrounder here. (10 pages)
Read the press release here.
