LawStudy 7 | - Student
Oct 29, 2019 | #1
Introduction
The relationship between acculturation, colonialism, and education is a formidable one, with cultural imperialism through educational structures markedly visible even in the twenty-first century (Slowey 5). As a dominant form of socialization, the education of children has frequently served as a mechanism for nation-building throughout human history, with curricula and institutional forces aimed at cultivating a loyal citizenry. The most brutal instances of attempted acculturation through education, however, have sought to eradicate the norms, traditions, and practices of indigenous cultures by using children as a medium for cultural imperialism. Canada's residential school system, at its inception, served as an attempt to address the perceived socioeconomic and sociopolitical needs of a young nation that was seeking cultural cohesion (Slowey 5). The education of youth through the new, poorly structured and grossly misguided system was motivated by various economic forces, with current discourse regarding residential schools highlighting the atrocities which pervaded the system. The following inquiry examines the economic motivations behind Canadian residential schools, asserting the perceived importance of acculturation due to shifts within the economic sphere relative to resources and the needs of a growing and shifting population. This work theorizes that the resonating effects of residential school policies continue to impact the Aboriginal people in Canada, with the same economic motivators which shaped the system during the nineteenth century persisting in the current globalized marketplace.
The residential school system has now been broadly and fervently condemned for a wide spectrum of abuses, with the very theoretical ground on which the system rested significantly immoral and indicative of the proverbial White Man's Burden to educate colonized populations (Fear-Segal 32). Slowey posits that while the nation of Canada has sought to remedy the ills associated with residential schools and colonization, the Aboriginal people in the nation continue to be affected by economically driven policies which undermine their autonomy. Moreover, these policies exist under the guise of self-governance, with the surface-level agenda being to wield diversity as a resource rather than a liability through fortification of the Aboriginal identity. Slowey describes this process as follows:
"In this era of globalization, in which corporations assume a more dominant role in all spheres of life, the Canadian government is involved in a process of significant restructuring driven by a neoliberal agenda. In accordance with this vision of a minimalist state and unfettered market-driven development, self-government is being promoted as a means for political autonomy as well as for economic development in Aboriginal communities--all considered critical elements of "decolonization." Through the process of devolution, the state is, arguably, promoting self-governance as a means to enhance the opportunity of Aboriginal peoples to enter the market society and liberate them from traditional colonial constraints (5)."
Neocolonialism, the same author posits, represents forces similar to the more blatant colonialism that created the residential school system, with neocolonialism continuing to suppress the Aboriginal people while the Canadian government makes apologies for the residential schools.
The legacy of residential schools is an unfortunate one, with scholars suggesting that out of all the actions against the Aboriginal people during the nineteenth century for which the Canadian government has sought reconciliation, the residential schools were the most egregious (Dyck and Tanner 7). The Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) charged four Christian churches to run the residential school system in the 1880s, with the associated policies interfering not only with Aboriginal culture but also their governance and economic development. Irrefutably, the motivations for structuring residential schools were socioeconomic in nature, with colonialism always sourced from a dangerous combination of economic greed, resource imbalance, and a perceived inequality between the colonizer and the colonized.
The residential schools were unapologetically structured as a channel for assimilating the Aboriginal people to the dominant, Euro-centric culture. Residential schools yielded two effects that were not intended by policy-makers; these were the justified anger of the Aboriginal people against the Canadian government and the widely visible message that the government did not value the culture of the indigenous population. Unfortunately, it was the youngest generations of the Aboriginal people who suffered most immediately, with significant instances of child abuse, neglect, and poor educational practices now well-documented (Dyck and Tanner 8).
Emerging as early as the late 1700s within New Brunswick, the original residential schools were masked as missionary efforts. The residential schools spread throughout the nineteenth century, with missionaries aiming to convert First Nations people by targeting children. Notably, the efforts of the churches were not universally sourced from ill-will toward the indigenous people, with legitimate concern for the children's safety now acknowledged as very real during the early decades of the nineteenth century. The displacement of the Aboriginals had begun long before the inception of residential schools, with the churches tasked by the DIA acknowledging that the Aboriginal children were in danger due to their social immobility (Smith 6).
The economic motivations for acculturation, however, were not sourced from a desire to protect the First Nations children; they were driven first and foremost by incompatibilities between the cultures of the colonizers and the colonized. The displacement of the Aboriginal people occurred geographically first, with the colonists pushing them off of their lands due to desired resources. Understandably, the fragility affecting the now socially immobile Aboriginal people undermined their cultural cohesion and created conditions through which they could be even more easily dominated. Substance abuse became rampant in many, though certainly not all, Aboriginal societies, with the missionaries acknowledging that the social environment and economic instability affecting the indigenous children was not an optimal context through which children can be educated and raised (Smith 6). Ultimately, it was the colonizing population, namely the white, Eurocentric population, which created the severe instability for the Aboriginal people that then warranted cohesive, political efforts to address the emerging problems.
The residential schools then emerged in order to serve the needs of the colonizers rather than the First Nations people (Schabas 4). The instability created by the displacement of the Aboriginals sourced a wide spectrum of problems, with the remaining desire to assimilate the population to the dominant population additionally informing the residential school efforts. The First Nations people had been robbed of their autonomy, unable to sustain themselves in the new and unfamiliar political, social, and economic environment, with the residential schools emerging as a channel for reducing the new, perceived burden on Euro-Canadian society.
Primarily, residential schools were not a means of protecting indigenous children but, more saliently, a means of assimilating, and by extension controlling, their futures. The residential schools were structured under the language of self-sufficiency, a language which continues to inform Aboriginal policy in Canada, with the treaties between the First Nations people and the colonizers directly informing the context of the schools. Politically, it was these treaties, many of which were signed during the 1870s in order to promote more effective assimilation efforts, which cited the government's responsibility to place schools on the new First Nations reservations. Schabas articulates the initial legislation as follows: "The initial legislation was called the Gradual Civilization Act and the ideological underpinning was assimilationist. The schools' proponents pledged they would end the "Indian problem" within a few generations. More than 150,000 young Native people were placed in such institutions. They were often forbidden to speak their language and practise their culture, and were subjected to various forms of ill-treatment and brutality" (5).
Most of the stakeholders in the residential school system during the latter decades of the nineteenth century acknowledged the very real economic needs of the First Nations people; they had been displaced from their land, were unable to meaningfully compete in the new marketplace, and needed to survive the irrevocably degradation of their own economy. In many areas, the colonized people had a longstanding economy which was bison-based and thrived as at least partially migratory for generations; this was eradicated in a comparatively short period of time by the colonists. The new schooling policies would create an opportunity for Aboriginal people to survive in their new environment, with the language of the legislation focusing on the positive changes the schools would create.
The emerging schools, however, were located external to First Nations communities, with evidence now suggesting that this was an intentional effort to more aggressively assimilate the indigenous people by generationally fragmenting their society. Students had inadequate healthcare, food, and educational resources, with atrocious evidence highlighting gross neglect and abuse in the schools. DeLeeuw describes the residential school system discourse during the 1870s in terms of aggressive civilization, with the removal of children from their families the principle feature of residential schools: "....Aboriginal children were 'kept constantly within the circle of civilized conditions' where they would receive the 'care of a mother' and an education that would prepare them for a life in modernizing Canada....Confined and specific sites were vital in the transmission and enactment of colonial ideologies" (345). In the absence of their social support network and faced with a network of sexual and physical abuses, the students of residential schools were not acculturated, as was the intention, but served as a viable source of animosity toward the Canadian government within Aboriginal societies.
The failed residential schools were a growing problem throughout the former half of the twentieth century, with the government beginning to close them during the 1940s. The effort to eradicate the schools was a slow one, however, with the last residential school in Saskatchewan closing in 1996. It was not until the late 1990s when fervent research begun on the atrocities affecting residential school students, with these instances of abuse now well-documented. The churches tasked with running the schools were the first to apologize and support reconciliation, with the Canadian government not targeted for its role in the process until much later. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was tasked with the need to examine the unfortunate history of the residential school system and its legacy, emerging from the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) in 2007 (Schabas 3). The established compensation system aims to serve as reconciliation for the brutal impact of the residential schools, with survivors of the system provided with $10,000 compensation in addition to $3,000 for each year of attendance; these amounts have been condemned, however, for never being able to heal the physical, mental, and emotional damage done to the students of residential schools.
Economic changes resultant from colonization processes rarely benefit the indigenous population. The residential schools aimed to address the instabilities of the economic environment emerging during the colonization process which had created a wide gap between the sufficiency of the dominating Euro-Canadian population and the instability of the socially immobile First Nations people. The movement of the students away from their communities and families as well as the gross lack of resources, accountability, and general integrity had by the schools were indicative of a total dismissal of the humanity of the indigenous population. Fear-Segal posits that the Euro-American and Euro-Canadian populations' educational efforts against the indigenous people in the United States and Canada were sourced from a genuine desire to cultivate contributing citizens juxtaposed with a desire to maintain their inferiority; the policy makers wanted to reduce the economic burden on society but not allow them to flourish (32). Fear-Segal describes this as follows:
"The government's new commitment to educating all Indians and assimilating them into the Republic preempted the answer to a question that had been long debated and still haunted the minds of many white Americans. Could white schooling prepare native children for equal citizenship? ...Advocates of federal Indian education were engaged in a new and controversial venture..... Yet the common goal of reformers masked a fundamental division in their perceptions and constructions of the Indian. In deliberating over how to transform the Indian, they were forced to broach the thorny problem of racial difference; to ask not only in what ways Indians were dissimilar to whites but to confront the essence and source of that difference (31)."
Conveniently, the guise of morality and religious duty served the economic needs of the dominant European colonist population very well, with their socioeconomic and sociopolitical superiority ensured by the use of poor-quality education, forced displacement of the younger generation, and abuse that would reduce the life quality of First Nations children as they grew.
The intention was to cultivate a dependent, inferior citizenry that would never be allowed to flourish but would be less of an economic burden. The ideology of the residential schools was grounded in Enlightenment ideals through which the civilized Christians were tasked with acculturating, and thereby saving, the indigenous people. The Enlightenment ideas, particularly as they evolved throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were markedly dangerous, as they served to ground prejudice in science. Fear-Segal describes this ideology as follows: "Recruited to classify different societies into a hierarchical scheme, "science" played an important role in suggesting that nonwhite "savages" were socially inferior to members of civilized society and that their social inferiority had a biological or racial counterpart" (32). The nature of this discourse created an insurmountable barrier to the colonized people, as they were characterized as having permanent traits which rendered their inferiority innate and irrevocable.
The expanding European empires coincided with spreading capitalist practices throughout Western society, with consequently mounting competition creating conditions conducive to colonialism. The desire for greater resources, and by extension more land, paralleled social issues such as need for religious freedom and the duty to civilize those perceived as savage (DeLeeuw 340). In Canada, the colonial actions targeting the Aboriginals destroyed their existing social, economic, and political practices, with the residential schools a channel for social and economic control. DeLeeuw posits that geographic incursion coincides with the destruction of entire societies within a rapid period of time during the process of colonization, with the ideologies supporting economic gain justifying racial prejudices (341). In turn, the language of inferiority then allows for the dominating population to enact any number of atrocities against the colonized population. DeLeeuw describes this interaction between social and economic ideologies as follows:
"Colonial action, however, requires an ideological framework of explanation and rationalization. Such ideological frameworks, as many post-colonial theorists have argued, are comprised of nuanced social practices and cultural iterations which insist that (particularly non-white) non-Euro colonial peoples, and all elements of their existences, are flawed and inherently inferior.... To think of this in another way, it is helpful to understand colonialism, like racism, as a set of practices and outcomes arising from the cumulative merger of thoughts, discursive iterations and bureaucracies or laws.... These constructions then informed, and manifested into, structural undertakings, including residential schooling and (en)forced colonial education (345)."
Residential schools were grounded in the assumption that the indigenous people were in need of transformation; from one perspective, this was true in that the colonists had created an environment to which the indigenous people of the land were not accustomed and within which they could not sustain themselves.
While the historic colonial period has ended within the global community, the relevance of the economic circumstances affecting Aboriginal politics during the late nineteenth century persists in the twenty-first century. Aboriginal politics in Canada mirror relations between majority and minority populations around the world, particularly in areas having a history of colonialism. The language of neocolonialism has emerged with respect to Aboriginal politics in Canada, with the resonating impact of residential schools highlighted as a more blatant manifestation of similar relations, now less visible, between First Nations people and the Canadian government. Kulchyski cites that Aboriginal politics in Canada are a "specific terrain of struggle" which is complex and inextricably bound to economics (8).
The Canadian government has sought to, from its inception, accumulate capital by constructing a set of circumstances for the First Nations people that maintain their inferiority. Kulchyski describes these circumstances as sets of temporal and spatial actions which form barriers to the accumulation of capital for Aboriginal people (9). The ways in which the Canadian government most immediately impeded the First Nations people from accumulating capital was via geographic displacement and then later, abusive policies in the name of education: "The most notable struggles of Aboriginal peoples against capital have been over the exploitation of non-renewable resources in the Canadian hinterland, and the resulting environmental impact such exploitation has, including the negative consequences for those whose material livelihood depends upon a subsistence economy directly linked to the land as the means of subsistence" (9). The same author suggests that the economic motivations behind residential schools, which separated and subjugated the indigenous societies in name of self-sufficiency, continue to persist in many current policies which seek to economically afford Aboriginals in Canada with job and education access.
Self-sufficiency, specifically, emerged within the language of residential school policy during the late nineteenth century, with the language of self-sufficiency persisting in the twenty-first century (Slowey 5). Slowey cites that the Aboriginal people in Canada are generally more dependent on the state, and specifically on self-government native policies, and the current neoliberal agenda will undermine the well-being of First Nations society due to the weakening of the nation-state in general within the international political community (5). Current Aboriginal politics are defined by new partnership encouragement, new fiscal relationships, and greater autonomy in governance within Aboriginal societies in order to bolster self-sufficiency. Specific manifestations of these ideals, however, are very much in line with corporate interests and the desire to control indigenous land (Slowey 5). Motivations similar to those which created residential schools, in short, continue to exist within Canada, with self-sufficiency providing a guise for serving economic interests of the dominant population.
Conclusions
The residential schools which were so detrimental to the indigenous populations of Canada during the nineteenth and twentieth century represented a perceived, albeit very poorly planned, solution to problems affecting the post-colonial Canadian environment; this environment was marked by declining stability among the Aboriginal people's societies due to forced, drastic changes to their world including displacement, ill treatment, and policies which subjugated them severely. Residential schools would fulfill the need, it was assumed, to acculturate the First Nations children through educating them, creating a Canadian citizenry that was loyal to the state but not positioned to become socially or economically superior to the dominant population.
Economic changes to the Aboriginal way of life included a total dissolution of their longstanding practices which did not afford them a place within the new Euro-Canadian society. The schools allowed for acculturation to take place which would frame Aboriginals as economic contributors, but the aggressive practices of removing them from their homes and ways of life undermined their emotional stability. In the absence of necessary resources, residential schools floundered and represented an egregious violation of human rights for Aboriginal children and their families. This inquiry concludes that while the relationship between education, assimilation, and colonization is well-known, the desire to truly render the First Nations children as contributing citizens was affected significantly by a concurrent desire to maintain their inferiority, a social position which was maintained by ideologies which framed their lower status as inborn. Lower quality education would allow them to sustain themselves, or so the policy makers assumed, but never transcend the instilled cycle of social immobility. Most saliently, the language of self-sufficiency continues to impact Aboriginal politics in the twenty-first century, with scholars positing that the imposition of job and educational opportunities which are not culturally competent actually undermines First Nations people's ability to be empowered in the global marketplace.
Works Cited
De Leeuw, Sarah. "Intimate Colonialisms: The Material and Experienced Places of British Columbia's Residential Schools." The Canadian Geographer 51.3 (2007): 339-355.
Dyck, Noel, and Adrian Tanner. "[Differing Visions: Administering Indian Residential Schooling in Prince Albert, 1867-1995]." Anthropologica 40.2 (1998). Questia.
Fear-Segal, Jacquelline. White Man's Club: Schools, Race, and the Struggle of Indian Acculturation. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska, 2007. Questia. Web.
Kulchyski, Peter. "Aboriginal Peoples and Hegemony in Canada." Journal of Canadian Studies 30.1 (1995). 7.
Schabas, William A. "Truth vs. Reconciliation? as Canada's Residential Schools Commission Launches, Worldwide Precedents Suggest We Might Not Get Both." Literary Review of Canada Nov. 2010: 3-11.
Slowey, Gabrielle A. "Globalization and Self-Government: Impacts and Implications for First Nations in Canada." American Review of Canadian Studies (2001). 5.
Smith, Derek G. "The "Policy of Aggressive Civilization" and Projects of Governance in Roman Catholic Industrial Schools for Native Peoples in Canada, 1870-95." Anthropologica 43.2 (2001). 6.
The relationship between acculturation, colonialism, and education is a formidable one, with cultural imperialism through educational structures markedly visible even in the twenty-first century (Slowey 5). As a dominant form of socialization, the education of children has frequently served as a mechanism for nation-building throughout human history, with curricula and institutional forces aimed at cultivating a loyal citizenry. The most brutal instances of attempted acculturation through education, however, have sought to eradicate the norms, traditions, and practices of indigenous cultures by using children as a medium for cultural imperialism. Canada's residential school system, at its inception, served as an attempt to address the perceived socioeconomic and sociopolitical needs of a young nation that was seeking cultural cohesion (Slowey 5). The education of youth through the new, poorly structured and grossly misguided system was motivated by various economic forces, with current discourse regarding residential schools highlighting the atrocities which pervaded the system. The following inquiry examines the economic motivations behind Canadian residential schools, asserting the perceived importance of acculturation due to shifts within the economic sphere relative to resources and the needs of a growing and shifting population. This work theorizes that the resonating effects of residential school policies continue to impact the Aboriginal people in Canada, with the same economic motivators which shaped the system during the nineteenth century persisting in the current globalized marketplace.
The residential school system has now been broadly and fervently condemned for a wide spectrum of abuses, with the very theoretical ground on which the system rested significantly immoral and indicative of the proverbial White Man's Burden to educate colonized populations (Fear-Segal 32). Slowey posits that while the nation of Canada has sought to remedy the ills associated with residential schools and colonization, the Aboriginal people in the nation continue to be affected by economically driven policies which undermine their autonomy. Moreover, these policies exist under the guise of self-governance, with the surface-level agenda being to wield diversity as a resource rather than a liability through fortification of the Aboriginal identity. Slowey describes this process as follows:"In this era of globalization, in which corporations assume a more dominant role in all spheres of life, the Canadian government is involved in a process of significant restructuring driven by a neoliberal agenda. In accordance with this vision of a minimalist state and unfettered market-driven development, self-government is being promoted as a means for political autonomy as well as for economic development in Aboriginal communities--all considered critical elements of "decolonization." Through the process of devolution, the state is, arguably, promoting self-governance as a means to enhance the opportunity of Aboriginal peoples to enter the market society and liberate them from traditional colonial constraints (5)."
Neocolonialism, the same author posits, represents forces similar to the more blatant colonialism that created the residential school system, with neocolonialism continuing to suppress the Aboriginal people while the Canadian government makes apologies for the residential schools.
Canadian Residential Schools' Emergence
The legacy of residential schools is an unfortunate one, with scholars suggesting that out of all the actions against the Aboriginal people during the nineteenth century for which the Canadian government has sought reconciliation, the residential schools were the most egregious (Dyck and Tanner 7). The Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) charged four Christian churches to run the residential school system in the 1880s, with the associated policies interfering not only with Aboriginal culture but also their governance and economic development. Irrefutably, the motivations for structuring residential schools were socioeconomic in nature, with colonialism always sourced from a dangerous combination of economic greed, resource imbalance, and a perceived inequality between the colonizer and the colonized.
The residential schools were unapologetically structured as a channel for assimilating the Aboriginal people to the dominant, Euro-centric culture. Residential schools yielded two effects that were not intended by policy-makers; these were the justified anger of the Aboriginal people against the Canadian government and the widely visible message that the government did not value the culture of the indigenous population. Unfortunately, it was the youngest generations of the Aboriginal people who suffered most immediately, with significant instances of child abuse, neglect, and poor educational practices now well-documented (Dyck and Tanner 8).
Emerging as early as the late 1700s within New Brunswick, the original residential schools were masked as missionary efforts. The residential schools spread throughout the nineteenth century, with missionaries aiming to convert First Nations people by targeting children. Notably, the efforts of the churches were not universally sourced from ill-will toward the indigenous people, with legitimate concern for the children's safety now acknowledged as very real during the early decades of the nineteenth century. The displacement of the Aboriginals had begun long before the inception of residential schools, with the churches tasked by the DIA acknowledging that the Aboriginal children were in danger due to their social immobility (Smith 6).
The economic motivations for acculturation, however, were not sourced from a desire to protect the First Nations children; they were driven first and foremost by incompatibilities between the cultures of the colonizers and the colonized. The displacement of the Aboriginal people occurred geographically first, with the colonists pushing them off of their lands due to desired resources. Understandably, the fragility affecting the now socially immobile Aboriginal people undermined their cultural cohesion and created conditions through which they could be even more easily dominated. Substance abuse became rampant in many, though certainly not all, Aboriginal societies, with the missionaries acknowledging that the social environment and economic instability affecting the indigenous children was not an optimal context through which children can be educated and raised (Smith 6). Ultimately, it was the colonizing population, namely the white, Eurocentric population, which created the severe instability for the Aboriginal people that then warranted cohesive, political efforts to address the emerging problems.
The residential schools then emerged in order to serve the needs of the colonizers rather than the First Nations people (Schabas 4). The instability created by the displacement of the Aboriginals sourced a wide spectrum of problems, with the remaining desire to assimilate the population to the dominant population additionally informing the residential school efforts. The First Nations people had been robbed of their autonomy, unable to sustain themselves in the new and unfamiliar political, social, and economic environment, with the residential schools emerging as a channel for reducing the new, perceived burden on Euro-Canadian society.
Primarily, residential schools were not a means of protecting indigenous children but, more saliently, a means of assimilating, and by extension controlling, their futures. The residential schools were structured under the language of self-sufficiency, a language which continues to inform Aboriginal policy in Canada, with the treaties between the First Nations people and the colonizers directly informing the context of the schools. Politically, it was these treaties, many of which were signed during the 1870s in order to promote more effective assimilation efforts, which cited the government's responsibility to place schools on the new First Nations reservations. Schabas articulates the initial legislation as follows: "The initial legislation was called the Gradual Civilization Act and the ideological underpinning was assimilationist. The schools' proponents pledged they would end the "Indian problem" within a few generations. More than 150,000 young Native people were placed in such institutions. They were often forbidden to speak their language and practise their culture, and were subjected to various forms of ill-treatment and brutality" (5).
Most of the stakeholders in the residential school system during the latter decades of the nineteenth century acknowledged the very real economic needs of the First Nations people; they had been displaced from their land, were unable to meaningfully compete in the new marketplace, and needed to survive the irrevocably degradation of their own economy. In many areas, the colonized people had a longstanding economy which was bison-based and thrived as at least partially migratory for generations; this was eradicated in a comparatively short period of time by the colonists. The new schooling policies would create an opportunity for Aboriginal people to survive in their new environment, with the language of the legislation focusing on the positive changes the schools would create.
The emerging schools, however, were located external to First Nations communities, with evidence now suggesting that this was an intentional effort to more aggressively assimilate the indigenous people by generationally fragmenting their society. Students had inadequate healthcare, food, and educational resources, with atrocious evidence highlighting gross neglect and abuse in the schools. DeLeeuw describes the residential school system discourse during the 1870s in terms of aggressive civilization, with the removal of children from their families the principle feature of residential schools: "....Aboriginal children were 'kept constantly within the circle of civilized conditions' where they would receive the 'care of a mother' and an education that would prepare them for a life in modernizing Canada....Confined and specific sites were vital in the transmission and enactment of colonial ideologies" (345). In the absence of their social support network and faced with a network of sexual and physical abuses, the students of residential schools were not acculturated, as was the intention, but served as a viable source of animosity toward the Canadian government within Aboriginal societies.
The failed residential schools were a growing problem throughout the former half of the twentieth century, with the government beginning to close them during the 1940s. The effort to eradicate the schools was a slow one, however, with the last residential school in Saskatchewan closing in 1996. It was not until the late 1990s when fervent research begun on the atrocities affecting residential school students, with these instances of abuse now well-documented. The churches tasked with running the schools were the first to apologize and support reconciliation, with the Canadian government not targeted for its role in the process until much later. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was tasked with the need to examine the unfortunate history of the residential school system and its legacy, emerging from the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) in 2007 (Schabas 3). The established compensation system aims to serve as reconciliation for the brutal impact of the residential schools, with survivors of the system provided with $10,000 compensation in addition to $3,000 for each year of attendance; these amounts have been condemned, however, for never being able to heal the physical, mental, and emotional damage done to the students of residential schools.
Economic Change, Education, and the White Man's Burden
Economic changes resultant from colonization processes rarely benefit the indigenous population. The residential schools aimed to address the instabilities of the economic environment emerging during the colonization process which had created a wide gap between the sufficiency of the dominating Euro-Canadian population and the instability of the socially immobile First Nations people. The movement of the students away from their communities and families as well as the gross lack of resources, accountability, and general integrity had by the schools were indicative of a total dismissal of the humanity of the indigenous population. Fear-Segal posits that the Euro-American and Euro-Canadian populations' educational efforts against the indigenous people in the United States and Canada were sourced from a genuine desire to cultivate contributing citizens juxtaposed with a desire to maintain their inferiority; the policy makers wanted to reduce the economic burden on society but not allow them to flourish (32). Fear-Segal describes this as follows:
"The government's new commitment to educating all Indians and assimilating them into the Republic preempted the answer to a question that had been long debated and still haunted the minds of many white Americans. Could white schooling prepare native children for equal citizenship? ...Advocates of federal Indian education were engaged in a new and controversial venture..... Yet the common goal of reformers masked a fundamental division in their perceptions and constructions of the Indian. In deliberating over how to transform the Indian, they were forced to broach the thorny problem of racial difference; to ask not only in what ways Indians were dissimilar to whites but to confront the essence and source of that difference (31)."
Conveniently, the guise of morality and religious duty served the economic needs of the dominant European colonist population very well, with their socioeconomic and sociopolitical superiority ensured by the use of poor-quality education, forced displacement of the younger generation, and abuse that would reduce the life quality of First Nations children as they grew.
The intention was to cultivate a dependent, inferior citizenry that would never be allowed to flourish but would be less of an economic burden. The ideology of the residential schools was grounded in Enlightenment ideals through which the civilized Christians were tasked with acculturating, and thereby saving, the indigenous people. The Enlightenment ideas, particularly as they evolved throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were markedly dangerous, as they served to ground prejudice in science. Fear-Segal describes this ideology as follows: "Recruited to classify different societies into a hierarchical scheme, "science" played an important role in suggesting that nonwhite "savages" were socially inferior to members of civilized society and that their social inferiority had a biological or racial counterpart" (32). The nature of this discourse created an insurmountable barrier to the colonized people, as they were characterized as having permanent traits which rendered their inferiority innate and irrevocable.
The expanding European empires coincided with spreading capitalist practices throughout Western society, with consequently mounting competition creating conditions conducive to colonialism. The desire for greater resources, and by extension more land, paralleled social issues such as need for religious freedom and the duty to civilize those perceived as savage (DeLeeuw 340). In Canada, the colonial actions targeting the Aboriginals destroyed their existing social, economic, and political practices, with the residential schools a channel for social and economic control. DeLeeuw posits that geographic incursion coincides with the destruction of entire societies within a rapid period of time during the process of colonization, with the ideologies supporting economic gain justifying racial prejudices (341). In turn, the language of inferiority then allows for the dominating population to enact any number of atrocities against the colonized population. DeLeeuw describes this interaction between social and economic ideologies as follows:
"Colonial action, however, requires an ideological framework of explanation and rationalization. Such ideological frameworks, as many post-colonial theorists have argued, are comprised of nuanced social practices and cultural iterations which insist that (particularly non-white) non-Euro colonial peoples, and all elements of their existences, are flawed and inherently inferior.... To think of this in another way, it is helpful to understand colonialism, like racism, as a set of practices and outcomes arising from the cumulative merger of thoughts, discursive iterations and bureaucracies or laws.... These constructions then informed, and manifested into, structural undertakings, including residential schooling and (en)forced colonial education (345)."
Residential schools were grounded in the assumption that the indigenous people were in need of transformation; from one perspective, this was true in that the colonists had created an environment to which the indigenous people of the land were not accustomed and within which they could not sustain themselves.
Relevance of Residential Schools to Modern Aboriginal Politics Within the Global Marketplace
While the historic colonial period has ended within the global community, the relevance of the economic circumstances affecting Aboriginal politics during the late nineteenth century persists in the twenty-first century. Aboriginal politics in Canada mirror relations between majority and minority populations around the world, particularly in areas having a history of colonialism. The language of neocolonialism has emerged with respect to Aboriginal politics in Canada, with the resonating impact of residential schools highlighted as a more blatant manifestation of similar relations, now less visible, between First Nations people and the Canadian government. Kulchyski cites that Aboriginal politics in Canada are a "specific terrain of struggle" which is complex and inextricably bound to economics (8).
The Canadian government has sought to, from its inception, accumulate capital by constructing a set of circumstances for the First Nations people that maintain their inferiority. Kulchyski describes these circumstances as sets of temporal and spatial actions which form barriers to the accumulation of capital for Aboriginal people (9). The ways in which the Canadian government most immediately impeded the First Nations people from accumulating capital was via geographic displacement and then later, abusive policies in the name of education: "The most notable struggles of Aboriginal peoples against capital have been over the exploitation of non-renewable resources in the Canadian hinterland, and the resulting environmental impact such exploitation has, including the negative consequences for those whose material livelihood depends upon a subsistence economy directly linked to the land as the means of subsistence" (9). The same author suggests that the economic motivations behind residential schools, which separated and subjugated the indigenous societies in name of self-sufficiency, continue to persist in many current policies which seek to economically afford Aboriginals in Canada with job and education access.
Self-sufficiency, specifically, emerged within the language of residential school policy during the late nineteenth century, with the language of self-sufficiency persisting in the twenty-first century (Slowey 5). Slowey cites that the Aboriginal people in Canada are generally more dependent on the state, and specifically on self-government native policies, and the current neoliberal agenda will undermine the well-being of First Nations society due to the weakening of the nation-state in general within the international political community (5). Current Aboriginal politics are defined by new partnership encouragement, new fiscal relationships, and greater autonomy in governance within Aboriginal societies in order to bolster self-sufficiency. Specific manifestations of these ideals, however, are very much in line with corporate interests and the desire to control indigenous land (Slowey 5). Motivations similar to those which created residential schools, in short, continue to exist within Canada, with self-sufficiency providing a guise for serving economic interests of the dominant population.
Conclusions
The residential schools which were so detrimental to the indigenous populations of Canada during the nineteenth and twentieth century represented a perceived, albeit very poorly planned, solution to problems affecting the post-colonial Canadian environment; this environment was marked by declining stability among the Aboriginal people's societies due to forced, drastic changes to their world including displacement, ill treatment, and policies which subjugated them severely. Residential schools would fulfill the need, it was assumed, to acculturate the First Nations children through educating them, creating a Canadian citizenry that was loyal to the state but not positioned to become socially or economically superior to the dominant population.
Economic changes to the Aboriginal way of life included a total dissolution of their longstanding practices which did not afford them a place within the new Euro-Canadian society. The schools allowed for acculturation to take place which would frame Aboriginals as economic contributors, but the aggressive practices of removing them from their homes and ways of life undermined their emotional stability. In the absence of necessary resources, residential schools floundered and represented an egregious violation of human rights for Aboriginal children and their families. This inquiry concludes that while the relationship between education, assimilation, and colonization is well-known, the desire to truly render the First Nations children as contributing citizens was affected significantly by a concurrent desire to maintain their inferiority, a social position which was maintained by ideologies which framed their lower status as inborn. Lower quality education would allow them to sustain themselves, or so the policy makers assumed, but never transcend the instilled cycle of social immobility. Most saliently, the language of self-sufficiency continues to impact Aboriginal politics in the twenty-first century, with scholars positing that the imposition of job and educational opportunities which are not culturally competent actually undermines First Nations people's ability to be empowered in the global marketplace.
Works Cited
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