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Mothering & Residential Schools
Rose McCormick
In less than one hundred and fifty years , Canadian Residential Schools served to tear apart the individual lives and larger cultural and family structures of First Nations Peoples all over what we now call Canada . Underpinned by the ideology of ‘ kill the Indian , save the child ’, the Residential Schooling system , a series of boarding schools found all across the nation ( s ), systematically removed Indigenous children from their homes and communities . These schools , operated by members of the Catholic church of Canada , taught Indigenous children ‘ dominant Canadian values ’ as a way to erase centuries of Indigenous knowledge , traditional cultural practices , and a wealth of Native languages .
In teaching ‘ Canadian ’ values to the students , these schools hoped to eradicate what various Canadian leaders perceived over time as the ‘ Indian problem ’, i . e .: the existence of many Indigenous communities of rich culture , knowledge , and languages over the entirety of the ‘ newly ’ settled land . This method of teaching not only stripped Indigenous children of their sense of self as Indigenous peoples , it also willfully and purposefully tore apart Native families . In these schools , education only truly came about upon separating Native children from their families , who were understood to be uncivilized and detrimental to the advancement of a ‘ new ’ society .
For Indigenous mothers , having their children forcibly removed and placed into institutions had dire consequences . In taking away their children , the Canadian government told Indigenous women that their ways of parenting were unacceptable , uncivilized , and a hindrance to the furthering of ‘ Canadian ’ progress . On a cultural level , Residen-