Residential Schools

Gray Merriam | Jul 14, 2021

Your Editorial “Canada Day Needs to Change Again” is certainly timely,a but perhaps some additional considerations are needed to fully understand the issue. The Residential School problem arose a few years before Canada had been proclaimed. It arose from an unfortunate coalescence of two belief systems. The belief in British commercialism was a colonial dictum promoted heavily by the Hudsons Bay Company and its competitors. That belief system received strong support from the belief in Christian religions. Neither could be questioned by either average citizens or traditional government members or civil servants. Strong belief systems were believed to absolve recipients of the responsibility to think  for themselves. They still do. Canada was guilty of following, not starting, the corrupt behaviour that resulted.

Tragically, the strength of those two belief systems have had lasting affects on Canada’s colonial development. In my family, my grandfather was proud of his role in suppressing the Riel Rebellion and my father carried that pride forward another generation. Fortunately, as the seventh family generation in North America, I did not subscribe to their pride. But as an undergraduate student in the 1950’s, I did not voice objection to the continuing removal of Indigenous children from their homes, sometimes at gunpoint. Why was I silent? Narrow focus, certainly, but also the media of Canada failed to publicize the atrocity. We never heard of it. Today’s students would not stand for it!

At the governing level, Canada is still mistakenly believing in the belief system of the Hudsons Bay Company; namely that stripping the country of its natural resources and selling them without increased economic worth, just like the Hudsons Bay beavers, is our fate handed to us by HBC. Pushing indigenous peoples out of the way was just part of the British colonial system. The genocide that it constituted was not even newsworthy.

Gray Merriam