Eliza Stewart, a Gitk'san woman living in Vancouver, has confirmed that Indian women were still being sterilized by the government in the 1980's. In 1987, she was forced to undergo a tubal ligation by order of a social worker named Sally Heather in North Vancouver.
“The Ministry had already taken my daughter from me, and my worker, Sally Heather, told me that if I ever wanted to see her again I'd have to have my tubes tied. She said, 'You Indians have too many children as it is. This is for your own good.' So it was done in a north shore hospital after two mounties came to my home and took me away. I've never gotten over that. No lawyer will touch my case, and none of the doctors who did it will talk about it.” (47)
Finally, an insider in the system of hospital-based sterilizations, a former nurse named Pat Taylor, shared her knowledge with the IHRAMM inquiry in June, 1998.
“I worked for two years as a relief nurse at the Prairie Training School (PTS) in Red Deer, Alberta. That would be 1956 to 1958. The school was a front really, a place where all the scooped up kids were brought for sterilizing: lots of vagrant and runaway kids, unwed teenage moms, really just ordinary
people. And PTS policy was to sterilize all of them if they'd reached puberty, no exceptions. There was no consent involved. That included a lot of Indian kids. The Mounties used to bring them to us in big batches, mostly from the Edmonton (United Church) residential school. They all got sterilized.” (See Pat’s separate affidavit in Figure 66) (48)In Ontario, aboriginal women have been routinely used as involuntary test subjects in clinics to try out experimental birth control devices like the IUD, and in the process have been sterilized. Lynn Sharman, an aboriginal community worker in Thunder Bay, has documented these experiments over many years.
“The aim has always been to stop Indian women from conceiving. Starting in the fifties, Cree and Ojibway women were locked up in the Lake head Psychiatric Hospital and pumped full of experimental birth control drugs. I have a list of over three hundred of them who died from these experiments and were never reported buried. The Crees around Fort Albany found a death register, all of them with the
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names of women who died “under surgery”. It was when they needed guinea pigs for the IUD. They'd insert it and watched what happened, looking for the best way to stop procreation among the savages. All the doctors used to talk like that. They're just more discreet now.” (49)
These individual cases are tips of a much bigger iceberg of crime. The Globe and Mail reported in December, 1979 that Health Canada was distributing birth control pills to pre-menstrual Inuit and Dene girls without their knowledge; and that the government had an “unofficial” policy of sterilizing Inuit women after a certain number of childbirths. (Figure 88)
In addition, government doctors have employed a lactation suppressant known as “Agalactia”, a “non-intrusive sterilization method”, against native women for decades, according to Renee la Fortune. Renee was a doctoral student in Toronto whose academic career was cut short after she made her discovery of Agalactia public. Similar accounts abound. (50)
The growing body of literature on the ongoing sterilization of “third world” peoples indicates that since 1980 as many as one third of all aboriginal women in some western American states have been chemically sterilized by vaccines as part of tribal” public health programs”. Independent studies also claim that sterilizing agents have been found in World Health Organization (WHO) serums used to immunize Asians, aboriginals and Africans against polio and other diseases. (51)
And straight from the “horse's mouth”, the Director of the WHO's Expanded Immunization Program, and architect of the Vietnam War, Robert MacNamara, told a Paris journal in 1996,
“One must take draconian measures of demographic reduction against the will of certain populations. Reducing the birth rate has proved to be impossible. One must therefore increase the mortality rate. How? By natural means: famine and sickness.” (52)
Earlier in his career, President Obama's chief scientific adviser John Holdren stated,
“A program of compulsory sterilization of women after their second child might be easier to arrange than the mass sterilization of men ... Alternatively, adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods
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can only be effective if it was uniformly applied.” (53) Murder of Newborns, Forced Abortions and Segregation
“And they took the baby into the furnace room and they threw that little baby in there and burned it alive. All you could hear was this little cry, like 'uhh!'...” (54) - Irene Favel, survivor of the Catholic Muscowequan residential school, Saskatchewan, 1944-1949, from a CBC TV interview, July 3, 2008
“When I was in Senior B, the girls would get pregnant but they'd never have their kids, you know. They'd bring in someone who'd do an abortion. It was scary, we'd hear the incinerator door being opened and hear the big clang, and we'd know they'd be getting rid of the evidence ... We'd wonder how many kids got thrown into that incinerator.”- Eddy Jules, survivor of Catholic Kamloops residential school, quoted in Behind Closed Doors: Stories from the Kamloops Indian Residential School, Secwepemc Cultural Education Society, 2000
“I'll never forget those little skulls we found inside the furnace - tiny ones, like from babies.”- Lillian Shirt, survivor of Bluequills Catholic Indian school, Alberta, 1949-1958
By definition, the late night killing of unwanted newborns or fetuses will not be recorded in any record besides the memory of those who witnessed it. There are many such bystanders, who as children were pressed into service by priests or staffers who buried or incinerated the evidence of their impregnation of Indian girls. But the bystanders included insiders who have talked.
Former Port Alberni school employee Marion MacFarlane, mentioned earlier, witnessed regular child trafficking of Indian girls who would end up pregnant.
“We used to call the school 'The White House' because of all the big shots who'd show up to pick out little boys and girls. Sometimes I recognized a local cop or judge. It was just like a slave auction, they'd line up the children and some would be picked and taken away. Often the girls would come back pregnant, and we'd drive them to the West Coast Hospital for an abortion. Sometimes the girls would make a fuss and you wouldn't see them again. I think they're buried out past the old water pipeline in the hills behind the school, them and those newborns.” (55)
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Local hospitals near to the residential schools were regularly used to dispose of newborns or fetuses from native girls, or even from impregnated nuns. These hospitals included West Coast General in Port Alberni, St. Paul's catholic hospital in Vancouver, St. Joseph's Anglican hospital in Alert Bay, the R.W. Large Hospital in Bella Bella, B.C., the Charles Camsell hospital in Edmonton, the Lake Head Psychiatric hospital in Thunder Bay, and many local church-run clinics.
In the same way that tuberculosis sanitaria provided the institutional cover for deliberately infecting or experimenting on Indians, regular hospitals became child disposal centers: not just for body removal but, as child trafficking from residential schools became more lucrative, to circulate children for sale to the highest bidding pedocide. (56)
The enslavement of children to grueling labor and as sexual chattels was a structural feature of the residential schools. Their trafficking provided a source of young bodies for sex rings and medical experimentation. But it also served a broader genocidal purpose in permanently destroying kinship ties and estranging the aboriginal generations and sexes from one another: a prime aim of any genocidal regime. This intergenerational estrangement is a structural feature of aboriginal families in Canada and a primary cause of the ongoing destruction of native societies.
The alienation of native siblings and relatives from each other was as fundamental to the residential schools as was the suppression of all native languages, and was even reflected architecturally in the standard “H” block design of most Indian residential schools whereby the sexes were kept strictly segregated. Unlawful mixing of the sexes was often punished severely. (See Figure 89 for a blueprint of the standard “H” architecture of an Indian residential school)
Nan Johnson never saw her little brother for the entire seven years they were both incarcerated in the catholic school on Meares Island during the 1960's.
“I didn't recognize my brother Tom when I saw him again, it had been so long ... We were never allowed anywhere near the boys or into the boys' dorm, it was locked away from us anyway. But one of the girls couldn't stand not seeing her brothers and she tried creeping over to them one night. But she was caught and the next day we had to give her the Gauntlet treatment ... We were all given belts and heavy
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sticks by the nuns and we had to beat her as she ran down our line. She couldn't even walk after we were done with her.” (57)
The long term consequences of such inter-generational estrangement have been catastrophic on aboriginal families. Child abuse, marital violence, divorce and incest are between ten and fifteen times higher among natives than non-natives. The continuing epidemic of child trafficking on and off Indian reservations, often aided and abetted by state-funded tribal council chiefs themselves, is as big a threat to native survival as is the drug trade-related gang violence on many reserves today.
The late Harriett Nahanee, who survived the Alberni residential school, described the child trafficking
trade operating from her Squamish Indian reserve to Vancouver establishments.
“The same black stretch limousine will pull up late on Friday nights, usually after midnight. This one
night last year I saw two little kids loaded into the back. They were maybe eight or ten years old and all
dressed up fancy with make up on. They were stumbling like they’d been drugged.
“So I got my son to follow the limousine and it dropped the children off at the back of the Vancouver Club. A reporter with the Aboriginal Drum newspaper named Noel, he staked out the back door of the Club and at 3 am or so the kids came out the door, looking all dazed and mixed up. Noel started interviewing them and then he got hit on the head. When he woke up his recorder was gone and so were the kids. They never showed up on the reserve after that. Nobody knows what happened to them.” (58)
A year after the IHRAAM Tribunal, in the summer of 1999, a UNESCO report on pan-pacific child trafficking named Vancouver and Bangkok as major hotspots for the crime, “where organized pedophilia (sic) goes on with extensive police, judicial and political protection . Of particular abuse is the widespread trafficking of indigenous children who are abducted off their traditional territories, often as part of a bigger strategy to intimidate and control aboriginal families in order to seize their lands and resources” (59)
F. Forcibly Transferring Children from one group to another
“Every Indian child between the ages of seven and fifteen years who is physically able shall attend such 65
day, industrial or boarding school as may be designated ... The Superintendent General may appoint any officer or person to be a truant officer to enforce the attendance of Indian children at school, and for such purpose a truant officer shall be vested with the powers of a peace officer, and shall have authority to enter any place ... Any parent, guardian or person with whom an Indian child is residing who fails to cause such child ... to attend school as required by this Section ... shall be liable on summary conviction to (a) fine and imprisonment ...”
- from the amendment to the Indian Act establishing Indian Residential Schools, 10-11 George V, Chapter 50, July 1, 1920, Parliament of Canada
“Sawyer has not sent his two children to the local Residential School. Constable Burroughs will assist the
Indian Agent in having Sawyer's children removed to the Residential School at Kuper Island under sec. 35
of the Indian Act. Sawyer will be prosecuted if he does not comply.”
- Telegram from Inspector C.R. Peters, Commander, RCMP Vancouver Island Section, December 11,
1942 to Indian Agent, Cowichan Agency, Duncan, B.C.
Since the autumn of 1948, the act of forcibly transporting children from one group to another is considered to be genocide and an indictable crime under international law. Yet until 1996 within the residential schools, and still to this day through foster care and government “child welfare” agencies, this genocidal act against aboriginal children occurred and continues with impunity at the hands of the government, churches and private corporations. (60)
Such a forcible transfer and alienation of Indian children from their culture was the very raison d'etre and fiber of the residential school system. The bare existence of that system itself is enough to condemn it as genocidal. Its massive kidnapping and incarceration of nearly a quarter of a million native children between 1889 and 1996 was always coercive, involuntary and violent.
As Harriett Nahanee recounted in 1998,
“My parents hid me before the Mounties arrived, and I watched everything from under the steps of our house ... They had their guns drawn and they were clubbing down all the men and rounding up every child in our village, even the three and four year olds. Everyone was running around and screaming ...
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They had all the children tied together by a rope and they dragged them off onto the RCMP gunboat. The cops kept grabbing and slapping the children who were screaming and crying for their mothers. I couldn't watch it ... Later when I got taken I found out that two of my cousins had died on that boat. They just threw their bodies overboard.” (61)
The violence of the residential schools’ round up of children was deliberate and flowed from the insistence by the churches that children be incarcerated year-round in residential or boarding schools rather than day schools.
In an 1888 letter from Alexander Sutherland, head of the Methodist Church in Canada, to Indian Affairs in Ottawa, Sutherland said “... we think it most important that provision should be made for Boarding Schools, and also for Industrial Institutions, where the children can be kept for a series of years away from the influences which surround them on the Reserves ...” (Figure 90) (62)
The churches were assisted in their plan to rob Indian nations of their children by force. Aboriginal chiefs themselves often aided the rounding up of young natives, with the guarantee that their own children would be spared the ordeal of residential school if the chiefs collaborated. Chief Paul White of the Nanaimo band was one such quisling. On December 4, 1935 he was paid $54 by the local Indian Agent to transport reserve children into the Nanaimo day school. Chief Thorne of the Cowichan band near Duncan was paid to do the same hatchet job for many years. As a reward, none of his children ever had to go to a residential school. (Figures 91 and 92)
Upon entering the average residential school, all aboriginal children regardless of their age were uniformly stripped, their hair shaved off completely as noxious and poisonous DDT powder was showered on them, and they were given a standard prison-like uniform with a number on it. They could no longer use their real name but had to respond to the number. In many cases, mandatory rape was inflicted on every child, especially those who would not cooperate. And any child who continued to use their native language was beaten and tortured mercilessly. (63)
Older native students collaborated with the school authorities and were trained to supervise and even assault arriving groups of children. Vera Hunt of the Ahousaht nation remembers the day she
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arrived at the United Church School in Port Alberni in the fall of 1963.
“There were three hundred of us lined on the beach in the rain. We were all shivering and crying. The white people weren't even near to us, just watching from in the school. These guys carrying whips walked up and down the lines, and whenever we spoke our language they started beating us and screaming. It turns out they were Indians too, but you couldn't tell that at first. Later I learned to use a knife when I was just eight years old and that saved my life.” (64)
As a masquerade of legality over the abduction of their children, all native parents were forced to sign an “Application for Admission Form” that legally surrendered legal guardianship to the residential school Principal, normally a clergyman. This form proved the ultimate legal liability of the churches for the crimes and damages within their Indian schools. (Figure 93) (65)
The conditions in residential “schools” were more akin to labor camps than educational facilities. A letter from a Deputy Indian Affairs official to an Indian Agent in Fort Fraser, B.C. stated “the Department considers the boys should be at work six and a half days per week”, and outlined the heavy labor students as young as ten should be engaged in on residential school lands, including tree cutting and clearing, farm and field work, and construction. The “primary aim” of educating Indian females should be towards training them as domestic servants and kitchen help. (66)
A United Church policy statement from its General Council meeting in October, 1935 confirms this genocidal aim of creating a race of aboriginal “hewers of water and carriers of water”:
“In our residential schools we are teaching our young wards to be successful farmers. Nothing will so dispossess the Indians of their nomadic habits and traditional ways than to bind them to the soil and make them practical artisans, since it is their attachment to their culture and traditions that has created the Indian Problem in the first place.” (See Figure 9)
In keeping with this goal of de-educating natives, teachers in the residential schools were rarely qualified. Schooling was minimal and irregular, confined on average to some two or three hours of instruction a day, and then on largely religious topics and rudimentary learning. Higher education was
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deliberately shut off to Indians as a matter of unwritten policy. (67)
A clear example of this policy is referred to in a letter from Indian Agent Edward Frost to Indian Affairs in Ottawa, dated August 18, 1934, in which Frost urges the Department not to provide funds for the higher education of five Alberni residential school students who are “above the ordinary run of intelligence”.
States Frost,
I fail to see where a High School training is going to benefit them, as all classes of employment are now over stocked with white students ... I am not making these remarks as pertaining to the above mentioned pupils only, but I consider they apply generally to Indian pupils, at least in this Agency ...” (Figure 94)
According to Lillian Shirt, a survivor of the Bluequills Catholic school in Alberta,
“We weren't allowed to laugh. We weren't allowed to read. We had no books. If we were ever caught reading ... whew! Look out! We weren't even allowed comics. All we ever got in class was long lectures about the Virgin Mary from some stupid old nun. That was it. We were never educated at all.” (68)
This explicit policy of deliberate de-educating and “dumbing down” of a conquered people is a basic feature of genocide everywhere in the world, and was foundational to the Indian residential school system in Canada.
Like any battlefield, residential schools were the same kind of mixture of the mundane and the quickly violent. These conditions often caused children to run away. The RCMP was deputized by the government during the 1930's to act as the police arm of the schools, and its officers tracked down and returned the runaways. But any private citizen could be deputized to do the same, and school Principals often hired private vigilante “slave hunters” to find the missing children.
These vigilantes had unlimited power to break into any home and seize anything and anyone without a warrant, and then charge the runaways with juvenile delinquency, which allowed any native child to
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be jailed and criminalized like an adult.
When runaways were returned to the residential schools they faced mandatory, extreme and sometimes deadly punishment. At the United Church's Alberni School, returned children were routinely locked in a basement cold storage locker for days without food and water. If they survived, they were stripped naked and beaten in front of the other children as an example and a warning. (69)
At the St. George Anglican School in Lytton, British Columbia runaways faced a medieval-like brutality, as admitted by a former Principal, Canon Charles Hives in a letter dated June 21, 1942:
“... two girls ran away and they were chained together and driven home in front of the Principal. They used the shackles to chain runnaways (sic) to the bed. They also had stocks in the playgrounds. And they were used.” (Figure 95)
According to another former employee at St. George's, “First offense was just a flogging. Second offense, the kid got the stocks and then was manacled to their bed for a week. Sometimes we'd find a dead child in the stocks, especially in winter. No allowance was ever made for the weather. Mr. Lett, the Principal, he used to parade the children around the school in chains.” (70)
The late Virginia Baptiste of the Osoyoos Nation ran away several times from the St. Eugene catholic school in Cranbrook. Each time she was captured she was beaten unconscious by nuns holding wooden brushes. After her third escape at the age of nine, she was given an “ice water” torture.
“Those bastard nuns made me stand in ice for hours. I lost all feeling in my feet and legs and I still haven't recovered from it. After I passed out they beat me until I woke up. The damage was permanent. I was just nine then and I'm fifty eight now and I can never seem to get warm. I've never been able to walk right since that day.” (71)
In 1942, Willy Sport had his feet deliberately deformed as a child in the United Church School in Port Alberni by the Principal, Mr. Pitts, in order to prevent him from running away.
“The second time they caught me Pitts made me wear these shoes that were too small. He never let me 70
take them off. I was just six and still growing. My toes got all twisted and the bones got bent. I could only hobble around. Been that way my whole life. But some other kids had their feet smashed with a hammer after they got caught, so I consider myself lucky.” (Figure 96) (72)
One of the most torturous aspects of children's incarceration in the residential schools was the vicious “divide and conquer” system of management used by the school staff. Children were incited to inform on, attack and molest one another. Those who informed on their fellows received better food and less punishment.
“We called them the Goon squad” said the late Delmar Johnny of the Cowichan nation to researchers
in the fall of 2006. He was recounting his years in the Kuper Island catholic school.
“They were always better dressed than the rest of us. They were in the protected group. Nobody else
was protected, we were all fair game for the rapists on staff. The goons got the pick of any of us too, just
for ratting on us whenever the staff needed to know who was planning what.” (73)
Ominously, these “goons” often went on to receive a better education and acquire political power in the local native hierarchy, becoming tribal council officials who often continue to terrorize their own people for the same white masters.
“Things in the aboriginal world never change” reflected Haida native and Edmonton school survivor Doug W ilson at a University of V ictoria forum on Genocide in Canada in the fall of 2007.
“The very same people who used to abuse us as lackeys for the white man in residential school are doing the same thing today on our tribal councils. They tell all of us to heal and get our lives together, but they've never dealt with their own shit. They're ordered by Ottawa to sell us out and give away our land for nothing, and they do it. That subservience is still wired in to them. Our so-called leaders are our biggest roadblock to progress, and that's mostly because of residential school. It was set up that way to debilitate us over the long run and make us incapable of governing ourselves.” (74)
G. Inflicting conditions designed to cause long term destruction
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“I have before pointed out that the Indian death rate is terribly high; that our medical advisers attribute the frightful mortality to tuberculosis ... that in my opinion, we are taking no effective steps to reduce the death rate ...” (Figure 97)- West Coast Indian Superintendent Dr. Ian MacRae to Indian Affairs Deputy Superintendent Duncan Campbell Scott, February 6, 1903
“ ... if matters are allowed to proceed, as they are proceeding today, it will be but a short time before the Indians are wiped out of existence by this disease.” (Figure 98) - Letter of Dr. C.J. Fagan to Dr. Peter Bryce, Chief Medical Officer for Indian Affairs, July 7, 1909
“If the schools are to be conducted at all we must face the fact that a large number of the pupils will suffer from tuberculosis ... While it is true that they die at a much higher rate after entering the schools, such is in keeping with the policy of this Department, which is geared towards the final solution of the Indian Problem.”- Letter of Indian Affairs Deputy Superintendent Duncan Campbell Scott to Major D. McKay, Inspector of Indian schools, British Columbia, March 7, 1910
Genocide is never a series of isolated acts but a continuum of purpose, which is clearly evident in the physical conditions in which a targeted group is forced to live and die. These conditions are the template for the future, eventual destruction of that group.
We have observed how the residential schools were deliberately maintained in a substandard condition to foster and spread tuberculosis and other communicable diseases: a practice that can account for the enormous number of deaths from the normally containable and treatable tuberculosis. This “contaminant imperative” required that all of the physical and psychological conditions in the schools be equally as destructive to the long term survival of Indians.
“In no single instance in any school where a young child was found did it not show signs of tuberculosis, made worse by the practice of admitting children suffering from the disease ... What is unfortunately too certain is that whatever good the children may receive through residence in a boarding school will be at the expense of the health of all and the lives of some.” (See Figure 85)
When an Indian school Inspector named William Chisholm wrote these words on September 22, 1905, he was recognizing that all the Indian children had tuberculosis, and that all of them in the system were unhealthy just by being there. But despite this awareness, lower level officials like Chisholm
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acted as if they did not understand the genocidal purpose of the residential schools.
Like the proverbial elephant in the living room, the proof of this purpose has always been before Canadians in stark detail. For like the enormous death rate, the examples of unhealthy and deadly conditions in the residential schools remained unchanged, decade after decade, despite warnings, protests and calls for improvement.
These examples abound in the residential school documentary record from 1896 to the 1960's ( Some original documents are too faded or illegible for reproduction in this report):
April 24, 1896: “It is remarked that many children apparently healthy on their admission to the different schools, are affected with tuberculosis” (Hayter Reed, Ottawa) (Figure 99)
September 3, 1903: “Our charges lack the most elementary requirements of sanitation and any fresh food whatsoever” (Donald Jamieson, File Hills, Alberta)
February 14, 1909: “Nothing is being done to provide for the children, who are even forced out of doors in the winter” (Sr. Ruth Cluharty, Regina)
October 1, 1915: “Of 163 students, 98 of them are sick with the pox and the rest are too ill to attend classes” (C. C. Baker, Lytton)
June 13, 1922: “Since the Home started forty-nine had died and fifty were still alive” (RCMP Cpl. R.W. Clearwater, Ocean Falls to RCMP Command, Prince Rupert) (Figure 100)
April 10, 1923: “The children were lean, anemic and T.B. glands were running in many cases” (Rev. A.R. Lett, Lytton) (Figure 101)
May 6, 1927: “...during the past winter thirteen pupils of this school have died, four of whom were buried within the past three weeks ...” (C.C. Perry, Indian Agent, regarding the Anglican school in Lytton, BC) (Figure 102)
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February 8, 1929: “The nature of the present water supply and the so called toilet system is a positive menace to health ... And it is not to be wondered that there has been in recent years a very unusual number of deaths ...” (Rev. W. Wood, Ahousaht) (Figure 103)
June 30, 1938: “this building can only be described as a fire trap and a menace to health ... sanitary arrangements are terrible” (P. D. Ashbridge, Port Alberni)
March 27, 1939: “Children in residential schools are inclined to grow away from the life of the Indian band and are unable to fit anywhere as functioning citizens” (Conference of United Church clergy, Ottawa) (Figure 104)
September 30, 1942: “Under the present arrangements the school does not remotely satisfy the usually accepted standards of sanitation ... I have therefore decided to condemn the buildings of the residential school as unsuitable ...” (Dr. F. Burns Roth, M.D., regarding the Anglican Carcross school, Yukon) (Figure 105)
January 6, 1946: “when children were sick at the residential school at Lejac they were not kept separate from the other children” (Nautley Indian Band petition) (See Figure 67, above)
March 2, 1953: “Morale was very low among the children who are generally sick, listless and withdrawn no doubt because of the harsh regime of punishments they must endure ...” (Mrs. E. Riley, Alert Bay)
June 1, 1960: “the overcrowded and unhealthy quarters in which the boys are expected to live have not improved since our last inspection over a year ago” (A.L. Smithe, St. Mary's Mission)
In the course of the research that went into preparing this report beginning with the earliest healing circles and public forums in Vancouver in the spring of 1997, a total of over twelve hundred residential school survivors in seven provinces were interviewed at some point. Of these, three hundred and fifty eight survivors agreed to have their statements made public and be quoted.
A survey of the latter's statements found this commonality of experience when it came to the conditions they endured between the years 1932 and 1981 in thirty eight different residential schools
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run by the Catholic, Anglican and United Church: (See Appendix One and Two) (75)
- Rancid or contaminated food
- Insufficient clothing
- Unheated and unventilated dormitories
- Permanent isolation from family, friends and love
- A daily environment of indiscriminate violence, racism, random and undeserved punishment, and
unalleviated stress
- Regular exposure to sick children and those suffering from the flu or tuberculosis
- No regular medical care or examinations
- No regular visits by government agents or care workers
- Continual physical and sexual assaults
- Regular deaths of fellow students that were never investigated
- Punishment for speaking their native languages, including extreme tortures
- Forced, unpaid labor
Reflecting on these monstrous conditions, Edmonton school survivor Sylvester Green said in March, 2007, “We can never recover from what they did to us and now what we're doing to ourselves. The worst part is we passed on everything to our children: the alcoholism, the drugs, the violence and rape. All this 'healing' talk is just for white people.” (76)
Echoing Sylvester, Kevin Annett observed in his testimony before the IHRAAM Tribunal that the majority of native men and women he encountered in the local Vancouver “healing circles” had never attended an Indian residential school– they were the offspring of school survivors – and yet they bore exactly the same degree of dysfunction, addiction and shortened life expectancy as their parents. This pattern is found everywhere across Canada. (77)
The long term destructiveness established among all Canadian aboriginals by the schools' brutalities is clear to anyone who visits and Indian reservation or the poverty-stricken urban ghettos in which three fourths of Indians live: conditions that are permanent and inter-generational. Even Canadian government studies confirm this.
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