Perceived Intentions
Imagine for a moment that you are listening to a conversation between a Canadian government official and an aboriginal parent at a time where aboriginal children were seized from their homes and forced into far away residential schools. Imagine that the official and the parent shared a common language resulting in perfect communication. What response would a government official have to an indigenous mother when she asks, Why are you taking my child? He would explain that on the other end of the child’s long journey there will be a large facility of ‘Indian’ children just like yours. They will be provided with sufficient shelter, clothing, and food that will create a caring and structured environment suitable for your child’s education. We will provide your child with all of the necessary skills one needs to survive in our society; Cooking, housework, carpentry, boot making, writing, reading, farming, and trading. They will one day take these skills and return to your community to teach you our new and innovative ways. We will create career people out of your children who can effectively and practically enter our economy as contributors to society. They will advance to support themselves as well as you, their family. Why must we remove the children from your care you ask? Our methods of living have far surpassed the living conditions of your people. Taking your children will create a more effective way for our advancements to be relayed to them. This will raise your communities to the same potential as ours. |
Actual Intentions
Now imagine the same conversation but in this case the Government Official is obligated to share the honest truth of what residential schools will do for the Canadian Government. What would he have to admit to the aboriginal mother? We believe that the living conditions of your people are uncivilized, savage-like and exist in a position of stupidity and weakness. We are doing your people a service by introducing you to civilization. We understand that eventually our cultures could one day unite however in a time of extreme and rapid economical growth and the possibility of a strong nation in mind, we don’t have time to let evolution take place. We must diminish your style of living now and convert you to ours. How will we do this, you ask? We will take your children to our poorly funded institutions where students will learn substandard skills that serve lower functions in our society. We will strip them of their identity and prevent them from practicing your meaningless cultural customs and create faithful Christian individuals. After all, a powerful civilization is one that has a strong bond between church and government (Milloy, 1999). We hope that in time, the amount of children who do not understand and value your culture will increase, and one day your culture will cease to exist. Then we will finally break free from all of the social and economic responsibility we pretended to have for your communities. We will finally have complete access to all the land you once called home and all the resources you once lived off. But in order for this to be successful, we must take your children, and keep them from you for as long as possible. This not only ensures that cultural backsliding doesn’t occur (Milloy, 1999), but it also protects us from your possible retaliation. We may not have been all together truthful and fair, but we know that you would never strike back on a government that now possesses all of your children. We are sorry if the conditions of our residential schools are damaging to your children, but it is the price to pay for progress to be made (Dion, 2002). |