cripplepunk-berrytwist:oldshowbiz:February 1930 - First Nations students Nelson Hughes and George Pa
cripplepunk-berrytwist:oldshowbiz:February 1930 - First Nations students Nelson Hughes and George Paynter burned the Cross Lake Residential School to the ground. Residential Schools were funded by the federal government and operated by missionaries with the purpose of forcibly assimilating Natives into colonial Christian ways. They were notorious for their abuse and brutality. Children who could not speak English were forbidden from speaking their own Native language. If a child spoke in the only language they knew, teachers would puncture their tongues with sewing needles as punishment. Most residential schools had cemeteries on site. On average, one third of the student population died before graduation. The other two thirds were traumatized for life. It was against the law for a Native parent to resist. Native children were forcibly removed from their homes by the RCMP and sent to schools hundreds of miles away. Forced into a military regimen and treated like animals, full scale abuse was administered on a national scale. If parents resisted the kidnapping of their children, they were sent to prison. This was the Canadian government’s approach from the 1870s through the 1960s. No wonder they burned it to the ground. Source:The Winnipeg Tribune, November 13, 1931 Photo: https://twitter.com/NCTR_UM/status/969320362436648961“Through the 1960s” is candy-coating the actual numbers.The final residential school to shut down was in Manitoba in 1997. It was the one my paternal grandfather grew up in. Where he was stripped of his identity, his language, his family. He raised my father to be ASHAMED of his Native background instead of proud of it; if you can call being an absentee alcoholic and addict raising a child at all.My heritage is lost to me because of these schools.Good on you, boys. -- source link