Category: Residential Schools

Residential Schools in Canada

Opposition to Residential School Survivor Denialism 

by Rita Jasper, posted in Mary and her Metis Grandma, Residential School, Residential Schools

The places where children are believed to be buried cannot be disturbed because the Nation from which the child originated cannot be identified. Some protocols must be followed before exhuming what remains of the little sacred bodies; each Nation has different rules for disturbing the deceased. Because of this, it is hard to prove how many children are buried at the Kamloops Residential School.

Before this secret Kamloops graveyard, anonymous burial sites were documented by the University of Saskatchewan in 1974. A cairn, pictured below, erected at the Battleford Industrial School was placed at the cemetery after a total of 72 graves were excavated by staff and Archaeology students from the University of Saskatchewan. Back in 1974, the Indigenous people didn’t have the political strength to oppose the excavation like the current Nations surrounding Kamloops.

There are too many possible mass graves to mention, so lastly, I will mention only two more of many mass graves of disrespect.
1) Lemay Forest, Manitoba, contains an unmarked mass burial ground for Indigenous, Metis, and European children from the Asile Ritchot orphanage (or Asile Rache). Our parents told us to walk “in a graceful manner”, with kind, loving thoughts, because you never know when you might be walking on someone’s resting place — their grave.

2) Magdaline Laundries originated in Europe but were adopted in Canada. While it was touted as safe places for young women who had made bad choices, they were workhouses providing free labout to the churches that operated them. In Europe, one of these church businesses decided to sell some land and asked a man to move some burried boxes to another location. He discovered that there were skeletons in the boxes and reported it.

Image from (Ben Feist) CBC News · Posted: May 24, 2017 4:00 AM PDT | Last Updated: May 24, 2017

Stone cairn with plaque for unmarked graves of children in Saskatchewan, Canada

Dr. Bryce, Government Medical Inspector for Residential Schools

From a newspaper article, Saturday Night, Bryce said:

“Indian residential schools should compel the attention of Parliament. Indian boys and girls are dying like flies in these situations [Residential Schools] or shortly after leaving them….” Click button below to read more details.

Life at Residential Schools for Indigenous Children

After the Department of Indian Affairs ignored Dr. Bryce’s report, he published his own book, The Story of a National Crime. It detailed how the churches, with government approval, purposefully ignored the health issues resulting from unsanitary conditions and even an electric chair which was used for discipline. Click button below to read more details.

Survival Rate for Indigenous Students at Residential Schools

Bryce predicted that the death rates associated with residential schools were much higher than initially believed, closer to 42% after carefully analyzing the data he gathered. Accordingly, only 58 [or 58%] of  100 children and youth who attended the residential school would eventually be reunited with their families.

Click here for more details from Mary and her Metis Grandma

If you are specifically intrerested in Dr. Bryce’s book click this link. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1aqOakvnjg6cHEL29fQwyB4GM83bazFO3?usp=sharing

The Story of a National Crime

by Rita Jasper, posted in Mary and her Metis Grandma, Residential Schools


By: P. H. Bryce, M. A., M.D.

An Appeal for Justice to the Indians of Canada
The Wards of the Nation:
Please see the link below to access the original book.

This is a damning report that describes the consequences of the Canadian government’s genocidal policies towards First Nations during the first two decades of the 1900s. It was published not long after Dr. Bryce, a renowned physician and public health specialist, was compelled to give up his position as a reporter for the Indian Affairs Department. While he worked as a civil servant, his report on the health conditions in the Canadian residential school system in western Canada was suppressed. The horrific actions of the school staff continued well into the 1980s and later. The last residential school was closed in Saskatchewan in 1996.

Even though Bryce described the appalling conditions he discovered in the residential schools, the government consistently disregarded his findings. He concluded that the Canadian colonial government deliberately promoted the extremely high rate of tuberculosis among First Nations in the Prairies to destroy indigenous communities. 

The myth of residential schools not being used for genocide was exposed as a lie by Dr. Bryce. He took a courageous stand in an official letter to Canada’s parliament and First Nations a century ago as he appealed for justice. The fact that “we didn’t know” was deliberate: poet and genocide supporter and enforcer, Duncan Campbell Scott, for instance, carried out policies of deliberate neglect while posing as compassionate in public to try, as he put it, “to get rid of the Indian problem.” 

As part of a campaign of forced assimilation, 150,000 Indigenous children were sent to a network of church and state-run institutions, including St. Anne’s, which was located in the Fort Albany community and operated from 1902 to 1976. The school gained notoriety for its pervasive mistreatment, which included the use of a homemade electric chair to discipline Indigenous children.

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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1aqOakvnjg6cHEL29fQwyB4GM83bazFO3?usp=sharing