Canada, US & Church Residential School Crimes

The United States government and the Canadian government have committed the crime of genocide against native peoples through the forced removal of native children from their families and their maltreatment by Christian officials and staff in boarding schools. As a matter of government policy, native children were forcibly removed from their families and placed in residential schools or boarding schools by the governments of Canada and the United States to convert them to Christianity and eliminate their cultural connections and personal identities. The Canadian government from its beginning in the 1880s, and the United States government beginning in 1819, in collaboration with Christian churches, intentionally and with malice, systematically forced the removal of native children from their families and communities. The US government’s report released on May 11, 2022, states, “There is ample evidence in Federal records demonstrating that the United States coerced, induced, or compelled Indian children to enter the Federal Indian boarding school system.” The purpose of the forced removals was “the abolition of the old tribal relations.” The Report goes on to quote the Department of the Interior records stating that it was: “indispensably necessary that [the Indians] be placed in positions where they can be controlled, and finally compelled, by stern necessity, to resort to agricultural labor or starve.” Ultimately the purpose of the systematic forced removals of children was to “assimilate Indian children,” fracturing Indian families and fragmenting tribal communities.

US government and Canadian government officials directed native children to be forcibly removed from their families and shipped by train or truck to schools administered by Christian churches. While some children eventually returned to their communities, as much as twenty-five percent of them never returned evidenced by graves on school sites in Canada and the United States. When children were released and allowed to return to their parents, they were unable to communicate with family members. They could not identify either as members of their community or as Euro-Americans. In the case of Canada’s residential school system, the intention of forcing native children being removed from their families and communities was to “kill the Indian in the child.”

Children at the schools were forcibly prohibited from living their culture or religion. They were forced to pray daily in the Christian faith and speak English or French in the Canadian schools though the children understood neither language. Children who resisted being taken from their families were beaten and arrested, and most often, children were not permitted to visit their families until they reached the age of 18.
Since the schools were underfunded (the Canadian and US governments provided small funding), the children were forced to cook and clean the schools. Children were sometimes subjected to nutritional and health experimentation. In some instances, children were punished with repeated pierced tongues with needles as a punishment for speaking a language other than English or French in Canadian residential schools. Sexual abuse in Canadian schools was also common where priests and school staff raped girls and boys.

Children in schools in the US and Canada frequently died at a rate of 30% to 60% within the first five years after placed forcibly in the schools. In Canada, the most common cause of death was tuberculosis, while suicides, freezing from outdoor exposure from running away, and unsafe working conditions contributed to native children dying.

May 11, 2022, the US Department of the Interior released Federal Boarding School Initiative Report. To wipe away native peoples’ culture, and identities and ultimately confiscate their lands, the governments of Canada and the US government separately colluded with the Roman Catholic Church and churches of other denominations. They sought to assimilate and to “Christianize” in state and church sponsored residential schools and boarding schools in the 19th century through to the 21st century.

Only after uncounted numbers of Indian children graves were reveal in Canada and graves were found by US boarding schools both governments, the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian churches opened their records to reveal the carnage for which they must be morally and legally held accountable.