Recovery time: Healing after the residential school abuse (part one)

Today I read an article about the residential school. Since the European colonizers came to Canada, the aboriginal culture has been under tremendous pressure because the colonizers have pushed the white culture to be the dominant one by running residential schools. The purpose of the residential schools was to assimilate the children through the process of education, preaching, as well as cultural degradation by teaching the children to be ashamed of their heritage in order to facilitate the assimilation process.

Aboriginal children were separated from their parents to go to the residential school. Physical, emotional, and sexual abuse was rampant in the schools and some of the children died. During this cultural assimilation phase, some Aboriginal people lost their native language and valued skills, such as their traditional way of parenting. Even now, the experiences that Aboriginal people had in residential schools are continuing to have detrimental impact on aboriginal communities. For example, most aboriginal people who attended residential schools developed mental illnesses from being abused at the schools.

The consequences of the culture assimilation are profound, one of which being the most concerning is that the suicide rate among Aboriginal youth are five to seven times higher than that of other young non-Aboriginal Canadians, and the life expectancy of Aboriginal people is five to seven years less. In addition, their self-esteem is generally low due to degrading education.There are many articles talking about the influences of residential schools, but there is in general a lack of knowledge on ways to help the Aboriginal people to overcome the negative effects of residential schools. I will discuss some methods we can use to improve Aboriginal health in part two.