A Knock on the Door: The Essential History of Residential Schools from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

297 Pages·2015·8.559 MB·English

by  Phil Fontaine

A KnocK on the Door
perceptions on truth and reconciliation
issn 2371-347x
5 Did You See Us? Reunion, Remembrance, and Reclamation at an
Urban Indian Residential School, by Survivors of the Assiniboia
Indian Residential School
4 Sharing the Land, Sharing a Future: The Legacy of the Royal Commis-
sion on Aboriginal Peoples, edited by Katherine A. H. Graham and
David Newhouse
3 Decolonizing Discipline: Children, Corporal Punishment, Christian
Theologies, and Reconciliation, edited by Valerie E. Michaelson and
Joan E. Durrant
2 Pathways of Reconciliation: Indigenous and Settler Approaches to
Implementing the TRC’s Calls to Action, edited by Aimée Craft and
Paulette Regan
1 A Knock on the Door: The Essential History of Residential Schools from
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, with a foreword
by Phil Fontaine
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perceptions on truth and reconciliation
issn 2371-347x
5 Did You See Us? Reunion, Remembrance, and Reclamation at an
Urban Indian Residential School, by Survivors of the Assiniboia A
Indian Residential School
4 Sharing the Land, Sharing a Future: The Legacy of the Royal Commis-
sion on Aboriginal Peoples, edited by Katherine A. H. Graham and
KNOCK
David Newhouse
3 Decolonizing Discipline: Children, Corporal Punishment, Christian
Theologies, and Reconciliation, edited by Valerie E. Michaelson and
Joan E. Durrant O N T H E
2 Pathways of Reconciliation: Indigenous and Settler Approaches to
Implementing the TRC’s Calls to Action, edited by Aimée Craft and
Paulette Regan
DOOR
1 A Knock on the Door: The Essential History of Residential Schools from
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, with a foreword
by Phil Fontaine
ESSENTIAL HISTORY
the of
RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS
from the TRUTH and RECONCILIATION
COMMISSION of CANADA Edited & Abridged
FOREWORD BY PHIL FONTAINE
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Published in collaboration with the National Centre for
Truth and Reconciliation
The Introduction, Chapters 1–5, and Bibliography have been reproduced
from reports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada:
What We Have Learned: Principles of Truth and Reconciliation (2015) and
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action (2015).
These texts are in the public domain and can be accessed at www.trc.ca.
Foreword © Phil Fontaine 2016
Afterword © Aimée Craft 2016
24 23 22 21 9 10 11 12
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database
and retrieval system in Canada, without the prior written permission
of the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or any other
reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright,
www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777.
University of Manitoba Press
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Treaty 1 Territory
uofmpress.ca
Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
Perceptions on Truth and Reconciliation, issn 2371-347x ; 1
isbn 978-0-88755-785-9 (paper)
isbn 978-0-88755-540-4 (pdf)
isbn 978-0-88755-538-1 (epub)
isbn 978-0-88755-226-7 (bound)

Cover and interior design by Jess Koroscil
Printed in Canada
The University of Manitoba Press acknowledges the financial support for
its publication program provided by the Government of Canada through
the Canada Book Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba
Department of Sport, Culture, and Heritage, the Manitoba Arts Council,
and the Manitoba Book Publishing Tax Credit.
A portion of all proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to the
National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to assist with its ongoing
educational and research activities.
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c o n t e n t s
foreword vii
mAp x
residentiAl schools in cAnAdA xiii
chronology xvii
intRoduction 3
chapter one
the histoRy 9
chapter two
the school expeRience 47
chapter three
the legacy 129
chapter four
Reconciliation 142
chapter five
calls to action 162
Afterword 189
A note on the text 195
notes 197
BiBliogrAphy 259

f o R e w o R d
My name is Phil Fontaine and I am a survivor.
Survivor is a word that years ago I used in hushed tones to describe
my experience at Indian Residential School. But that was then.
I have now come to say the word louder and more imbued with
pride with every passing year of my life. This year, “survivor” has
reached a crescendo.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, and its
findings, represents a historic moment for all survivors; for all
Indigenous people everywhere. It is, I think, a historic moment for
Canada, the significance of which rests in not only what has been,
but also what is to come.
I cannot speak for every survivor—each of us has our own
story—but we do have common characteristics. As survivors,
we number in the thousands. But if you count our brothers and
sisters who are no longer with us, we number in the hundreds of
thousands, possibly many more. All of us, the living and the dead,
endured the effects of a policy that sought transformation—trans-
formation of us as a people, as parents, grandparents, a transfor-
mation of all of our descendants—forever.
And so, the story of how we came to be here today is a long
and painful one. The release, the publishing, the official stamp
upon the findings of the Commission represents a monumental
moment, and it will help put our shared collective pain behind us.
viii a knock on the door
I am pleased to write this foreword to A Knock on the Door:
The Essential History of Residential Schools from the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission of Canada. This book presents the
history of the Residential School system in a way that makes it ac-
cessible to all Canadians.
It addresses one of the key objectives of the Truth and Rec-
onciliation Commission: to educate all Canadians about the
Residential School experience and how this sad chapter in our
shared history has affected the relationship between Indigenous
and non-Indigenous people today.
The Commission spent five years putting together a report
that was given life by the thousands of stories from survivors
who experienced the misguided experiment of assimilation. Their
contribution is immense, and their truths now enshrined for all
time. Because of this hard work, our history can no longer be de-
nied. The incontrovertible historical record before us, before all of
Canada, has put an official limit on “the range of permissible lies,”
to use Michael Ignatieff’s term.1
By describing and validating our story, the Report validates
Canada’s story. It demonstrates the righteousness and importance
of our struggle. It tells us how the fundamental systems of gover-
nance failed to protect our social, economic, and cultural rights.
Education; health care; justice; child welfare: all of these
systems and benefits are enjoyed, rightfully so, without a second
thought by non-Indigenous Canadians. For Indigenous Canadi-
ans, wrongfully so, access to high quality education, health care,
justice, child welfare was a passing dream.
What the Commission’s Report tells us is that Canada is in-
deed in need of transformation, but that transformation is not of
us. What is needed is for Canada to transform itself to embrace
our true, shared culture and history—to understand that we are
all, in fact, in this together.
This year happens to be the 800th anniversary of the Magna
Carta, the great charter that inspired the Royal Proclamation of
FOREWORD ix
1763—our Magna Carta—which in turn inspired the Commission
and its prescriptions for reconciliation.
It has taken until 2015 to get here. It took the revelation of the
experiences of residential school survivors to crystallize the reality
that Canada was not the nation we wished it to be. But even so,
beyond my fellow survivors I know that this would not have hap-
pened without the help of our allies. There are too many to name,
and so to mention but a few I thank, first, the Chief Justice of
Canada, the Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, for speaking the words
that could not be spoken: that what Canada did to us was cultural
genocide. From the Supreme Court of Canada, she changed the
vocabulary and narrative around residential schools.
I thank the Hon. Frank Iacobucci for his commitment to
bring about a settlement that everyone could live with. I thank the
negotiators for their tenacity. I thank the Rt. Hon. Paul Martin for
his support throughout. I give thanks to the Commissioners for
their compassionate work, for their courage, their patience, their
protection, their understanding, their vision, and their wisdom.
Their work affirms the survivors’ legacy.
The attempt to transform us failed. The true legacy of the
survivors, then, will be the transformation of Canada.
Meegwetch,
Phil Fontaine