Alberni Indian Residential School

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Alberni Indian Residential School was a school in the city of Alberni from 1891 to 1973 . It was located south of the Tseshaht Reserve Tsahaheh 1 and about four kilometers north of Port Alberni. This (and other schools of this type in Canada) gained notoriety for the systematic attacks on the children of the school by the teaching staff.

history

The Alberni Indian Residential School was opened as a day school by the Presbyter Reverand JA MacDonald in 1891. MacDonald's sister was able to convince the Presbyterian Woman's Missionary Society that a bigger school was needed. The new school quickly became a boarding school with 50 students from the Presbyterian Woman's Missionary Society, under the direction of head nurse Elizabeth Lister and a Mr. McKee as a teacher. HB Curry was the headmaster when the school burned down in 1917. It was also reinstated when the new building - paid for by the government - was constructed and opened in 1920. Management of the school was passed on to the United Church Woman's Missionary Society in 1925. FE Pitts was named headmaster in 1927 and stayed until RC Scott was named headmaster in late 1939. He was followed by AF Caldwell in 1944. In 1944, two new classrooms and the retirement home (later Peake Hill) were also built on the site. From then on, the government was also responsible for hiring teachers. Headmaster Caldwell was succeeded by John Denny in 1958 and JA Andrews in 1962. In 1969 the federal government took full responsibility for the management of the school. The school closed in 1973 and the building was demolished in 2009.

Mistreatment and sexual assault

Contemporary witnesses report on extremely bad conditions in the school, both with regard to the general purpose of the school, as well as about the handling of the students and the hygienic conditions that led to deaths. Children were physically abused and sexual assault took place. A teacher was tried in 36 cases that occurred between 1948 and 1968. These and other incidents led to a systematic investigation of all schools and culminated in a statement by Douglas Hogarth, a Supreme Court judge, that this school system was nothing more than an "institution for institutionalized pedophilia". The background: The school type was set up specifically for the indigenous people in Canada and called the Residential School . The first of its kind opened in the 1840s and the last closed in 1996. This type of school represents the darkest chapter in the country's school history. These schools should keep children away from their parents and at the same time from their cultural influence. The use of their respective mother tongue was strictly forbidden, instead they should learn English or French. Associated with this was a general civilization mandate, the driving force of which a commission of inquiry described as “cultural triumphalism”.

Web links

  • Photos of the school , archived and published by the United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto
  • History of the school , created by the Residential School Archive project, United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Alberni Indian Residential School - The Children Remembered. In: thechildrenremembered.ca. Retrieved October 19, 2016 .
  2. ^ Alberni Indian Residential School - MemoryBC. In: www.memorybc.ca. Retrieved October 19, 2016 .
  3. ^ Residential Schools. History and Demographics. Archived from the original on May 3, 2010 ; accessed on December 2, 2009 .
  4. ^ Prince Albert Grand Council Indian Residential School Virtual Museum. 2015, archived from the original on December 18, 2015 ; accessed on June 12, 2015 .
  5. ^ Mission and Justice Relationships (Anglican Indian and Eskimo Residential Schools) . Anglican Church of Canada. Retrieved June 12, 2015.
  6. ↑ ARCHIVED - Introduction - Native Residential Schools in Canada: A Selective Bibliography - Library and Archives Canada. In: www.collectionscanada.gc.ca. Retrieved October 19, 2016 .