An Oblate view of the history of Indian residential schools

By FR. CAMILLE PICHÉ
Special to the WCR

With the great influx of new immigrants in the Canadian Northwest they provided much-needed services, building churches, orphanages, schools and hospitals for emerging towns and villages.

The Missionary Oblates arrived at the Red River Settlement in 1845, serving the growing number of homesteaders and M‚tis and befriending the Assiniboines, Saulteux, Ojibway and Chipewyan First Nations. In the adventurous spirit of the first explorers and voyageurs, they trekked through uncharted territory further west beyond the Rocky Mountains and north to the Arctic Ocean.

Urged by the Gospel, they were not to be outdone by the traders in search of valuable furs. "How hard they work for even one miserable pelt?" comments Bishop Vital Grandin. "Should we not be as zealous in saving souls?" he says to his brother Oblates. And so they tackled the arduous task of learning Saulteux, Cree, Dene and Blackfoot to proclaim to each, in his own language, the Good News of Jesus Christ.

If at times game was plenty and life was good, conditions were often harsh for nomadic native populations living in vast lands. The opening of the West brought much-needed tools and new opportunities for sustenance and relief in hard times, but also caused immeasurable harm.

Native populations were displaced from their traditional lands and decimated by recurring outbreaks of smallpox and tuberculosis. The extermination of the buffalo, depletion of wild game, fur bearing animals and fish stocks would deprive them even of the basic means of survival. Once noble and strong, aboriginal people were becoming destitute and impoverished.

Dene leaders formed a delegation to lobby the Catholic Church for a residential school.

The Oblates needed help and knocked on the door of religious women such as the Grey Nuns, Sisters of Providence, Sisters of Assumption, Sisters of St Anne, to name but a few. These dedicated women, often called Angels of Mercy, responded to the urgent pleas for help. Called to serve the poor, they could not remain indifferent to the harsh conditions of life of the nomadic native populations.

The sisters built nursing stations and hospitals to care for the ill and disabled, opened homes to care for needy and orphaned children. No work was deemed more important, however, than providing a future for aboriginal youth through education. In remote areas where people still lived off the land, regular attendance at day schools often proved onerous if not impossible. Seen as the best alternative, residential schools were built by the government and staffed by vowed religious men and women.

History will serve as judge in determining the role of the government in educating aboriginal children. Education was, after all, included as an obligation in treaties signed by the Canadian government with First Nations. In the Northwest however, these promises remained largely unfulfilled for many years. Church institutions in the meantime filled an all-too-evident void.

For example, let us consider the Dene Th a of northern Alberta. In 1947, local Oblate Missionary, Father Fran‡ois Arbet, counted 139 children who were of school age. Although they signed Treaty 8 in 1900 and the Dene Th a chief had often made formal requests for a school, it took 50 years before it was built.

Frustrated by the lack of response, Dene leaders formed a delegation to lobby the Catholic Church for a residential school. The delegation met with Father Jean-Marie Liz‚e, in Hay River, NWT, asking for the immediate admission of some of their children in the nearest residential schools. In 1949, the federal government asked the Grouard Diocese to build and operate a residential school in Assumption (Chateh), Alta.

Similar situations arose elsewhere. Church workers and organizations attempted to provide educational opportunities for aboriginal children at a time when the public was not concerned with the plight of Canada's aboriginal population. I uphold that the majority of the religious men and women who dedicated their whole lives to the service of God and neighbour acted in the best interests and out of genuine love for the children in their care.

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