Dr. Peter Bryce's report of 1907

[cinemo]

Under the influence of former Prime Minister, and Canadian Pacific Railway lawyer, John A. MacDonald, Canada establishes in 1876 the Indian Act, which reduces all Indians and Metis to the status of non-citizens and legal wards of the Canadian state. Henceforth, natives are imprisoned on “reserve land”, denied any legal status or civil rights, and cannot vote, sue in court, own property or conduct any actions on their own behalf.

In 1889, the federal Department of Indian Affairs is established. Indian “industrial schools” are sanctioned by the federal government, which, in partnership with Catholic and Protestant churches, jointly funds and establishes internment camps for all native children across Canada.

Two years later, the first medical report of massive deaths in these schools caused by rampant and untreated tuberculosis is issued to the federal government by Dr. George Orton in Alberta. Orton’s report is ignored. Even after 1900 , thousands of residential school children died from tuberculosis and from the many other ailments they contracted at the schools.

Dr. Peter Bryce, appointed in 1904 as Canada's first medical officer for the Department of Indian Affairs, issued a report in 1907 exposing the poor sanitary conditions in these boarding schools which led to high mortality rates. Dr. Bryce did not attempt to disguise the horror of what he found. In his official report, Bryce called the tuberculosis epidemic a “’national crime’ … [and] the consequence of inadequate government funding, poorly constructed schools, sanitary and ventilation problems, inadequate diet, clothing and medical care.” (A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986, p. 75.) He calculated mortality rates among school age children as ranging from 35% and 60%.

Not everyone welcomed Dr. Bryce’s report, or indeed, the similar such findings of others. His requests for additional funds to address some of the basic health concerns were denied. Parts of his incriminating report were suppressed by Duncan Campbell Scott, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, who then also terminated the position of Medical Inspector. Clearly, the health of Aboriginal school children was not going to be made a priority.

Instead, Duncan Campbell Scott turned his attention to negotiating a joint agreement between the federal government and the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches. This agreement established the structure and mandate for what would now be termed “Indian Residential Schools,” and the contractual obligations of the churches responsible for running them. The new “residential” schools would focus on primary education in an effort to forcefully civilize and Christianize Indian children. Although the change in name may have made for good public relations, the abusive treatment of Aboriginal children continued, and the epidemics that were killing them did not subside. Duncan Campbell Scott was determined to find a “final solution to the Indian Problem.” He explained:

“I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone… Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department”

In 1922, after he was forced to retire from federal service, Dr. Bryce published his report in its entirety, under the title: The Story of a National Crime: Being a Record of the Health Conditions of the Indians of Canada from 1904 to 1921.

cinemo

[jnfinv]

wow

[true facts]

wow what an amazing facts everyone

[gregor]

Schools for Native Americans vs. Schools for Whites

Many Native Americans routinely assume that the Boarding Schools were special facilities for Native Americans to suppress their culture. With regard to cultural oppression, they are certainly right. But they were by no means „special facilities“ for Indians only. The schools for white children were little different from the schools for Native American children.
Please understand me correctly, that shouldn't be an excuse.
With regard to school education and children in particular, we see many things completely differently than they did a 100 years ago. But it was especially bad for Indian children because they were in no way prepared for what to expect in school.

But what could children expect who went to school 100 to 150 years ago? Here are two examples from England (Victorian era) and Germany (school in the German Empire).

England (Victorian Times)
English Schools were not free until 1891. In early Victorian England, most children never went to school at all and grew up unable to read or write. Instead they were sent out to work to earn money for their families. Only the upper and middle class children went to school.
In 1870, the english Parliament passed the Forster's Education Act, requiring all parts of Britain to provide schools to children aged 5 to 12. However, not all these school were free so many could not afford the „school's pence“ each week. As it was not mandatory to attend school many children still didn't go to school. In 1880 a law was passed making it compulsory for every child in Britain between the ages of 5 and 10 to attend school.
There could be as many as 70 or 80 pupils in one class, especially in cities. The teachers were very strict. Children were often taught by reading and copying things down, or chanting things till they were perfect.
Typical lessons at school included the three Rs - Reading, WRiting and ARithmetic. In addition to the three Rs which were taught most of the day, once a week the children learned geography, history and singing. The girls learned how to sew.

Discipline in Victorian schools was very harsh. Teachers often beat pupils using a cane. Canes were mostly made out of birch wood. Boys were usually caned on their backsides and girls were either beaten on their bare legs or across their hands. A pupil could receive a caning for a whole range of different reasons, including: rudeness, leaving a room without permission, laziness, not telling the truth and playing truant (missing school).

Germany (German Empire / Kaiser Reich)
The Situation in Germany was similar. Up until the 17th century, schools in the German principalities and imperial cities only existed for a small privileged minority, especially monastery and Latin schools.
It was in the course of the Reformation that the sovereigns gradually introduced compulsory schooling in their territories and issued school regulations, whereby they were strongly oriented towards the ideas of the churches. Nevertheless, at the End of the 18th century, the enrollment rate in most of the German states was well below 50 percent, as it was not possible to guarantee a nationwide classroom provision, and the parents were not particularly willing or able to pay school fees. In the German Empire, children usually went to school for eight years, from 6 to 14 years of age.

The teachers - they were often craftsmen, sextons or war-damaged soldiers - were expected to encourage their pupils to study with "paternal kindness and rigor". In fact, however, the cane secured her strict schoolmaster's rule in many schoolrooms (it seems to me there was a „global birch cane industry“).

The teachers spoke to the children in the tone of command as on the barracks square: “Sit down!”, “Get up”, “Quiet!”, “ Show Notebooks!”. “There is discipline and order in the school” was a motto for educators. Children should be accustomed to obedience and discipline at an early age. For many teachers, the rod for punishment was therefore always at hand.

No student calls in or disturbs. The children know what kind of trouble they might otherwise face. If Adam giggled several times, all pupils should write "potato peeling knife" 100 times. Collective punishment. In a book of penalties on display in a German museum, seven blows with a stick are documented for a boy because he was "stubborn" and did not want to read.
So, corporal punishment was common in all types of schools at that time. These punishments were used in all strata of society at that time and, unlike today, corporal punishment was also tolerated in public. It was demanded by the people as well as by most scholars in school as well.

„Going to school“ was also called “Sul virga degere”. This Latin phrase means nothing more than “live under the rod”. It was said that one had to instill the „divine spirit“ in children. Because of this approval of brute force in school, pupils from elementary school to high school were ill-treated. The teacher even kept a „book of daily strokes“, listing every single stroke and the reason for it.

I went to a monastery high school in the 1960s in Germany. Back then it was still common to chastise students with a rod! (There were certainly teachers who thought I deserved it. )

No matter whether schools for Indian children or children of whites - the school system 100-150 years ago was cruel for all children. The purpose of the school was not to raise children to be independent, creative open-minded individuals, but to produce obedient subjects. I hope that has changed – but I'm not sure.

[Dietmar]

Thanks Gregor,

very interesting points, and I understand how you mean it.

However, I´d like to add some differences. Unlike white students, Indian children were often removed from their homelands, their families and their culture. They were not allowed to speak their language and practice their religion. Their hair was cut short (and we all know what that meant to them). And many of them died while at school, their graves still can be seen in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

The goal of Indian schools, like Captain Pratt said it, was ‘to kill the Indian, and save the man’.

So yes, school could be also cruel to white students, but it was in many ways a different experience for Indian children.

Greetings
Dietmar

[gregor]

That's what I said - cultural oppression 😉
But Boarding Schools were no special inventions for native children.