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Egerton Ryerson produces a study of native education at the request of the assistant superintendent general of Indian affairs. His findings become the model for future Indian residential schools. Ryerson recommends that domestic education and religious instruction is the best model for the Indian population.
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This is after the Imperial Government shifts its policy from fostering the autonomy of native populations through industry to assimilating them through education.
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Read more here.
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Dominion of Canada purchases ‘Rupert’s Land’ from Hudson Bay Company for $1.5-million. It is the largest real estate transaction (by land area) in the country’s history. The purchase of Rupert’s Land transforms Canada geographically. It changes from a modest country in the northeast of the continent into an expansive one that reaches across North America. Rupert’s Land is eventually divided among Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories.
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BC enters confederation and is promised a transcontinental railway connecting the Dominion from Sea to Sea.
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Government mounts a systematic policy of marginalizing the indigenous population and forcing them off their land, through violence and forced starvation to make for the railways. In only five years between 1880 and 1885, the population of Plains First Nations dropped from 32,000 to 20,000. For more info read this and this
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Numbered Treaties 1 to 7 solidify Canada’s claim to lands north of the United States–Canada border.
The treaties enable the construction of a national railway and open the lands of the North-West Territories to agricultural settlement. In order to construct the railway and encourage future settlement, the government considered it necessary to extinguish Aboriginal title to the land. -
Act allows for lands in Western Canada to be granted to individuals, the Hudson’s Bay Company, railway construction, municipalities and religious groups and includes homestead policies to encourage settlement in the West. Some 1.25 million homesteads are made available over an expanse of about 80 million hectares — the largest survey grid in the world. From 1870 to 1930, roughly 625,000 land patents are issued to homesteaders. Hundreds of thousands of settlers pour into the region.
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In 1872, shipping magnate and railway promoter Sir Hugh Allan was awarded the lucrative contract for the Canadian Pacific Railway by Prime Minister John A. Macdonald. But, Allan contributed around $350,000 to Macdonald's election campaign—when this becomes public knowledge in 1873, Macdonald's government is forced to resign over what has become known as the Pacific Scandal
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Read about the Indian Act
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Treaty 7—the last of the Numbered Treaties made between the Government of Canada and the Plains First Nations—is hurriedly negotiated to defuse an increasingly tense situation in Southern Alberta caused by armed conflict just south of the US border.
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John A Macdonald returns to power with the completion of the railway as a major facet of his National Policy. In this term he will also begin the implementation of a series of Indigenous assimilation policies in order to get rid of the "Indian Problem".
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Nicholas Flood Davin was asked by John A. Macdonald to write a report on the structure of American Indian schools and how to implement this model in the new dominion. Davin's report led to the creation of government-funded residential schools in Canada. Officially the report was title, Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds.
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Residential schooling quickly became a central element in the federal government’s Aboriginal policy in conjunction with other federal assimilation policies.
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Thomas Quinn gathers his emaciated Cree charges in front of the on-reserve ration house, before declaring them the victims of an April Fool’s joke and turning them away with nothing. For more information read.
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This completes the rail connection that will connect the Dominion from sea to sea.
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Read more here
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Cree chief Big Bear’s young warriors and war chief, Wandering Spirit, seize the settlement at Frog Lake to collect arms, ammunition and food. Indian Agent Thomas Quinn refuses the orders to leave, and war chief Wandering Spirit shoots him dead. Eight more settlers are killed and about 70 others are taken prisoner. The settlement is burned to the ground. Read more here.
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In this report, Dr. Peter Bryce, Canada’s Chief Medical Health Officer, documents the appalling health conditions within residential schools and outlines clear recommendations to prevent student deaths. He concludes this is a “national crime . . . the consequence of inadequate funding, poorly constructed schools, sanitary problems, inadequate diet, clothing and medical care.” His report is disregarded.
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Under the leadership of Duncan Campbell Scott, the Indian Act is amended to make attendance at residential schools compulsory for Aboriginal children between the ages of four and 16. It is made mandatory from 1920 to 1948. Read more here
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Duncan Campbell Scott proposes amendment to the Indian Act that bans Indigenous people from hiring lawyers (without the Department of Indian Affair's approval) to represent them in land and rights claims.
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Prime Minister King declares war on Britain's enemies. Indigenous men (and later women in 1941) volunteer to fight for Canada
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Widespread experimentation on residential school children began immediately after the Second World War. Beginning in Norway House and subsequently expanding to residential schools in Port Alberni, B.C., Kenora, Ont., Shubenacadie, N.S., and Lethbridge, AB. More information here.
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In his 2-part report, published in 1966 and 1967, A Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada: Economic, Political, Educational Needs and Policies, Hawthorn concludes that Aboriginal peoples are Canada’s most disadvantaged and marginalized population. He advocates ending all forced assimilation programs, especially residential schools. His report leads to Indigenous consultations with the government and the White Paper.
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The White Paper is a policy paper that proposes ending the special legal relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian state and dismantling the Indian Act. Written by then-Minister of Indian Affairs, Jean Chrétien, the white paper is met with forceful opposition from Aboriginal leaders across the country and sparks a new era of Indigenous political organizing in Canada.
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Led by Harold Cardinal, the Indian Association of Alberta, backed by the National Indian Brotherhood, reject the White Paper and offer their counter proposal, Citizens Plus, to Trudeau and his cabinet. Citizens Plus, which becomes popularly known as the Red Paper.
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At the Second General Assembly of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples in Sweden, George Manuel proposes an international declaration to uphold and protect the rights of Indigenous peoples worldwide. This would eventually become the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People UNDRIP
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The UNHRC finds that section 12 (1) (b) of the Indian Act —which stripped women of their Indian Status if they married non-status men—breaches the human rights of Indigenous women and pressures Canada to change section 12 (1) (b) The decision is an embarrassment to Canada. As a result of major pressure on the Canadian government to address the discriminatory provisions of the Act.
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The Department of Indian Affairs evaluates the schools and creates a series of initiatives. Among them is a plan to make the school administration more culturally aware of the needs of aboriginal students.
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The Constitution Express movement begins to protest the lack of recognition of Aboriginal rights in the proposed patriation of the Canadian constitution by the Trudeau government— led by George Manuel, then president of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs.
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Bill C-31 was to remove discrimination against women, to be consistent with section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms[1], included in the 1982 amendment of the Constitution. Indigenous women’s rights activists, worked for decades to remove section 12(1)(b) of the Indian Act, which stripped women of their Indian Status if they married non-status men. Their work and organizing led to Bill C-31.
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Their case is referred to as Mowatt v. Clarke. Both the Anglican Church and the government admitted fault and agree to a settlement.
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Where the Spirit Lives depicts the struggles of a girl in an unnamed Indian Residential School on the Canadian prairies.
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Phil Fontaine, leader of the Association of Manitoba Chiefs, meets with representatives of the Catholic Church. He demands that the church acknowledge the physical and sexual abuse suffered by students at residential schools.
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Chief Phil Fontaine discusses his experiences of sexual abuse in Residential School in an interview with Barbara Frum on CBC’s “The Journal"—one of the first people to go public about the abuses of residential school.
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Nora Bernard efforts would turn into the first 1995 class action lawsuit against the government for abuses suffered at residential school.
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The Oka Crisis, also known as the Kanesatake Resistance or the Mohawk Resistance at Kanesatake, was a 78-day standoff (11 July–26 September 1990) between Mohawk protesters, Quebec police, the RCMP and the Canadian Army.
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Fr. Doug Crosby, President of the Oblate Conference of Canada, issued an apology to the Native people of Canada on behalf of the twelve hundred Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate living and ministering in Canada. Crosby began the apology by locating his words within Oblate history: the Oblates’ presence in Canada for 150 years; the history of the Americas; 1992 as the 500th Anniversary of Columbus’s arrival; and criticisms of and revelations regarding the Residential Schools
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The federal government establishes the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples by order-in-council on 26 August 1991 in response to the Oka crisis.
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After Nora files her claim other survivors from other schools in other provinces file similar lawsuits. Eventually these claims join together and the end result is the National Class Action Settlement, the largest class action settlement in Canadian history which will pay compensation to up to 70,000 former Residential School residents. Read more about Nora's here.
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One entire chapter is dedicated to residential schools. The 4,000-page document makes 440 recommendations calling for changes in the relationship between aboriginals, non-aboriginals and governments in Canada. Read the report here
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Thirty survivors from the Alberni Indian Residential School file charges against Arthur Plint, a dorm supervisor who had sexually abused children under his care. In addition to convicting Plint, the court held the federal government and the United Church responsible for the wrongs committed.
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It includes the Statement of Reconciliation: Learning from the Past, in which the Government of Canada recognizes and apologizes to those who experienced physical and sexual abuse at Indian residential schools and acknowledges its role in the development and administration of residential schools.
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Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Jane Stewart delivers a written apology to Phil Fontaine (at that time the Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations). It was called a Statement of Reconciliation.
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The United Church's General Council Executive offers a second apology to the First Nations peoples of Canada for the abuse incurred at residential schools. The litigation list naming the Government of Canada and major Church denominations grows to 7,500.
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It is the second of four churches involved in running Indian residential schools that has initiated an agreement-in-principle with the federal government to share compensation for former students claiming sexual and physical abuse.
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Together they agree the Canadian government will pay 70 per cent of the compensation and the Anglican Church of Canada will pay 30 per cent, to a maximum of $25 million.
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The United Church carried out most of the day-to-day operations at Port Alberni Indian Residential School, where six aboriginal students claimed they were abused by a dormitory supervisor from the 1940s to the 1960s. The court ruled the church was responsible for 24 per cent of the liability.
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Details of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement include an initial payout for each person who attended a residential school of $10,000, plus $3,000 per year. Approximately 86,000 people are eligible for compensation.
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This became the largest class action settlement in Canadian history. The class-action deal — one of the most complicated in Canadian history — was effectively settled when documents were released that said the deal had been approved by seven courts: in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and the Yukon. Read more here
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The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA), a landmark compensation deal for former residential school students, comes into effect, ending what Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine called a 150-year "journey of tears, hardship and pain — but also of tremendous struggle and accomplishment." The federal government-approved agreement will provide nearly $2 billion to the former students who had attended 130 schools.
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Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologizes to former students of residential schools, marking the first formal apology by a prime minister for the federally financed program. "The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history," he says in a speech in the House of Commons.
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Indigenous delegates had a private meeting with Pope Benedict XVI where he expresses "sorrow" for the abuse and "deplorable" treatment that aboriginal students suffered at Catholic church-run residential schools. More here.
