A national crime : the Canadian government and the residential school system, 1879 to 1986

Summary: For over 100 years, thousands of Aboriginal children passed through the Canadian residential school system. Although the system was meant to bring Aboriginal children into the "circle of civilization," the actual results were far different. More commonly, it provided an inferior education in an atmosphere of neglect, disease, and often abuse. Using access to previously unreleased government documents, Milloy provides a full picture of the ideological roots of the system, and follows the paper trails of internal memorandams, reports from field inspectors, and letters of complaint. In the early decades, the system grew without planning or restraint. Despite numerous critical commissions and reports, it persisted into the 1970s, when it transformed itself into a social welfare system without improving conditions for its thousands of wards. A National Crime shows how the residential system was chronically underfunded and mismanaged, and how this affected the health, education, and well-being of entire generations of Aboriginal children.

Record details

ISBN: 9780887556463
ISBN: 0887556469
Physical Description: xix, 402 pages, 10 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm
print
Publisher: Winnipeg : University of Manitoba Press, [1999].

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	pt. 1. Vision: The Circle of Civilized Conditions. 1. The Tuition of Thomas Moore. 2. The Imperial Heritage, 1830 to 1879. 3. The Founding Vision of Residential School Education, 1879 to 1920 -- pt. 2. Reality: The System at Work, 1879 to 1946. 4. "A National Crime": Building and Managing the System, 1879 to 1946. 5. "The Charge of Manslaughter": Disease and Death, 1879 to 1946. 6. "We Are Going to Tell You How We Are Treated": Food and Clothing, 1879 to 1946. 7. The Parenting Presumption: Neglect and Abuse. 8. Teaching and Learning, 1879 to 1946 -- pt. 3. Integration and Guardianship, 1946 to 1986. 9. Integration for Closure: 1946 to 1986. 10. Persistence: The Struggle for Closure. 11. Northern and Arctic Assimilation. 12. The Failure of Guardianship: Neglect and Abuse, 1946 to 1986. Epilogue: Beyond Closure, 1992 to 1998.
Immediate Source of Acquisition Note:	$24.95