EDUCATION, WELFARE AND DEATH?: EMOTIONAL REACTIONS TO THE CANADIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL SYSTEM 1946 TO 2000

Abstract

The role of emotions in the history of the Indian Residential School system in Canada is understudied, and this research addresses that history in the years between 1946 and 2000, particularly in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Significant policies and events came into action during this period, moving Canadian society from segregation to contemporary integration. This societal transition helps explain how emotions and attitudes towards the IRS system changed. The aim of this research is not to tell the known history of the Indian Residential Schools, but to add the context of the emotional reactions to answer the research question: How has the emotional response to the Indian Residential School system and its abuses changed since 1946, and how can these emotional changes be explained? In this research, I argue that the societal emotional reaction was shaped by societal structure over time, where the years of segregation led to isolated emotional reactions. With increased interaction in these communities through integration policy, the emotional communities also began to increasingly interact and overlap. By analysing the emotions of the non-Indigenous and Indigenous emotional communities in connection to the Indian Residential School system, this research demonstrates how societal policies and reforms changed the impact of the system of cultural genocide on two communities in different ways. Ultimately, through the analysis of oral histories and news coverage, we see that as Canada transitioned, there was also a shift among emotional communities. Although these communities were not identical by 2000, there is evidence that Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities’ emotional reactions began to resemble each other more over time. Considering the author’s own cultural background and familial relationship to “Indian Status” in Canada, reflective personal emotions are woven into the text as an experimental exercise of researcher reflexivity.