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Abuse In Residential Schools Essay

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Abuse In Residential Schools Essay
In the 19th century, the Canadian government came up with an idea to start assimilating Aboriginal peoples into the dominant culture. This meant taking 150,000 children away from their homes and communities and placing them into residential schools. The assumption of Aboriginal peoples culture being peculiar, was greatly believed by the government and many people. The cruel saying “beat the Indian out of them” unfortunately became true, because that is exactly what took place in residential schools. Being exposed to many awful ways of abuse, including mental, emotional, and physical, caused the men and women who attended residential schools to be struggling further on in their lives, specifically regarding cultural practises, and parenting. …show more content…
Since the children have only seen abuse, both physical, verbal, and mental growing up, they lack adequate parenting skills. Considering these pasts, the cycle of abuse between families continues on. Children were exposed to strict discipline while in residential schools, as a result they treated their kids the same. A testimony from Lorna Rope shows how residential schools shaped bad parents, “...when he would get angry he would kind of lose control and he would hit us on the head with his knuckles, and that was the same way the Nuns did to us, to me, when I was there”. The children saw abuse, which they then as parents used on their children because that is all they have seen growing up. Many generations of aboriginal children have grown up without a loving and nurturing family. Seeing no examples of normal family life, caused them to not know how to deal with children, since they have only experienced abuse in their childhood. Brothers and sisters rarely saw one another, considering how activities were segregated. The lessons children learn as growing up deeply influence behavior and are often repeated in adulthood. Power is a crucial factor in all this, those in charge of residential schools used the power they were given as a negative advantage. It was easy for people in charge to use this power in a negative way, because in return the children could not do anything due to fear and lack of
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