Social Studies Children's Book - Lauren Fraser
Storyboard Text
- I am proud to have such a beautiful family
- We are a happy family that loves each other
- We are going to get the church to start a school!
- We need the Indian people to be like us. Look like us behave like us, speak like us
- We will pay to to start schools and run them. Make these people like us!
- Hmm....I guess we can do it. I will need many schools and the Nuns to help.
- Many years ago in the country of Canada there was a beautiful culture of indigenous people. They were happy, lived together and loved the land.
- Tomorrow you will have to leave us and go to school. We will miss you.
- We don't want to leave you!!!!!
- In the mid 1800's the government decided the Indigenous people needed to be assimilated. They wanted them to live as they did. Speak English and practice Christianity.
- The Government approached the church and offered pay them to start schools that would take the indigenous children from their families and teach them the "right " way to live.
- This is where you will go to school.
- Families were devistated.
- Proper young ladies DO NOT have long hair!!
- Over 150,000 children were taken from their homes and sent to residential schools
- This is where you will be sleeping with the other girls
- When the children arrived at school this was the last time brothers and sisters would see each other.
- When they arrived they were stripped and washed roughly and their hair was cut off. This was terrifying for the children
- But we NEVER cut our hair!
- Frightened and alone the children started their new lives at the residential schools.
- I want to go home.
- They had no rights and no privacy.
- I wonder where my sister is...I miss her.
- Get to work or you will not eat!
- I am hungry and I want to go home
- I am so tired.
- This room better be spotless and you may ONLY SPEAK ENGLISH
- They were forced to work for long days, in harsh conditions. If they did not work hard they did not get to eat.
- Children were not allowed to speak in their own language. If they did they were punished.
- We are so very sorry I know we have a long way to go to fix things between us. Please forgive us.
- They really did not get much schooling. Often they would only go to class once or twice a week. They mostly just worked for the church.
- Many tried to run away from the residential schools. It is believed that close to 6000 children died this way.
- In 1996, after residential schools had been running for over 100 years the last school finally closed.
- CLOSED
- In 2008 the government finally apologized for destroying generations of families. The Indigenous people were also given money. But that does not change history.....reconciliation will take many, many, many more years.
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