True Left

Families were forced to send their children to these schools by the government and the Catholic church. By 1926, nearly 83% of all Native children were enrolled in one of these schools. Children were made to eliminate their entire cultural identities; schools cut their braids, had them wear uniforms, removed traditional foods from their diets and even assigned them new “white” names.

It was not until 1978, when the Indian Child Welfare Act passed, that Native American parents could even have a legal say as to whether their children could attend an off-reservation school.

Nikki Apostolou, a member of the Kanien’keha community whose great-grandfather attended one of the schools, explained to In The Know: “Many [of these schools] were promoted and operated under the belief that they were helping Native children to become better integrated into Christian, modern society.”
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Phyllis “Jack” Webstad, who is Northern Secwpemc (Shuswap) from the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation, was initially enrolled at a residential school when she was 6 years old in 1973. She shared that her grandmother had bought her a “shiny orange shirt” to get her excited for the first day of school. But when Webstad arrived, boarding school officials immediately stripped her of her clothes.

When I got to the Mission, they stripped me, and took away my clothes, including the orange shirt! I never wore it again. I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t give it back to me, it was mine! The color orange has always reminded me of that and how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and how I felt like I was worth nothing. All of us little children were crying and no one cared.