Inuit and the Residential School System

Inuit and the Residential School System
The Legacy of Hope Foundation
Ontario, 2013

The Introduction of the Residential School System in the Canadian Arctic and Subarctic
The Aboriginal Healing Foundation defines residential schools as, “the Residential School System in Canada, attended by Aboriginal students. It may include industrial schools, boarding schools, homes for students, hostels, billets, residential schools, residential schools with a majority of day students, or a combination of any of the above.” For Inuit peoples, residential schools also included tent camps. The purpose of residential schools was to assimilate Aboriginal peoples into the dominant colonial culture by removing children from the care of their parents and community, placing them in institutions far from their homes, teaching them Christian and European ideologies, and prohibiting them from speaking their Indigenous languages or practicing their culture.

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