I'm an indigenous child from Canada in the late 1800's, taken into a residential school. What was my experience inside, and what would have changed once I managed to get out?

While there's always more than can be said, I answered a similar question ("I am a young Canadian native and am being sent to a residential school. When would my schooling end and what would one experience during my stay?") and you may find the answer helpful.

One of the findings of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission was that the experiences of young people sent to Canadian residential schools were as varied as the children themselves. A few young people spent only a few months at a school, experienced little more than homesickness, picked up English or French, and returned to their families. However, the overwhelming majority of the children experienced long periods of deprivation including food scarcity and limited contact with friends and family, physical and sexual assault, and an unwavering intolerance for their culture, language, name, and experiences. In effect, if you were a Canadian First Nations, Métis, or Inuit child or teenager at a residential school, you'd experience adults using every bit of power they had over you to erase the things that make you ... you.

In 1937, four boys, Maurice Justin (age 8), Allen Willie (age 8), Johnny Michael (age 9), and Andrew Paul (age 9) froze to death running away from the Lejac Indian Residential School.^1 No adults from the school followed them. They sent out no rescue party and did not attempt to notify the boys' relatives they were missing. The boys were trying to get back to their families, who lived about ten miles from the school.

If we approach your questions as if you were one of those four boys, you were attending a a Roman Catholic school, which meant you were expected to participate in mass, read scripture, study Catholic saints, and learn French or English. Virtually all of the 130 schools were run by the clergy and included some form of religious study. You likely spend your time in class listening to an adult talk at you and repeating back words or numbers on command. No one was really interested in providing you a classical or liberal arts education as they expected you to work in manual labor when you left the school.

The adults with whom you interacted were more interested in your body (did you behave correctly? do you look like a good Canadian? are you polite and respectful to them?) and to a certain extent, your soul. Prior to World War II, the course work only went up to 8th grade so had you not died trying to escape, you probably would have left at 14 or 15. Your sister, though, may have been asked (or told) to stay on to help younger children. This is a collection of first-person reports about the schools pulled from the Commission's final report that provides more context about what your experience would be like.

There were a number of different reasons why you may have ended up at that school. It's possible you went because one or both of your parents attended the school and it had become a community norm. Other children followed different paths to the school. Some were forcibly taken from their families. In some cases, families sent their children because they feared the consequences of not sending them. In others, school or government representatives presented graduates who spoke about their experiences in glowing terms and assured parents their child would be fine. It was rarely, if ever, your choice as a young person to attend one of the schools.

Historians and ethicists are still working through the relationship between the Indian schools and the concept of genocide and there is no consensus. That said, those who see the connection point to generational damage, the enduring impact on communities, and explicit harm done to the children at the schools, including death by negligence, malnutrition, or murder.^2 They can also see parallels between the coping mechanisms of the children at the schools and those who survived other genocides. After World War II, young men at the schools competed in national cadet drill competitions and reportedly enjoyed the events. Many of the students at industrial schools learned physical trades and were able to take their skills back to their communities. They found ways to rebel and protest. They snuck out letters and snuck in food. They found ways to survive and it was their advocacy that brought out the Commission and the resulting apologies from the government, the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and the United Church.

References:

Milloy, John S. A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879-1986. Winnipeg: U of Manitoba P, 1999. cited in Young, B. (2015). "Killing the Indian in the Child": Death, Cruelty, and Subject-formation in the Canadian Indian Residential School System. Mosaic: a journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature, 63-76.

MacDonald, D. B., & Hudson, G. (2012). The genocide question and Indian residential schools in Canada. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique, 45(2), 427-449.

This long form piece from the Commission gives a solid overview of the entire system with lots of footnotes and resources.