Aboriginal Discrimination

Essay Outline The human race that inhabited the lands earlier than anyone else, Aboriginals in Canada had conquered many obstacles which got them to what they are today. In the past, Canadian Aboriginals have dealt with many gruesome issues that primarily involved the Canadians opposing them or treating them like ‘‘wards.’’ The Indian Act is a written law which controls the Indian’s lives and it is often amended several times to make Indian lives either peaceful or cruel but especially, cruel. Aboriginals found the Indian Act a massive problem in their lives due to it completely controlling them and how they lived on their reserve.

This is true of Saul. Residential schools subject children to traumatic events and situations that sever cultural ties. Saul states," I did not want to be haunted. I had lived that way for far too long as it was," (Wagamese 314). Saul explains how residential schools have negatively impacted his life and the lives of others.

Hi, I’m Leah, and I will be discussing the News Magazine Education Week Video on Residential schools from 1955. This video, which claims to accurately inform the viewer on the subject of Aboriginal Residential schools, is nothing more than a propaganda video aimed at an audience of white, suburban Canadians to validate their racism. The video claims that residential schools have a positive impact on the aboriginal children who attend them.

After many years of being outside of residential schools each of them still holds onto the memories that they have of that place and find it very difficult to face those memories. In sharing his history at residential schools “A kind of euphoria filled Howie, even though he felt weak in the knees. It was as if the burden of history had been lifted from his shoulders.” (Good 279-280) Although Howie found it difficult to speak about the horrible things that happened to him at the residential school many people have found that speaking about the past is the best way to move forward.

The law ruling Indigenous parents as unfit to look after their children shows that white society believed their parenting was more superior. The children taken were raised as white people and lost their sense of identity. Some children were taken when they were a few months old, and as they grew they believed they were part of the white community. Being removed from their heritage and not being able to fit in society left children confused on who they were (Dudgeon, 1997). Some adolescents got confused on their identity and their heritage, and not being able to deal with the constant battle led them to commit suicide.

Indigenous Women are being murdered and are disappearing at a higher rate than other women in Canada. Aboriginal women are five times more likely than other women to die due to violence. High rates of murder of indigenous women have occurred since settlers arrived in Canada. The first European and Canadian Aboriginal contact dates back to the sixteenth century. Indigenous women were the centers of their community and a common tactic of European settlers was to attack women.

Aboriginal people continue to be victimized and incarcerated at much higher rates than non-Aboriginal people. The overrepresentation of Canadian Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system is a question that has not yet been answered. This research paper will focus on the risk factors experienced by many Aboriginal people, residential school experiences, and institutional racism, and their roles in the overrepresentation of Canadian Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system. The Canadian government system has tried to deal with this issue, but looking at the high rates of overrepresentation, there approach has not been successful.

We Were Children, the documentary on residential schools, is a re-enactment of two aboriginal children and their first hand experiences in the residential school system. The kinds of problems this documentary presented include mistreatment faced by the children who attended these schools, corruption and scandal inside the administration of the schools, and the false perception about these schools that resonated amongst Canadian society. These two children talk about the bullying they had to endure from the nuns which show that the children were not seen as equal to a child of non-Aboriginal decent. Furthermore, the types of abuse administration would put these kids through was immensely disturbing considering this was a state run institution.

Indigenous peoples of Canada have been considered inferior to all other citizens, and have been abused and neglected through European history, and can be seen as a form of genocide. In Canadian residential schools, children were removed from the home, sexually assaulted, beaten, deprived of basic human necessities, and over 3 500 women and girls were sterilized, and this went on well into the 1980 's (Nicoll 2015). The dehumanization of Indigenous peoples over the generations has left a significant impact on society today; the generational trauma has left many Indigenous peoples heavily dependent of drugs and alcohol, and the vulnerability of Indigenous women has led to extremely high rates of violent crime towards these women. A report that

Indigenous people have been discriminated and have been extremely mistreated

Critical Summary #3: First Nations Perspectives In Chapter eight of Byron Williston’s Environmental Ethics for Canadians First Nation’s perspectives are explored. The case study titled “Language, Land and the Residential Schools” begins by speaking of a public apology from former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He apologizes for the treatment of “Indians” in “Indian Residential Schools”. He highlights the initial agenda of these schools as he says that the “school system [was] to remove and isolate [Aboriginal] children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them[…]” (Williston 244).

Residential Schools was an enormous lengthening event in our history. Residential schools were to assimilate and integrate white people’s viewpoints and values to First Nations children. The schools were ran by white nuns and white priests to get rid of the “inner Indian” in the children. In residential schools, the children suffered immensely from physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual abuse. Although the many tragedies, language was a huge loss by the First Nations children.

The basis of these problems is a loss of identity and a sense of knowing that their values are oppressed, and their rights are ignored. Likewise, non-indigenous Canadians have become increasingly aware of the unfairness of the richness of indigenous and aboriginal cultures that are taking place.

Residential schools were cruel places where indigenous people had no choice but to do things they weren 't okay with and did not want to do. Residential schools are a huge part of Canada’s history because of what they stood for. They were a boarding school indigenous people were forced to attend, where they learn valuable things but were in turn abused. In these boarding schools, indigenous people were forced to give up their family, culture and their way of life.

The Stolen Generation was a generation of half-caste (half Aboriginal and half white European) children taken away from their Aboriginal families by white settlers, in a period of time lasting from around 1890-1970. Aboriginal communities were either approached by government officials, who left with their half-caste children, or mothers were given documents to sign, and told that this would be granting permission for their children to be vaccinated, when it was actually to let their children be taken away. The stolen half-caste children were either sent to live in foster families, or institutions specifically run to assimilate Indigenous children into the European community. Inside the institutions, children experienced highly controlled environments,