It was
through the residential schools – centres for abuse, family destruction and
alienation from cultural identity --- the violence took root in Indigenous
communities. The “residential school
syndrome” – difficulty loving oneself or loving or caring for others --- a
transmitter from one generation to the next.
Over
the course of more than a hundred years, 150,000 Indigenous children in Canada
were removed from their families by law enforcement officers and placed in
residential schools designed with the express purpose of “taking the Indian out
of the child”, places where hunger and abuse were commonplace. Another practice followed on its heels: that
of deliberately placing children in white families at great distances from
their communities; this was the “Sixties Scoop”, which affected 200,000
children, a period that lasted form the 1960s to the 1980s. Today 30-40% of all children placed in care
are Indigenous, although they account for only 5% of all Canadian children.
80%
of MMIW, as identified by researcher Maryanne Pearce, were not involved in sex
work.
At
least 4,134 children died in residential schools from untreated illnesses,
abuse, suicide, accidents during attempts to flee, even from starvation.
