Canadian Residential Schools and Cultural Trauma

From the 1880s through the majority of the 20th century, Canada kidnapped over 150,000 indigenous children from their homes and enrolled them in Canadian Residential Schools. These schools consisted of “fixing” the children and “civilizing” them. Run by abusive nuns and priests, children were forced to forget their heritage and culture. The goal was to beat the indigenous part of them out and make them good Christian citizens. Sexual, physical, and mental abuse was rampant, and the trauma has permeated through generations. Yet, not everyone made it out of the schools. In 2021, archeologists found 950 unmarked graves on two school properties. How do we memorialize this? How do we bring justice to the children that never got to go home? For the kids that did survive, how do they combat the generational trauma that occurred within their families?

The Canadian Residential Schools is one of the clearest examples of Ron Eyerman's definition of cultural trauma. Eyerman’s article “The Past In the Present: Culture and the Transmission of Memory” explains that cultural trauma occurs when there is a “dramatic loss of identity and meaning, a tear in the social fabric, affecting a group of people who have achieved some degree of cohesion” (The Collective Memory Reader, 304). Indigenous children were taken from their families and their homes and were raised by people that do not know their culture and history. The whole goal was to break the cohesion of the tribes and change their identity. In the CBS article “Canada's Unmarked Graves: How Residential Schools Carried Out "Cultural Genocide" Against Indigenous Children” Chief Wilton Littlechild is interviewed about his time at the schools. He said that they referred to him as 65. He did not have a name. There, he was completely stripped of his identity and was reduced to a number. Chief Wilton Littlechild even said in the interview that his loss of identity was “where the trauma begins” (CBS 2022). 

According to Eyermena, this trauma will be passed on through generations. Cultural trauma works in that “the trauma need not necessarily be felt by everyone in a group or have been directly experienced by any or all” (304). In the case of the residential schools, one victim explains how the “lives of her children and grandchildren have been plagued by violence and substance abuse, intergenerational trauma, she says, that began the day her own mother was sent to school at Muskowekwan” (CBS 2022). Cultural trauma shapes generations in that “the past becomes present through symbolic interactions, through narrative and discourse, with memory itself being a product of both” (305). When a traumatic event occurs like residential schools occur for a century, and no one gets compensation or closure, it is hard for the trauma to not seep into the future generations. However, Canada has attempted to reconcile their past indiscretions by setting up “a $1.9 billion compensation fund and established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Chief Littlechild helped lead” (CBS 2022). The commission declared that the schools caused a “cultural genocide.” However, there are ways in which carrier groups of this trauma can bring attention to the injustices against them. 

In Christina Simko’s 2022 article “Marking Time in Memorials and Museums of Terror: Temporality and Cultural Trauma” she points out that “survivors and family members as the most important carrier groups” (58). They are the ones that carry the trauma, but they also carry the ability to memorialize what happened. In the case of the residential schools the voices of the indigenous people of Canada have historically been silenced. However, Eyerman introduces the concept of discourse versus narratives. Narratives allow “for a minority or an oppressed group,in which some of the central concepts of a dominating discourse [...] can be given new meaning” (306). Indigenous communities can rewrite the narrative and take back some power. Part of this includes having archeologists uncover mass graves and possibly identify the victims. Previous students also filed thousands of lawsuits against the Canadian government, which was what forced them to set up the compensation fund and create the commission. Cultural trauma may have detrimental effects, but it can also be a driving force in getting justice. 

Works Cited

Cooper, Anderson. 2022. “Canada's Unmarked Graves: How Residential Schools Carried Out 

"Cultural Genocide" Against Indigenous Children.” CBS, February 6. Retrieved Apr 25, 2022. (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ canada-residential-schools-unmarked- graves-indigenous-children-60-minutes-2022-02-06/).

Eyerman, Ron. 2011. “From: ‘The Past In the Present: Culture and the Transmission of 

Memory’.” Pp. 139-149 in The Collective Memory Reader, edited by J.K. Olick, V. Vinitzky-Seroussi, and D. Levy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Simko, Christina. 2020. “Marking Time in Memorials and Museums of Terror: Temporality and 

Cultural Trauma.” American Sociological Association 38(1): 51-77.