Canada's residential schools

It failed to take into account the devel- opment of new Aboriginal nations, and the implications of the Indian Act’s definition of who was and was not a “status Indian” and the British North America Act’s division of responsibility for “Indians.” In the government’s vision, there was no place for the Métis Nation that proclaimed itself in the Canadian Northwest in the nineteenth cen- tury. [...] Métis children were, for example, among the first students enrolled at the school at Fort Providence in the Northwest Territories.1 Métis children were also in many of the mission schools that were established by the Oblates throughout the West.2 In one case, the presence of Métis children at Catholic missions was a matter of disappointment. [...] The grandmothers were the best 8 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission people to love and care for the orphans but the others they just starved and beat them, too often.”5 Although most of the Métis at Fort Chipewyan spoke French, instruction at the school in the early twentieth century was in English one day and French the next. [...] In addi- tion, the federal government agreed to provide up to $2,000 for the purchase of farm implements and seed “for the most needy of the half-breeds who may join the colony during the next financial year.”25 The land was north of the Saskatchewan River near the Egg and Saddle lakes in what is now Alberta.26 Oblate Father Adéodat Thérien was appointed the resident manager.27 Lacombe then issued [...] But as this scheme of sending the Halfbreed children to the Indian boarding schools cannot be adopted without great inconvenience the only way to solve the question would be to establish a boarding school exclusively for the Halfbreed children.30 Thérien requested a grant of $72 per student.31 In lobbying Indian Affairs Minister Clifford Sifton for support for the school and the colony in general,