Canada’s Indian Residential School System was a network of boarding schools, industrial schools, and federal hostels created to remove indigenous children from their homes, their families, and their cultures. While many schools originated long before Confederation in 1867, the system was primarily active following the approval of the Indian Act in 1876 — a group of laws aiming to do away with the Indian tribal system and forcibly enfranchise First Nations peoples — until the the last federally-operated school closed in 1996.
Only in recent years has information about the schools, often run by various religious sects, and their students welfare become public knowledge: physical and sexual abuse was rampant; malnourishment and poor living conditions were not uncommon; and assimilation, deprivation of cultural traditions, and punishment was the standard. It is estimated that 6000 children died while in attendance at an Indian Residential School.
We weren’t taught this in school.
This project, my thesis piece at Parsons School of Design, aims to investigate the IRS system visually, beginning with the stories of survivors and transitioning into the narrative of each school.
