
The year is 1920. Deputy superintendent general of Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott—the most revered and reviled public figure in Canada—is taking the government’s aspirations for assimilation of the red man (as the native is callously known) to new lows. Scott’s strategy is a stranglehold on language and culture through re-education. His political strike is swift, insidious, and lethal. With the application of an amendment to the Indian Act, Scott makes it mandatory for aboriginal children aged six to fifteen to attend residential schools. Parents wishing to protect their children from this harbinger of desolation are threatened with prison terms. Participation is compulsory, resistance futile.
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