An Inside Look at Canada’s Program to Strip Indigenous Kids of Their Culture

Kenneth Deer's traditional name, Atsenhaienton, means "The fire still burns." He grew up in Kahnawake, his older siblings speaking fluent Mohawk, while he hardly knew anything about his roots. At the local day school, the nuns exerted Canada's tradition of taking "the Indian out of the child." And they'd done a good job on him. Right up until high school, when he embarked in a lifelong search for his Iroquois identity.

"You know, they always talk about residential schools," the Indigenous political activist tells VICE, his long white ponytail shaking. "About how bad they were. Well, I went to a day school. We had the same curriculum as the residential ones. But they never mention those."

Last June, Federal Court in Vancouver validated a class-action lawsuit presented by former Indigenous students known as "day scholars," who attended the schools but went back home at night. Until then, day scholars had been left out of residential school compensation.

Survivors say the abuse, neglect, and culture shock at day schools rivaled that of residential schools. Their new life was in stark contrast to the one they left behind. Corporal punishment was the cost for falling out of line.

"It was very regimented, very strict. We'd sit in rows. They aimed to take the Indian out of the man," Deer says. "We didn't learn anything about us except for the Lachine Massacre, where we burned Jesuits at the stake. We Iroquois were the bad guys and the black robes were the good guys."

Kenneth Deer speaking in 2015

Residential schools in Canada first opened in 1876 as part of the Indian Act; they were designed to strip Indigenous children of their culture and assimilate them into Euro-Canadian society.

Over the course of a century, the government plucked 150,000 kids away from their communities, forcing them into residency under the care of 125 Christian churches and seven government-sponsored institutions. The children suffered abuse and extreme neglect at the hands of their caretakers and the government, often dying far away from home.

The last residential school was still operational as recently as 1996.

In 2007, the government established the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement—a $1.9 billion [$1.3 billion USD] settlement to compensate the victims and their families as well as a formal apology from Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

However, residential schoolers weren't the only ones to suffer.

"When I left day school, I couldn't speak my own language," says Deer. "I was very much unprepared to face the outside world. They robbed me of my culture."

The 67-year-old retired journalist is the current secretary of the Mohawk Nation at Kahnawake, located outside Montreal. He is a member of the Bear Clan. In 1992, he founded The Eastern Door, a community newspaper in the reserve. He was, for a time, on the board of trustees for the UN Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations. He fought to have the rights of Indigenous people recognized, attending meetings on the development of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—a document the Trudeau government has promised to endorse.

Deer sighs as he recalls his day school experiences. Despite his relative success, he says he endured trauma growing up. He is forthcoming about sharing his thoughts despite his constant darting looks toward the exit during our meeting.

He attended the Kateri day school—named after the canonized Saint Kateri Tekakwitha—located at a walking distance from Kahnawake. The school was run by Catholic nuns, and the children were subjected to corporal punishment.

"The strap on the back of the hand, on the behind," Deer said. "Some guys got hit with bell clappers."

Day schools had the same objective as residential ones; kids weren't allowed to speak their own language. They were denied their own history and forced to adopt a foreign culture. Deer knows first hand the lasting harm the education system has inflicted on his community.

After Grade 8, Deer transferred to a school with non-natives in Lachine, Quebec. He says the culture shock was tremendous. Kids struggled; the dropout rate was high.

"There was a lot of derogatory name-calling," he says. "I didn't fight very much, but my friends did. And, we're the ones who got suspended because we tended to win the fights."

The journalist and political activist began a lifelong search of his origins in his first year of high school.

"We were very much unprepared to face the outside world," Deer says about his time in high school. "We knew nothing of our history, our language. We had no way of defending ourselves. I couldn't explain myself to non-Mohawks."

Though his parents were traditional Mohawks, they were told not to teach their children the Kanien'kéha language. Still, they gave him some guidance and, in his teens, he drifted towards the longhouse, where community meetings are held.

Deer sticks his chest out as he remembers how he fought to keep his identity despite day school teachers' best efforts to mold him into a white man.

"I learned it all my own," he says. "It's the ones who dropped out of school who kept the language alive. They resisted assimilation and taught the rest of us our culture. Now, they teach it in our schools."

Deer himself is no stranger to teaching. For 16 years, he was as an education counselor, high school principal, and was co-chairman of the National Indian Education Council in Canada.

In 1978, he helped launch the Kahnawake Survival School. It served 300 Mohawk students mandated through Bill 101 to be taught in English and French—another attempt at assimilation. The school is still in operation. This year, he received a honorary doctorate from Concordia University rewarding a lifetime of achievements.

Still, the Mohawk language is in danger. There are only around 3,000 speakers left on the entire continent.

To revive the culture, the Kanien'kéha Ratiwennahní:rats Adult Language Immersion Program was set up. Immersion programs for children exist from nursery to grade 6. The language is also taught in high school and students must pass the class to graduate.

"I'm on my way to the United Nations in New York to attend an expert group meeting on Indigenous languages," says the retired journalist. "To talk about preserving the Mohawk language. A bunch of us from Kahnawake are heading up there."

Deer says learning about his own origins was important. It gave him a barrier against negative external forces. Not everyone was so fortunate though.

"I've seen several of my friends unable to cope with the shame," he says pointing out the negative cycle that often plagues adults who survive a difficult childhood. "They fall into addiction and early death."

Despite modest improvements, Canada's education system continues to fail Indigenous people.

"Our schools have been underfunded for decades," says Deer. "Harper killed the Kelowna Accord and never made up for it in eight years."

These frozen relations might warm up soon. Last December, among other notable promises, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government would invest in First Nations education.

As stated in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final report, "Aboriginal youth between the ages of ten and twenty-nine who are living on reserves are five to six times more likely to die by suicide than non-Aboriginal youth."

The report, the result of a six-year investigation, prompted the government to announce the future implementation of all 94 recommendations—Calls to Action—of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. This includes collaborative work with plaintiffs excluded from the original agreement—Metis, those in Newfoundland and Labrador, and day scholars.

And for good reason.

Indigenous children didn't just suffer neglect, abuse, and humiliation. If Deer lost some of his ability to converse in his mother tongue because of day school, the ones who spent prolonged periods away from home lost much more.

In 1994, the Assembly of First Nations noted that "the impact of residential school silencing their language is equivalent to a residential school silencing their world."

And, according to Deer, there are a lot of things the government must yet answer for.

"They're still trying to assimilate us," he says. "By calling each reserve a nation, they are doing a disservice to our culture. Each reserve isn't a nation."

Deer says some nations—like the Mohawk—are dispersed among several reserves.

"It divides the nations into smaller factions and dilutes our identity," Deer says.

Still, the political activist isn't deterred. He has much more to say.

"Do you know that back in the 1800s, the federal government took money from the League of Six Nations coffers to fund McGill University," Deer says. "It was going bankrupt. They never gave it back. They don't want to open that can of worms, of course."

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