Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

Canada’s Indigenous people have suffered many injustices as a result of colonization. The Residential School system was one of them. Most First Nations, Metis and Inuit people today are themselves residential school survivors or the children/grandchildren of those who survived (many did not). These schools were sites of physical and sexual abuse. Children were taken away, sometimes forcibly, from their parents and from normal family life. They were unable to experience the daily contact, care, and love that parents provide to their children. This was traumatic, and further, it was not a single-event trauma but ongoing trauma, often for many years. Processing and recovering from trauma are difficult lifelong undertakings, yet residential school syndrome was not even recognized until recently. First Nations, Metis and Inuit children left these schools and tried to get on with their lives, carrying overwhelming emotional burdens, including untreated anxiety, clinical depression, and PTSD. Research demonstrates