Talk:List of Canadian residential schools

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[edit] Skookumchuck Hot Springs and Owl Creek

I'm not sure of the history of these missions, and I don't think maybe that they survived into the era of the formal residential schools. All I know is there were schools attached to the missions, in Owl Creek's case a large one such that the Lil'wat people came down from the then-main village at Pemberton Meadows to live near it, which instigated the growth of the Mt. Currie Reserve, now the main Lil'wat community. There is no trace of Owl Creek today other than the placename (on a power substation...). At Skookumchuck Hot Springs, Skatin today, I'm not sure the scale of the school, possibly local so not residential, so to speak. Both were Oblate-run and another mission was at Shalalth, although I think that was just a church, albeit with a small school, again not AFAIK "residential". And all I think were frontier-era and maybe didn't survive into the formal residential school era. I don't have cites handy, although with a certain book (Decker's book on Pemberton, see that page for the ref) a basic article on Owl Creek could be listed; what its "saintly name" was I don't know, maybe it's in that book.Skookum1 (talk) 17:33, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] All Hallows should not be on here

All Hallows Indian Residential School; Yale; opened 1884; closed 1920 (AN)

The listing is incorrect. All Hallows was a school for all girls, including uppercrust society girls from Victoria, who studied alongside native girls. This was a residential school, but only in the same sense as Sacred Heart or Vancouver College. It was a fancy private school that admitted First Nations children and treated them as equals. I'm removing the listing; its name anyway was simply "All Hallows School for Girls", no mention of "residential" or "Indian" in its name, and it has no (known) association with the abuses of the residential schools.Skookum1 (talk) 17:28, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

It's on the AFN site, so it's cited. If you want to create a page, describing conditions there as wonderful, and cite it, that's your business. Here's a link to start with. From what I see, it closed down before attendance became compulsory. I don't see why any of this means it shouldn't be listed. I'm pretty sure the language of instruction was in English, and that assimilation was still a goal for the Church running it. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 17:14, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Barman, Jean. "Lost Opportunity: All Hallows School for Indians and White Girls, 1884-1920," British Columbia Historical News, Vol. 22 (Spring 1989) might also be an interesting source, not that I trust Jean Barman any further than I could throw her. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 17:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Assimilation was not the goal of the school, but of education overall, and that included for immigrant children from white countries as well as making sure the little darlings of Victoria and New Westminster society were indoctrinated in the prevailing paradigm. The term "residential school" in Canada has clear associations of native-only specifically-indoctrinating/assimilating schools; this happened to be a school that while it did board its students did not segregate classes nor the girls themselves, and FWIU even corporal punishment was frowned on; it was a place to "cultivate" girls; I suspect the First Nations girls who went there may have been from chiefly/noble families or otherwise placed within the cross-over society of First Nations people who worked for or closely with "high society" people. I have real trepidations about lumping it in here with St. Joseph's and Alert Bay and other hellholes; without a really stern rider, or maybe a separate section for schools which admitted FN children alongside others, as this one did. I went to Mission High at the time that the St. Mary's Residence students were "integrated" into ours (only a few "integrated", mostly they still kept to themselves) and know that even unsegregated schools can still work out as segregated; this was, again so far as I know, not what went down at All Hallows. As for Barman, you know I don't like her thinking at all, she's constantly playing the blame-game and looking for the negative, while putting on a pedestal the benighted "immigrants" (i.e. non-whites, a typical p.c. distortion as everybody were immigrants, even from Canada); I'll have to look up her little paper on All Hallows; I know I read something else on it this last year, maybe in th Sun but I don't think it was her paper; I'll ask Terry Glavin, maybe he might know more about it; the current proprietors of All Hallows (now a campground/trailer park) may have a lot more to add, I'll see if they're emailable or whatever......All Hallows School for Girls definitely warrants an article, if only because it was in Onderdonk's former mansion and accompanying buildings, but also because of its important role in early BC education.....Barman's an education historian, a sociologist really, and fascinated with denominational politics...there's anotehr paper b y somebody or other out there about the inroads of the Christian landscape in the Fraser Canyon, but the author misses so many points, and makes so many judgmental errors and disproportionate pronouncements (he makes a big deal about Bishop Hills' attempts to lay out a Christian society in the Canyon, missing entirely the point that he was entirely ignored and made not a single convert....also missing is the story of the Nlaka'pamux transexual religious visionary who got all under her sway to join the Anglican effort at Lytton, rather than the Oblate one (still holds today and is part of the reason for the deep divisions in Nlaka'pamux society). The residential schools article should probably have something about situations like hers, and about the incredible devotion those converted displayed; latter-day FN politics dumps on the church; many elders, still very devout, are very wary of that but the write-ups generally avoidtalking about the Faithful as anybody but victims of cultural repression; Rose Prince is a case in point that's not such an easy judgement to pass, and stories like the Prophet of the Skeena (I'll see waht I can find) point to a pre-Contact religious excitation that the churches were lucky to walk into to fill the void.....I do like the CJ term for the Devil, though - Hyas Lejaub (lejaub from fr. le diable), or rather the imagery associated with him....a white man in a white suit and white hat....a protestant preacher of a certain kind, in other words, perhaps an image fostered by the Oblates to scare native people away from other "men of the cross", who as Protestants surely were the Devil to the Oblate way of thinking.....as you know I'm very wary of "pat" judgments of the past; there's always a deeper story....Skookum1 (talk) 18:05, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm happy to acknowledge that you believe these things, and that they may indeed be true, but you'd still need to reference them. I think creating an article on All Hallows would be the best "rider" you could come up with, however, simply removing it from the list doesn't make sense. Of course there was variety among schools, just like there was variety among students. Some people went through certain schools and had no exceptionally bad experiences. Supposedly, Andy Paull was happy to volunteer to attend, stayed friends with the oblates all through his life, and he was a firm activist.

Still, I don't think it makes sense to exclude this school from the history of residential schools. According to the Anglicans, "the education of Indian girls was transferred to St. George's from All Hallows School, Yale in 1916." So it's clearly connected with the history of the residential school system. Judging only by the titles, it looks like Barman changed her mind a few years after writing "lost opportunity" because in 1995, she wrote "Separate and unequal: Indian and White girls at All Hallows School, 1884-1920." In J. Barman, N. Sutherland, & J. D. Wilson (Eds.), Children, teachers, & schools: In the history of British Columbia (pp. 337-357). It looks like there might be some interesting info in "Our Tellings: Interior Salish Stories of the Nlhaʼkapmx People" (Darwin Hanna & Mamie Henry), as it contains Edna Malloway's (who attended All Hallows) "Memories of Lytton." Give that a shot too. Just like the Japanese internment article, I'm all for creating an accurate, nuanced history of residential schools (rather than a simplistic one) but simply removing this school from the list doesn't accomplish that. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 19:21, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Here's something you just said, but let me shift the emphasis if you will:

So it's clearly connected with the history of the residential school system.

There's a BIG difference. "Connected with" is not the same as "being a part of". Mission High, too, was connected to the St. Mary's Residence because of a transfer of students; all that statement says is that the non-segregated, non-prison school, in the years of its decline (and, I believe, shrinking school population), transferred its small roster of FN girls to Lytton; it doesn't mean it was a residential school in the way that phrase is used/meant; ideally "First Nations residential school" or "residential school for First Nations children" is a more correct title. Lillooet Secondary and other schools had dormitories, residences, that is, for kids from rural areas, this include the FN kids who attended it; but that doesn't make it a residential school any more than it does Lytton Secondary for absorbing the St. George's kids, or Mission the St. Mary's. And I'm sorry I can't reference this with any resources available to me here in Nova Scotia; likewise the Owl Creek and Skookumchuck and Shalalth missions. But in the case of this one, it's entirely inapprorpriate, unless all convent and other schools of any kind that are residential are included; I have doubts for the same reason that St. Anne's should be on here....a sublist of schools who had FN kids in them that weren't part of "the system" would maybe be the place to have them; the term "residential school" to me doesn't fit with a place where the tea-and-doily set sent their darlings....If All Hallows was a residential school, so was Sacred Heart.Skookum1 (talk) 20:58, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

You've ignored the body of my argument and you have no references. It's listed on the AFN website. I've re-added it. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 23:12, 3 March 2008 (UTC)