Peter Bryce

Peter Henderson Bryce (August 17, 1853 – January 15, 1932) was an official of the Ontario Health Department, Canada. He released his famous book in 1922 titled The Story of a National Crime: Being a Record of the Health Conditions of the Indians of Canada from 1904 to 1921, which documented mistreatment of the aboriginals in Canada.^[1]

Bryce was hired by Indian Affairs Department in Ottawa to report on the health conditions of the Canadian residential school system in western Canada and British Columbia. His report was never released by the government but was published by Bryce in 1922 as a book.

Bryce claimed that Indian children were deprived and unhealthy in the residential schools and on Indian reservations and suggested improvements to national indigenous policy.^[2] He cited an average mortality rate of between 14% to 24% at the schools and a shocking 42% infant mortality rate on the reserves, this due to sick children being sent home to die.^[3] He also alleged that staff and church officials were withholding and falsifying the records of children's death.^[4]

He appealed his forced retirement from the Civil Service in 1921 and was denied, subsequently publishing his suppressed report condemning the treatment of the Indigenous at the hands of the BNA.^[5]

See also

• List of Canadian residential schools
• United States Indian Boarding School
• New Zealand Native schools
• Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission
• Canada -Institutional racism

Further reading

• Barman, Jean et al., eds. (1986) Indian Education in Canada. Volume 1: The Legacy. ISBN 0-7748-0243-X
• Ward Churchill, Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools, City Lights Books.,U.S., 2004, ISBN 0-87286-434-0
• Edwards, Brendan Frederick R. (2005). Paper Talk: a history of libraries, print culture, and Aboriginal peoples in Canada before 1960. ISBN 0-8108-5113-X
• Haig-Brown, Celia. (1988). "Resistance and Renewal : Surviving the Indian Residential School." Vancouver. Tillacum Library, Arsenal Pulp PressISBN 0-88978-189-3
• Milloy, John S. (1999). 'A National Crime': the Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986. ISBN 0-88755-646-9
• Mitchell, Jennifer. "Indian Princess #134: Cultural Assimilations at St. Joseph's Mission" (2003)

References

External links

• Peter Henderson Bryce - Canadian Encyclopedia entry
• The story of a national crime : being an appeal for justice to the Indians of Canada ; the wards of the nation, our allies in the Revolutionary War, our brothers-in-arms in the Great War full text on archive.org
• CBC Digital Archives – A Lost Heritage: Canada's Residential Schools
• Official Residential School Settlement website