Canada: Kill the Indian, Save the Man

“It was the worst 10 years of my life. I was away from my family from the age of six to 16. How do you learn about family? I didn’t know what love was. We weren’t even known by names back then. I was a number,” said Mike Pinay, of the Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School (1953-1963). Image by Daniella Zalcman. Canada, 2015.

For more than a century, Canada's sustained effort to eradicate Indigenous culture hinged on targeting the population's most vulnerable group: its children.

The government funded a network of church-run Indian Residential Schools that were designed to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children into Western thought and practices. Students were stripped of their tribal language, traditions, and spirituality. They were told the only valid historical authority belonged to Canada's European settlers, not their own elders.

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