Tag Archives: Assimilation

First Nations

Onkwehonwe-Neha: A Guide to Integrating into Turtle Island

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Editor’s Note: We have noticed a great deal of controversy following the release of “Énoncé de valeurs: Des clés pour mon intégration à Gatineau.” This strikes us as curious, since documents of this sort have existed for centuries, without causing similar uproar. To cite one well-known example, we present the following English-language translation of the pamphlet, “Onkwehonwe-Neha [Our Ways]: A Guide to Integrating into Turtle Island,” published in 1557 by the Haudenosaunee and given to each new immigrant on arrival to Haudenosaunee territory.

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First Nations

How to Look at Canada’s Indian Residential Schools Archive

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Photo: Rupert’s Land Indian Industrial School / later St. Paul’s Indian Residential School, 1901. Library and Archives Canada PA-182251.

WITH VERY few exceptions, the men and women who created and sustained Canada’s Indian Residential School System believed that the policy of “aggressive assimilation”* was benevolent and forward-looking. The absorption of the Indian into Canadian society, necessary to possess land and resources and to build a nation-state, was the desired outcome of policies and the final solution of the Indian Problem envisioned by Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott. The policy of assimilation neither began nor ended with the Indian Residential School System. The program of assimilation continues to this day, for the simple reason that nation-building, from sea to shining sea, continues.

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