Residential School

The experience of residential school carries with it a strong legacy of multi generational trauma and grief; loss experienced and passed on from generation to generation.
This workshop explores the history of residential schools to present day and defines the trauma factors and legacy experienced by former students as well as their families.

The mental/physical/spiritual/sexual abuse experienced in most of the residential schools resulted in trauma factors that include; anxiety, depression, intense shame, lack of parenting skills and a varying degree of attachment issues…among others.

The “act” (existence) of Residential schools was a form (act) of genocide as defined below by the United Nations Genocide Convention; article II.

Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group