This is probably one of the most depressingly heart-wrenching photos I’ve ever seen. Native American children taken from their families and put into school to assimilate them into white society. the slogan for this governmental campaign ’“kill the Indian to save the man”. no official apology has ever been issued. never forgotten.
this hurts so bad.
I remember learning about this in Native History
they were toddlers taken from their homes, their hair cut. if they asked why their hair was cut, who had died for their hair to be cut, why they couldn’t see their parents, had their parents died, they were told yes. and beaten and starved for crying.
never forget that these prison labour “schools,” who used the boys for free farm labour and infrastructure development in nearby settler towns, and used the girls for free laundry, kitchen labour, and sewing, whether in america or canada, had graveyards.
in canada, specifically, the children were subject to government starvation experiments and deprived of specific nutrients to study the effect on their health, for the benefit of cereal manufacturers. this human experimentation led to the understanding of vital nutrients for settler children, and their inclusion on cereal packets, by learning what would happen if you starved native children of them.
these schools were cultural genocide, yes, but they were also violent, murderous, bloody-handed genocide against our most vulnerable members.
