Library and Academic Services: Residential Schools: Resources

Streaming Videos and Documentaries

This National Film Board film tells the story of residential schools through the eyes of two young children. View streaming video by clicking here.

Sisters & Brothers
A pounding critique of Canada's colonial history, this short film draws by artist Kent Monkman parallels between the annihilation of the bison in the 1890s and the devastation inflicted on the Indigenous population by the residential school system. View online through NFB and search for title.

Second Stories - It Had to be Done

This short documentary explores the legacy of residential schools through the eyes of two extraordinary women who not only lived it, but who, as adults, made the surprising decision to return to the school that had affected their lives so profoundly. This intimate and moving film affirms their strength and dignity in standing up and making a difference on their own terms. View online through NFB and search for title.

We Can't Make the Same Mistake Twice The rights of First Nations children take centre stage in this monumental documentary. Following a historic court case filed by the Assembly of First Nations and the Child and Family Caring Society of Canada against the federal government, Alanis Obomsawin exposes generations of injustices endured by First Nations children living on reserves and their families. View online through NFB and search for title.

Books and eBooks

A Knock on the Door: The Essential History of Residential Schools from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada by Phil Fontaine (Foreward)
Location: Ebook or Print at NDC E 96.5 .T778 2016
“It can start with a knock on the door one morning. It is the local Indian agent, or the parish priest, or, perhaps, a Mounted Police officer.” So began the school experience of many Indigenous children in Canada for more than a hundred years.
Magic Weapons: Aboriginal writers reMaking Community after Residential School by Sam McKegney; Basil Johnston (Foreword by)
Location: Ebook or Print at NDC E 96.2 M35 2007
Surveys Indigenous writings in response to the impacts of the residential school system, and provides readings of life writings by Rita Joe (Mi'kmaq) and Anthony Apakark Thrasher (Inuit), and critical studies of better known life writings by Basil Johnston (Ojibway) and Tomson Highway (Cree).
A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986 by John S. Milloy
Location: Ebook or Print at NDC E 96.5 M54 2017
Shows that the residential school system was chronically underfunded and often mismanaged, and documents in detail how this affected the health, education, and well-being of entire generations of Aboriginal children.
Picking up the Pieces: Residential School Memories and the Making of the Witness Blanket by Carey Newman; Kristie Hudson
Publication Date: 2019
Picking Up the Pieces tells the story of the making of the Witness Blanket, a living work of art. It includes hundreds of items collected from residential schools across Canada, everything from bricks, photos and letters to hockey skates, dolls and braids.
Residential Schools and Reconciliation : Canada Confronts Its History by J.R. Miller
Location: E 96.5 M553 2018
Miller reveals a major obstacle to achieving reconciliation--the inability of Canadians at large to overcome their flawed, overly positive understanding of their country's history.
This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the US by Andrew Woolford
Location: Print only at NDC E 96 .W66 2015
Examines the formulation of the "Indian problem" as a policy concern and how the "solution" of boarding schools was implemented in Manitoba and New Mexico.
The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation by David B. MacDonald
Location: Forthcoming
Publication Date: 2019
Confronting the truths of Canada’s Indian residential school system has been likened to waking a sleeping giant.

All Guides (A-Z)

Guides by School/Program

Database Instruction Guides

Student Success Guides

Kent Monkman

Kent Monkman's The Scream features children being taken away to residential schools. https://www.kentmonkman.com/painting/2018/8/7/the-scoop

Never Forgotten

Names of 215 Children who Died or went Missing from Residential Schools

On this page you will see images of each of the Manitoba Residential Schools. Select a school to view the names of the children who died at or went missing from that school.

Source: National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation

The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation

The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation is the permanent home for statements, documents, and other materials created during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. The NCTR website also provides resources for research on residential schools. Look through their Reports page to find the full text of many recent and historical reports.

RRC Library has print copies of the Canada's Residential Schools: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission located in E 96.5 .T788 2015 as well as many of the other historical Reports.

v. 1. The History. Part 1, Origins to 1939

v. 1. The History. Part 2, 1939 to 2000

v. 2. The Inuit and Northern Experience

v. 3. The Métis Experience

v. 4. The Missing Children and Unmarked Burials

v. 5. The Legacy

v. 6. Reconciliation

Exhibitions

The Aboriginal Healing Foundation and The National Archives of Canada launched a project which represented an attempt to tell the true and painful story of a national institution committed, not to the preservation of a people, but to their forced assimilation. Click here to view the website.

Aboriginal Healing Foundation

On March 31, 1998, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF) was set up with a $350 million fund from the Government of Canada, to be expended within an eleven-year time-frame. This grant has enabled the Foundation to fund community-based healing projects that address the legacy of physical abuse and sexual abuse in the residential school system, including intergenerational impacts. Although AHF closed on September 30, 2014, their archived website has numerous valuable publications. The Library also has print copies of many of these resources. We especially recommend this title:

Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing describes the intergenerational transmission of historic trauma and examines the implications for healing in a contemporary Aboriginal context. The purpose of the study was to develop a comprehensive historical framework of Aboriginal trauma, beginning with contact in 1492 through to the 1950s, with a primary focus on the period immediately after contact. Available online and in print E 98 .S67 W47 2004.

Apology

On Wednesday June 11, 2008, the Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, made a Statement of Apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools, on behalf of the Government of Canada.

Read the full apology, or watch CBC's News in Review: Canada's Residential School Apology online.

Survivors Stories

Survivors Speak: A Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (NCTR Website)

NCTR Statements and Videos

Wawahte: Stories of Residential School Survivors

Books about Survivors

Broken Circle by Theodore Fontaine
Location: Ebook or Print at NDC E 96.5 F66 2010
Broken Circle resonates with the author's resolve to help himself and others, and with his enduring belief that one can pick up the shattered pieces and use them for good.
The Education of Augie Merasty: A Residential School Memoir by Joseph Auguste (Augie) Merasty
Location: Ebook or Print at NDC E 96.65 S27 M47 2017
This memoir offers a courageous and intimate chronicle of life in a residential school. Now a retired fisherman and trapper, the author was one of an estimated 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Metis children who were taken from their families and sent to government-funded, church-run schools, where they were subjected to a policy of "aggressive assimilation."
Mnidoo Bemaasing Bemaadiziwin: Reclaiming, Reconnecting, and Demystifying Resiliency as Life Force Energy for Residential School Survivors by Theresa Turmel
Location: Forthcoming
Publication Date: 2020
Mnidoo Bemaasing Bemaadiziwin is a twenty-five year research and community based book. It brings forward Indigenous thought, history, and acts of resistance as viewed through the survivors of residential school who through certain aspects of their young lives were able to persevere with resiliency, and share their life experiences, teaching us about them, and their understanding of their own resiliency.
Power Through Testimony: Reframing Residential Schools in the Age of Reconciliation by Brieg Capitaine, ed.
Location: E 96.5 .P69 2017
Drawing on field research during the Commission and in local communities, the contributors reveal how survivors are unsettling colonial narratives about residential schools and how churches and former school staff are receiving or resisting the new 'residential school story.
Residential Schools : With the Words and Images of Survivors by Larry Loyie with Wayne K. Spear, Constance Brissenden
Location: E 96.5 .L69 2014
For over a century, Canada removed more than 150,000 Aboriginal children from their families to attend church-run residential schools, often in remote locations far from home.
Secret Path by Gordon Downie; Jeff Lemire (Illustrator)
Location: ML 54.6 .D695 2016
The story of Chanie Wenjack, a twelve-year-old boy who died in flight from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School fifty years ago.
Surviving Canada by Myra Tait (Editor); Kiera Ladner (Editor)
Location: E 78 .C2 S89 2017
A collection of elegant, thoughtful, and powerful reflections about Indigenous Peoples' complicated, and often frustrating, relationship with Canada, and how-even 150 years after Confederation-the fight for recognition of their treaty and Aboriginal rights continues.
Up Ghost River by Edmund Metatawabin; Alexandra Shimo
Location: E 99 .C88 M48 2014
In the 1950s, 7-year-old Edmund Metatawabin was separated from his family and placed in one of Canada's worst residential schools.

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Subjects: Creative Arts, Indigenous Education