In the first study of its kind, UVic education professor Dr. Helen Raptis reveals that on-reserve Indian day schools were also harmful to aboriginal students just as residential schools were—as day schools contributed to the loss of ancestral language and culture.
Raptis used documentary and oral history approaches to examine the experiences of students who attended Port Essington Indian Day School during the 1930s and 1940s.
Her research illustrates how day schools were less benign than previously thought, causing children to develop strategies to maneuver through two worlds: the Anglo-centric world of formal schooling on the one hand and traditional Tsimshian education on the other.
“One of the elders who had been a student at Port Essington told a story about how her first grade teacher took her home after school every day to play with his children so she could learn English,” recalls Raptis. “But a few years later she had another teacher who made her stand at the blackboard and write I must not speak Sm’algyax’ at least 500 times. Some of the teachers actually spoke the language but at the same time they wouldn’t tolerate it from the children.”
Calculations taken from Department of Indian Affairs annual reports from 1891 to 1951 indicate that day schools educated about 58 per cent of B.C.’s aboriginal students; residential schools accounted for 42 per cent.
