To add to the guilt and helplessness of the situation, some families were even manipulated to send their children to residential schools because pamphlets, documents and pictures that were shown to them portrayed these schools as positive learning environments that would be beneficial for their children, even though they were the furthest from that. When I think of this manipulation I compare this to the ridiculously happy videos that the Nazis made about concentration camps to lure people in and make them feel safe. Is this a coincidence? The children who were stripped from their family had to obey all the rules of the teachers and priests, which was far different than what they knew. There were consequences for speaking their native tongue and any self or cultural expression was punishable and could range from beatings/whips to a needle being jabbed into their small tongues. Solitary confinement was the worst punishment, it sent the message that they must adapt to their new way of life. Teachers at the school would shove kids into small boxes and make them stay there for a week. It is impossible to hold in fecal matter for that long, so when a child did have a bowel movement they would be harshly called a “dirty Indian” or a savage. These children should have never gone through what they did. Physical abuse, forced labour, limited food were part of these indigenous children's daily lives, all in the attempt to force them to conform to this new culture. This is a disgrace and has left a black mark in Canadian history. No one should have ever had to live this way.
Another huge factor that made residential schools so horrendous is the power teachers had. In the novel, Saul was raped as a young child in the residential school many times by one of the teachers/priests. However, the book hid the truth because it was too painful. This part of the book really got to me, because I thought everything was going to turn out fine for Saul, but then I realized that this underlying detail effected everything. It made me reconsider what the novel was truly about. The reality is that many children were sexually abused. Saul’s rape in the residential school was only discovered at the end of the novel. As much as Saul knew what was happening to him was horrible, he always did what he was asked because he loved the idea of being loved, which he has been deprived of since being separated from his family. Saul was given jobs such as clearing off the ice rink to buy his silence, and "[he] used the game[of hockey] to shelter [him] from seeing the truth, from having to face it every day. Later, after [he] was gone, the game kept [him] from remembering"(Wagamese 199). He found brief salvation in playing hockey. However, just like in real life one positive situation could not resolve all the problems that had been built up.
Another huge factor that made residential schools so horrendous is the power teachers had. In the novel, Saul was raped as a young child in the residential school many times by one of the teachers/priests. However, the book hid the truth because it was too painful. This part of the book really got to me, because I thought everything was going to turn out fine for Saul, but then I realized that this underlying detail effected everything. It made me reconsider what the novel was truly about. The reality is that many children were sexually abused. Saul’s rape in the residential school was only discovered at the end of the novel. As much as Saul knew what was happening to him was horrible, he always did what he was asked because he loved the idea of being loved, which he has been deprived of since being separated from his family. Saul was given jobs such as clearing off the ice rink to buy his silence, and "[he] used the game[of hockey] to shelter [him] from seeing the truth, from having to face it every day. Later, after [he] was gone, the game kept [him] from remembering"(Wagamese 199). He found brief salvation in playing hockey. However, just like in real life one positive situation could not resolve all the problems that had been built up.