Who knows, they might even become as good, civilised and enlightened – almost – as we white people.

Boys at Kamloops Indian Residential School, probably before the 1920s - Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre at the University of British Columbia

“Between 1890 and 1978, at Kamloops Indian Residential School in the Canadian province of British Columbia, thousands of Indigenous children were taught to ‘forget’. Separated from their families, these children were compelled to forget their languages, their identities and their cultures. Through separation and forgetting, settler governments and teachers believed they were not only helping Indigenous children, but the nation itself. Canada would make progress, settlers hoped, if Indigenous children could just be made more like white people.” 

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