Residential schools and other aspects of colonialization have undermined the identity of Indigenous peoples in Canada . By separating children from their families, communities and traditions, the residential school system denied children access to their native identities and the knowledge of their peoples. Abuse, discrimination and disrespect destroyed self-esteem, and violence, like an infectious disease, was carried back in to Indigenous communities and has directly contributed to the high rates of suicide and drug, alcohol, sexual and family abuse within Indigenous communities. This paper will explore how René Girard’s theory of mimesis is particularly appropriate to understanding the violent legacy of residential schools in Canada . Evidence and analysis suggests that the violence experienced by an estimated 100,000 children who attended these schools is being mimetically imitated within Indigenous communities.

Applying the theory of mimesis and structural violence to the work of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and other movements of healing within Indigenous communities, I suggest that Indigenous communities are finding wellness as they regenerate traditional identities and reject the identity imposed on them by colonizers, missionaries and the Canadian government.

The Residential School System

I feel certain that this school will be a great success, and that it will be a chief means of civilizing the Indian […] with no danger of their following the awful existence that many of them ignorantly live now.

- Reverend Hugonnard, Principal[i]

Residential schools operated in Canada between 1892 and 1969 through arrangements between the Canadian government and Christian churches (primarily Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, United and Presbyterian). The federal government withdrew from official involvement in 1969, but schools continued to operate until the 1990s. Assimilation of Indigenous children is the nominal description of the residential school objective. However, for those who attended these schools, the impact of this objective was often profoundly destructive. As Wilfred Brass, a Saulteaux Elder from Key Reserve, Saskatchewan , described, “they put curtains around our minds, they tried to keep us in the dark, they wanted to keep us stupid, make us their slaves.”[ii] Thousands of Indian, Métis and Inuit children passed through the residential school system, which varied in size from small day schools to hostels to large industrial and boarding schools. At their peak, over 130 of these institutions were operating.[iii]

Three key tenets guided the Canadian residential school policy: separating Indigenous children from the families and communities; re-socializing them in the values of the colonial society; and absorbing them into the non-Aboriginal world.[iv] Brock Pitawanakwat, faculty member at the First Nations University of Canada, additionally describes the policy as one which was “designed to take in Indigenous children and produce compliant labourers for Canadian farms and factories.”[v] The intention to integrate Indigenous peoples into settler communities was not only misguided; it proved unsuccessful. The majority of Indigenous people who went through the residential school system did not integrate into the non-Aboriginal world. Instead they returned to their communities with an experience of personal violation, their Indigenous identity undermined and fractured. As John Tootoosis, a former residential school student, described in his biography, a graduate was left “hanging in the middle of two cultures and he is not a white man and he is not an Indian.”[vi]

The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) described the damage of residential schools as “loss of life, denigration of culture, destruction of self-respect and self-esteem, rupture of families.”[vii] This violation of identity is arguably a form of violence, but was not the only kind children were subjected to in residential schools. Physical, sexual and emotional violence experienced in residential schools has been documented and there are on-going cases before the courts in which victims seek reparations from the state and the implicated churches. By the time the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was released in 1996, approximately 200 claims alleging abuse had been filed while other cases are only beginning to come to light.[viii] The Canadian government and several churches have acknowledged and apologized for the abuses committed in their schools but RCAP has recommended that the government establish a public inquiry based on precedents in countries such as South Africa and Argentina .

Acknowledgement of, and reparations for, past abuses could greatly assist in reconciliation between Indigenous and settler people. However, there are more subtle aspects of violence which must also be considered if one is to fully understand the impact of the residential school system on survivors, their families and their communities.

Indigenous children were made to feel ashamed of their blood, of their ancestry. They were often removed from their families and communities and forced to attend residential schools. Indigenous peoples have long understood their identity and existence as “formed around axes of land, culture and community”.[ix] Thus, when children were taken away from their families and land, they were being removed from a fundamental axis of their identity. The premise behind these abductions was that “Aboriginal people had to be liberated from their savage ways”.[x] Shirley I. Williams, an Odawa woman, attended a boarding residential school in Spanish, Ontario from 1949-1956. The years she spent there made her feel confused about her identity and later in life she admitted that as adult she tried to “cover her brown skin with make-up”.[xi]

Traditional religion and languages were also stolen from them. Residential schools operated as a partnership between the federal government and Christian churches. Many students were forced to convert to Catholicism or Christian Protestant denominations. In the recent past church groups and the federal government have apologized for “denying the value of Aboriginal spirituality”[xii]. But these apologies cannot bring back what was stolen. In their Statement of Reconciliation, the Canadian government admits that “[a]ttitudes of racial and cultural superiority led to a suppression of Aboriginal culture and values.”[xiii] Children were punished, often with beatings, for speaking “the language of ‘savagery’.”[xiv] As the explained by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation:

“Reshaping the identity and consciousness of students required more than enforced attendance at the schools. To dislodge children’s previous worldview and disrupt the transmission of cultural heritage the government and the churches placed a priority on stamping out Aboriginal language in schools and in the children.”[xv]

Erasing Indigenous languages was seen as a sure method of “civilizing” children and separating them from the influence of their ethnicity. It also served to alienate them from their families and communities.

As Vern Redekop identifies in his book From Violence to Blessing, there are several ways of acting in violence to another such as to control, force, extract, diminish, hurt, curse or withhold help.[xvi] Each of forms of violence can be seen within the context of the residential school system. For example, control can hold people back. While the intention of the residential school system was to educate Indigenous children and integrate them into white society, it served to hold them back from finding and thriving in their identity as Indigenous. It also deprived them of the cultural and familial upbringing which they needed to survive in their communities and raise children of their own. “Being separated from my loving parents and family at five years of age,” writes Flora Merrick who attended the Portage la Prairie residential school, “and enduring constant physical, emotional, psychological, and verbal abuse still haunts me.”[xvii]

This haunting of past trauma affects not only the survivors of the residential schools, but their families and communities as well. Counsellors and therapists working with Indigenous peoples have identified post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as one of the long term effects of residential school abuse. We can apply René Girard’s mimetic theory the residential school system to understand how trauma identified above can deeply impact survivors and their communities

Girard’s Mimetic Theory Applied to Residential Schools

            Girard’s theory of mimesis offers a profound understanding of the legacy of residential schools. Mimesis, or “mimetic desire” reveals a triangular relationship in which one imitates or mimics the desires of another person. The imitated person, or “model,” is an object of veneration (perhaps subconsciously) and resentment. The self wants what the model has, yet sees the model as an obstruction to acquiring the desired object. Girard refers to Max Scheler who explains the arousal of envy as “when our efforts to acquire [the object of desire] fail and we are left with a feeling of impotence.”[xviii] Girard goes on to explain that “someone who prevents us from satisfying a desire which he himself has inspired in us is truly an object of hatred.”[xix] Through a mimetic lens, we see that what the residential school system sought to do was to implant in Indigenous children new objects of desire. The practice of Christianity is essentially life lived in imitation of Christ. Missionaries in the residential school system aspired that their students would adopt this identity; indeed many children were “converted” to Christianity without meaningful consent of themselves or their families. Residential school instructors also sought to “civilize” their students. They hoped to replace what they called “savage” ways or desires with “civilized” ones. Essentially, instructors positioned themselves as models and demanded that the students imitate them. To fail to do so was to remain a “savage” and invoke punishment.

            Yet while teachers in residential schools may have been offering themselves as models to their students, they also prevented Indigenous peoples from satisfying these imposed/learned desires. If an Indigenous child mimicked her teacher and sought a higher education, she soon discovered that the education given to Indigenous children was inferior to that afforded white children. One of the intended outcomes of the residential school system was to place graduates in employment outside their own communities. However, this largely failed because “the level and quality of education delivered was inadequate to fit former students for employment”.[xx] Similarly, a child who mimicked the teacher’s authority would discover that white settlers would not allow an Aboriginal to take authority over them. Thus the desires and ambitions which children were taught were those they were denied. Girard has explained that thwarted desires inspire hatred toward the one who obstructs and residential schools appear a breeding ground for such hatred.

            Models within the residential schools denied children access to the very desires they evoked. Children could not replace these desires with those from their own communities since they were denied access to those who might have served as constructive models. Separated from their family and homes, residential school students did not have the proximity to their communities through which they could observe and mimic. Neither were they provided with examples of Indigenous models through literature, story, etc. If they recalled models from their communities and sought to imitate them, they were punished by the teachers, by those who would be the replacement models. Upon returning to their communities after graduating from residential schools these young adults found themselves aliens among their own people – without language or skills required for an integrated life. Many graduates moved away from their communities to urban centres, where they were also rejected from the mainstream and denied access to productive livelihoods or integration into settler communities.    

People learn love from those who model acceptance, respect and the desire for fulfillment of the other.[xxi] Many Indigenous children in the residential school system were denied this experience of love. I say many because there were teachers, priests and nuns who with good intentions sought to educate and care for their wards. Yet even with good intentions, the desire they had for the children was not for fulfillment in traditional ways; the desire was that these children would “successfully” adapt to the colonial culture, belief and authority structure. The impacts of residential school children being denied nurturing support are being seen in the descendents of survivors.  When beliefs and self-understanding are based upon the inequality, that message is transferred down through generations. Whattam, whose mother was a residential school survivor, realized later in life that she did not acquire basic life skills, such as managing stress and emotions or caring for herself, because her mother “didn’t learn them in residential schools”.[xxii] Her mother treated her children “as though [they] were in residential school because that is all she knew”.[xxiii] To treat her children as if they were in residential school was to deny them the nurturing, supportive environment which would impart skills of coping and self-care.

            Girard describes mimetic relationships in which the self comes into to competition with the other for the desired object. The mimetic structure within residential schools is an exacerbation of what Girard describes as the “double bind – a contradictory double imperative” that demands to be imitated yet jealously seeks to guard the desired object.[xxiv] The self (in this case an Indigenous child in the school) is not in direct competition with the other (the instructor) because the instructor does not view the student as a worthy opponent. The student is made to understand that he or she is not being denied the object of desire simply by obstruction from the instructor, but rather because of his or her own nature, namely of being Indigenous. Girard writes of the “impotent hatred” upon being blocked access by the model to the object of desire which leads to a “psychological self-poisoning”.[xxv] How much greater this self-poisoning must be if the impediment to the object of desire is ostensibly one’s own nature. Children were taught that because of their intrinsic nature as Aboriginals they were barred access to the desires (or ambitions) they had been forced to acquire. This message was not simply confined to residential schools. Mimetic analysis could be applied to the land reservation system and the established political institutions to find examples of models presenting Indigenous peoples with desires which they are then denied because of their inherent identity.

Legacy of Violence

Like everyone else, I was informed and influenced by family, by my parents’ family, and by society’s values and beliefs: the residential school system, the reserve system, the Indian Act.[xxvi]

-Tracy Whattam, daughter of residential school survivor.

Residential schools imposed and thwarted mimetic desire which undermined Indigenous identity and self-worth. They were also sites of physical, emotional and sexual violence. Vern Redekop explains that “persons subjected [to structures of violence] imitate the violence of their oppressors on one another… developing cascading hegemonic structures that then become mimetic structures of violence.”[xxvii] Girard explains this imitation by exploring the inherently communicable nature of violence. Linking these theories, and applying them to the violence experienced in residential schools, will reveal the destructive infection that has spread into Indigenous communities.  

Girard describes the “mechanism of violence” as “a vicious circle”.[xxviii] I suggest that people who perpetuate the violence they experience have been unable to break the circle of violence. Indeed, it is often acknowledged that violent aggressors were themselves victims of aggression and abuse. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation defines intergenerational impacts as “the effects of physical and sexual abuse that were passed on to the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Aboriginal people who attended the residential school system.”[xxix] The intergenerational legacy of historical trauma is also one of shame, guilt, and distrust”.[xxx] If victims are unable to act out in vengeance on their perpetrators, or see them brought to justice, it is possible that their frustration and sense of disempowerment leads them to act out vengeance on themselves and on their own community.

Children in residential schools were morally vulnerable to the message that their heritage was shameful, their language and culture were “uncivilized” and their nature was sinful. They were taught to emulate the white settlers. To do so was to treat themselves and those of shared heritage with disrespect and contempt. Judith Herman describes the “contaminated identity” of victims which leads to shame, guilt and a sense of failure.[xxxi] Violence acted out against self (such as through drug and alcohol abuse, self-mutilation and suicide) can also be an imitation of violence experienced. If a mimetic understanding of love is reflecting upon the other a desire for fulfillment, the inverse could also apply. The desire which colonizers reflected toward Indigenous children was for their subjugation and conformity. As children mimetically adopted these desires, they internalized a message of inferiority and compulsory subjugation.

But the trauma which residential school students endured was not only psychological and spiritual. Children died of malnutrition and disease. As mentioned above, many experienced psychological, physical and sexual violence.  If violence is contagious as Girard suggests, these children would carry their infection back into their communities and act out violence upon themselves and upon others.[xxxii] Thus the high rates of violence and self-destructive behaviours seen in Indigenous communities in Canada can be causally linked to the violence experienced in and the destructive mimetic structures of residential schools. This violence will continue to infect communities until it is successful expelled.

Violence within the Aboriginal Community

            The facts are sobering. Statistics Canada rates life expectancy for communities in Canada by measuring the proportion of people who are Aboriginal since they have the lowest life expectancy of any ethnic group in Canada .[xxxiii] They also perpetrate and experience violence at higher rates than their non-Aboriginal counterparts. Statistics Canada reports that almost 40 per cent of Aboriginal people over the age of 15 were victimized at least once during 2003. (This proportion is significantly higher than the 28 per cent for non-Aboriginal people.)[xxxiv] Aboriginal people are also almost twice as likely as their non-Aboriginal counterparts to be “repeat victims of crime” and over than three times more likely to be victims of spousal violence.[xxxv] Canadian jails are populated with more First Nations people than those of any other ethnicity.[xxxvi]

            Drug and alcohol abuse significantly contribute to cultures of violence and instability in Indigenous communities. Among these incidents of spousal violence, alcohol was indicated as being a factor in almost half of the cases.[xxxvii] Daily smoking, obesity and heavy drinking rates are also higher among Aboriginals than in the average Canadian population.[xxxviii] The Aboriginal Healing Foundation refers to therapists who believe that “addiction to alcohol and other mind-altering substances often seen in person suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a strategy to block memories and feelings that seem to harsh to endure.”[xxxix] Aboriginal communities additionally have the highest school dropout and unemployment rates.[xl]

            As these statistics demonstrate, a culture of violence has spread in Indigenous communities. Violence is meted out by community members against each other. It is also self-directed, as demonstrated by the high levels of drug and alcohol abuse, suicide and school dropouts. As the Aboriginal Healing Foundation began setting up and funding projects to address the legacy of residential school violence, the most commonly cited environmental challenge these projects faced was violent behavior, such as “youth gang and criminal activity, violent death (murder and suicide), widespread vandalism and a culture of violence.”[xli] Where violence is pervasive, and a culture of violence instilled in a community, the trust and security essential to healing processes are hard to achieve. The experience of violence is also carried into the healing process and impedes progress.

Federal statistics show that violent incidents against Aboriginal people were most likely to be committed by someone who was known to the victim. This was the case for over half of violent incidents committed against Aboriginal people.[xlii] This rate of violence is, I believe, at least partially a result of the legacy of residential schools. Indigenous communities have been contaminated by the violence residential school survivors experienced. Additionally, the residential school system was an institution of colonialism which constructed and imposed a negative identity for Indigenous peoples. It therefore follows that if First Nation peoples are to break the cycle of violence within their communities, they must revive their traditional identities and replace mimetic structures of violence with those of wellness.

Healing as a Mimetic Structure of Wellness

Concepts of wellness and healing activities within Indigenous communities are closely tied to the primary axes of their identity: land, community and culture. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF) was created in 1998 to distribute grants from the Government of Canada for community-based healing related to the legacy of physical and sexual abuse at residential schools and supporting “holistic and community-based healing” geared to the needs of individuals, families and communities.[xliii] Rituals of healing include sweat lodge ceremonies, sweetgrass smudges, feasts, fastings and sundances: all of which are connected to the earth, culture and community and create the supporting framework for healing and wellness.

Tracy Whattam, daughter of a residential school survivor, has written of the “recovery movement”, which has been spreading across Canada .[xliv] This movement is evident in the number of activities and programs addressing healing which have sprung up in recent years across Canada . Community leaders are also addressing the legacy of colonialism and residential school violence. For example, Taiaiake Alfred, a prominent Indigenous leader and scholar, has included “remembering ceremony” and “returning to homelands” in steps which Indigenous people can take toward decolonization and empowerment.[xlv] For Whattam, returning to her traditional rituals, rooted in her ancestral land, was therefore not only a method of healing, but it was a personal decolonization. “I started to come back to myself,” she writes.[xlvi]

This return to self is a return to a traditional understanding of self which is not based upon the beliefs of inferiority taught by the residential school system. Traditional identity is rooted in values and beliefs which reclaim autonomy, spirituality and connection to the land and the community. Many of the healing efforts undertaken by Indigenous communities across Canada involve reintroducing traditional philosophies, beliefs, and rituals. Traditional celebrations have been incorporated in healing activities as ways of engaging survivors into their Indigenous culture and “acknowledging what was lost to them personally, spiritually and linguistically.”[xlvii] The holistic nature of Indigenous worldview is illustrated in the medicine wheel which includes physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual aspects – all of which are connected to the earth.[xlviii] Ceremonies and healing activities are therefore linked to the land and are often held where Elders and youth can practice traditional land-related activities such as traditional hunting and gathering. Traditional knowledge is communicated through storytelling, ceremonies, traditions, ideologies, medicines, dances, arts and crafts.[xlix] As Whattam describes it, “many of us are waking up, as if from a deep coma, and learning how to live all over again.”[l]

A Girardian lens of analysis can help understand this waking and learning to live again. Applying his theory demonstrates that activities and philosophies of healing within Indigenous communities contribute to the creation of a mimetic structure of wellness. Girard writes that “[m]en can dispose of their violence more efficiently if they regard the process not as something emanating from within themselves”.[li] When communities have been able to see that “the burdens carried by [survivors] did not derive from some puzzling personal flaw, but were normal and predictable consequences of institutional trauma, Survivors were able to […] reclaim wellness as a sign of courage, not weakness.”[lii] Survivors could see that their personal trauma was not something “emanating” from themselves or an essential part of their identity. Acting out violence or internalizing it (such as with depression and self-abuse) can thus be seen as a response to and result of experienced violence. Actions can be interpreted as part of a mimetic structure of violence generated by the residential school system and other colonial policies of oppression and subjugation.

            Yet one must be careful to not assume that the healing process will be quick or easy.  More than half of participants in AHF healing activities were “intergenerationally impacted by physical and sexual abuse at residential schools.”[liii] Those who implement healing activities within Indigenous communities often face a wall of denial and resistance. Research on trauma and recovery has shown that victims of abuse will try to avoid thoughts and feelings related to their abuse. Denial often masks “shame, guilt, anger and fear of being traumatized again.”[liv] Additionally, if a survivor has engaged in violent behaviour, there is concern that disclosure could lead to punishment and incarceration. A lack of recognition of the mimetic nature of violence, and denial of the share of responsibility belong to those who implemented and supported the residential schools too often leads to a blaming of the victim.

            In response to the resistance displayed by many survivors, acceptance and safety have become key elements of healing activities.[lv] An environment of acceptance and trust is an essential part of a mimetic structure of wellness since it reflects a respect for the other that invites fulfillment and growth. Elders provide positive models and create mimetic structures of wellness by “projecting honesty, empathy and unconditional positive regard in interpersonal relationships.”[lvi] This resembles the mimetic nature of love expressed by Rebecca Adams and discussed above.

Conclusion

            This paper has sought to demonstrate that the residential school system in Canada created a cycle of violence which has infected Indigenous communities. By applying a mimetic analysis to the violence of residential schools, we can see how the identity of school survivors was undermined, how self-hatred and anger grew from denied access to learned desires, and how experienced violence was carried back into communities and transferred through generations. Yet while the aim of this paper was to address the responsibility of those bodies which established and maintained residential schools in Canada, it is not in any way meant to be a continuation of a perspective which defines Indigenous peoples only in relation to the colonizers. The shameful history of colonizers with respect to Canada ’s First Nations peoples should be acknowledged, but it should never be given the last word. Indigenous peoples existed long before the arrival of European settlers and it only follows that they possessed identities and ways of life undefined by relation to settlers. While not claiming full knowledge of this identity or of Indigenous ways, in this paper I have sought to recognize and honour the traditional healing practices and philosophies of First Nation peoples which are generating new structures of wellness.

            Indigenous healing practices are grounded in the belief that “you start by healing yourself, then your family, then your community, and finally your nation”.[lvii] As I learn about the revival of Indigenous healing practices as structures of wellness, I am filled with hope that Indigenous peoples, after healing themselves and their communities, will assist the nation of Canada in achieving wellness and blessing among all its peoples.

    SITEMAP Girard Studiekring