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Summary Of We Were Children

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We Were Children, the documentary on residential schools, is a re-enactment of two aboriginal children and their first hand experiences in the residential school system. The kinds of problems this documentary presented include mistreatment faced by the children who attended these schools, corruption and scandal inside the administration of the schools, and the false perception about these schools that resonated amongst Canadian society. These two children talk about the bullying they had to endure from the nuns which show that the children were not seen as equal to a child of non-Aboriginal decent. Furthermore, the types of abuse administration would put these kids through was immensely disturbing considering this was a state run institution. …show more content…

The nun had bathed her with DDT, which is heavily toxic, but a well known chemical for killing insects. This showed that the nuns, the ones receiving the children as they came into the residential schools, degraded the children because they believed they were dirty and of lesser being. This shows that much of Canada, especially these nuns that worked in the residential schools had very little cultural tolerance and acceptance towards Aboriginals. However, as the documentary showed, this was not the case with every nun. There was one nun that truly cared for the children, but was coerced not to by the others. The pedagogy that the nuns subscribed too was also grounds for bullying the children. If the children spoke their own native tongue they were punished even though some of the children did not know the English language at …show more content…

It was the belief of the nurses as they coerced the children to learn God’s language, English, and “saved” them from their cultural ties. This belief normalized the mistreatment in the residential schools allowing for it to exist. Furthermore, when the two children had escaped from residential school the aunt, where they stopped for a break, turned them in because going back to the school and getting an education was going to be good for their future. Through these events it is clear that the producer may be advocating both the lack of knowledge about residential schools and the devaluation of Aboriginal communities. If society knew about these events in the schools, then like the nurse that tried to help all the children, more people would have taken action against them and those that knew about what is going on in the schools did not value the lives of Aboriginals enough to protest against

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