Indigenous · History Classes · Grades 10–13 · College · University

The Schools Chronology — Child-Taking, Dated

History Class · Level band: Grades 10–13 · College · University

DRAFT — CULTURAL REVIEW PENDING. These history classes are a publisher’s draft blend of the Collection’s Indigenous history research, standing on its own website. Indigenous cultural review precedes any public release of this strand. Readings carry the research labels unchanged: Documented Fact · Tradition — the people’s own account · Debated / Claim. This page carries no advertising.

English edition — the language editions of the history classes are outstanding and will follow the site’s translation pattern; none is fabricated here.

For the teacher — teacher-facing guidance for this class stands in this box only; the reading below is the student reading. Senior band only. The lesson of this class is that a chronology is evidence: an act that can be dated, authorised by statute, and counted by the states that ran it is a programme, not a misfortune. The class also models the Record's discipline on difficult material — a date in the publisher's own research post that the institutional sources do not carry is printed as an unresolved variance, not silently fixed; one example that does not verify as named is kept, with the documented case beside it; and the post's closing verdict is quoted in capitals and classed as what it is — the owner's voice, not a finding. Full texts, sources and limits: The Schools Chronology as Evidence, Genocide Record file 27.

Why a chronology is evidence

Class: RESEARCH. The Genocide Convention (1948), Article II, names five acts committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such." The fifth is: "(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." No killing is required by that paragraph — the act is the transfer of the children. The schools were that transfer, run as a dated programme: authorised in named years, opened on named days, made compulsory by a named amendment, and counted by the governments themselves. That is why this chronology is filed as evidence toward the act, not as background.

Canada — the dated programme

1828 — the Mohawk Institute is founded at Brantford, Ontario, by the New England Company as a day school. 1831 — its boarding operation begins; children live in the institution, separated from their families. Survivors named it "the Mush Hole." Some 15,000 children attended over its life. 1920 — an amendment to the Indian Act makes attendance compulsory for children aged 7–15; parents who refuse or conceal a child face imprisonment. From that year, the transfer is not an offer. 1931 — the peak: 80 schools, about 17,000 students. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission documented at least 150,000 children who attended the system, and 139 schools recognised under the Settlement Agreement. It identified 3,200 deaths — and stated the true number to be far higher, because of gaps and destruction in the records. The government's own medical officer, Dr. Bryce, had reported in 1907 that 24% of pupils at the schools he surveyed had died; he was sidelined. The last federally run school, at Gordon, Saskatchewan, closed in 1996. The Mohawk Institute itself closed on 27 June 1970.

The United States — the dated programme

1819 — the Civilization Fund Act funds the schooling system the Interior Department dates from that year. 1 November 1879 — the Carlisle Indian Industrial School opens in Pennsylvania, the model for the system: military discipline, identity alteration, children taken far from home. Interior's Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative counted 417 schools (2024 report), at least 973 documented child deaths, at least 74 burial sites at 65 schools, and 18,624 children identified by name — and states the true numbers are greater. Children as young as four were taken; by 1926 nearly 83% of Indian school-age children were in boarding schools. In October 2024 the President formally apologised for the system — an apology, printed at an apology's weight.

The abortion chronology — fact, in the publisher's teaching frame

The chronology is documented fact: abortion is recorded since antiquity; Canada banned it in 1869, allowed therapeutic abortions by hospital committee in 1969, and has had no criminal abortion law since 1988, when the Supreme Court struck the law down in R. v. Morgentaler. In the United States, Roe v. Wade (1973) was overturned by Dobbs (2022). Its placement in this record — as another avenue of the warfare against the people's increase — is the publisher's teaching, printed as OWNER'S TEACHING and not merged with the facts: in his teaching, abortion breaks "you shall not kill," reaching even that which is conceived, for Yahweh puts the child together in the mother's womb. The documented sterilisation record stands at full strength in its own class in this strand.

One date that does not agree — and stays printed

The publisher's own research post (October 3) dates the Mohawk Institute "opened in 1826." The Woodland Cultural Centre, the Royal Ontario Museum and the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation all give 1828, with boarding from 1831. The post's closing date, address, "Mush Hole" name and 15,000 children all check out; its community count (60+) differs from the reporting's (20). This Record prints 1826 as an unresolved variance — not adopted, not silently replaced. A record that corrects its own publisher in the open is the only kind whose other dates can be trusted.

The schools as total institutions

The publisher's July 16 research compilation analyses the schools as total institutions — closed environments under absolute administrative control — under heads this class maps to the TRC record: cultural eradication by breaking family bonds; an accountability vacuum (civil authority handed to religious institutions, oversight removed, the reporting doctor sidelined); rigid hierarchies that put the institution's reputation above a child's protection — the abuse process had resolved 31,970 claims by 2015; a culture of silence; deference to authority taught to the victims; intergenerational trauma; and erosion of trust. Filed as his published research analysis, mapped — not as imported text.

The Institute today

The former Mohawk Institute was saved by the Woodland Cultural Centre's Save the Evidence campaign (over $26 million raised) and reopened on 30 September 2025 as an Interpretive Historic Site and Educational Resource. The survivor-led Survivors' Secretariat has searched its grounds since November 2021; its documentary research identified 97 student deaths tied to the Institute in September 2022 — against the national register's 48 — sixteen of them children whose names are not known. No excavation findings are claimed by any source, and none are claimed here.

The mall, the cemetery, and the grounds built over

At Brantford's Tranquility Cemetery (established in the early 1800s; city-maintained at 324 King George Road), the cemetery record states that the surviving gravemarkers "have been mounted in a long arched concrete slab" and "the actual graves are under the nearby mall." A late-1990s fight over severing part of the cemetery — the provincial cemeteries regulator and the Ombudsman both involved — is documented by the Ontario Historical Society; the enclosed mall on the site was demolished in 2008 and replaced by a Walmart-anchored plaza. The publisher's post itself files the "native burial ground" version as Tradition — oral history joining the pioneer cemetery to the wider Delaware settlement along Powerline Road — and so does this class. Modern Ontario law, checked against the statute, now requires exactly what the post describes: on a discovery, notify police and coroner; a Registrar-ordered investigation by a licensed archaeologist; and disposition negotiated with the representatives of those buried — for an Indigenous burial ground, the nearest First Nation. The publisher's wider totals (hundreds built over; dozens of knowing authorisations) stand at his post's level; the registration record beside them shows about a fifth of Ontario's ~66,000 known burial sites unregistered and without the Act's protection.

The examples, at the levels found

Boitanio Mall, Williams Lake, BC — verified. Williams Lake First Nation's own record: the mall's 1974 construction sat on a village and burial site; about 13 disarticulated human skeletons were unearthed, trucked away and discarded over an embankment without the Nation. In the 2022 renovation, every load of earth was screened under the Nation's oversight. Halifax — not as named. No source ties Victoria Park to a burial ground; Halifax's documented case is the Poor House Burying Ground, said to hold ~800 dead, with the Memorial Library built over it in 1949. Hamilton — verified, corrected. Christ's Church Cathedral's cemetery (~763 buried, 1837–53) was paved for parking with about half its dead left in place; radar evidence suggests 300–400 remains. Brandon, Manitoba — verified, figure corrected. At the Brandon residential school (1895–1972), Sioux Valley Dakota Nation-led research identified 104 potential graves, 78 of them accountable through burial records — the 78 is a records figure, not a deaths total. The school's first burial ground now lies under a campground. A companion census of school gravesites built over stands in the research record beside this file.

The paper record — and the denialism argument

Against the argument that unexcavated ground means nothing happened, the record answers with paper: the TRC's register of 3,200 deaths was built from death certificates, church burial logs and admission records — the system's own paperwork — and the national memorial register grows from documents still (2,800 names in 2019; 1,143 more verified in 2025). At Tk'emlúps, this class holds the line exactly: ground-penetrating radar reported anomalies in 2021, later described as ~200 targets of interest; no excavation has confirmed remains there; and, on paper, 51 deaths at that school were documented by the TRC years before. Excavation decisions rest with the Nations. The documented dead do not depend on them.

The aftermath — and the publisher's verdict

The aftermath is measured in the state's own record: the TRC traced the line from the schools to addiction and intergenerational trauma; research on 127 Survivors found all but two living with conditions including PTSD and substance-use disorder; and the Correctional Investigator reports Indigenous people at about one-third of federal custody from under 5% of the adult population — Indigenous women at half of all women in federal penitentiaries. The publisher's post closes in his own voice, and it is quoted as OWNER'S VOICE, his verdict and not a research finding: "CONSTRUCTION WENT ON ACROSS CANADA AND THEY BUILT STRUCTURES OVERALL INDIGENOUS, BURIAL GROUNDS ALL LOCATED IN PROXIMITY TO RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS ALL AROUND THE TIME THEY WERE GETTING SHUT DOWN. COINCIDENCE I THINK NOT." The corrections above do not soften it; it does not raise any corrected item above its level. Both things stand, because both are true to what they are.

Sources for this class

UN Genocide Convention (1948), Art. II(e) • TRC Final Report (2015) • NCTR Memorial Register (2019; Sept 2025) • Woodland Cultural Centre (2025); ROM; Survivors' Secretariat via CBC/AP (2022) • US Dept. of the Interior, Boarding School Initiative Vols. I–II (2022; 2024) • Smithsonian NMAI • Abortion in Canada chronology (1869; 1968–69; R. v. Morgentaler 1988); Roe (1973); Dobbs (2022) • Ontario Historical Society Bulletin 118 (1999) • Tranquility Cemetery transcription record; Brantford Municipal Code Ch. 227 • FBCSA 2002, ss. 94–100; O. Reg. 30/11 • Ontario Genealogical Society cemetery records • Williams Lake First Nation releases (2022); Williams Lake Tribune • Fairview Historical Society • Sioux Valley Dakota Nation statement (4 June 2021); Nichols (2015) • Correctional Investigator; Justice Canada JustFacts (2024). Full research file: The Schools Chronology as Evidence, Genocide Record file 27.

Back to the Grades 10–13 · College · University classes All History Classes