Film: The residential School Experience

This film explored the native culture and how it could be changed to a white traditional culture. The native people were stripped of their culture from head to toe and were forced to be people who they were not. They wanted to prove that by doing certain things to someone you could make anyone a white person. I think the native people were used as an experiment. They started by cutting their hair short, they took away their moccasins and replaced them with boots. They then took their robes and native dress and replaced it with uniforms. Following the complete transformation of the way they looked they put them into school where they could not speak their native language in any way shape or form. They were only allowed to speak what they were taught. The schooling aspect of it struggled because there was a major shortage of teachers. Watching this film I was taken back by how the native children were forced into this culture and they didn’t have a choice. It was interesting to see how the native people were transformed and how it happened so fast.