To be able to give a good critique about the historical accuracy of this movie I needed to look more into first hand sources from the time. I had heard about Canadian Residential Schools for Native children but only briefly as, similarly to how Americans gloss over the current state of our surviving native populations, the Canadians do much the same. Looking into it, only one member of the Canadian Government has come out and apologized for the governments actions. Otherwise, the Canadian Government still refuses to use the language of “genocide” to detail the events that the movie does a good job of portraying, though they have set up funds to compensate the families of those incarcerated. These boarding schools were first put into practice in the early to mid 1800’s and lasted until the final school was shut down in the 1990’s. Attendance was mandatory for children ages 7 to 16 up until 1946, yet many children were still forcibly taken from their homes during the 60’s and 70’s.
The primary goal was to strip the children of their native cultures and assimilate them into Canadian Society. While it was the government that funded this operation, the day to day lives of the children were controlled by the Christian Priests and Nuns who ran the facilities with the intent of converting the children to christianity so that the native religions would die out. The movie accurately portrays the children being stripped of their own clothing and being put in frocks. The scene where Aila has her hair cut off is a very powerful one and shows that everything that could be considered native will be sheared away from them; Even something as simple as her braids. The speaking of native languages was prohibited as well as any other native tradition the children would participate in. Schools were intentionally build far away from reservations to prevent contact between the children and their families. All of this hinged on the argument that these school would better integrate the native children into general canadian society and that they’d live better lives because of it, though many times children would leave the schools not being able to read or write due to all their instruction going towards religious practices, home care, or manual labor.
Most of these facilities had a graveyard on the grounds where many children were buried in unmarked graves. Many times parents were not even notified of their child’s passing. These deaths are attributed to the use of physical punishment and the poor conditions of many of these facilities. Children were denied healthcare and would die of ailments such as tuberculosis which would spread throughout the incarcerated population. The canadian government cannot give a true estimate of how many native children died in these facilities as records were often loosely kept and deaths were covered up. In some cases graveyards were built over to hide the evidence of the bodies underneath.
So do I think the movie is an accurate portrayal of the situation? Yes, in the way that the movie shows the audience the fear that people felt bringing up the schools. In the beginning of the movie the school was almost described liked one would describe prison. They showed the sexual violence children would face in custody and the violence the native community had to live through just to survive. You watch as a community soothes themselves with drinking and smoking to cope with the trauma of their childhoods and the fact that there children might some day, or are already, experiencing the same. It accurately shows how these schools have devastated what is left of Canada’s Native Population.
Works cited
https://www.trc-cvr.ca/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/06/canada-dark-of-history-residential-schools
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools
(Im sorry I’m not able to provide more for you as I only completed the historical assessment of the movie as I had no help but I completely recommend this movie if you’re comfortable with minor gore)