Today I visited the former Indan Residential School in Kaloops, British Columbia, Canada. It is now being used by first nations for various purposes. This school, and other residential schools, for aboriginal children were a tragedy for the first nations culture. Children were taken from there families and put together in the residential schools were they had to assimilate in the Canadian (western christian) culture. Residential schools were created at the end of the 19th century and existed until the 1970s. Various first nations people are actively working on retaining their cultures and are negotiating terms for self-determination, land rights and natural resource ownership. It is a harsh struggle that cannot be missed when visiting beautiful British Columbia.
