'Major concerns' were flagged in Indian boarding home system for years, records show

In January 1967, the minister of Indian Affairs in Ottawa got a troubling letter from the United Church's Indian Work Sub-Committee in lower mainland British Columbia.

Committee members were so concerned by the department's handling of an expanding boarding home program for Indigenous students attending public schools, they felt compelled to write.

The program, then in its second decade, had "great potential," the committee said, but it was "in serious danger of collapsing because of weaknesses in its implementation and excessive case-loads for the counsellors."

The committee filled two single-spaced, typewritten pages with what it saw as problems with the program. First, the letter said, the department failed to properly match students to homes, which had "unfortunate results, as we all can testify." 

Education counsellors were underqualified, culturally incompetent and already overworked. They proved incapable of adequately screening prospective parents and students, "one of the greatest problems" in the program.

"We know of families who have been allowed to take students when there was already overcrowding and an unstable household," the committee said.

Boarding home parents frequently lacked insight, appreciation or basic knowledge of the students' cultures. There was an "inadequate medical and dental situation that students are exposed to."

Earlier this month, lawyers for boarding home survivors and the federal Liberal government agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit. The announcement of an agreement-in-principle came nearly 56 years after the church committee sent its letter of concerns, which was filed in Federal Court in 2018.

The letter bears the minister's office's stamp — showing Indian Affairs was told early, and at the highest level, of problems with the program.

Officials continued getting similar reports as the program expanded across the country, the historical record shows.

The department introduced the boarding home program along with a new educational assistance policy following 1951 amendments to the Indian Act. 

The revised legislation repealed the law's notoriously oppressive bans on things like hiring lawyers, filing land claims and conducting traditional ceremonies.

Indian Affairs was exploring alternatives to residential schools, ushering in an expansion of the on-reserve day school system and new partnerships with provincial public schools, historian Sean Carleton said.

He said the department took this action mostly out of frugality — a belief the new systems would be cheaper — and never lost sight of its long-standing aim: assimilation.