The Healing Fund

From roughly the turn of this century it was the policy of the Government of Canada to provide education to a portion of the Aboriginal Peoples in Canada through "Indian Residential Schools." The schools were part of the general assimilationist policy of the government that was explicitly stated even into the 1950's . Four churches were involved in the operation of the schools on a contractual basis with the federal government: Roman Catholic orders, Anglican, Presbyterian and United. The Methodist and Presbyterian churches prior to union in 1925 each were involved in residential schools, which then became part of the mission work of the United Church. It is estimated that 100,000 children attended the schools, about 20 per cent of the potential status Indian students.

The number of United Church-related schools ranged from a high of 13 in 1927, to six in 1951, and four in 1966. In 1969 the federal government completely took over operation or closed all of the United Church-related schools. These schools were predominantly in western Canada. They tended to be in regions where mission activity and churches had been started among Aboriginal Peoples, but there is no immediate correlation between a particular denominational school and given Aboriginal communities. Children from one community, or even one family, may have attended several different schools affiliated with different denominations even at great distance from their homes. In 1927 the United Church also was involved in the operation of 42 day schools in Aboriginal communities. Chronic under funding by government was always a concern.

The United Church's involvement in Indian Residential Schools did not develop in a vacuum. They were one strand of the work undertaken by the church to make education accessible to children for whom there were no schools because of their class, gender, ethnic origin, or religion. For the forerunners of the United Church, access to education for children of low-income families was an important strategy in the struggle to secure greater justice and to subvert the privileges of established elites.

In the early years, the churches explicitly supported the assimilationist goals in running the schools. Thinking began to change in the 1940's and 1950's about the harm to children in separating them from their families and the increasingly evident failure of assimilation in practice and as a policy goal. The Apology to First Nations Peoples was delivered by General Council in 1986. In 1990 the churches and Canadian society more broadly began to hear the stories of former residential school students and their families, which included descriptions of cultural, physical, psychological, sexual and other abuses. In 1994 the General Council of the United Church established The Healing Fund, a $1 million fund-raising and educational campaign to support healing initiatives of First Nations.