Resource Library
Find compelling classroom resources, learn new teaching methods, meet standards, and make a difference in the lives of your students.
We are grateful to The Hammer Family Foundation for supporting the development of our on-demand learning and teaching resources.
Introducing Our US History Curriculum Collection
Draw from this flexible curriculum collection as you plan any middle or high school US history course. Featuring units, C3-style inquiries, and case studies, the collection will help you explore themes of democracy and freedom with your students throughout the year.
Killing the Indian in the Child
Learn about the goal of assimilation held by many in colonial Canada and its influence on the creation of the Indian Residential Schools system.
What Is Reconciliation?
Senator Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, discusses what it means to work toward reconciliation in Canada. This video is a part of the resource Stolen Lives: The Indigenous Peoples of Canada and The Indian Residential Schools.
The Indian Act
Historian, and researcher-curator at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Dr. Karine Duhamel, details the Indian Act of Canada. This video is a part of the resource Stolen Lives: The Indigenous Peoples of Canada and The Indian Residential Schools.
Aggressive Assimilation
Facing the resilience of indigenous traditional education in Canada, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, who was also Minister of Indian Affairs, commissioned Nicholas Flood Davin, a journalist, lawyer, and politician, to go to Washington, DC, in 1879 to study how the United States tackled the same issue.
Stolen Lives: The Indigenous Peoples of Canada and The Indian Residential Schools
Designed for Canadian educators, this resource examines the Indian Residential Schools and their long-lasting effects on Canada’s Indigenous Peoples.
Historical Background: The Indian Act and the Indian Residential Schools
Go deeper into the history of the Indian Act and the founding of the Residential Schools system.
Dispossession, Destruction, and the Reserves
Reserves existed in Africa, in the British American colonies, and in Canada, where the colonizers had to address the people they dispossessed— people who seemingly stood in the way of the political and economic plans of European settlers.
Defining the Indian
Two main pieces of legislation laid the foundation for what was to be the new Dominion’s policy regarding relations with First Nations: the Gradual Civilization Act of 1857 and the Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869.
Banning Indigenous Culture
The ultimate goal of the Indian Act has always been the assimilation of the Indigenous Peoples as separate nations into mainstream Canada.
Traditional Education
The idea that Western culture was superior and that the Indigenous Peoples needed to be Christianized and civilized came from the biases of Europeans and their unwillingness to appreciate the complex, largely unwritten teaching processes inside indigenous communities.
Aggressive Assimilation
The key to this policy was a system of industrial schools where religious instruction and skills training would help the Native Americans catch up with the demands of Western society.