Resource Library
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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.
96 Results
English — CA
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.
Introduction: Stolen Lives
Read a foreword by Theodore Fontaine and other introductory material that will help you begin exploring this book.
Métis
The term Métis describes descendants of both Europeans and First Nations people (the Canadian government did not formally recognize the term until the Constitution Act of 1982).
The Invention of the “Indian”
One of the first acts of the European colonization of the Americas was an act of naming or, more accurately, misnaming.
Colonization
When the European powers set their sights on North America, some three hundred years after the so-called discovery of the continent (which for them was the “New World”), it became a location for French and British settlements.
Colonial Power Struggle
War and political changes also contributed to the destruction of indigenous ways, livelihoods, and physical existence.
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.