A Cultural Sociology of Anglican Mission and the Indian Residential Schools in Canada

Download or read book A Cultural Sociology of Anglican Mission and the Indian Residential Schools in Canada written by Eric Taylor Woods and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-14 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the recurring struggle over the meaning of the Anglican Church’s role in the Indian residential schools--a long-running school system designed to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture, in which sexual, psychological, and physical abuse were common. From the end of the nineteenth century until the outset of twenty-first century, the meaning of the Indian residential schools underwent a protracted transformation. Once a symbol of the Church’s sacred mission to Christianize and civilize Indigenous children, they are now associated with colonialism and suffering. In bringing this transformation to light, the book addresses why the Church was so quick to become involved in the Indian residential schools and why acknowledgment of their deleterious impact was so protracted. In doing so, the book adds to our understanding of the sociological process by which perpetrators come to recognize themselves as such.