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The records on our site emerge from the cultural and physical genocide that the Canadian government and churches conducted through the Indian Residential School System, including the ongoing impacts.

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Indian girls when they first started the school, Kitimaat
Indian girls when they first started the school, Kitimaat

Day or residential school attendance made compulsory

1920
Description
An amendment to the Indian Act made attendance at a government-designated residential or day school mandatory for First Nations children between the ages of seven and fifteen. Parents and guardians of children who resisted mandatory attendance could be held criminally liable and fined or imprisoned. This amendment also stipulated that, barring exceptional circumstances, no Protestant children would be sent to Roman Catholic schools and no Catholic children would be sent to Protestant schools.

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